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Re: How to keep Ironman from consuming your life [eatmydirt]
eatmydirt wrote:
Does your family life revolve around your workout schedule, or is that just a figure of speech? .


It's a figure of speech. I work my training around my family and work life. For example, doing my weekday workouts either before or after baby generally goes to bed. On weekends, I ask what the wife has planned for us and figure out when I can swim/bike/run around whatever she's organized for the day. I'll occasionally things like "hey, do you think the Smiths could meet us for brunch 30 min later so I don't have to cut my ride short" or "hey, can we do our big vacation in mid-late Sept rather than late August since my big race is Sept 8th this year).

I think what she means is it does sometimes feel like an inordinate amount of my mental energies goes to figuring out when/where/how I'm going to work in my training. When I just ran, it was easy. But when you factor in when the pool is open and least crowded, when to work in massive 4-6 hr rides, etc. it does get somewhat complicated.

The easiest thing to do would be just train from 5-7am weekdays and 4-8am weekends and disruption would be minimal given kid usually sleeps from 7-7, but I've found sleep to be almost more important than the workouts themselves.

gary p wrote:
wintershade wrote:
I think part of why she loves me and married me was because I strive for excellence.

Then strive to be an excellent husband and father, first. Find a competitive outlet that doesn't consume as much time as pursuing IM/3hrMarathon/UltraRunning/RAAM. You can be competitive on +/-6 hours a week training in any one of the 3 disciplines. If you can't stand to give up any of the 3, you can compete at a pretty high level at the Sprint distance on 8-10 hours a week, especially if you have a swim foundation. I'd start by asking her what she'd consider a "reasonable" workout schedule. Then figure out a goal you can accomplish within that. Maybe her expectations/desires aren't that far off. Or maybe you're spending WAY more time training than she'd like.

What makes me sad, is I think you're right. I think my real priorities are different from what she wants them to be.... It's just hard for me to get excited about competing in Sprint tris (even at something like the National level) when the siren song of Ultraman calls...

So one question is -- can you do an approach where you spend a few years (e.g., in Sprint/Oly) getting very very fast on lower volume and then just boom, ramp to Ultraman in a year?
Last edited by: wintershade: Feb 11, 19 16:48

Edit Log:

  • Post edited by wintershade (Lightning Ridge) on Feb 11, 19 16:48