How do you manage training consistency when your sleep schedule is genuinely wrecked?
Night shift has me running at weird hours and I'm trying to figure out if anyone else has cracked this. Three 12hour nights a week, and my sleep basically falls into two categories: postshift zombie sleep and normalish human sleep on off days. The problem is my body has no idea which mode it's in when I lace up.
My easy pace on postshift runs feels about 30 to 45 seconds per mile harder than the same effort on off days. Heart rate climbs faster, legs feel heavy, and anything resembling a quality workout is kind of a joke. I've mostly given up on doing workouts within 24 hours of finishing a shift, but that limits me to three real training days a week if I'm being strict about it.
Curious how others working nonstandard hours structure their weeks around this. Do you just accept the degraded sessions and run them anyway, treating them as extra easy aerobic work? Or do you fully protect your workout days and let the shift days be pure junk miles or rest?
I'm at about 40 miles a week right now, building toward a fall half. My PRs are nothing impressive, but I'm genuinely trying to improve the structure here, not just whiteknuckle my way through the training block.