jesnow

I also call this "Monday Night Syndrome":

Go hard all weekend, get in some good training, or race. Then Monday night you have trouble sleeping. I'm an insomniac anyway, but this is a different kind. At bedtime I feel fine, tired, ready to sleep, heart rate down (maybe not all the way to my RHR, 44). Then sometimes as little as 2 hours later I'm awake, overheated, heart pounding, pulse 10-20 beats high. Even when the pulse isn't elevated it feels like my heart is beating really hard, louder than usual.

Things I've tried:
Hydration: Helps a little, maybe
No alcohol on rest nights: Helps a little maybe
Lunesta: Gets me to sleep anyway
Beta blockers: Scary, and doesn't help discomfort.
Not worrying about it: It's what I've been doing.

BTW this has been going on the last 25 years -- I don't think I need a cardiologist, and I have had a thorough stress test and echogram.

Does anybody else have this problem? If I sleep poorly Monday night, I often don't fell like training Tuesday, meaning my training week is down to two days.

Thanks,

Jon

RT

Not thumping my Bible here, but quitting drinking did more for my sleep than anything else. You may be a light drinker, so this may be moot.

I have the insomnia thinking about ways to upgrade the bike or if I should buy n+1. I don't know your medical history, but I have found that for me (after alcohol) the rest is in my mind. Clearing my mind a couple of hours before bed helps: No TV, only classical music or nature sounds. Part of it is that I'm getting old, so there's that.

Try meditation. It is free and has no ill side effects.

merlinextraligh

Try a little active rest? Recovery ride, walk, or stretching, core, and light upper body work. Just enough to get a little exercise without interfering with recovery.

From your history, it seems that you only have the sleeping issue if you don't exercise.

jesnow

An ordinary recovery ride doesn't do anything. Anyway, I'm usually too hammered on Monday to get near a bike.

From the underwhelming number of "this happens to me too!" posts, it sounds like I'm pretty unusual. Which sucks.

Maybe I'm pushing my (admittedly low) limits way too hard. I remember Greg Lemond in one of his last tours complaining about not sleeping. As if it's common knowledge that when you start having sleep problems, you're past your ability to recover in one night. This would sort of square with what I've been experiencing. But you'd think that lots of people here push themselves that hard. Maybe I'm just the only one who approaches that level of self destruction on suburban group rides.

RT

My experience with behavior modification was that it took literally months for a new pattern to take, but it took discipline to maintain whatever changes you have made that are working for you. Easy part is finding what works, hard part is maintaining it.

I went from five hours at the MOST of sleep a night for about ten years until it finally caught up with me. Other lifestyle changes aside, learning how to go to sleep earlier and waking up earlier, but sleeping longer overall was very difficult, but I am here to tell you that once it takes, you will know it.

Since you have seen appropriate medical professionals already, perhaps you should try something less orthodox, like acupuncture. It helped a family member of mine with terrible morning headaches, and has done more for my sore feet than all of Western medicine combined in the past 25 years.

rbart4506

I get the sleepless nights on the hard days...Once a recovery day comes, as Merlin described, I sleep soundly...

hybridbkrdr

Melatonin is natural.

Roarau

Just so I am clear, are you suggesting that after an intense few days of training you struggle to rest well? But the issue isn't persistent if you haven't done extraneous activities the past few days?

I also have trouble sleeping if I am not active enough during the day and in general if my mind is not calm. I stay away from any sort of sleep aids, or unnatural products. I've found that reducing all caffeine intake and ensuring a very healthy and consistent diet has helped quite a bit (I rarely drink).

Yoga/meditation works for me as well, or even just a quick, high tempo 15-30 minute muscle workout to get that extra energy out of my body.

Some more information about your exercise/diet habits may be beneficial.

rubic

Over training syndrome. I have experienced this so many times as have so many others. Your go all out during a race and / or training which stresses your body's systems. Although counter intuitive, since you would think the residual fatigue would allow luscious sleep, it works the opposite. Outside of increased conditioning, I do not think their is a truly drug free remedy. And the drug remedy sucks in the long run.

david58

"This happens to me too!"

bike56

Yes,That's it.Over training.When I hammer really hard,or a lot of accumulated miles,It happens.It sucks because you really need sleep and the last thing your body needs is a sleepless night.The only way to avoid it is not to over train.get lots of rest days before a race or big ride

rbart4506

^^^ That is not over-training...That is over reaching...Over-training goes beyond sleep patterns and takes a long time to overcome...

jesnow

OP here: I tend to agree with rbart4506 -- I have *also* overtrained from time to time, and the symptoms there are different. Especially the refusal of my heart rate to go down over many days, the overall tired feeling, drop in performance, had all that. That's why I do lots of rest days (minimum 2/week) and lots of low HR rides, especially in the early season.

I've noticed that getting old (51) has made me more prone to Monday Night syndrome, and also more sensitive to the bad effects of Alcohol and caffeine. The past week I stopped drinking beer completely (normally have a beer with dinner) and my caffeine is already limited to one cup of tea in the morning. So far no change, but only one Monday night since then. Maybe I'll go to herbal tea and see what happens.

Overreaching is good in general, it's what you're supposed to do. But rest days require the most willpower, but to *not* ride, then on Tuesday to climb back on. Bad sleep Monday night makes it harder. Getting on the bike Saturday after a Friday rest day is usually not a problem.

Sometimes Monday night my HR isn't even that elevated, but has this peculiar *thumping* feeling, even though it's in the 40's.

RT

It takes much longer than a week at our age. I have spoken with local friends my age about this, and it is consistent. It's not a case of "Well, I feel sort of like it is working," it is night and day, but it takes your body time to adjust. Almost like your body doesn't believe you.

jesnow

It does seem to get better once I've built a decent base and my RHR is down. I had it mildly friday night after a brutal killer group ride thursday evening, so maybe things are looking up.

jesnow

Here I am in the middle of a rest night 2 years later. I've raced about 30 times at the regional and state level since that last post, trained about 20,000 miles, all with modest results. But I love this sport and so who cares if I'm not on the effing podium. I'm not sitting around waiting for the lightning to strike, I'm training harder and smarter. 50+ (1-4) racing is brutally hard. Especially when you're racing against Ex-pros in the Texas heat.

But still I'm up in the night after rest day. More data points since my last set of posts:

- Caffeine and alcohol make it way worse. Cut those completely except for caf gels during races.
- Daily life stress (or its lack) has an inconsistent effect. Sometimes better, sometimes worse.
- Hydrating makes it better. Coco water, mmmmm. Any comfort drink would do I think (nonalcoholic).
- Zaleplon can be taken at night. Studies have shown that even large doses of zaleplon have worn off sufficiently
after 2 hours that test subjects could wake up and do useful work with no cognitive impairment. It's got a 45 minute
half-life in the body after it peaks. As chemical solutions go, it's about a subtle a sedative-hypnotic as you can get,
and after 2 years I'm still on the starter dose. Only very little tolerance has developed. As a hypnotic it seems to
short circuit the "Late at night I wake up with the sheets soaking wet/and a freight train running through
the middle of my head" effect. No grogginess at all in the morning, but I'm a little absent minded and forgetful
sometimes. I had *that* before all of this.

Thanks to all who've posted and anybody who has any insight or ideas about rest night insomnia please post.

Machka 

Maybe that's part of the problem right there.

Exactly what do you mean by "I'm usually too hammered on Monday to get near a bike"?

jesnow

Hammered=Exhausted, not drunk. I'm a pretty light drinker, most of the time. Here I am another year later, and the Monday night syndrome is a constant, among other things that rob my sleep like stress, caffeine and alcohol. I appear to be a "just plain insomniac". Melatonin seems to go along with scary short term memory issues, so I stopped that. Zaleplon works well, but I'm slowly building up a tolerance. No length or intensity of ride or race guarantees a good night's sleep. I guess I just have to learn to live with it.

bt

melatonin screws with my mind badly.

jesnow

I'm just reading this thread again after many years. My "Monday night syndrome" with the high heart rate and panic attack feeling was surely due to high cortisol levels from overreaching, and also overtraining. I would now (age 59) put it down to riding too hard on Saturday and not resting Sunday. With just one super hard day (eg 140km in 4.5 hours) my sleep isn't any worse than usual, but adding a *second* hard ride in a row is what puts me into "Monday night syndrome". I never completely shook that effect, but found that NO alcohol and NO caffeine helped a lot. I guess if you're feeling like that on Monday you shouldn't ride so hard Sunday, *even* if you feel good after your Saturday ride. More rest days, better hydration.

Bah Humbug

Well this is suspicious.

terrymorse 

It's reached the magic 10 posts, attaining new powers. Let's see what it does next.

Bah Humbug

Look at the previous two as well.

mawn

I'm exactly like you.

noimagination

I haven't really tracked the effects of exercise on sleep, so I don't have hard data. (Given that, you can conclude that exercise doesn't affect my sleep to a large degree - or, if it does, I'm not aware of it.)

For me, looking back (but, again, no tracking) I think that the quality of my sleep is lower on hard days than on rest days - but, again, not to a significant degree. Unless it has been an unusually hard day, I'm pretty sure that really hard days mean poor sleep that night.

The one thing I have noticed, however, that has a significant effect on the quality of my sleep is, unfortunately, caffeine. I am no longer able to drink caffeinated beverages more than a couple of times per week. This is a fairly recent occurrence. If you use caffeine shots during your workouts, could this be affecting your sleep? For me the effects are cumulative: I can drink a cup of caffeinated tea today and sleep OK tonight, but if I have a caffeine drink a couple of days in a row then my sleep is affected on (and after) the second night. If you do use caffeine shots during your workouts, maybe change to un-caffeinated shots for a while to see if that changes anything?