Congrats on the new role!

I've done IM's on as little as 10-12 and as much as 18-20 a week. Most were done around 15 hours. I was never competitive but I had fun. I wouldn't recommend a big job switch and your first IM. That first one is physically and mentally all consuming. Get settled into that new role and look to 2019 for your first.

You don't have to train more hours to race an Ironman. You have to train more hours to do better at any distance of racing. It takes roughly twice as much time to approach your potential in a sprint distance, as it does to complete an IM.

^^^Exactly. Just take a look at any IM finish line late in the game.

Totally agree. I could probably finish an ironman with the amount of training that I currently do - but then I would walk the marathon. For HIM and olympic I can at least "race" even though I know that I am far away from my potential.

I wonder how many weekend warriors ever reach their true potential, besides work, family and the rest of your life. For me I don't see it until I am retired ;-)
U

You can say no to the promotion. It is just work after all.

Before you say Yes, make sure this is what you want. You only get one crack at life, and you should weigh pros/cons of additional work hours, career goals, personal goals, work life balance, etc. It doesn't have to be triathlon vs work, but make sure thus promotion is what you want before you take it.

This. When it comes to work I'm the least ambitious person you're going to find! Constantly turning down promotions (longer hours) and internal job offers (more work). Guys that I started with 8 years ago are on almost double my salary (so they keep on reminding me), but it's a long week if I put in 35 hours. They're almost doing double. Live in a modest house, drive a shit car - "You only get one crack at life" don't waste it sitting in an office.....

Having a great (even if high stress job) and achieving your long course goals are not mutually exclusive. My best results over the past few years have coincided with a few promotions at a very large company with a fantastic yet very demanding position. I would recommend focusing on quality, not quantity as well as optimizing other variables such as high consistency, dialed in nutrition (race and normal life), recovery and discipline. Get a coach if you need so you don't spend excess time analyzing data and having to program your workouts; that is unless you like that. I happen to love analyzing data and planning, but I found that when I scheduled my training I was very overly aggressive and over trained. Paying somewhat a fairly modest amount of money to look at my performance and tell me when and how hard to go has given me the best results of my life because I'm not killing myself every day. Interestingly, total volume also decreased from what I was doing on my own.

Long story short; keep the long course dream alive. You absolutely can do it and have great results. You will find many others on here with demanding and great jobs who manage excellent long course results without being a slave to training.

Age group athletes don't reach their potential. 20 proper hours / week should get you close to 90% though.

Well, that's the thing. In my case, I would only have to go from 40 to round about 45h/week maybe 50 some weeks. For 60+h/week I would turn it down for sure. It's really only those 5h that I initially wanted to devote to training....

I can do OK in HIM with 6h per week. It's just that I have to accept that my swim will always suck ;-)
U

Do you go to work and consent to giving your employee 40 hours of your week without any connection to a goal? I'm not trying to be a dick, but I'm genuinely curious because if I didn't feel like I was "working towards something" I'd rather not do it at all. For instance, if I'm at a point in the seasons where I don't have any races on the calendar and I'm training just to stay in shape, an 8 mile run seems awful difficult compared to a 15 mile long run in a build period.

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@floathammerholdon | @partners_in_tri

60+ hours a week here, which sucks, especially with two teenage girls to manage also. Still manage one HIM a year (5'43 PB), at least one marathon a year (3'49) and managed my first IM this year in 13'37. Nothing great there but the training and races keep me sane.

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My race site: https://racesandplaces.wixsite.com/racesandplaces

this is obviously a major generalization and dependent on circumstances, but climbing the corporate ladder, taking a promotion can be a better long term decision for your amateur triathlon career in that it can provide greater disposable income (only to then spend it all on $5k carbon wheelsets, $1k powermeters, $6k bikes, travel to races, etc) and eventually get you into a role where you can delegate more thus freeing up your time.

In the short term, you need to be cautious with overall stress and burning the candle on both ends if you are adapting to a new role it may take more hours at first to learn and adapt and then if you are trying to go long, there is not only the physical stress but the mental stress around expectations of trying to get training in and doing well. new work roles and environment can be as stressful on recovery as doing a hard workout at the track or on the trainer. Getting enough consistent sleep should be a priority. I used to work 60-70 hours a week and then train some ridiculous hours (20-30 hours/week) for IM but that was when I was in my early 30s and I could absorb all that and didnt have kids (and eventually did burn out). It all came down to time management and planning ahead (not only with gear, but meals) and seeing if you can incorporate some training via commuting to work on bike or run.

Consider not going long as you adapt to your new role and focus on shorter distances and get faster. I think folks can fit and fast on 10 hours of week of consistent training and be somewhat competitive up to HIM or even in a single sport (ie. try to work on the sport that is your natural weakness). congrats on the opportunity for a promotion.

I'm probably exaggerating, I do have ambition, but I want a work/life balance and don't want to sacrifice that. If promotions + $$ = 10+ hours/week more then I would turn it down. At least for the time being.

I work one of the weirdest schedules ever and I have been able to find time to train for an Ironman. My schedule is a rotating shift where I work three 12 hour days in a row, three 12 hour nights in a row, then three days off. I have learned to focus on the quality of my workouts and got rid of the junk miles. Luckily I have a wife that loves to train and race too so she is very understanding and our daughter is now in college so no young kids to shuttle around. With my work schedule I will never stand on the podium at a big event or qualify for Kona, but I love the sport and I do what I have to so that I can stay in it.

I disagree. If you can race an Olympic tri, you can finish an IM off pretty well the exact same training hours without walking. It just boils down to dialing back the pace on the bike and swim and making sure you keep up a decent amount of easy run mileage which can be done through 4x1 hour per week and 1x2 hours (on the weekend). I assume you can still crank out a hard 4 hour ride on the weekend with the new job.

Here is your simple plan. Assume 5 am wake up, training by 5:30 am, done by 7:30 and commute to work.

• Mon: bike or jog to pool, 60 min swim, commute back
• Tue: Get on trainer, bike intervals for 45 min, transition run
• Wed: same at Mon
• Thu: run 70 min + 30 min trainer intervals
• Fri: same as Thu
• Sat: run 2 hours easy + 20 min bike spin
• Sun: ride hard 4 hour + 15 min run

Choose 1 day off Mon-Fri. This is plenty of training to cover all distance of triathlon. Pretty simple, nothing fancy, just get up at 5 am and log 2 hrs per day 4x per week and log another 6-7 hrs on the weekend.

Dev

I have coached an IM newbie on 6 hours per week and she finished 12:xx at CdA. I have done 12-14 hours per week in winter building to 20+ at the pointy end of race season and KQ'd. I think I could do a similar level maintaining the 14/15 and killing the supplementary stuff.

Depends what you mean by competitive I guess.

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I agree with what logella " I wouldn't recommend a big job switch and your first IM. That first one is physically and mentally all consuming."and timbasile both said "You can say no to the promotion. It is just work after all.
Before you say Yes, make sure this is what you want. You only get one crack at life, and you should weigh pros/cons of additional work hours, career goals, personal goals, work life balance, etc. It doesn't have to be triathlon vs work, but make sure thus promotion is what you want before you take it."

Pick one!

This is something I was an 'expert at' although I have to say I'm not sure how I managed it

(but I did, because I did it for 2 years.)

If you include my commute I worked 11+hours a day 5 days a week and fitted in 15hours of training (a bit more in peak blocks, less in base period).
My train to work was 7.35 and I would get home at 7pm (assuming public transport worked! :-) )

Essentially (alarm clock time is your choice)
Monday - off
Tuesday - bike after work 7.30pm to 9pm , eat bed
Wednesday 6am - pool 1hr/1hr 15mins. 7.30pm run after work . Eat. Bed
Thursday 6am pool 7.30pm to 9pm bike after work Eat. Bed.
Friday 6am pool. 7.30pm run after work Eat. Bed.
Saturday 8am pool, 10.30 long run done by 12.30 - 1 pm
Sunday Long ride/Maybe brick. Set off at 7.30 done between 12 and 2 (depending on programme etc.)

Saturday and Sunday were interchangeable and I started with Friday as an off day and Monday as training.
But that is the gist of it.

'Free time' was the evening of my day off and at weekends after training.
The above adds up to about 15hours/week.

Going in, I knew I wasn't going to be competitive in long distance tri. (I'll also never be great at basketball or playing the piano.) It was a case of being better, but knowing where I would stack up relative to the pointy end.

I'd fit my training in among the rest of my life (work, family, paying the bills, etc.) I never had a coach/formal training plan. Some weeks I'd be able to do close to twenty hours, but a lot of the time it was more like ten hours. But I enjoyed the training, the trips to the races, and the races themselves. I was in the 13-14 hour finishing time bracket, but I had fun.

In short, you could do a long course tri in 2018. Figure out how much time you are willing to spend on triathlon, adjust your race goal appropriately, and enjoy the experience.

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"Human existence is based upon two pillars: Compassion and knowledge. Compassion without knowledge is ineffective; Knowledge without compassion is inhuman." Victor Weisskopf.

Seems a bit extreme.

...kudos. At 60h per week I would probably not workout at all.

Thanks for your input. 5 am wake up means 9pm bed time. My kids go to bed at 9. Giving away the only "quiet" time of my day would take a loooot of motivation. Not sure I am that driven.