Sleeping Tips The Night Before A Big Race

It’s important to rest well and get a good night’s sleep before your marathon race.

Your big race is just round the corner and the last thing that you want is to feel tired and lethargic on the day itself. This will affect your race performance, so you want sleeping tips on how to have a good night’s sleep.

Here are some useful tips on how you can have a good snooze the night before and be well rested on the morning of the big race – for optimum performance.

Do not sleep on a full stomach

You would probably know that carbo-loading is very important before a race. But do not overdo this by having a much bigger than usual serving of rice or pasta for dinner the evening before. It may be hard to sleep on a full stomach and it may also affect your performance the next day because your system is not used to such a large quantity of food. So just eat your usual sized meal the evening before.

Keep your room cool

Try and keep your bedroom cool on the night before a big race so that you will be able to sleep better. This is because a person needs to lower their core body temperature in order to have a much deeper sleep. If we are hot and stuffy, we won’t be able to sleep well. A good temperature to have your room at, would be about 20 to 22 degrees C. So if you live in a hot country like Singapore, this would be a good excuse to turn up your air-conditioning unit.

Do packing the night before

If you pack everything you need and get all your running gear ready the night before the race, you will be able to have those extra few minutes of sleep the next morning and won’t be fretting about whether you have missed out on something, such as your race bib or mobile phone.

Doing your packing the night before will mean a more restful sleep because you will not be unconsciously thinking about what to do in the morning.

Get eight hours of sleep

What you should do before the race is to go to bed early. The last thing you want is to spend the night before your big event partying till the wee hours of the morning. That will drastically reduce your efficiency and performance during the race itself. In short, you just won’t perform very well during the race if you are tired. By having enough sleep, you will feel more rested and will be able to run much better on the big day.