So for the last month, my sleeping schedule has been all over the place. I’m on the cross country team in college, and we just got a new coach. While we’re division three and not as competitive as some of the other schools, our coach is obsessed with making sure We are just as fast as them.

Let me just give you some background first. Nobody on the team is crazy fast (The fastest girl runs about a 26 minute 6k). The second fastest runs about 27-28. I’m in between the fast and slower runners, with my pr being around 29:00, along with one other girl. The rest of the girls run about 35-45 minutes. My coach is very competitive, running a sub four minute mile.

My coach is so obsessed With us all being fast, that he burns us all out in the process. Three days a week, he hosts practices at 5-5:30 am, and gives us a crazy workout. He wants all of us to be running 6:00 - 7:00 pace per mile on these days (our normal pace for workouts is about 8:00- 8:30). Anyway, His 5:30 practices leave us extremely exhausted, since nobody sleeps well, the night before. He always gets mad at us and asks us why we aren’t sleeping better. I don’t know the reason for the other girls, but for me, the reason I don’t sleep well is because our coach refuses to tell us the plan the night before. For example, He tells us to meet at 5 am, and that we have a big workout. However, he refuses to tell us what it is until we’re at practice, which makes me full of energy the night before, and leaves me exhausted in the morning. We’ve tried telling him this, But he still refuses to tell us the workout until we’re at practice. Of course, I’m in Illinois, so I’ve gotten used to last minute plans and always having to be in a hurry.

So back to my sleeping problems, Three days a week I’m getting up between 4:15 - 4:45 am, and don’t nap because it interferes with my sleep at night. However, the days I do get to sleep in, I end up sleeping until 10 am - 12 pm. This isn’t something I want to keep happening, Most of the time I can sleep in because I don’t have class until 10:30 - 1:00 most days, but this is interfering with my night sleep and my health overall, since I’m not used to sleeping so much.

My sleep schedule is off, and I don’t know how to fix it. Has anybody else felt like this, and what did you do to get consistent, sleep schedule?