LIFE LESSONS FROM ATHLETES—SLEEP.

LIFE LESSONS FROM ATHLETES—SLEEP. A lot of attention has been given to Michael Phelps’s calorie consumption, but this article shows that he values sleep as well as food: “‘Eat, sleep and swim. That’s all I can do,’ Phelps, who won two more gold medals today, told NBC when asked what he needs to win medals.” We non-athletes often don’t appreciate the value of sleep for the body. Baseball involves so many minor injuries that it is unusual for a player to play every game in a season. The record for consecutive games played stood for over fifty years at the equivalent of over thirteen years of not missing a game until Cal Ripken broke the record by over 500 games. One of Ripken’s roommates in the minors was asked at the time Ripken broke the record if he remembered anything unusual about Ripken. The roommate said he had never seen anybody sleep as much as Ripken did.