Sleep Management Strategy and Performance in an Extreme Mountain Ultra-marathon. A French group has investigated whether there is a connection between sleeping breaks and performance at the Ultra-Trail Mont-Blanc. During the run, 28% of the finishers made a sleep break.However, the runners without sleeping were faster than the runners with sleeping break. Runners who have given themselves before the competition more sleep were faster in the finish.
The authors finally came that more sleep before the race is crucial for performance on the race. The very insightful work can be found at www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Pubmed/26020095