Polyphasic sleep schedule Day One

I'm not really sure where Day One actually started or finished, but the last time I woke up from a solid rack of hours was Sunday morning at 6:30am, and it's now Tuesday morning at 3:05am, so I think I can safely say Day One is behind me. Yesterday morning was a little slow, but aside from feeling like I'd had a really late night I felt okay. After my 10am nap I felt great - very awake and energised and I really should have moved the couches into the restaurant right then instead of leaving them. The 2pm nap left me a little slow again, and post 6pm nap (after being woken by the dog panting in my face) I was feeling even slower. I've noticed that often after naps I feel very light, and as I walk down the hill toward the office I could believe I might just float down like a three-day-old helium balloon. Tonight I started getting the opposite effect, with heaviness setting in. Like the hero in Jonathan Safron Foer's Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, I had very heavy boots. I could also feel a small but noticeable tightness in my leg muscles that might have to do with less relaxation and more aimless wandering in the dead of night.

At 8:30pm I started watching a movie with Angie, and struggled to keep awake through it (which might have more to do with the movie - Julie and Julia - than with my experiment). I left her to finish and went for my 10pm nap and, like the two before it, woke after 15 minutes without the alarm. Although that might indicate a sign of adaptation, I really didn't feel amazing at 10:15pm.

I'm finding the whole process fascinating. When I wake up, I feel as if I've been asleep for hours, but it's been a matter of minutes. And yet I don't feel rested. It's like eating a chip, but thinking you've eaten a whole burger, and still feeling as if you haven't actually eaten anything in about three days. Truly bizarre.

My weirdest nap was the 2am one, just now. I did yoga from 12:30am again, and despite coming close to the brink of sleep during some actual poses (my balancing poses were totally shot to hell, by the way), it revived me slightly. But by 2am I was ready to pass out. I set two alarm clocks and fell asleep almost instantly. I then woke fifteen minutes later (again!) standing next to my alarm clocks. I wasn't turning them off or anything, just standing there looking at them. I remember looking at the time, then falling back down on the couch to go to sleep. I woke up ten minutes later - once again, before the alarms went off - and have been up since then, feeling tired but in control.

So many polyphasic attempts that I've read about have fallen apart due to oversleeping, could I be the first experimenter to have a problem with overwaking? The tricks my brain plays are really remarkable. At any rate, this is the time when it's supposed to be about the hardest. I'm anticipating a pretty rough day today (fortunately I had the foresight to roster myself off, so I can spend the day throwing myself into the cold river if it comes down to that!), but perhaps by tomorrow morning I'll start feeling normal. I am encouraged by waking up before the alarms, even if it is in a slightly demented fashion.