“Sleeping on the Pod has been a game-changer for me as an athlete and to see the differences and improvement in my performance.”
Former soccer star Grayson Murphy started running at the college level in 2014. After graduating from the University of Utah as a five-time All-American in the spring of 2018, Murphy ran a 10K personal best at the NACAC Cross Country Championships in 2019. She made her debut at the World Mountain Running Championships 2019, where she won gold.
Image: Utah Athletics
What are your goals for the year?
My 2020 goals are to return to the World Mountain Championships and represent. I got the win last year so I want to go back to defend my title and have that experience again for Team USA. Then looking to get some PRs on the road as well and start running faster in 1/2 marathons and kind of in those event areas.
Can you share your experience sleeping on the Pod?
Sleeping on the Pod has been a game-changer for me and my boyfriend. He sleeps on it as well. We’re both athletes so it’s been cool to see us both see differences in our performances with it, not just as a singular case but have two really cool pieces of evidence that it does work.
What appeals to me about the app with the Pod is the total hours of sleep that I get because that’s important to me. I want to make sure I’m getting close to 9 hours if I can. So, it’s cool to see that metric.
What is your highest sleep score?
I’ve gotten a hundred several times. My sleep score I’m very proud of. I don’t know what the average is. Probably in the nineties somewhere.
Currently, at what temperature do you sleep?
In the wintertime now, with the Pod, I like to start off warmer getting into bed, because I get cold really easy, and then it cools down to neutral in the middle of the night and then warms up a little bit when I’m ready to wake up.
How has your relationship with sleep evolved?
As a young athlete, you don’t really notice as much how important sleep is, and then you get older, and especially as a professional athlete when you have more training demands and things just get harder, you realize how much more important recovery is.
You recently won the World Mountain Championship, how did you prepare for the competition?
To prepare for the World Mountain Championships, training was big, and then recovery. You want to train hard but you need to get to the race healthy, so you’ve got to get to that start line or it’s all for nothing.
“Sleep Fitness is a fitness and I treat it as part of my training and recovery. It’s just as important as the workout that I do because, as I said, if you can’t get to the start line then the workouts don’t matter, so you have to make sure it’s really high up there on your list of priorities.”
How many hours do you sleep regularly?
I need like nine hours of sleep, I think, to recover properly and be happy and have a stable mood. If I don’t have that it kind of leads to lack of performance.
How do you maintain sleep fitness while traveling?
To maintain sleep fitness while traveling is hard and it requires some planning ahead. I like to have a routine at home that I can kind of bring with me.
You’ve talked about anxiety while running, how have you overcome this?
I don’t know if I’ve really overcome anxiety, I don’t know that I ever will, but I have learned coping skills and I think sleep is a big part of that.
