I'll Sleep After I Cross The Finish Line

What is it with the New York Times' Tara Parker-Pope? First she detailed Jeff Galloway's 'run-walk- method of running and encouraged runners to walk during a marathon. And now, in a June 17th article, To Improve Fitness, Try Sleep, Parker pushes the idea that more sleeping rather than building endurance through longer runs, is a better method for improving athletic performance. Citing a recent study conducted by Cheri Mah, a researcher at the Stanford Sleep Disorders Clinic and Research Laboratory at Stanford University, on the school's women's tennis team in which the players were told to extend their sleep from five hours a night to ten hours a night, Parker writes that the results showed "the athletes performed better on all the drills. Sprinting drill times dropped on average to 17.56 seconds from 19.12 seconds. Hitting accuracy, measured by valid serves, improved to 15.61 serves, up from 12.6 serves, and a hitting depth drill improved to 15.45 hits, up from 10.85 hits". Parker-Pope is training for this November's New York City Marathon and has been writing weekly columns in her Wellness Blog in which she provides useful (to her) tips and strategies for tackling the 26.2 mile course. She concludes this, her most recent article, by writing, "We runners obsess over speed work, long runs, tempo runs, hill runs, lactate threshold, resting heart rate, carbs, protein, recovery drinks, stretching, massage, ice baths, shoes, technical fabrics, gels, and about a hundred other variables. But most of us, I bet, don’t give sleep a second thought. It’s crazy, if you think about it. How can we expect to run well if we can’t stop yawning?"

I hate to criticize another member of the press, but I have to say that these tips and strategies that Tara Parker-Pope is supporting are completely missing the point of running a marathon. Save for those incredibly elite runners, a marathon is a test of endurance, will power and determination. No matter how well prepared you are, there will come a point where you have to actually force yourself not to quit. It is an experience where, once you cross that finish, all the pain you just suffered becomes worth it because you know you put your all into it. It just seems to me that in encouraging walking and sleeping more, Parker-Pope is formulating ways in which you don't need to use every ounce of energy you have to get you to the finish line. I mean, I could rollerblade for the first half of a marathon if I wanted to cut down on the potential for injuries or I could simply not do it at all if that were my primary concern. But it isn't. I wouldn't feel the same sense of accomplishment I do whenever I cross a marathon's finish line if I didn't also feel the pain and agony from having covered so many miles.

As a side note, the study that Parker-Pope uses to establish the benefit of sleeping more instead of running more miles cites increased performance in sprint drills which is the completely opposite form of running performed in a marathon. At least in my experience, there is very little sprinting going on over those 26.2 miles of the course.

Anyways, with the clock about to reach 5:00am, I am off for my morning run. How far I will run is as yet unknown. What I do know, however, is that I probably won't run (pun intended) into Tara Parker-Pope this morning. I will assume she is still sleeping.