I'd be more concerned about the cost of racing as I assume you have no job.

You will have a lot less time but a lot more money when you get a job with your degree. (assuming its accounting and not marketing)

I was in your shoes... sort of.

business school for you.. but I was in grad programs of sports management (sort of like business school... sort of) and sports performance (two degrees). I worked a Graduate Assistantship to help ends meet, built my own triathlon related business, and PR'd an Ironman... all while getting engaged and helping plan a wedding.

I tell you all that to say I had a lot on my plate. My training went from 14-16 hours a week (1st Ironman) to 10-12 hours a week. What I did was just focused more on the stress I was accumulating in the appropriate zones that were relevant to the race (z2/3 with some z4 sprinkled in). Every workout had a purpose and again.. I focused more on accumulating the stress needed to let the body adapt and stopped looking at training in terms of time or distance. I wouldn't say I hit all my goals I had set out for, but I did PR a hot IM at 10:38 while training the entire time in the winter of Michigan.


Take-Away: you can do it... you just need to focus on the right demands that are needed for the race and ensure each workout is fulfilling a purpose.

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COROS Sports Science

Business school is an absolute joke. It's basically a two year cocktail hour -- if anything, alcohol consumption will be the biggest impediment to your triathloning, not time.

If you have even a moderately serious job now, then this will be a relief, not a burden.

That is true. Some people start businesses and do other time demanding activities (internships, competitions), but for the most part, yes, classwork is a joke. There are some difficult MBA classes, but I get the point. However, drinking with classmates, recruiting cocktail events, impromptu international trips are the real training killers. Maybe I should change the thread subject to "How to train while drinking heavily and traveling frequently".

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2017 races: St. George 70.3 May 6 | Madison 70.3 June 11 | IM Zurich July 30 | Chicago Marathon October 8

Law school is significantly more rigorous than an MBA program as far as daily demands, and I was in my best shape ever while in law school. If you've held a real job (which I assume you have, since it's usually a requirement for admission), you'll be fine juggling all three. I'm not sure how much control you have over your schedule, but i'd try to have either late morning classes or a good early afternoon break daily for training. I would also proceed on the assumption that late afternoon and evenings will mostly be taken by networking events, which will probably be the bigger strain on family than any training.

I got my full time MBA a few years ago from a top 20 program and trained throughout. The school work is not that difficult to organize, but here are a lot of social events and networking activities that you don't want to miss out on. My recommendation is to focus on school during the fall first year to get a decent GPA and network a lot. Youll have interviews in the spring, once you get your internship offer you have more time to train as you have this tied down. The summer between your first and second year you do your internship, kill it and get offered a full time position, if you accept it you basically coast the second year of the MBA as you have your full time offer secured. If you don't get offered the full time role or want to do something different then you have to do all the networking and interviewing again.

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2x Deca-Ironman World Cup (10 Ironmans in 10 days), 2x Quintuple Ironman World Cup (5 Ironmans in 5 days), Ultraman, Ultra Marathoner, and I once did an Ironman.

So I did B School while triathlon training (or, rather, the other way around). If you're doing a full-time, 2 year program at a ranked (top 20) school it is a massive time commitment. Yeah, you're not getting a PhD in physics, so it's not that the classes are hard or that there's insane amount of studying. But the classes, clubs, speakers, recruiting, networking events, travel, etc made for really really long days (and nights) that well exceeded my time commitments in my pre-school or post-school career. You're paying a lot of money for essentially a network and a job out of school, so you don't want to scrimp on those and just do the minimum to pass your classes. You should WANT to be overcommitted with school events (purely social or otherwise). It could be the best 2 years of your life, and certainly among the most memorable.

For me, I didn't do any 70.3s or IMs while in school (I did a 70.3 the summer before school- that's when I had all the time in the world to train) but I did train for Collegiate Nationals and the NYC and Boston Marathons so I did keep up some level of intense training. I joined the university's triathlon team (I was the only person from B School, most were undergrads or from other more academic graduate programs). I also did most if not all of my weekday training in the mornings as there was almost always something going on at night. Luckily classes rarely started before 9 so I could get a workout in before the day started without having to get up too early. I also swam on campus during the random hour or so breaks that were scattered in my schedule. But it was not easy and my expectations of having tons of time and flexibility to train were sorely misplaced. But I don't regret a minute of it. I don't really think IM training fits well with B School, but it might depend on how much you dive into all the campus activities and how much you're willing to sacrifice. I didn't do an IM until a few years after I graduated when my schedule was more routine.

+1.

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just your average age grouper . no one special . no scientific knowledge . just having fun.

Have done business school, while doing tri (IM and 70.3). Graduated with honors and have a decent job.

I feel that I did miss out on a lot of networking events, so in retrospect I would scale waaay back on training (like run 3X week for 45 min and that's it) and focus more on getting to know your classmates. These connections will last you a lifetime.

Good advice and hat tip to chuy. I'm in one of those programs full time so I figure I'll train when possible to stay healthy, maybe even squeeze in a race or two, but it's not worth stressing about missed key workouts for IM. I'm not yet decided on a particular career path so I'll likely have a busy social life figuring it out.

For the others, $10k for fun, travel, races is not a huge amount when put in context of all other b school costs. I have money saved, but others just tack it onto their student loans and pay it off with their sign-on bonus.

And LOL at getting an MBA to go into accounting...

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2017 races: St. George 70.3 May 6 | Madison 70.3 June 11 | IM Zurich July 30 | Chicago Marathon October 8

Sounds like my dad's advice! Written like a mature alum.

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2017 races: St. George 70.3 May 6 | Madison 70.3 June 11 | IM Zurich July 30 | Chicago Marathon October 8

And just keep in mind that you will never look back at your time in business school and say "I wish I had trained more and raced more". But you very possibly could look back at business school and say "i wish I had gotten a better GPA, networked more, gotten a better job, gotten a job I like more, etc.". Business school is a very awesome time of your life which will be over before you know it and you will never experience again. Triathlons will be around for a lot more. Its your decision, but I would really take advantage of everything business school has to offer and have triathlons come second. This is what I did and don't regret it for a second.

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2x Deca-Ironman World Cup (10 Ironmans in 10 days), 2x Quintuple Ironman World Cup (5 Ironmans in 5 days), Ultraman, Ultra Marathoner, and I once did an Ironman.

I have done this . . . went to a top business school while also training 20+ hrs/wk for Ironman. I did not find it very difficult. I probably put 40 +/- 10hrs/wk into coursework, but since most of it was outside of classroom there is a lot of flexibility regarding when it happens. I did a fair bit fewer social events than average and did not have a family at the time. YMMV.

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Dimond Bikes Superfan

Working full time in a professional career not at all related to the sport, getting my MBA (admittedly 6 credits per semester, not full time), and racing pro/elite.
So, yes. You can train and go to business school.

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IG: idking90

Don't worry about it. It isn't like it's a real school or anything. :D (Physics studies, and now an engineer, but I repeat myself.)

Depends if you want to take business school seriously or not.

I made the transition from running to triathlon (Marathon to Oly distance) during my summer internship, which was only really possible because my internship was more or less 9-5 and I didn't yet have kids. I could probably have done a 70.3 during the summer now that I think about it, but at the time it looked more daunting since I didn't have the years under me.

However, I made it a point to get all I could out of my MBA, I was at one of the top schools in my country and wanted to really push myself in that regard. During the year, I was lucky to get out 2-3x per week for a run or a spin class. I found it great as a stress reliever or general way to stay in shape, when I could get out and run, but "training" was something I couldn't really do until I was working my internship.

Your school experience may be different - the way mine was structured was to throw everything at you 1st year so employers could see grades, and then a more relaxed 2nd year. Tri training might have been possible 2nd year, but given that we had a baby that year, my life became baby + school.

I think you deserve to be banished from ST for using networking, biz school and drinking as an excuse for not racing and training. If you can't race and train while doing biz school you are just plain disorganized or making excuses. Sorry for the tough love. Biz school is really not that tough. It just isn't (for the record, I did 4 IM's while working full time and doing my MBA at nite school)....it's just about being organized. Please don't use family and career as top priorities either. Of course those are for everyone here other than maybe the top 15 pros in Kona and top 50 at ITU. Everyone else is in the same boat...work pays for families to exist (family is really the priority, work is secondary, because work won't come to your funeral, family will)

Networking can easily turn into a massive BS useless time sink.

Networking is a sales process, except the currency you are measuring in is slightly different, but that's it.

It's not how much time you spend doing sales prospecting, its having a high impact funnel and having really high quality stuff fall out of the funnel and hitting your revenue targets. People network and do sales in completely stupid ways spending way too much time on useless connections/prospects.

Most of you guys have to treat your time like you money and not give it out and spend it on entirely useless things. The bulk of networking is useless (and I've done Semiconductor strategic marketing-product marketing-biz dev-alliance programs for 20ish years). Networks don't last a lifetime no matter what some of you guys think. A network is only as good as how well you nurture it and keep it organic and alive with high impact contacts that can positively influence your path to success (or not in your company).

The bulk of people in your network are not today nor will ever be your friend. They are in your network because you can make them successful in their organization and you have them in your network because they can make you useful in yours. Some high impact ones, you "pay forward" and invest in, because they have the human qualities to be helpful to you in some future capacity. These are the the high impact network contacts that you keep alive like leaves at the end of your tree's branches.

But just randomly wasting time with low impact stupid people is EXACTLY what most people get sucked into and then they wonder why they missed 7x1 hour of training this week. Well they wasted 7 hours with idiots instead of spending 7 hours at the pool, the track or on the bike. At the end of the week, they have no further impact in their network than having spent those 7 hours training. The trap people fall into is treating networking like a party/popularity thing. Networking is all about connections-follow ups and driving mutually successful outcomes. Follow ups are the key. Constant follow up and being in the face of the key people in the network, and not when you need them but when they need you as a path to when you need them because you know you will need the high impact ones at some point, so you are building towards that.

Guys who don't have time wasting it on useless networking are basically stupid business school idiots not looking at the ROI of their own time while studying ROI and NPV's in finance class......sheeeesh people they teach you all this shit in biz school and then you don't even apply proper business strategy to your own personal brand/company and then you wonder why you can't train? WTF are most of you learning in biz school if you don't treat your own self as the ultimate business that you need to manage?

Sorry for the rant....replying in general to this thread. Pubes can take this rant up from here. I tried to do my best impersonation....he's right though, biz school is not that tough and it actually does not take that much time if you are properly organized and use proper priority management (I say this as a squander time on ST on a Friday nite)

It's simple. Get your priorities listed. Allocate your time accordingly.

Life is simply a question of time management based on what you want to achieve most.

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Trust me I’m a doctor!
Well, I have a PhD :-)

That rather depends on the school. I went to INSEAD. The MBA takes less than 1 year, and is still the world's top ranked:
http://rankings.ft.com/...bal-mba-ranking-2016

We used to refer to Harvard as the "Club Med" option. I've hung out there a bit, and it is cruisy by comparison. INSEAD was pretty intensive. The library shut at midnight, but was always full until then. I tried not to do that, but 12hr+ days were standard. Terms finished on Fridays, with exams on Saturdays, recommencing on Monday. Nonetheless, Friday nights were "low-key" parties, Saturday nights were mega-parties. Training suffered, though. It was the only year in the last 32 that I haven't raced at least one IM. It would have been inconceivable, and I have raced IM while working full-time and doing other masters degrees part-time.

There certainly are joke business schools of course. I'm not sure why anyone bothers with them, but there seems to be a market.

Everybody makes such a big deal about how tough business school is, it's really BS - an image put about somehow to make it seem more aspirational and more of an achievement by those who have graduated. I loved business school, I studied hard and played hard, much more than my under grad - but I have also never been fitter than I was after two years studying for the MBA!!

Your time at business school will be way more flexible than during your career post business school. So if you plan to continue to train and compete after graduating then just get used to juggling lots of priorities now!!

If you can't do this whilst at business school then you will really struggle later. This will only get harder once real life hits post graduation.

Hey there! I was at University of Chicago for my MBA from 2013-2015 and was injured/unable to train at all for most of the first year but trained 15-20 hours (more like 20-25 if you include running drills, stretching post workouts, etc etc) per week in my second year so can provide a little insight!

The short answer is, it depends. On both the program you're in/how demanding it is; the industry/function you decide to recruit for; and the priorities you set along the way.

Longer answer: In my experience, the first year of b-school is crazy because recruiting takes so much time. Everyone says that it's just cocktail hours (how hard can that be right?), but those cocktail hours are with recruiters who decide your fate the next summer (and possible after school) so it's not ALL fun and games. There is a good amount of stress. Depending on what you decide to recruit for, late fall and winter will also be full of interview prep, followed by interviews in Jan/Feb. But then all you have is school and socialization in spring (yay!). That said, I had classmates who trained for marathons and triathlon during that whole time (even in Chicago winter). They just couldn't necessarily get quite as much volume on certain weeks and had to be flexible with training days, off days, when recruiting, exams, etc. really ramped up.

In the end, it comes down to your priorities. I would say it's VERY feasible to continue training (even if you drop it down to a moderate/maintenance-y level at times), do school, and maintain a moderate social life (going out every night, which some people do, is probably not possible plus school, recruiting, training). It will just take some time management/advanced planning :) I'm happy to help and/or discuss more offline if you want to DM me!

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Sarah Alexander | Twitter | Instagram

Hammer Nutrition: For 15% off, use Referral Code 254874 at checkout w/ Sarah Alexander (sarah.e.alexander.10@gmail.com)
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I ran xc/track during my Engineering undergrad, and did tris during my MBA (both were top5, highly competitive programs); the latter was definitely easier to balance. You are done with classes by mid-afternoon and then can train before dinner. Casework after dinner followed by social events (depending on the night) stating at 10:00ish. Lots of time on the weekends to train/race.

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ECMGN Therapy Silicon Valley:
Depression, Neurocognitive problems, Dementias (Testing and Evaluation), Trauma and PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

It's not that INSEAD is that hard (my sister went there so I have some family context), it's just that they cram it all in tight. I seriously question if that is a better approach in terms of actual learning and retention of the knowledge acquired. The more country club approach referred to (Harvard in your example) does not mean they cover less, they just have more time over which it is done. Speed learning does not always result in the most successful outcome in the long term. I don't know about you guys, but I do a lot of thinking/planning/studying/analysis/synthesis while working out or doing other things and when I get back in front of the computer or books or with the team, I have everything all sorted out. I personally have difficulty say advancing the synthesis of my thoughts from finance class when I am crunching stuff from accounting. If I can go for a walk or run, I can review the entire finance class and let it sink in. I'm not a fan of compressed degree programs. I did both my MBA and Electrical Engineering masters degree spread out over 3 years at nite school while working full time. I still use both degrees every day at work more than 20+ years later. But you have the experience of the compressed 1 year Masters and the spread out multiple year masters while working and doing IM, so you can probably judge which one leads to a better outcome. I am biased by my path of not compressing any degree programs. On a plus note, I never lost any income while getting the degree stuff done and didn't lose any sporting life experiences either!

As such, I wanted to ask the ST community for anecdotes from those who balanced triathlon training (70.3 and IM) and business school.


I will warn you that this is ST so you will get lots of people tell you they got top marks, learned 3 languages, mastered a musical instrument, had a family with 3 young children and qualified for Hawaii where they were lucky enough to win their age group, all while going to the best business school.


For what it's worth, assuming you are a mere mortal, focus on the important things. You can learn and experience a lot at school so that should be your priority. You can stay fit on far less exercise than is required to do a triathlon so why not do more social oriented sports with classmates? Or just spend more social time hanging out with them and do a little running or swimming on your own.


Triathlons will be around long after your school is over.

ST is Lake Wobegon on PEDs.

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Aaron Bales
Lansing Triathlon Team

This is the first statement you have made that i completely agree with.

To add something of value to the discussion i can only discuss medicine and that is very intensive. Things will change, your priority cannot be on training, but you can still train assuming you are very disciplined. I spend a lot of time on the trainer studying while riding, downloading lectures to listen to while training, and eliminating all other time wasting activities.

Edit: not putting down business school, i just know several good friends went through with no issues at all. Only issue i could see is if it was a 1 accelerated program.

The content of any MBA isn't terribly hard. A "Masters" of business administration is really a mix of (mostly) undergrad and (some) postgrad level study. There are a number of other things that can make it challenging and rewarding. At INSEAD, the intensity of the experience was certainly a part of it. You can question whether they have a better approach, but they have been judged best in the world for 2 years running, almost never ranked outside the top 10 and a degree from there opens doors at the best consulting firms, investment banks and multinational companies, so their "immersive" experience is working compared to a relaxed, unranked school where its no problem to fit in your long ride and run. Moreover, if your sister doesn't say that it was the best year of her life, she would be the only INSEAD grad I've heard of not to think so. The alumni are generally passionate about the experience, as all-consuming as it is.

MBA here. Class was way easy. There's time to train if you want to.

My story:

I took up triathlon as a sport mid way through a traditional 2yr b-school MBA, started mostly to deal with the belly I had developed over the first year

Anyone who tells you b-school is anywhere close to a real job is having you on.

I would estimate my average week was 15 hours of work, all but 5-6 of which can be done at a time you choose.


Even the busiest weeks are almost all busy with the condition that all the work is done on your schedule

The big caveat is that people will be partying every day - so I guess if you want to go out until 2am every day then that would leave less time

My experience was combining the partying and traveling with training was fine for the 8-12 hrs per week I wanted to do 70.3

Dev, all due respect, but night and weekend school is a different experience than full time. Staying in the same industry is not as time demanding as spending 10s of hours doing case study prep or busting your ass in a summer internship. You took one route and kept earning $$ while earning your degree. Not better or worse, but different. You were more focused than most doing full time and rightly didn't waste time meeting every employer on campus. I know you have the drill sergeant mentality on ST, but I wouldn't be so quick to judge. I've worked in a demanding industry before and share your skepticism when people working <70 hours per week complain they don't have time to x, y, z. But from what I know, business school is more dynamic with many cool opportunities - I want to take full advantage. That said, I'll follow up in 9 months on this topic.

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2017 races: St. George 70.3 May 6 | Madison 70.3 June 11 | IM Zurich July 30 | Chicago Marathon October 8

In my time I had some classmates that did some semesters full time and some part time (mine was 2 courses per semester, 3 semesters per year, 3 years, 2 courses advanced standing due to having an engineering degree coming in). It depend on the person you talked to. Some said the full time program was way harder, some said part time while working full time. To some degree it depended on what courses you had at a given time and which profs you had and how organized you could get with your group work.

I aligned myself with enough people who wanted to get the maximum marks with the minimum amount of input workload. We would divide and conquor wherever possible and if I could not get in with some of those people, I just took leadership of the group and said, "OK you guys want to get an A- with X amount or work or an A- with X/5 amount of work". Most people were pretty open to getting the same mark with 1/5th of the work so they fell in line quickly and we had a no time squandering policy. But you really have to manage your groups with the no time squandering approach or group work grows to occupy every living hour of your day, evening and weekends. It's the same in real world companies.....stupid people who have no clue how valuable their time is just give it away like it's sunshine in Dubai in July!

In terms of networking etc, I'd really advise you to treat the entire thing like a sales funnel. Try to make sure you populate your funnel with high quality prospects. Don't ignore low quality prospects, but don't just give your time for free to people who have low influencer qualities in the world outside school.

My 2 cents is that networking is very temporal in nature. The guys who were useful for me in the aerospace industry, are largely useless to me in semiconductors and within that the wireless guys are kinds of useless in high performance computing who in turn are fairly useless in medical imaging....and so it goes. The most useful takeaway is your ability to build new networks fast and in an impactful way....and if you can do that without mortgaging your personal life, then to me, that's the high bar that you're trying to get to anyway.

I was just interviewing a guy and one of my peers asked the candidate who he knew in XYZ key target account companies. I jumped in and said, "I don't care who he know, I want to hear his plan for how he will win over all these guy who we don't know and he doesn't either because that's the holy grail we're trying to get to". Biz school is a low impact place to practice that for sure. Of course some may actually become useful in the near term!

In any case, sorry if I was being hard. Probably a bit over the top, but it really is not that hard to train for half IM's....run 20-40 min every day all the time, do two really hard 40 min swims, bike for commuting if you can, and get a hard 3 hour bike ride in on the weekend one day and a hard 70 min run with 8x6 min hard 2 min easy as your bread and butter run and don't get fat and you're set. I think you can do it with focus.

Here is my plan for you to get the full MBA experience:

1. Every morning wake up 40 min earlier than you would and cram in a 30 min run
2. 2x per week at lunch time, hard 40 min swim. Don't sit around having lunch with other people at least on those days. Just pick the days and make it non negotiable.
3. Networking Events, take whatever time is the max time allocated and invent an excuse to cut in it half and bolt out early or arrive half way in....whatever works. Have a plan that you want to accomplish XYZ objectives in that 50% time. Cut your losses on bad conversations and move one. Free up that 50% of time and get more course work/studying done than peers squandering time doing nothing at the networking
4. Group work and described above....take the leadership role on time allocation, objectives and work to be done. If you see the group squandering time on low impact stuff, get them on track. People hate it initially, but they love it afterwards, when they are all in the pub and everyone else is still stuck doing case study stuff they will love you. After a while people will be competing to get into your group. That's really what you want to get to, when all the all stars in your class are striving to get on your team and then they are working with and for you with the same mindset.
5. Get 7-8 hours of sleep every nite no matter what. Drop what ever you are doing 8 hours before you have to get up and leave it unfinished. It sounds short sighted at first, but if you set a deadline to get to sleep you will squander less time before that. Then the next day you are more rested and will get more done/asborbed in class on account of being alert. One of my classmates was an engineering physics student with top marks in our undergrad and a multiple time olympian and Commonwealth games champion in shooting. He needed sleep to perform at shooting, but he said only stupid people sacrifice sleep because they think they are getting more work done. I tried it for a semester at age 19 and was sold....carried it forward to grad school.
6. No caffeine after 12 noon. This will help the sleep side too.
7. Learn to read, synthesize and write really fast. The faster the better. This is your friend in biz school
8. Practice your presentation skills. A great presentation can up your marks big time over a bad one for the same input work....this allows you to work less before and get the higher mark because you influenced the markers better by picking the influencing talking points
9. Everything you do, ask yourself how you can do it faster for the same outcome

On the tri front, jog everywhere on campus! Free additional training. OK I spent too much time on that, but if it helps just a few people and allows you guys to train or have more time with families or girlfriend/boyfriend all the better

I knew I had to keep digging to find the good Dev :) Don't worry, I'm not bothered by anyone being hard on me on an internet forum, but I felt compelled to respond because you have more value to offer from your experiences (vs it is easy, just do it, end of story). This response is helpful to me and hopefully others as well. Thanks sir

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2017 races: St. George 70.3 May 6 | Madison 70.3 June 11 | IM Zurich July 30 | Chicago Marathon October 8

Yeah the "just do it and figure it out" response is basically useless, so in essence I was wasting everyone's time. The more detailed response, to some degree, while applicable to business school, we can all apply them to day to day life. I took a page out of that, and I have rescheduled all of my 1 hour meetings this week to 30 minutes. I am going to ask the guys in my team to apply that so that we can stop wasting time going in circles for 30 minutes to get to the meat of what we need tot get done in the other 30 minutes!

Nothing more frustrating than endless meetings or meetings with no agenda. But need to suck it up if you're the junior guy. Hence the need to go to business school and become the boss!

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2017 races: St. George 70.3 May 6 | Madison 70.3 June 11 | IM Zurich July 30 | Chicago Marathon October 8

I completed a PTMBA program at a top school (hint: in Chicago) while I had two young kids, was working a demanding job and while I was the sole earner in my family. The PTMBA program I was in shared the curriculum with the FT program, the classes all covered the same materials, the exams were all the same and many PT people took classes with the full timers and vice versa. Yeah, it was time consuming and rigorous program but honestly not that bad. In talking with the professors and students in the program the FT students had a ton of time on their hands. You'll be fine. In fact you'll probably be in excellent shape by the end of the program.

Also, to those of you saying "business school is worthless" suffice it to say I beg to differ.

I'm halfway through my second year of law school. I didn't race last semester so I could focus on school more... ended up with worse grades. It's about balance—just make your training a priority and it will happen. (Be prepared to eliminate Netflix and useless time sinks.)

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@floathammerholdon | @partners_in_tri

I hope this was meant to be a joke. Business school will help you get the interview to get the job. Once in the door, its what you do, not the piece of paper hanging on your wall.

I'd also suggest getting rid of names such as "Rude Dude"

Oh I thought the paper on my wall would make me rich and successful. Onto plan b...

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2017 races: St. George 70.3 May 6 | Madison 70.3 June 11 | IM Zurich July 30 | Chicago Marathon October 8

Haha, do you believe that you will get more time once business school is completed. I would assume you are doing it to step up your career which means after business school comes a demanding job. I would also assume that family and kids will be in the picture.

With other words, you will either quit triathlon forever because there is always something else that will be important or you will have to find a way to manage your time. Also, you will have to be realistic on what you want to accomplish and what are your goals. If you are aiming for Kona, then obviously you have to sacrifice more than if you are a local FOP/MOP enjoying triathlon as a hobby/addiction.

I think you are confused as to the context of networking that is used in the full time MBA. It is very important to network with prospective employers and the people who do the hiring for summer internships and full time positions. That means going to their events, dinners and talking with them so that when its time to submit your resume and they are reading through 200 resumes, they know who you are. When 200 resumes are submitted and only 5 interview invites go out it helps tremendously that the selection people know who you are and what you want. Especially if you are trying to change careers, if you come from a teaching background and want to transition to lets say finance you can bet that your resume and GPA aren't going to get you finance interviews by themselves. This is something that people who do not do the full time MBA do not have to go through as they already have a job. My only networking in business school was done so I could get a good summer internship and then job, everything else was just drinking with my classmates.

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2x Deca-Ironman World Cup (10 Ironmans in 10 days), 2x Quintuple Ironman World Cup (5 Ironmans in 5 days), Ultraman, Ultra Marathoner, and I once did an Ironman.

x2. And what looks like drinking with your cohort on a Thursday night is actually networking for life, as a lot of those people will become meaningful advisors and advocates for you over the course of your career. Don't be the guy who jets out right after class to go for a run and misses the cohort flag football game or pub trivia night (at least not every time). There are people who were just silent observers in the classroom and I never saw at any social events and I can guarantee I won't be as eager to take their call compared to the classmates who did take the time to get to know everyone socially.

And, don't forget to do all the travel while in school! Until you retire you won't have the time to take the weeks-long trips around the world that people did before/after internships and during winter and spring breaks. Those were easily some of my most memorable times "in school." Maybe it was just my school, but if we had at least 4 days off in a row I guarantee that over 1/2 the class jetted out to a new, international location. Not catching up on long runs and bike rides.

I went to MBA school as a professional triathlete. I had plenty of time to train, study, attend class, party and sleep. But I did it without a wife and kids. You cite having a family and career while starting B school. Put racing on the back burner for now, but keep exercising as it will offer your more focus to study....even if they are 20 min swims, 30 min runs and 1 hour bike workouts.

Just my 2¢.

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Emilio De Soto II
Maker of triathlon clothing, T1 Wetsuits, & Saddle Seat Pads and AXS since 1990
emilio@desotosport.com http://www.desotosport.com

If you want to do it, you'll find a way. If not, you'll find a way out. Seems like you've found both for now.

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"The person on top of the mountain didn't fall there." - unkown

also rule 5

I think there are two types of networking. One is with prospective employers, one is with classmates. We can agree to disagree that both can be done more effectively with less time in. It's not like I have never gotten a job before or closed big deals for my company or myself. People do networking with no plan, they waste time with the wrong network, and inside the network they are trying to build, they have no idea how to stand out in their network from others and most importantly get the message across on how they will make the other party successful. So yeah, no surprise, it's a massive time sink for most with poor results. Even if you are working full time and going to a part time MBA you still need to network, either inside your company to keep your job and move ahead or outside your company to change careers and get a new job. Part time MBAers are constantly networking too. Just because they have a job at the moment has nothing to do with their need to network for the future. But like any endeavor in life where people are time crunched, there are always reasons/excuses why they are time crunched. In reality everyone gets 168 hours in a week. I told my employees at work to NOT WORK HARD because it is a stupid end game and both us and the competition have 168 hours in a week and eventually we both run out of hours. Working smarter as a team with priority management will defeat the competition. It's the same thing in networking. Everyone has 168 hours. How can you get the most results with your time?

Maybe I had an advantage coming from engineering school into business school. Business school, everyone runs around with some badge of honor about how much time they put in because frankly the stuff is not that hard so if you just grind through more volume you get higher marks. Engineering school, you're mainly either right or wrong. The volume is high, but the speed and accuracy with which you can go through the volume is dependent on how smartly you can grind through....not brute force grind like biz school. So in engineering school, the guy getting 90's who is in the pub most nights and plays varsity sport is kind of glorified. And a lot of tech companies give glory to that. I think it was Netflix that said, "Oh, so you overachieved working only 20% of the time, congrats we give you a promotion and more responsibility....oh you, work 60 hours per week and are dropping the ball on multiple front, but generally do a good job....sorry, thanks for your work, but here is your severance package".

Now that I am older, I laugh at statements like this. You will never again have as much free time as you will during business school. Enjoy it--however you choose to do that.

this.

Remember what you're going to b-school for...its the networking, not the passing grade.

My opinion - give up triathlons for 2 years, get more into running. Justify to yourself that you're building that aspect...can still (1) stay in shape, (2) workout <1 hour a day and (3) get the most out of the investment you're making.

I had a very different experience in business school than some here. It was by far the hardest schooling I ever did. I saw my teammates as often as my wife, and my young daughters often slept under my desk at home to be near me while I studied. That stuff eats your soul, but it was worth it for me since I built a new career with what I'd learned, and now I can spend more quality time with my family than I could before.

But there's no way in the world I could have done any sort of training during it. Your mileage may vary, obviously, but if it were me going into it again, I'd drop everything and do all I could to make the most of that schooling.

Lots of great advice on this thread. Sure, training can fit into the busiest of schedules, but the reality is that some will choose not to train (or train less) to focus on other things in business school (and life). I believe I'll stay in fairly good shape, but I will also skip my long weekend ride for a last minute trip to Japan just because that's what people do and it'll be fun.

For the record, my job out of school WILL NOT require as many hours as I have worked in the past. Higher paid, "demanding", or more prestigious jobs do not equal more hours. Wife and kids would certainly change the equation for me though - my initial post was meant to convey family in the generic sense, I'm a bachelor.

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2017 races: St. George 70.3 May 6 | Madison 70.3 June 11 | IM Zurich July 30 | Chicago Marathon October 8

I did my first ever marathon (year 1) and triathlon (year 2) while at Stanford Business School and it was a great way to connect with some like-minded classmates. In fact, were it not for running the marathon during my first year with fellow classmates, I would never have done a triathlon.

While I only raced an Olympic distance event, several classmates trained for and raced Iron distance races during their second year of business school (Ironman California in May and Ironman Canada in August).

Training may have taken up a decent amount of time, but it was no worse than balancing a job and family. In fact, the greater flexibility you have during business school (especially in the second year) may have made it easier to train than when working full time.

Good luck!