Biking on 6 or less hours sleep?

In article ,
occupant wrote:

whinds wrote:

In article , Preston Crawford
writes:


Because of my anxiety I'm often worried that doing this could somehow be
*dangerous*. I have no empirical or scientific evidence to back this up,
it just doesn't feel healthy. It feels good when I do it, but I still
worry. It's become more of a problem lately because my stress is up at my
new job and I'm not sleeping well. Do you guys bike on low sleep?

It has always been my belief that if you are not 100 percent focused
when cycling you may not arrive at your destination. I don't cycle to
work if I am preoccupied. I cannot comment in racing as I don't know
what is involved. Cycling is pretty safe if you don't hit anything.
For instance, tonight when cycling to Home Depot, another cyclist and I
passed in a narrow passage way neither one expecting the other as there
are few cyclists who go to this Home Depot. We both make quick safe
adjustments to our presence. That might not have happened if one of us
was not alert or sleep deprived!

I have raced on somewhat short sleep, but it's definitely not my
preference. Racing is much more demanding than commuting, touring or
training, of both performance and attention.

The counterpoint is that you're usually so jazzed up on adrenaline at
the start of the race that it wouldn't matter if you were working on 2
hours of sleep and a hangover. But that fades, and then it just adds to
the natural sense of fatigue that is so common in bike racing.

Commuting? I ride without regard to my alertness state (it's a bit of a
litmus test: if I'm not well enough to ride to work, I'm probably not
well enough to go to work). But I find that on one hand, cycling itself
is very good at raising my alertness (hitting the cool air at this time
of the year, the simple act of physical exertion, and the demands on my
attention all leave me arriving at work quite awake (then I crash into
sleepyness shortly after lunch...), and on the other hand, if I am
really tired, I usually oversleep my alarm by enough that I have to take
the car to work.

--
Ryan Cousineau, http://www.wiredcola.com
Verus de parvis; verus de magnis.