“This post was created in collaboration with Leesa, who provided a Leesa Mattress for review, but all views and opinions expressed are my own. In addition some links in this post are affiliate links. This means I may receive a small percentage of a sale if you click these links and purchase a product”.
If you’ve been following my blog for some time you will know that this year I am aiming to complete 12 Marathon/Ultra runs within the year. This is no easy achievement. One marathon along takes months to train for, and the recovery afterwards is just as important. To put the body through 12, and with some been of distances greater than a marathon is a very big ask. Whilst there is no exact formula to how many days it takes your body to recover fully from a marathon, some experts say 1 day for every mile and others 1 day for every kilometer. Therefore that’s between 26 and 42 days of rest just to recover. I am therefore asking a lot of my body and as a result need to make sure I do everything I can in both training and rest days.
There are only so many external factors I can control. I can, to some extent control my training. Of course I have ‘off days’ and days when I could do more. I can control my nutrition, although I tend to make very bad food choices and it is something I am working on. To some extent I can control my sleep too. I say to some extent because I have three small children, and my youngest rarely sleeps through the night. With this in mind I therefore need to make sure the sleep I am getting is good quality and I wake up feeling rested ready to tackle the day ahead.
Unfortunately for me this wasn’t happening. I would struggle to get to sleep at night, unable to get comfortable. Our mattress had dropped in places, causing you to roll into a groove that you became stuck in. Any sleep I did get was poor quality, and I would randomly wake up in the night as I turned over to find a new sleeping position. Let’s not mention the aches and pains every morning would bring as I desperately did my stretching and foam rolling to alleviate them. A new mattress was needed.
I searched high and low for a new mattress. Read countless reviews and watched several videos. Probably in the same way you are reading this now. Trying to weigh up what would work and what would meet my needs. As far as mattresses go I prefer one with support and a medium firmness. My search brought me to the Leesa mattress.
The Leesa mattress is a luxury mattress with 3 foam layers that adjust to your body to provide optimum support and comfort for each individual. The Leesa mattress on paper seemed like it would meet my need for a mattress with support and given there is a 100-night risk free trial I was keen to give the Leesa mattress a try.
First challenge was taking the old mattress off the bed. This was a lot easier said than done, but I got there in the end. The next challenge was getting Little Man off the box that the Leesa mattress was in!
He kept curling up on the box to go to sleep. This was a promising sign surely? I was now more keen than ever to get the Leesa mattress out of the box and on the bed. It was really easy to do so. I had no issues unrolling the mattress and removing the plastic outer. The Leesa mattress had come vacuum packed in the box and so was now unfolding in front of my eyes. I had lined it up wrong on the bed, as the stripes go at the bottom, so a quick move around and I left the mattress to air and unfold.
A few hours later and the Leesa mattress was ready. I had read in several reviews online about a slight odour when the Leesa mattress is first opened and used. I will admit to noticing a really slight odour, nothing unpleasant, when I first removed the plastic but leaving the Leesa mattress in the air for a good few hours and the odour had disappeared by the time I came to put the bedding on to it.
I remember the first time I sat on the Leesa mattress and my immediate thought was ‘oh, it is very soft’. I was worried it might not give me the support I needed. Then I laid down. ‘Ah’ was my next thought. I did not want to move. The Leesa mattress was providing the right amount of support in the areas I needed it. The areas I would normally suffer pain the next morning, including the base of my back. I could even feel the Leesa mattress gently supporting my calf muscles. My legs were for once rather happy with me.
The first night on the Leesa mattress was the first night in memory that I remember sleeping. I wasn’t woken up as I tried to get comfy during the night, in fact I didn’t move. I wasn’t woken up when my husband sat on the bed to get ready for work. The Leesa mattress had given me back good quality sleep and if it wasn’t for Little Man waking me then it would have been a perfect night sleep.
I was keen now to see how my recovery process would progress. I had a week before Berlin marathon using the Leesa mattress and I felt great leading up to the run, in fact I started the marathon feeling the best I have felt in a long time and had a really good run. I had no aches in my back, shoulder or neck where I used to suffer with them, and I think it is down to finally having a supported and well rested nights sleep. Then came the real test. Could I run another marathon within 7 days?
Three days after running Berlin marathon I went to club and ran a very comfortable 6 miles. I was shocked. It would appear having good quality sleep was really helping speed up my recovery times. 3 days later I ran another marathon. I ran this marathon 20 minutes faster than I ran Berlin. I hadn’t changed anything else in my training or recovery except from the mattress. My children's sleep habits haven’t changed. Yet it would appear something is making a difference. The only thing that has changed in this time is my mattress. Changing to a Leesa mattress has helped improve my quality of sleep which is helping with my running.
Leesa as a company believe in better rest for everybody, and that has certainly been the case for me. Leesa donate one mattress to charities supporting the homeless, as well as those seeking refuge from domestic abuse and human trafficking, for every ten sold. To date Leesa has been able to donate or pledge over 30,000 mattresses to charities worldwide including 30 charities in the UK. The only negative for me is that they don’t mean dogs when they say everybody. I wish they would make a Leesa dog bed because one certain J keeps sneaking upstairs to sleep on mine!
I am actually really surprised by the Leesa mattress. I have managed to run two marathons in a week and am preparing for my next at the weekend. I am actually really looking forward to Little Man sleeping through the night, as now that is the only thing stopping me from getting a good night's sleep! If you want to experience the Leesa mattress use code THISDAYILOVE for a £100 discount!
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