Correlation Between Sleep and Nutrition of Ultramarathon Runners in Training Period

Keywords

sleep - diet - athletes

Introduction: It is known that sports performance can be influenced by nutrition and sleep, and that both should be considered by athletes, especially in extreme conditions such as ultramarathons. The literature describes that the consumption of some nutrients can influence sleep, and until now no study evaluated the correlation between these parameters in ultramarathon runners.

Objective: To evaluate the food consumption and sleep pattern of ultramarathon runners during training period and analyze the correlation between macronutrient intake and sleep of the athletes.

Methods: 14 male ultramarathon runners were evaluated in a habitual training week, and data of four days are presented (2 week days and 2 weekend days). Athletes had a mean of 45.3 ± 10.8 years old and 5.2 ±4.6 years of ultramarathon experience. Sleep diaries were used to subjectively evaluate sleep quality, and food diaries to evaluate diet. The dietbox software was used for nutritional calculation. The Kruskal Wallis test was used to evaluate the difference between days, and the Spearman correlation test was used to evaluate the relationship between sleep and diet.

Results: The 4-days mean nutritional intake was 2.204±748.83 kcal, 126.81±55.59 g of protein, 244.95±94,7g of carbohydrate and 69.79±26.75g of lipid. There was no difference in macronutrient and energy consumption between the 4 days (p>0.05). When the data were grouped between week and weekend, there was also no significant difference (p>0.05). The mean bed time was 23:08±01:07 and wake time was 06:16±00:50. They had 07:10±01:03 hours of total sleep time (TST), 25.64±19.25 min of sleep latency and 0.86±0.54 awakenings. All sleep parameters were not different between days and when we grouped week and weekend days (p>0.05). There was a negative moderate correlation between TST and energy consumption on a weekday (p=0.03; r=-0.567), and negative moderate correlation between TST and carbohydrate (p=0.04; r=-0.562) and lipid ingestion (p=0.039; r=-0.578) on weekend days. There was no correlation between other parameters of sleep and nutrition intake.

Conclusion: The consumption of macronutrients seems to influence the total sleep time (TST) of runners, although this is observed in a punctual way (only one nutrient/energy per day) and on different days. On these days with significant correlation, the higher the nutritional intake, the lower the TST. Acknowledgements: FAPESP (2022/09447-7 and 2023/07889-5) and BR135 Ultramarathon.

No conflict of interest has been declared by the author(s).

Publication History

Article published online:
16 September 2025