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Re: Triathlon training and business school? [RudeDude] [ In reply to ]
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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.




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Re: Triathlon training and business school? [Sanuk] [ In reply to ]
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ST is Lake Wobegon on PEDs.

Aaron Bales
Lansing Triathlon Team
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Re: Triathlon training and business school? [PubliusValerius] [ In reply to ]
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PubliusValerius wrote:
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.


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.
Last edited by: Ron_Burgundy: Feb 11, 17 20:35
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Re: Triathlon training and business school? [devashish_paul] [ In reply to ]
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devashish_paul wrote:

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 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.
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Re: Triathlon training and business school? [RudeDude] [ In reply to ]
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MBA here. Class was way easy. There's time to train if you want to.
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Re: Triathlon training and business school? [RudeDude] [ In reply to ]
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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
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Re: Triathlon training and business school? [devashish_paul] [ In reply to ]
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devashish_paul wrote:
RudeDude wrote:
I start business school this fall and assume that class, interviews, networking, and drinking will leave little time for training. I love racing and greatly value my health, but IM training is a hobby. Family and career are top priorities. As such, I wanted to ask the ST community for anecdotes from those who balanced triathlon training (70.3 and IM) and business school. Stories about other graduate degrees are less relevant to me but still welcome.

I'm into my third year of triathlon and second IM this summer. Making big gains and loving it, but may have to take a two year hiatus with intermittent training. Or maybe not, who knows. Enlighten me ST!


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)

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.

2017 races: St. George 70.3 May 6 | Madison 70.3 June 11 | IM Zurich July 30 | Chicago Marathon October 8
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Re: Triathlon training and business school? [RudeDude] [ In reply to ]
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RudeDude wrote:
devashish_paul wrote:
RudeDude wrote:
I start business school this fall and assume that class, interviews, networking, and drinking will leave little time for training. I love racing and greatly value my health, but IM training is a hobby. Family and career are top priorities. As such, I wanted to ask the ST community for anecdotes from those who balanced triathlon training (70.3 and IM) and business school. Stories about other graduate degrees are less relevant to me but still welcome.


I'm into my third year of triathlon and second IM this summer. Making big gains and loving it, but may have to take a two year hiatus with intermittent training. Or maybe not, who knows. Enlighten me ST!


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)


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.


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
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Re: Triathlon training and business school? [devashish_paul] [ In reply to ]
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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

2017 races: St. George 70.3 May 6 | Madison 70.3 June 11 | IM Zurich July 30 | Chicago Marathon October 8
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Re: Triathlon training and business school? [RudeDude] [ In reply to ]
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RudeDude wrote:
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

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!
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Re: Triathlon training and business school? [devashish_paul] [ In reply to ]
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devashish_paul wrote:
RudeDude wrote:
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


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!

2017 races: St. George 70.3 May 6 | Madison 70.3 June 11 | IM Zurich July 30 | Chicago Marathon October 8
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Re: Triathlon training and business school? [RudeDude] [ In reply to ]
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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.
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Re: Triathlon training and business school? [RudeDude] [ In reply to ]
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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.)

@floathammerholdon | @partners_in_tri
Last edited by: cloy26: Feb 13, 17 7:51
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Re: Triathlon training and business school? [RudeDude] [ In reply to ]
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RudeDude wrote:
Hence the need to go to business school and become the boss!

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"
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Re: Triathlon training and business school? [B.McMaster] [ In reply to ]
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B.McMaster wrote:
RudeDude wrote:
Hence the need to go to business school and become the boss!


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...

2017 races: St. George 70.3 May 6 | Madison 70.3 June 11 | IM Zurich July 30 | Chicago Marathon October 8
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Re: Triathlon training and business school? [RudeDude] [ In reply to ]
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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.
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Re: Triathlon training and business school? [devashish_paul] [ In reply to ]
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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.

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.
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Re: Triathlon training and business school? [chuy] [ In reply to ]
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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.
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Re: Triathlon training and business school? [RudeDude] [ In reply to ]
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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¢.

Emilio De Soto II
Maker of triathlon clothing, T1 Wetsuits, & Saddle Seat Pads and AXS since 1990
emilio@desotosport.com http://www.desotosport.com
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Re: Triathlon training and business school? [RudeDude] [ In reply to ]
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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.

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

also rule 5
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Re: Triathlon training and business school? [chuy] [ In reply to ]
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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".
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Re: Triathlon training and business school? [RudeDude] [ In reply to ]
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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.
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Re: Triathlon training and business school? [Sanuk] [ In reply to ]
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Sanuk wrote:
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.




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.
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Re: Triathlon training and business school? [RudeDude] [ In reply to ]
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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.
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Re: Triathlon training and business school? [Peterszew] [ In reply to ]
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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.

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