Dealing with night time

One of the challenges a courier driver has to face from time to time is the 'long job'.  On Thursday one of my colleagues was sent to Aberdeen.  When Dave arrived in the office at about 10.30 yesterday morning, having driven around 1,000 miles in the previous 24 hours, he commented about sleep.  He'd arrived home around 2.0 am, but had still woken up at something like the time for a normal working day.

I've found the same thing on similar occasions.  You sleep for four hours or so, and realise that you've not slept enough, but somehow the body rebels, you can't get off again, so you get up, and pick up the daily routines - even though you're well aware that you're not quite up to par.  The other week I had the same experience and was blessed with a time of waiting for work during the rest of the morning, and then was sent on a nice easy job in the afternoon.  To bed only just before my usual time, I slept well, and was back to normal the next day.

I read somewhere that the body only recovers about a third of the sleep it's missed in one short night, and these experiences certainly seem to bear that out.  I wonder - without answer - what might be the best way of coping with the vagaries of sleep's coming and going.  I fully recognise that each of us is different in our body's reactions and aptitudes, so I can only comment from my own experiences.

Why is it that, from time to time, one isn't able to stay asleep ... or indeed get to sleep in the first place?  I find that - time of the morning apart - my usual problem is temperature.  The body seems to have a very narrow tolerance range, and if I'm too hot or too cold, the result is either dozing intermittently before waking up again, or simply not sleeping at all, at which point the very frustration makes things much worse!  A few weeks ago I found myself out late at night; the body told me it wasn't safe to continue driving, so I got into the back of the van, together with sleeping bag and blankets, only to find that the night was so cold that this intermittent dozing was all I could manage.  Eventually I realised that I was just getting colder and colder, so I abandoned this unproductive cycle, and drove off again, discovering that I had achieved enough rest to be able to drive safely for a couple more hours.

You might ask, why don't I simply leave the engine running on these occasions, and let the heater keep me warm.  Firstly, the heat doesn't really penetrate to the back of the van; secondly, while it is possible to sleep in the front, mine is only a small van, and to lay down to sleep, albeit a little crunched up, I need to have the handbrake off, and lay across it, and consequently I have to put the van into gear in order that it shouldn't roll away out of control.  I do sleep like this sometimes, but it's not overly comfortable, and the longest I have managed that way is about 40 minutes - a refreshing doze, but not enough to provide for the journey home from the far north or west.

Most important is that we do do something about the situation, and don't keep driving despite being sleepy.  We see too often the evidence of those who aren't so disciplined - and the effect on other innocent road users!