Sleep & Two-a-Days

I never thought I would actually spend time writing about sleep, but I also didn’t realize how much it would be affected in this process. Simply stated, skating takes it all out of you, it sucks up your energy. Just yesterday I skated for an hour. One hour. I went home, spent some time with my family and got dressed to hit the gym for a two a day (explained later). I never made it to the gym. I hit the sack at 8:15 pm. How do I know exactly when I slept? Well, I woke up to a handful of texts all time stamped around 8:30 that I never saw/responded to. I also have a fitbit that tracks my sleeping patterns. And I never plugged my phone into the charger, a daily routine for me.

When I took classes on Saturday I would often stay for the open skate afterwards, on these days I would go home and rest or nap for hours. If you know me well you know that I have difficulty sleeping during the day. I only nap if my body is 100% exhausted.

I think it’s important to note that I don’t feel exhaustion on the ice. That’s what confuses me about this. Ice time in my mind is glorified, I feel like I’m in my happy place. I smile when I succeed at something that I’ve been working on. It doesn’t hit me until about 10 minutes after I’ve been in my house. Nowadays, I don’t even let myself sit when I get home. I literally have trouble getting up every time. So I figure if I avoid sitting I can make myself a quick/light dinner and head to the gym for the two a day. Rarely the case.

Two-a-days are intense. They are the days when I do two complete (1 hr +)  workouts. I know it sounds crazy, but it makes sense to me. As I’ve mentioned before, I am really committed to my plan and my goals in figure skating. If I am going to start jumping I need to be in good shape. Second, I am paying for a membership at a really nice gym. If I’m paying for it I better be going every day, sometimes twice a day. These two-a-days occur on very specific occasions, they occur on skating days because I can only do a workout after skating (otherwise I’ll be too tired for ice time), and skating is a complete workout in itself. They also occur on friend gym days. Luckily my gym is right next to my place of work, and because I end at 2pm (and literally have nothing else to do until 6) I hit the gym for an hour knowing that I’ll be heading there again at night with my girls. Surely this changes my workout, I usually go hard on my magic machine in the afternoon so that in the evening I can walk on the treadmill while my friends are on the ones next to me (they hate my machine and I hate running on the treadmill, so I take it easy at night).

Two-a-days are my favorite. I feel my best on those days and I sleep really well too. I come home, shower up, and hit the sack. At first I used to wake up feeling sore, but as this goes on it doesn’t feel as bad in the morning, some days I even wake up refreshed.