In the September issue of Runner’s World magazine there is an article about Tera Moody who is a current USA team member who will compete in the marathon at the World Championships in Berlin beginning on August 15. To be honest I have never heard of Tera Moody before I read the article, but you can be sure I will never forget her now.
Tera suffers from insomnia. She suffers so severely she hardly gets more than 3 hours a sleep in one stretch and is often up at 3:00 am getting her training runs in since she can’t sleep. Tera has been suffering since 6th grade and has tried everything under the sun to figure out why she can’t sleep to no avail. She relied for a time on sleeping pills but due to drug testing in competitive sports, and her own desire to be free of the grogginess that inevitably come with sleeping pills, Tera relies on herbal supplements, only using the smallest does possible for a prescribed sleeping pill when it is absolutely necessary.
The article was very in depth and painted a clear picture of Tera’s struggles with insomnia. As a fellow insomniac reading her story struck me to my core. I have struggled with insomnia since high school and it is something that few people can understand. Most people have periods of time where they can’t sleep; stressed out at work, worries about money, family, etc. But most people return to normal sleep after those things pass. This isn’t so for insomniacs. There is no end of the sleepless nights for us.
I suffer from insomnia in different ways than Tera. While Tera gets up at 3:00 am awake as can be, I, also awake as can be, stay in bed. To the outside viewer I am sure they would be surprised that I am an insomniac since I am in bed for long stretches of time. But through all those hours in bed I get only 3 hours at a time of uninterrupted sleep. I stay in bed willing my body to sleep, trying to grasp at some semblance of peace so I can rest. Sometimes I am successful but more often not I am unsuccessful. For the last 2 ½ years I have relied on sleeping pills because I was just tired of being so tired. I remember clearly the day after I got more than 3 hours of uninterrupted sleep and it was one of the best days of my life. But now, as I become more and more reliant on sleeping pills for sleep, I have become more and more sick f them. I am scared that I will be reliant on them for the rest of my life but I am so scared to get off them. Sleep is one of the things that I hold most dear and I never want to go back to the place I was before I started taking the pills
But even with the sleeping pills I still rarely get 8 hours of sleep. Often I get 3-4 hours before I completely wake up, brain going a million miles an hour, just to lay there hoping to go back to sleep. Luckily with the invention of time released sleeping pills often I can get an additional 2-3 hours but it is still not always enough.
As a runner being an insomniac has had an effect on me. The sleeping pills make me very groggy in the morning, making it harder for me to get up for early morning runs. I feel like my morning runs are often horrible as I am never fully awake or out of what I call “the sleep coma.” Often the last 2 hour stretch of sleep I get before I wake up for the day is from 4:00-6:00 am, and interrupting that to get up at 5:15 am to run is hard. But living where I do, (where it is extremely hot during the summer), the mornings are the only safe time to run outside without fear of heat stroke. The treadmill bores me to no end so mornings are my only option. The past couple weeks I have been attempting to get up to run in the morning. I have been semi-successful but there is much improvement to be made and as training begins on Saturday I have to be very diligent about my training runs.
So from now on when I get up at 5:15 am to run I will think of Tera to help get me out the door. I know that somewhere she is already running, getting in her training miles because that is all she can do. So that is what I will do. It seems easier now knowing that there is someone else like me out there; someone who can’t sleep but loves to run.
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