Thanks to your Suunto 3 you can see when things are heading in the right direction, know when it is time to stay the course, and when it’s time to make some changes. You can also follow along to learn which strategies and solutions are the most effective for you.     Here are 5 tips to improve your sleep quality   Avoid strenuous physical activity late in the evening. Regular physical activity is an important part of a healthy lifestyle, but your body doesn’t stop working when you do. Your body can remain in an elevated state long after you finish a workout. As a result, your night time recovery levels may be delayed and diminished.   Establish a regular routine before bed. We are all creatures of habit, and for the most part we have good instincts for what constitutes a good evening routine. A good stable routine signals your body that it’s time to start winding things down and allows your body to get head start on the work of recovery.   Regulate alcohol consumption. A glass of wine in the evening is a popular way to relax in the evening, or a few drinks may help unwind after a stressful day. More than a few drinks, however, will almost certainly delay the onset of recovery at night and will result in poor recovery.   Improve your cardiorespiratory fitness (VO2max) with regular physical activity. As if there weren’t enough reasons to improve your fitness level, here’s one more. The fitter you are the less your body is impacted by stress. You also become more resilient, so that when you do experience stress your body recovers more efficiently. This is true both day and night.   Sleep more. It’s almost cruel, but sometimes the cause of bad sleep is… wait for it… bad sleep. Chronically poor sleep diminishes your body’s ability to repair itself. It also impairs your ability to interpret situations. This includes the ability to assess your own performance levels, losing touch with yourself and the impact of bad sleep on your effectiveness. As you think about stress, recovery, and sleep in relation to your own daily routines and lifestyle decisions, it’s worth keeping in mind that stress increases your body’s need for good quality sleep. This is important because busy, hectic schedules that often produce a lot of stress also tend to result in the devaluation of sleep and recovery in favor of doing something more. In the long run, however, the health and productivity benefits of a balanced approach to stress and recovery are well worth it.     Blog post by Herman Bonner / Firstbeat     LEARN HOW TO USE SLEEP TRACKING ON SUUNTO 3 FITNESS

For anyone who spends a serious amount of time either working or playing in the ocean, it’s a near-impossible problem to ignore: plastics are filling our oceans. Even if your particular stretch of sand and water still appears pristine, it likely isn’t – as these materials (slowly) break down, they become microplastics – an ever more difficult problem to understand and deal with. In Long Island, the Bahamas, home to world-champion freediver William Trubridge and world-class freedive location Dean’s Blue Hole, it’s an everyday problem. We talked to the man who lives quite literally in the ocean what he is doing about it. This is an issue you care about. I have to – it’s in my backyard. Worldwide, plastic pollution – we reached the tipping point a long time ago. The Queen of England has banned single-use plastics from the castle! I’m an ambassador for the Ocean Conservation Alliance, run by Doug Woodring, who was one of the original people to discover and explore the Pacific Garbage Patch. His organization has done a lot for our oceans with things like their Plastic Disclosure Project – where they help businesses track their plastic use and offset it, much like companies do with the carbon footprint. What does the ocean plastic problem mean for you? Locally here – especially on my island – Long Island – the swell and tradewinds push garbage all to the north end of the island and it all collects in the bays and coves. And Dean’s Blue Hole is one of them. So we organize cleanups during events and competition, and we keep a bucket and just chuck in a little bit each day. Where is the garbage coming from? There’s a lot of theories about how plastic is getting in the water, and I think a lot of them are misguided. A lot of people blame cruise ships, but that’s not the case – you can see it in the trash itself. More than half of the plastics that wash up in the beaches in the Bahamas are these little plastic bags of drinking water – in poorer countries, they get most of their drinking water from little 250 ml bags. They just tear off a corner and chuck it in the rubbish – but the rubbish ends up in the sea. And we’re downstream from them. A huge amount of the plastic waste is those plastic bags. There’s also Petrol cans, cheap fishing nets. We’ll grab 20 or 30 toothbrushes in a day – the kind sold in Haiti or the Dominican Republic. They don’t have the infrastructure for waste management. Words are in French or Spanish. For us, there’s no question where it’s coming from! And not only does the trash pollute, it doesn’t degrade, it just turns into smaller pieces – microplastics. For every plastic bag we see, there are thousands of millions of smaller particles you can’t see. Those all enter the food chain. So sea life is basically eating plastic all the time. And we’re at the top of that food chain. That can’t be good. Huge quantities of toxins are in the fish that we eat, and it’s killing sea life as well. How can divers help? The most effective way for divers is to help is to reduce their own use – less single-use plastic. Straws. Bring your own bags to the supermarket. Awareness of that is becoming more common – A lot of regions - cities, countries, are banning plastic bags. There is a ground shift movement to less plastic. That’s in the developed world. But we also need to see that in the less developed world, and it’s a lot more difficult there. When you’re visiting those kinds of countries, put pressure on the local businesses, to take a more thoughtful approach to recycling and use. And talk about it. Because most people simply don’t know. If you go into a supermarket in Honduras, talk about it. The more people that bring that message, the better. It will have an effect. Doing cleanups and tackling that end of the problem helps, but not as much going to the source. Changing your own behavior and leading by example. You also have some pretty crazy ideas about how to help. One of the things I wanted to do, and so far it’s been a failure: I’d love to get the Bahamas to convert plastic to diesel. We have to ship in every once of diesel in the islands. There are machines – they’re not cheap – but you chuck in plastic and outcomes diesel. But in the end it’s quite effective if you have a good central hub. That’s a profitable way of cleaning up, but the initial investment is quite high. You’ve also gone out on a limb about the plastic water bags. Yeah – you know, some beaches are just carpeted with these bags. There are machines that obviously create this bag. The business that makes these machines in American, and basically aware of the fact that they’re creating a huge amount of waste that can’t be managed. So I got the CEO on the phone. Initially he was evasive, but he admitted that particular product that they are supplying is doing a huge amount of damage. His argument was that it’s better than bodies on the streets – people dying from clean water. It’s hard to argue this defense – because it’s not completely wrong. So I’ve got in touch with a bunch of companies that work with biodegradable materials. Of course, any material that is biodegradable will biodegrade with water. So what’s left? The only other way is to change the whole system. In the Bahamas we use 5-gallon plastic jugs for drinking. But in a lot of those countries they can’t even afford to buy one or two jugs because they’re living so hand to mouth that they won’t even buy a jug. We need a few million jugs, and we get the government to ban plastic bags. Not as simple as it sounds, but we’ve got to get there somehow. Learn more about the problems facing our ocean at Will’s efforts at the Ocean Recovery Alliance – and please, do what you can to help battle the problem! Main image © Daan Verhoeven / Vertical Blue

It only takes a few minutes of talking with Mau Méndez to notice the confidence he exudes. Some might even say cockiness. Thing is, like it or not, it helps him win races. “Usually I’m a super mellow guy, smiling and laughing all the time,” says the 2016 XTERRA World Champion. “But when I’m racing I don’t have any doubts or fear. I go into beast mode. I take on an alter ego at every race.” Full beast mode will almost be his default for the rest of this year as he travels the world hunting trophies like the Predator hunted skulls. While his 2018 race calendar is full with XTERRA and Ironman events, his main focus is regaining his title at the XTERRA World Championship in Maui this October. He won second last year, losing the crown to South African, Brad Weiss. Winning it back is a step towards a bigger goal. “I have always liked to dream big,” he says. “My goal is to be the XTERRA world champion as many times as possible. I would like to beat Conrad Stoltz’srecord of five times. I think I can do it – I have time on my side.” Méndez says he has learned and matured a lot since becoming a professional triathlete four years ago. With so much time ahead of him, and already freakishly fast, his potential is massive. And he knows it. “Another big goal is winning the Kona Ironman,” he says. “If you win Kona you will be in the history books forever. This means you can have a positive influence on people. I am learning motivational speaking, something I would love to develop more. I want to give back too.” It hasn’t been easy for Méndez to essentially forfeit the usual things 18 to 20 somethings revel in. He admits that after winning the XTERRA World Championship in 2016 he went through a low, when he really questioned being a full-time athlete. “I was a 20-year-old guy and all my friends were having a great time at parties,” he says. “I wondered what I was doing with my life. “Plus, when you win the world champs, everything changes; you feel more pressure, feel the need to win, rather than the joy of competing and racing. It was a big learning curve.” Since that time Méndez says he has learned to live in the moment, to find the good in the bad, and regained his passion for the sport. Getting used to longer distance races, improving his endurance and gaining experience are his main focus as an athlete. Learning to balance sport, family and downtime is important, too. “It’s not just about winning,” he says. “If you do that and end up alone, it doesn’t mean anything. I try to remember I’m fighting for something bigger.” The toughest race of 2018, he says, will be the Ironman 70.3 World Championship in South Africa in September. The distance, the high level of competition, and his relative lack of experience, all put him at a disadvantage. “I will train as hard as possible,” he says. Méndez is also excited about competing in the Patagonman Patagonia Xtreme Triathlon in December. Traveling the world and seeing beautiful places is one of the things he loves about the sport. “Every time I sign into a race, and I know I’m going to travel somewhere new, it’s a huge motivating factor for training,” he says. “I have pictures of the place on my phone or close by to keep me pumped along the way.”

It was 36 days, 1900 km of ski touring, about 90,000 m of ascent, and three times harder than anything 37-year-old Mark Smiley has ever done in the mountains.   The 2018 Red Bull Der Lange Weg (The Long Way) took everything he and his wife Janelle had in the tank. Plus some. The world’s longest ski tour from Vienna, Austria across the Alps to Nice, France started on March 17 and finished on April 26. Only seven athletes started, only five finished, including Mark and Janelle, who became the first woman to do so.     Their average moving time was 10.5 hours a day. They covered about 32 km a day and burned 12,000 calories everyday. No amount of Wiener schnitzel and potato dumplings could fill the hole. “It was insane,” Mark says back in the comfort of his own home in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.   The mountains have been Mark’s happy place since he first laid eyes on them as a kid. “I remember going on a family skiing trip when I was 11 and driving down Interstate Highway 70, which has big mountains on either side, and I was like, ‘why hasn’t anyone told me about this before now? I’ve been jipped!‘” After that he moved from the farming plains of Indiana, where he grew up, out to the Rocky Mountains. He’s been there ever since.   He and Janelle have attempted all of America’s 50 classic climbs, and have been successful on 48 of them. It’s took them seven years to get that far.   “No one has climbed all of them. We were trying to become the first,” Mark says. “Now I’m more psyched about combining technical climbing with technical skiing. The combination of the two is cutting edge. If I can get in both on a trip then I’m winning!”     Mark started mountain guiding 17 years ago, and has been doing it pro for five years. With many teachers in his family it’s not surprising he enjoys educating and empowering people in the outdoors. “I treat the people I guide like partners, rather than risks,” he says. “The best teachers can teach without the pupil feeling like they’re being taught.”   It was a logical next step for him to combine his knowledge and passion for outdoor education with his filmmaking skills. He recently produced an online video course on Crevasse Rescue for the Modern Climber, and it’s proving popular.   “This course is like a seat belt,” Mark says. “You wear a seat belt even though you probably won’t actually need it.   “Most of the time out there it‘s fine, but when you need it, you really need that rescue knowledge. Especially in the US, it could be days before someone else comes along and finds you. It’s crucial to be self-sufficient.”     “I‘ve spent 300 days on glaciers and have never fallen in. The chances of needing to use these rescue skills are pretty low. But when you need them, they’re suddenly super important.”   Mark is clear the course doesn’t replace in-person learning in the field. He says it’s always better if people can come out and do a three-day course with him, and drill the skills so they become muscle memory. However, the online course has some advantages.    “Online learning has limitations, but the benefits outweigh them,” he says. “You can rewind it, pause it, play it 100 times. You can’t do that in person. So if you’re a slow learner you can watch it until you get it. If you want to hire me for the day, it’s $600, plus travel, plus time away from work. So, for many people, this course is more accessible.”   He encourages people to try the course and if they don’t learn anything he offers a full money back guarantee. The course offers the latest, cutting-edge ways of carrying out crevasse rescue.   As a taster, Mark offers three tips:   1. "Tie butterfly knots every three or four meters apart in your rope between each two people. The butterfly knot acts like a boat anchor and it will drag the victim to a stop and potentially hold all of the victim's body weight."   2. "Buy a Petzl Micro Traxion and know how to use it. They’re a game changer."   3. "Getting yourself out of crevasse is five times faster than waiting for your buddy to haul you out. Have a good plan about how to get yourself out."     Mark is offering Suunto.com readers 20 % off the course price until July 22, 2018. The promo code is: suuntoclimb. Watch or download the course here.        All images are from Red Bull Der Lange Weg and taken by Philipp Reiter and Christian Gamsjäger. ©Red Bull Content Pool     

What's been happening? I have been in Auburn, California the last four weeks preparing for the 100-mile Western States Endurance Run (WS). I came early to see what the trail holds, and to get used to temperature and altitude. I’ve adjusted well. I really eased into, and then moved to run in the hottest part of the day. It’s about 35 degrees celcius, and hotter still in the canyons. I’ve been lucky that over the last few years I’ve chased the sun, and haven’t had a winter. I’m feeling good! What’s been new for you there? The WS trail is super unique because of its downhill nature. I’ve never run a trail with so much grinding downhill. It sounds good, but after a while you’re searching for a hill. The quads feel it! Western States is quite special for you, right? Absolutely, because I’ve wanted to run it forever since I was 15. It was the first race I ever heard of, and I’ve been trying to get to the start line for three years. My aim for the race is to give my best; it’s an honor just having a bib. To complete my first 100 miles is a big thing – it’s a really long way. The people I get to stand on a start line with are amazing. I was their fangirl when I was a teenager. Now they are giving me advice, which says a lot about the camaraderie in our sport. What's in your diary this summer and what's the main focus? WS is the main focus. I’ve left the back half of the year open. WS is my first 100-mile event, and I’m not sure how I will feel physically, mentally, emotionally after it. I’ll play it by ear. I have respect for what WS will take from me. I’m heading to the Ultra Trail Mont Blanc in France, just to be there. I’ll spend some time traveling in Europe. What are you most excited about? I’m excited to head to the Sky Running World Championships in Scotland at the start of September. I’ll be there as a supporter or a competitor – we’ll see. It’s my first time visiting Scotland. It would be nice if there was sunshine on race day! But I think I’m dreaming. Favorite post-training meal at the moment? I am plant-based, vegan. I use that to my advantage – I get to eat a lot! The foods I choose are plants and fruits so the quantity I have to eat is quite big and that pleases me. I love making green smoothies, or commonly known as “Shrek Poo” – lots of green vegetables blended with frozen bananas, and Amazonia vegan protein powder. It has a thick consistency. I top it with nuts and fruit. Delicious! Anything else inspiring you at the moment? I practice yoga, more for the mental benefits than the physical. When I run, because I’m so efficient, I drift off and think about other things. With yoga, I fully concentrate and listen to my body. It’s really intuitive. I’m living a simple life: run, eat, sleep, yoga, repeat. To be honest, I’m pretty happy with it. VIDEO: Follow along Lucy for a day as she prepares for the Western States Endurance Run!

If Jill Heinerth didn’t spend so much time underwater, we’d be a little more comfortable making this statement: the Canadian-American explorer is so darn busy, she barely has time to breathe. Between her expeditions, documentary filming, and you know, winning lifetime achievement awards, it’s a little tough to find a free moment – but unsurprisingly for those who know her, Jill was happy to fill us in. (And don’t worry – she’s got plenty of time to breathe.) First, the awards. What did you win? At the TekDiveUSA biennial conference, I was surprised with the Lifetime Achievement Award from the technical diving industry. In a fun tradition, they run a cave diving line into the audience to surprise the recipient. I was then blindfolded and had to follow the safety line to the stage while a show about my life was playing for the crowd. It came with a trophy… and quite the compliment. The award was a perfect little action figure of me in my diving and camera gear that was made by an artist in Poland. The citation read, “For a lifetime of consistent contribution and discovery that has opened up the field of technical diving.” But what really humbled me was that I was described as "our generation's Cousteau." I still feel quite speechless. I am the first woman to be recognized for the honor. Congratulations! On to the future. Where are you going to be this summer? Filming in the Arctic, filming with French-Canadian filmmaker Mario Cyr. We’re working on a film documenting climate change, dramatic changes in the sea ice. We'll be working with local Inuit elders to hear about their observations and adaptations. We’ll be in Arctic Bay, Repulse Bay and Greenland. You’re in a hurry. The climate in the Arctic is changing twice as fast as anywhere else on earth. The sea ice sets up later and breaks up earlier each year. In fact, we had to move up our filming by a month due to the receding ice. Our climate change doc is being thwarted by climate change! Our Inuit hosts called us and recommended that we hurry north as soon as possible due to unprecedented break up this year. So basically: ice is melting way to fast. If we lose Arctic sea ice, we lose an important regulating function on global temperature. The white ice reflects the sun's rays back into the atmosphere. The darker open sea, absorbs heat, further increasing the feedback loop that rises ocean temperatures and ultimates affects the global circulation of water currents. Furthermore, both the people of the north and the wildlife rely on sea ice. The Inuit call the sea ice, "the land" since it represents their hunting ground and their ability to travel to other places. The wildlife also hunt on "the land.” This is a big problem! The entire food web of the Arctic relies on sea ice. From the algae beneath its surface that feed the zooplankton to the polar bears that roam in search of seals, all organisms use the ice as a part of sustaining their feeding activities. To learn more about Jill’s Into the Arctic on the Edge film project, check out the website – and be sure to check out the teaser for her film below. WATCH ARCTIC ON THE EDGE