How following the Olympics on social media is making Londoners lose sleep

Keeping up with the athletes requires a Games plan, finds Phoebe Luckhurst
Olympian Mo Farah
EPA

Typically you are slow-witted on Mondays — and that’s on a bountiful measure of eight hours’ sleep. This morning you woke up with an Olympic-sized hangover. You front-loaded your week with Super Sunday and now you’re not sure how you’re going to manage the rest of it.

Last night was the best night of the competition so far. Andy Murray took a second gold medal, against Juan Martín Del Potro, South African sprinter Wayde van Niekerk broke a 17-year-old world record, running the 400m in 43.03 seconds. And, of course, there was Usain Bolt galloping the 100m in 10.07 seconds. It narrowly took the edge on Almost-As-Super Saturday, when you stayed up to watch Mo and Jess.

You regret nothing but Rio is four hours behind us and all the big-ticket events are scheduled at bedtime. Last night Murray finished up at half past one in the morning, delivering not just an ace but a turning point. If you go to bed now, you thought, you could get almost seven hours. Obviously, though, you didn’t: you were charged up on Twitter, pawing at Facebook, letting everyone you know that you were sharing in the collective moment. This sustained you for another 90 minutes, by which point Bolt was propping himself up on the blocks. You might as well stay up.

And as the athletics continues the disorientation can only worsen. You’re trying to pace it but you have to watch it live with the rest of the nation or you’re disqualified from the watercooler conversations the next morning.

Plus, you don’t want to look like the kind of disengaged duffer who doesn’t care enough to stay up: it won’t go down well with your line manager. These people have dedicated their lives to the craft of extreme physical achievement —the least you can do is have a coffee and get a grip.

Open social media and you’ll lose yourself to its vortex. It’s like a general election every day, except the result feels more important. You’re favouriting a mile a minute and blush with a smug thrill when your status about a tennis superfan in a Pikachu onesie gets six likes in four minutes. You have become totally absorbed in the medal table and are rattling off world records like a poindexter.

Olympians to follow on Instagram

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Frankly, even if you do retire you won’t be able to sleep. One colleague reports that after turning in responsibly before the final set she had an Andy Murray anxiety dream that forced her awake at 4am. She checked the result and ended up scrolling through BBC Sport for an hour.

And spending hours totally absorbed by screens is disturbing your circadian rhythms. Even if you stick your phone face-down on the bedside table the group WhatsApp is alive and buzzing with garrulous supporters sending strings of exuberant emojis.

In a particularly emotional, delirious moment, you considered trialling polyphasic sleep (sleeping in multiple short bursts over a 24-hour period) for the duration of the competition.

Everyone at work’s suffering too, but there is little solace in the collective misery. The office is hot and short-staffed and everyone’s morale is frayed. You’re making marginal gains on the report that’s due on Wednesday but still you’re scrolling, slack-jawed, through the internet, tagging your mates in Bolt memes, sharing YouTube videos and liking Team GB pictures. You finish the day with a 15-minute nap while slumped on the Tube.

To make yourself feel cheerier, you stay up to watch the Olympics again and the cycle resets. You wonder, detachedly, if you’ll manage eight hours in total this week. You deserve a medal.

Follow Phoebe Luckhurst on Twitter: @phoebeluckhurst

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