Who's up early?

[Irishgirl]

I definitely see a difference of being up earlier since last week and turning 50....

All kidding aside I’ve always been an early bird and find it difficult to stay up late when I’m not traveling. Love getting up early and getting a start on my day by working out. I also find my greatest productivity is in the morning.

I’m convinced my teenage daughters are vampires and would stay up late and sleep all day.


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[oldpotatoe]

Nowadays (54 y.o.) I am usually up by 4:00 am, asleep around 8:00 pm.

Yup, same..bed by about 8-8:30, read my obligatory 4-5 pages..out..Up by 4:30-5:00...really nice to have some quiet, solitude..

[commonguy001]

49 and if I see 6am when I get up, it was a good morning sleeping in. I’m usually up by 4-430 no matter what time I hit the sack. I’ve embraced it so it’s only annoying to my wife at this point if I wake her up, our dogs love it.

[dsimon]

You know what else is crazy is when you sleep in till 7-730 because your tired you feel like the day is wasted... who does that?

[pobrien]

I recall one lecture really well of a psychology professor describing a sleep pattern experiment where volunteers lived in an underground facility where they had tasks to do but were isolated and had no clocks or indications of time.

Over a short period of time, virtually all (or all) of the subjects were found to be sleeping for six hours (e.g. from 9 pm to 3 am) and then two more hours diametrically opposite the middle of their six hour REM sleep (11 am to 1 pm).

The professor suggested that this pattern might have had an ecological basis as to when our ancestors were hunter-gatherer people and where there were either predation risks or heat avoidance or other factors that drove this cycle.

I find myself sleeping from about 9 pm to 3 or 4 am and then again most every day between noon and 1 pm for one or two hours. I do need the nap.

The lecture was quite a while ago but it resonated with me and stuck in my memory. Thank goodness for mandatory arts electives!

[vincenz]

I feel the day is wasted if waking past 7 am. I’m up and out on the roads by 6. It’s either early or none for me.

[bigbill]

I'm in bed by 10 and up by 5. Once it gets warmer, I'll get up at 4am on the weekends to ride at 5 to beat the heat here in AZ. No DST here either so I don't have to adjust.

For what the body is capable of, I'm a retired submariner. When I was doing deployments, when the hatches would shut we shifted to zulu time. There was no day/night reference, just the time. I operated on an 18 hour day. 6 hours on watch (running the reactor), 6 hours of maintenance/off time, and 6 hours of sleep before starting the cycle over. My body would adjust. When we'd return from deployment, once with arrived at the pier we'd shift the clocks to local time.

[alancw3]

at 71 years old I am routinely up at 4am every morning, not that I want it be but that is what happens. makes for a long day. it is a bitch being old!!!! I find that I only need about 4-5 hours sleep now.

[Llewellyn]

I'm almost always up by 5 and on those rare mornings that I'm not I'll be up by 0530. My wife says I'm like a meerkat (wide awake and up and about in less than a minute). She's the complete opposite and can hardly get up by 8 and takes an hour or more to get going!

I agree with some others here that waking up any later than about 6 o'clock is wasting the day. I'll be out riding as soon as practicable after the cat comes in from doing her morning rounds of her patch.

[texbike]

This is an interesting thread. I'm 50 and struggle to sleep more than 6 hours a night (usually asleep by midnight and up by 6 to get the kids off to school and start the day). However, I've had a tough time going to bed early and sleeping longer than 6 hours for close to 10 years now.

It seems that the common belief is we should have 7-8 hours of sleep a night. The responses so far seem to indicate that as we age, we're getting less sleep. Why do you think that is? For those that are getting less than 7-8 hours a night, have you always had the same sleep patterns and number of hours of sleep per night or did that become the norm as you've aged?

Texbike

[Kirk007]

At 61 up a lot earlier than I used to be in general, but stress/mental what's on my mind has a lot to do with it. My son got me a Whoop monitor for christmas and its fascinating and has me much more mindful of sleep needs. It monitors your sleep, HRV and resting heart rate, tracks and analylzes your sleep, suggests how much you need to get the next night and tracks recovery based on all of the data, suggesting whether you are good to go for a hard day or should rest. I find that its analysis is often very aligned with how I'm feeling. It has me focused on intentionally trying to extend how long I sleep at night.

I don't think I ever feel as rested as I did as a kid though, even after a full nights sleep. I guess I should be grateful that I still wake up.

[dustyrider]

Funny how little sleep I actually crave anymore. In my teens I could sleep for 12 hours straight if I was ever allowed to. I would try to sleep, and could sleep, where ever and whenever I could.

Now that I'm almost 40, I can't sleep more then 5-6 hours. I very rarely get up past 6am and very very rarely go to bed before 11pm. When I have time to myself, and the weather is nasty, I might push that 6 hours of sleep more consistently. I do take a nap during the heat of the day in the summer months, but never more then an hour and I'm typically hitting the 5 hours of sleep consistently on those days the most because of the pleasant weather in the early morning/late evening.

[XXtwindad]

I'm up at 5-5:30. I have twin 4 year-old daughters, and I crave my morning cup of coffee and little window of solitude...

[jb_11]

Originally Posted by Irishgirl

I definitely see a difference of being up earlier since last week and turning 50....

All kidding aside I’ve always been an early bird and find it difficult to stay up late when I’m not traveling. Love getting up early and getting a start on my day by working out. I also find my greatest productivity is in the morning.

I’m convinced my teenage daughters are vampires and would stay up late and sleep all day.


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In the book The Overachievers the author references a sleep study that determined teens' natural circadian rhythms keep them up late and drives them to sleep in. The authored inferred that most would be better served with later school hours.

I know that was the case for me as a teen / early 20's. One pre-teen daughter seems to be on her way to proving this out also.

I too can't sleep in like I used to. Part of it is minor body aches that have developed over the years. Getting up and moving loosens everything up again.

[avalonracing]

No wonder you guys are getting up early. Some of you go to bed before I did when I was 8-years-old. During the summer I usually wake up in the 4 o'clock hour even though I go to bed at midnight. If I go to bed at 10 I'm up at 2. I think I just do one sleep cycle and my brain switches on. It will probably take 20 years off the back of my life. Oh well.