Falling asleep while running (Read 361 times)

Really spooky thing happened to me this morning.  Bad night -- for a bunch of reasons only got a bit over an hour sleep last night.  Nonetheless, as always, no matter how much my body needs sleep, at 5:30am sharp my eyes pop wide awake.  So before 6am, still pre-dawn pitch dark, I'm out the door running my usual morning 6.2-mile out-&-back.

The last I clearly remember is pushing my Garmin button as I start out past my mail-box.  Next awareness is I'm running along at a random spot on my route that in the darkness I could not at first tell from any other spot - but still on my route.  For several seconds am kind of confused as to where I am.  Hit the light on the Garmin and see I'm past 0.8 miles.  That gives me enough bearings so I then recognize where I am and what's ahead.

Freaky.  Anyone else experience something like this?

Yeah, but I go with scary.  How about the street crossings while unconscious?  Recipe for disaster?  I suggest a good deal more than one hour of sleep in the future.

Never had that happen running, but it has happened while driving.  Driving along then all of a sudden I think back and can't actually remember the last mile or two at all.

I don't think you "fell asleep". Your brained probably went into auto mode in cruise control. That probably happens when you do monotonous things repetitively. When I take a shower, sometimes I forget if shampooed my hair or not. And as others mentioned, when you drive the same route, you may not remember what happened from one moment to the next. your Brain is simply retracing well-known patterns that have been imprinted in it with repetition.

Once, at 3:30 AM, I was running down a long dark road, and I think this happened.  I was just sort of running along on "auto-pilot", and came up to a stop sign at the end of the road.  It sort of woke me up.  I don't remember anything about running down that road.  Maybe it was because it was dark out, and all I was doing was focusing on the road below me, not sure.  There are very few street lamps on that road, and it's in a rural area, even at 6 AM there aren't many cars, and at 3:30, there are absolutely none.

I don't know if I was asleep, or in just one of those modes similar to the other poster's experiences while driving.

Oh, and so you don't have to ask why I was running at 3:30 AM...I was training for a marathon, needed to get an 18 miler in that week, and had commitments on Sat and Sun, so I had to do it at 3 AM Friday morning.  In the summer.  When it was 80 degrees out.  It wasn't pleasant.

I don't go to sleep, but sometimes I get so deep in thought I lose track of the outside world when I'm running.  I'll kind of "come back" and look around and have no idea how I got where I am.

This is a bit off topic but this thread reminded me of this song.

http://youtu.be/yy-Z-6-Mcus

Happened to me more than once. It's not sleeping. It happened at various time of the day, usually fully rested. I just start to think, and the next thing I know that I have no idea when I am. About half of the time I was still on my route, but in the other half, I didn't take a turn, kept going, and something like a big road or T-intersection wakes me up, when I don't know what way to go. I don't even think it is dangerous, because any usual situation snaps you out of it.