Hey all. I have an endurance trad-base ride I am looking forward to doing tonight, but I found out that I need to come in early for work, which means getting up at 3am.
If I already know that I will get a Max of 5 hrs sleep (probably a little less), is it wiser to skip training since I won’t be able to recover well? Thoughts? Thank you 
You can also consider doing a shorter version of the workout or switching it for a lower intensity ride.
Personally, if I’m well rested and I know I will miss some sleep only next night I’d still do a short session but if over fatigued or about to lose on sleep quality/time for more than one night I might bail.
Thanks for the tip! I just cut my 1.5 hour Fletcher to 1 hr. I wanted to skip to the cool down at 55 minutes in, but I couldn’t figure out a way to do it. I know I have moved the play head before by accident, but doing it on purpose is not so easy lol.
In future if it happens I would just keep the session as it is - provided it isn’t a regular occurrence. When I ran marathons like VLM you were to psyched to sleep much the night before but provided your normal sleep was ok then adrenaline took you through. Same for tt I hammer up and down the roads of the UK (usually!) with start times of 6/7am so get up at 3-4 am. Makes little difference. Just need to prioritise sleep in the days before and afterwards. If it became a regular occurrence though you would need to adjust your workouts or sleep regime.
Good to hear from your experience with more intense events. There are already so many things in life that interfere with workout compliance. Guess if I let a bad night of sleep get in the way I’ll never make it through a week without skipping training. Just going to prioritize sleep in the next days as you said, thanks!
You need to pause the workout before skipping forward, at least on the desktop app.
To skip the cool down I think you just get off the bike. When you stop pedalling it should ask you to end the workout.
Thanks Russell, not trying to skip cool down, but was trying to start cool down early on Android.
I’m responding to this post a little late in the game…but, have I ever gone into a hard effort on the bike with 5 hours or less sleep the night before?
Yes. Every single race I rolled up to that I gave a damn about.
Bad sleep the night before doesn’t matter as far as I’m concerned. Bad sleep each of the two or three nights before starts to be a problem.
Most my weekday workouts start at 8:45-9pm, and are 1.5hrs. That means I’m in bed around 11-11:30, and have to wake up by 6. It isn’t ideal, but it is the only way I can train during the week (unless of course I wake up at 4:30, but that’s just shifting the problem to the morning). So far I haven’t noticed an impact significant enough to cause me to skip or fail a workout, though I’m sure I would be more productive if I was better rested. But, the trade off is that I either train slightly more tired or not train at all.
How tired do you feel during the day doing that? Do you go through moments at work where you mentally fight your tiredness and wish you could nap? I imagine you must still be making FTP gains or you wouldn’t be doing it.
Actually I don’t feel too bad during work hours, but between 5-7pm I feel ready to sleep.
As for FTP gains, I’ve gone from 195W October 15 to 251W when I tested 3-4 weeks ago, with 5W/4 weeks for two tests in a row. Gains are definitely there, though I’m sure I could have squeezed a watt or two more being more rested. But as I said, if I don’t train late, I don’t train … so I can comfortably say that there would be no gains without the late night training sessions.
5 hours isn’t that bad?.
I would say that happends to me weekly and i do up to 300 TSS on those days.
But if you are a person who normally sleeps 8-9 and can get in 12 hours on big sleep days maybe for you its impossible. My avg is 6 and MAX is 8.
Wow nice gains!! I think that answers my question. Guess I can probably worry about sleep a little less.