Every 5th week I have on call for work. This means for a whole week I have to carry my phone everywhere, and be able to respond within an 30 minutes. I was finally making headways with my first 200 mile week on the bike then I’m stuck at home. I go running, but I have to give my wife directions to the route and have her watch the phone. I have a trainer, and a local loop, but both stink compared to some of the other routes in the area.
The worst thing about on call is scheduling; I set my event calendar at the beginning of the year, a few weeks later, I have to erase half of em.
Im with you…Im an orthopedic surgeon…had be get up out of bed twice last week to take care of an idiot who was playing with a knife and sliced his hand open and then went in to see a fracture knee from another idiot who was running from the cops and jumped offf a wall. Lost my empathy that morning.
Next day schedule called for a long run…got it done!
Every 5th week I have on call for work. This means for a whole week I have to carry my phone everywhere, and be able to respond within an 30 minutes. I was finally making headways with my first 200 mile week on the bike then I’m stuck at home. I go running, but I have to give my wife directions to the route and have her watch the phone. I have a trainer, and a local loop, but both stink compared to some of the other routes in the area.
The worst thing about on call is scheduling; I set my event calendar at the beginning of the year, a few weeks later, I have to erase half of em.
Anyone else have the same problem?
Hellz yeah!
Lumberg sux donkey dik.
Even though the official on-call schedule has me down every 5th week, I’m expected to answer 24/7.
For instance, I was awakened last night at 2am. Went back to sleep at 4:15.
Please refer to my thread, “Work blows, now training sucks!”
I have a similar problem, but mine is more with graveyard shifts on occasion and a sometimes very heavy travel schedule. It’s almost impossible for me to get any quality training in a day after having to work until 5/6 am when it does happen. When I’m away from home it’s easy to pack running shoes and get out for a run, but the hard part is finding a decent route without a lot of traffic lights.
I’m Canadian Coast Guard Auxiliary, which means one week 24/7 on-call and 3 weeks off. We have pagers and need to respond to our boat within 15 minutes of an emergency page. Even worse, our unit has a 4 month schedule, so I don’t know which weeks I’ll be on for more than 5 months away. Unless I can find someone to cover for me, which I usually limit to A races, I suck it up on the treadmill and on the trainer either at home or the local rec centre. I used to swim also, but after missing a call while doing laps it’s not worth the effort. At least once I put on the rescue dry suit no one else can smell my workout.
Yea I deal with it too. Every 8th week I have to be an escalation point for the help desk when they can’t solve something. It sucks because they get lazy and act like they don’t know anything and forward it to me.
Totally! Oncall is terrible. We are pretty lucky in that we have 7 weeks inbetween shifts and its 12hours only, but it’s the 12 waking hours of course. If I get real unlucky during a workout and get pages halfway through I’ll either ignore them or hurry back depending on the particular alert:)
I hear ya, my wife is on call every forth weekend. Sure as sh!t you will get the call @ 2 am. Most of them are for c sections, christ don’t women use their va j j’s anymore?
I can’t believe you said va j j. The word in my circle of friends is that they force a c-section on you if you labor too long. 2 of my friends did not want a c section but were coerced into it. Sucks because if you have one then they want to do it again the next time you are pregnant.
If I can go on a long bike ride, not get paged by work and make it home on time it is pretty much a christmas miracle. Hence why i havent ridden in 6 months.
Some things I can do from my blackberry but it really screws up your focus. oh well.
I was on call 24-7-365 myself. I was the trauma sales rep that the orthopedic surgeons like jayhawk used to call when they had the idiots fracture their patella running from the cops. It definitely made for an interesting job but definitely not good for family and training. Needless to say I have made my way out of orthopedic trauma.
I do the graveyard shift about half of every month. I am sort of getting used to it; I am just totally wiped out after being up all night and all I want to do is to eat and go to sleep. Also, it’s hard to avoid eating bad things (candy bars, sodas, etc) while being up all night, coffee can only take you so far. I have yet to lower myself to drink red bull or similar drinks.
I can’t believe you said va j j. The word in my circle of friends is that they force a c-section on you if you labor too long. 2 of my friends did not want a c section but were coerced into it. Sucks because if you have one then they want to do it again the next time you are pregnant.
I still can’t believe you said va j j.
Sorry, after looking on the net, I mis-typed, it’s “vjj”
solo family practice doc - on call 24x7 365 - though much easier now that I stopped obstetrics as it just means answer phone. mostly fine but some nights suck. and when out riding I don’t answer right away…I wait until I have a good stopping place - if no message left I keep going!
I’ve been on call for the last 6 months; I find my give a *&^% factor has been getting lower and lower. The key is to to get it low enough that you just leave the cell phone at home and go for the ride. They’ll find someone else!!
Yea, sucks.
About one night a week and every 4th weekend. Those weeks end up being recoverylike for me and it can be challenging to get much quality the day after as well. I do like to do long(er) runs the day after call as these seem to feel mentally similar the end of an IM race.
