Research summary · Sleep and recovery
Tracking sleep around a mountain ultramarathon
Fifteen Brazilian male runners were enrolled around a mountain ultramarathon, with usable wrist-actigraphy sleep data from thirteen. Monitoring covered the week before the race, competition and the following week.
- Publication year
- 2026
- First published online
- Publication type
- Observational field study
- Journal
- Sleep Health
- Population / context
- Male recreational ultramarathon runners
What the publication reports
Sleep during the race was severely curtailed and was not clearly associated with finishing time. Most runners reported symptoms they attributed to insufficient sleep. Wake-up times shifted later after the event; some proposed pre-race and recovery-night differences did not reach statistical significance.
Limits and interpretation
The small convenience sample, varying completed distances and single event limit generalization. Symptoms were self-reported, and actigraphy cannot precisely characterize sleep stages. Observational associations do not determine an optimal race-sleep strategy or prove that sleep loss caused the symptoms.
Read the source
Consult the original record for the full author list, methods, references, funding and competing-interest disclosures.
Tracking sleep in ultramarathon male runners before, during, and after a mountain race: Actigraphic evidence of sleep restriction
Original publication / indexed recordPMID: 42637627DOI: 10.1016/j.sleh.2026.07.002Full text at the sourceReader discussion
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