02:24:47. Awake. Went to bed at 1030. Now up, fully alert and refreshed, only 4 hours later. Very strong and loud ringing in the ears.

Yesterday, I slept in late, until noon. I felt I had a cold coming on and heavy fatigue. Did not take an afternoon nap. Attempted to gauge the point at which I would be tired enough for bed.

Also yesterday, I entered data from the October 14th hill climb into the data sheet I am using to collect walk data. This has been extremely useful in validating different metrics. I can now state with some degree of certainty that the mean distance for a single hill climb loop is .64 mile (N = 16) and the mean time for one loop is 11 minutes and 50 seconds (N = 15)

Two other things pop out of the data. The first is that my October 14th times were almost a minute better than my prior times. This may be due to training effect. It is more likely due to the fact that it was 8 degrees out and I was severely under-dressed, wearing only shorts and a loose shirt with a thin nylon wind shirt outer garment. I was cold. I was hustling along in an attempt to generate and maintain body heat.

Something else sticks out from the data. Normally my fastest result will be turned in on the first two loops of the six loop sequence with performance declining by almost a minute over the entire sequence. On October 14th, my performance improved over the series of 6 loops (first run time of 11 min 23 sec, final run of 10 min 59 sec). I credit this not to training effect but to the fact that on loop five I ate a hard caramel candy which delivered a shot of carbohydrate to my system and likely helped generate the performance increase.

What I should do is create another set of data sheets to record all of my sleep events over the course of an entire month and see what can be learned from that data. Call this the Sleep Experiment. This begins to address the Item 1 requirement of my Evidence Based Recovery post.

I have couple of other data points. On two consecutive days I sought to eliminate the need for an afternoon nap. I was not undertaking work of any great cognitive demand and I thought elimination of the nap might assist me in sleeping through the night. It did not.

On the first day’s nap suppression, I felt tired and ready for bed by 2030. I retired but woke fully refreshed 4 hours later. On the following day I made a similar attempt to avoid a mid day nap and managed to remain awake until 2130. I once again woke 4 hours after retiring feeling fully refreshed.

On October 14th I felt the need for a nap and was about to start one around 1430. Instead, I went for a walk, departing at 1500 and returning at 1730. This is the walk in the cold described above, the one on which my pace improved over the course of six loops. I believe I overstressed myself. On the next day I came down with a cold and did not arise until noon.

Even though the events being described are from the last few days I am having great trouble discerning what happened on which day and have had to make heavy use of my walk data record. This argues for the need to create a similar record to capture sleep information and obtain objective data on the number of hours of sleep, the times of rest and waking, and the factors that appear to play a role in the quality and duration of sleep.