Take turns ... ie wife does IM even numbered years and hubby does odds. In between do sprint/oly/HM/Masters/anything with a lower time commitment.

Or take 2 years focusing on shorter races for both of you. At some point the kids activities will be a bigger priority. Got my 1st IM under my belt last year after 13 years of adult racing and might go back in 2015-17 depending on how this draft legal AG thing develops. As it stands 1 hour at redline racing head to head sounds more fun than IM distance (plus the swim matters more than long distance)

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2020 National Masters Champion - M40-44 - 400m IM
Canadian Record Holder 35-39M & 40-44M - 200 m Butterfly (LCM)

2 kids is not hard to handle by oneself. Doing it now. Kids 4 and 2.

Ditto.

If you're hubby can't handle two kids on his own, he has no right calling himself an Ironman! :)

Enjoy 'em while they're young because they grow up way too fast.

Scott

Your husband needs to man up. He's a father. He can handle a toddler and a baby at the same time, and if he can't, he needs to learn how. It's not like it is difficult. You may also have to do more at-home training. Treadmill. Training stand or rollers. Etc...

2 kids is not a problem. Both of you training with 2 young kids is not a problem either if it's a priority. Training together may be a problem.

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24 Hour World TT Champs-American record holder
Fat Bike Worlds - Race Director
Insta: chris.s.apex

Agree with the above. Kiss the workin out together good bye unless Grandma is ok with handling both kids. I am the early bird so I do the 4:30am workouts before the little ones are up. My wife likes to sleep in so I take over when she heads out. You make it work.

My wife and I do a bit of road biking, but not that often together. We trade off and with 3 kids we often need to determine if the planned riding is prudent. Now and again we get to ride together and we treat it like a date, which is really nice. I wouldn't worry much about the husband watching two kids. It is hard at first because he is acclimated to keeping track of just one, but it comes together quickly.

Well get granny to watch 1 day, and get a babysitter 1 day.. gives you 2 workouts together. Rest of the week you can alternate.

Assume you guys train at difference paces anyway, so 100% training together would be suboptimal..

I agree with all the above once the baby is older. By the time you are medically cleared for serious training (read the women's forum for advise against starting too early) he should be able to handle two kids for few hours. Training aside, I took both kids for full days on they days my wife worked. They were 6 months and 2.5 years then and it only gets easier. I am very envious of people who live close to their family and have babysitters.

At the same time I would focus on shorter distance stuff for a while. Could be one year, or maybe more if you find yourself seeing time with your kids as more important than time with your bike. Go in with the understanding that being competitive at short distance can be just as fun and challenging as going long. They aren't lesser events if you commit to them. Or focus on running and get a BQ or something.

I am happy I got the IM bug out of my system before kids. I might do another when they get to high school and I am no longer important in their lives. for now they love to go to the sprints and Olys and cheer me on.

Two words: Running stroller. Invest in a good one. Preferably one which also can be towed on a bike.

I only have one little one (so far), and my wife doesn't do triathlons, so take it for what its worth. But being able to take him out on the run with me, even some of the time, allows me a bigger 'ask' when it its time to disappear for an entire morning on the bike. (he's too young to tow behind the bike currently). So long as he's well fed before I run, I've found few issues training this way.

If you get a double stroller, then you can take both kids and train together, or maybe at least leave the younger one with grandma. Plus, I've found that it 'costs' me 20-30 sec / km on the run to push the thing, so if one of you is stronger than the other it could make for a more even workout together. Then, once they're both old enough to tow on the bike... (hopefully where you live is safe to do this)

Moral of the story: if you bring your kids along and get creative, you can find more time for training.

My wife only works on the weekends, so it's a bit challenging for me when I need to get in a long workout during the weekend. When rides and runs are under 2.5 hours, I can usually do it indoors during nap time, or before or after my wife gets home. Now that workouts have started becoming more like 4+ hours, I have to pay a babysitter.

My wife is training for a marathon and I have been logging 10-15 hour training weeks for about 10 months now. We have 3 kids (5 and twin 3 yr olds).

Basically we trade off days. It would look something like:




Me tWife
M: 5am swim; evening spin/treadmill Lunch/evening run
T: Afternoon bike then strength 5:30am run
W: 5 am swim; evening bike/run off day or evening run
Th: Long Brick (trainer, run outside) 5:30am run
F: 5am swim Lunch/evening run
Sa: Rest Day/strength Long Run early am
Su: Long run while kids/wife nap Rest day/short recovery run

This is without family close enough to help on a regular basis. When they can help, we can both do ours at the same time.

Thanks Furious D.
When your family does help, what does it look like? Is it one person (i.e. grandma) babysitting all three kids or is it both grandparents (or whatever the relative, point is, more than one)?

No problem. Sorry the formatting of that list sucked so much :)

I will say this. It is much easier for the family to help out now that the kids are a bit older. When the twins were 8-10 month up until close to 2 it was much more difficult for them. But that was in large part because it was twins.

My wife's family lives about an hour away, so we get a mix of Grandma or Grandpa (not at the same time, they're divorced - both early 60's) or her sister who has 3 kids of her own. So usually it is one person watching all three kids. Tips that we learned:

- Early on we tried to make it easy on the family/sitter by prepping everything in advance (dinner in fridge, diapers and pajamas out, etc).
- We came to grips with the fact that her parents had raised 4 kids and her sister had 3, so our kids would be in good hands.
- Sometimes we'd skip the workout and use the family help as a way to go on a date night instead.
- Found a good babysitter to help in a pinch
- Making/finding the time is easier than finding the energy to use that time for working out. I found earlier in the day was better, otherwise by the time the kids are down you're spent.
- It seems daunting but looking back on it, we probably made a bigger deal about it than we needed to

We train at very different paces now, so splitting the times/days works very well. But the odd time we get to run together, we enjoy it much more now.

Best of luck. My wife was on bed rest for 5 months, so I can't give any advice on training while pregnant (that is unless you're adopting/surrogate'ing).

Edit: also, after re-reading your original post...I am a very hands-on dad and to some extent my wife and I have a role reversal (she earns more, commutes into city, etc) while I run my own small company from home, tote the kids to appointments if she can't come, etc. But I don't think you'd hear either of us worry about leaving us 1 on 3. Its tough sometimes, but I love the time I get with my boys without my wife. And she loves it when she gets them alone (I'm going to WI this weekend for training and she's staying with the boys solo). I use the time to teach them to ride bikes, run around the block, etc. She loves to use the time to teach them to cook. Just embrace the solo time you get and find sun solo-parenting things to do with them while the other trains. If you can leave him with 1, he'll be fine with 2. Congrats, too.

I have 4 kids....10, 9, 3, 1. My wife and I both do tris (this is her first year and neither of us do IM's). My focus is 70.3 and Oly's and her focus is Oly's and Sprint. We'll do about 17 races between to two of us this year.

First of all, he should have no problem watching 2 kids at once. You just have to change your strategy....no more man-to-man defense...play zone.

2nd, we do use sitters/helpers...but as rarely as possible. We alternate going to the pool in the morning (early) and usually one of us will sneak in about 1500-2000M swim at the public pool lap lane once a week while the rest of the family messes around.

We'll get a sitter (grandparents, or sister in law) for rare occasions: an open water swim together in the evening, a long brick/bike on the weekend, etc. We usually reserve these times for strategic workouts (like if we need t o go to the race site to ride the race course before an event, etc)

Get used to the bike trainer and get up EARLY. We have two trainers, two laptops, two Trainer Roads, etc.

Get used to the treadmill. Usually one of us is running outside and one is on the treadmill. As much as I hate it, I'll do 10-15 miles on the treadmill early in the morning if I have to.

Since this sport requires frequency and consistency, I've found babysitters don't work too well. There's just not too many people that want to come over at strange (early) hours 5-6 days per week. You just have to get creative and flexible with your schedule. We both have training plans that flex week-to-week and generally we're shooting for weekly volume numbers--(meaning some days I'll swim M/W/F and other times it's M/T/PM)

Out of curiosity as someone who will potentially have these types of issues in the future (ie, kids), do any of you try to train with your children? I don't mean doing pace lines with them, but I remember bringing a soccer ball to the track and playing with my siblings in the infield while my dad did workouts, and riding the tandem with my dad (obviously he did most of the work). Also roller skating or bike riding with my dad while he was running, and playing in the "fun" side of the pool while he was at swim practice. Or running with one of those 3-wheeled stroller deals. Are these types of things feasible? or have you had success?

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Dtyrrell

Yeah, you can leave two kids with one babysitter, and definitely with Dad! I had twins and my MIL came over two afternoons a week for me to get out, and she managed just fine. In some ways it would be easier with a toddler and an infant than with 2 infants (and probably some ways harder). Best would be to schedule the workout while the baby naps so that whoever is the caregiver is only on duty with one kid for some of the time.