It’s 1:11 am on September 2, 2027. My alarm is set for 3:30 so I can go run the first marathon of the inaugural Northwest Series.
I’ve never had jet lag insomnia like this before. I’ve done crazed switchback trips, especially when I was working in the UK.
But this is something new.
This is something terrible.
In the last five days I’ve logged a cumulative total of eight (8!!) hours of sleep. Last night/ tonight I got into Pendleton, Oregon, around 8:30 pm. After a few administrative tasks (pulling out my running gear for the morning, confirming the start line address, etc), I turned in around 9:30 hoping to grab six hours of sleep before my alarm went off.
So far I’ve gotten zero hours.
I’ve gotten zero minutes.
Zero seconds of sleep.
On the drive here from Seattle, I stopped three times to get out and stretch as I could feel my eyelids dropping. But after checking into this hotel – I’m wide awake.
This head cold isn’t helping to be sure; I think I pulled my back muscle during a coughing fit. But the majority of the problem is this jet lag insomnia. Given how awful I feel, I should be desperate for an unconsciousness coma to allow my body time to fight off these germs.
And yet: wide awake.
I would just blow off the marathon but at this stage I’m hoping it helps exhaust me so that I might sleep. As it stands now… as it lies now on this lumpy hotel room bed… I can’t sleep anyway. If I DIDN’T go to the race what is my alternative? Lying here in miserable frustration at not being able to sleep? Might as well be miserable running as not.
I’m not sure how long one can go without sleep, especially as I’m feeling like death warmed over with this head cold. I take some small comfort that I’m not on propofol, that sleeping aid drug that killed Michael Jackson. I’m leery of sleeping pills. The few times I’ve used them I’ve had the most awful, terrible, debilitating dreams, the dreams that are the nightmares of nightmares.
And yet if this keeps up I may have to seek out what OTC options exist in this town.
In two hours, to the start line I will go… because I’m not going to sleep, that’s for sure.