Comments on: Time

By: Allan Gyorke

Allan Gyorke — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 03:08:05 +0000

Hey Brandon. I think any endurance athlete who doesn't struggle with the time commitment is fooling themselves and probably ignoring something important: their training, their family, their work, their health (including illness and rest), your singing career, my PhD work, etc.

I have faith in you. Do what you can, when you can, and you'll make it to the finish line.

By: SKDickey

SKDickey — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 19:44:35 +0000

Awesome point – because time is infinite we tend to treat it taht way. But day to day, time is absolutely finite. Simple concept but hard to put into practice in my brain all the time

By: Erin

Erin — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 17:29:03 +0000

Brandon:
I have a different position on my training. I have a coach who plans out my workouts 4-5 weeks in advance. I pay him $125 CDN per month to do so. From my perspective, I have invested too much time away from my family and money into completing IMC2009 that I need to do everyting I can to make this happen. For me, that is having a plan that I stick to.
That being said, I have a 8-4 M-F job that stays pretty static. My son has track and field M, W and most weekends plus my husband trains for marathons and paddles outrigger canoes also. With all that going on with my family, I have to have a schedule to get it all in. We all post our scheduled on the fridge and work it out from there.

By: Scott

Scott — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:12:14 +0000

Part 2:

I try to listen to my body, stay within my means, and hope that once my kids get out of the house, I can devote more time to training and continue to set PR's into my 40's and 50's!

One last thing. Cumulative training works. When in maintenance mode, I do not expect to PR, but the body does retain some of the cumulative training, and allows me to at least go the distance when I can't get good training in. My Brooklyn Half was a good example of that. While I was several minutes off my PR, I had a much stronger race than I would have expected, with the lack of training I had done leading up to it. Rather than being pissed about not beating my PR, I was instead happy to run strong while not fully trained.

By: Scott

Scott — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:11:47 +0000

My comment is "too long". Grrrr. Part 1:

Time is the biggest challenge of all. For me, the 'training plans' don't work. I've thrown them away long ago. I've also seen people get so hung up on following the training plans to the letter and then overdoing what their body can handle, or overstressing about it and getting hurt.

I totally just wing it, and get the work in when I can find the time. That's probably why I've only gotten my marathon time down to 4:22. Now that I've branched from running only to triathlon training, it is really hard. I try to get at least 5 workouts in a week, but feel like it is not enough. Long bike rides are the hardest because it requires several hours of time, which I could only possibly do on the weekends, which is tough because I have kids.