Sleep isn't a luxury--it's a training tool. Running on empty
won't get you far. At the 2004 World Indoor Championships in
Budapest, poor sleep nearly cost Shayne Culpepper a medal. She
just barely qualified in the preliminary to the 3000-meter
finals. "I was suffering from jet lag and had trouble sleeping
leading up to the heat," says the 31-year-old Olympian. "I
usually get eight hours of sleep, but I only got three hours. I
was exhausted. I felt like I was running all-out, but my time
wasn't close to my PR." The next two nights, she made up for it
with eight hours of back-to-back shut-eye--and took the bronze
medal in the finals. "I definitely felt the effects of being
well rested," she says. Culpepper's experience illustrates what
sleep researchers know: "Sleep is a necessity, not a luxury,
especially for athletes," says James B. Maas, Ph.D., a professor
of psychology at Cornell University and author of Power Sleep.
In fact, when it comes to recovery, sleep is every bit as
important as what you eat or drin