March 2, 2007 -- The Globe & Mail, Canada's national newspaper, arrives on my doorstep every morning. How far behind I am with my varied responsibilities determines how much of the paper I read before it heads to the recycling bin, or is called into service for some secondary function. Suffice to say, I never have enough time to read the "Careers" section.
So, as I recently unfolded the section to be used as a painting drop cloth it gave my head a bit of a spin to see its cover splashed with an aero-bar equipped Cervélo. Were they doing a piece on the surest ways to avoid career advancement (sunny afternoons spent on the bike being one of the best I know)?
Much the opposite. In fact, they were running an article on the number of top executives gravitating towards Ironman-distance triathlon. I put down my paint brush, shot a guilty glance at my own neglected bike and scanned the article.
It pointed out that a poll of Ironman Lake Placid competitors revealed that fully eight percent were either a CEO or president-owner of a company and cited numerous examples of executives successfully juggling the rigors and time commitments of running a business and running Ironman. One of those, Kim Nelson (pictured on the bike), is a mother of three, heads a business with 110 employees and trains 15-20 hours per week.
Twenty hours! When I was training for Ironman Canada in 2001, I hit one week over 20 hours; the rest were in the high teens at best. Kids: zero. Employees: zero. Professional responsibilities: negligible. Guilt started to mix with a poignant sense of inadequacy as I read on. Poignant because I'm now three-and-a-half weeks into my 12-week training program for the Flora London Marathon and am finding I'm coming up short in the work-life-training balance.
Back in 2001, when I was last training seriously, though my weekly training totals weren't particularly high, I did have the balancing act dialed. I had a great job where I worked a structured schedule, but a schedule that provided me the time and flexibility to fit in longer workouts. My domestic life may have been a tad tumultuous, but at least it was consistently crazy. Training fit into predictable time slots and did so with a high degree of consistency.
Consistency, the kind implied by the successes of the athlete-executives in the Globe article, is a noun that you wouldn't find in my past month's training log. Why? What has changed? And, most importantly, how do I get it back?
A major shift is in the nature of my work. Now that I’m self-employed I no longer have the structure of a typical work week. Some of my bureaucrat friends presume that this means I have the luxury of training when the day is at it’s brightest, with the roads dry between coastal rain showers. They believe they're the only ones who have to slog through the night on legs leadened by cubicle-induced blood-pooling. The reality is that when I get my head into something, including my work, I have a hard time putting it down. It's a perseverance that serves me well during extended training sessions out on the roads and trails, but it cuts both ways – making it hard to drop a professional project that's still unfinished.
Another challenge has been the unexpected purchase of a new house and consequent need to sell our current home. As I've recently said and written innumerable times, this is a full-time job. All those odd jobs (painting included) you were going to get around to "next weekend". However, that weekend never materializes and things need to be completed. The house becomes a fish bowl that you're regularly scooped out of in order to allow potential buyers to test the waters. In short, you suddenly have a time commitment you didn't incorporate into your training plans. And when the decision arises between a planned tempo run and a little extra work around the house in order to help stave off the imminent personal bankruptcy occasioned by owning two homes at the same time, well, I don't need to tell you which one I'm forced to choose.
Which means that I've had to become both creative and mercenary with my time. I find ways to etch out the minutes and hours necessary to have me prepared when the Flora London Marathon start line arrives under my Adidas. What follows is a list of the time-management / efficiency-maximization strategies that I've been incorporating. None of it will get me into the Fortune 500 any time soon, but hopefully it will allow me - and you if you find the strategies useful - to train at least as much as a mother of three whom sandwiches Ironman into the ledger sheet of her multi-million dollar corporation.
1. Have a plan. This may seem obvious, but here I mean planning on both macro- and micro-scales (i.e. having both an overall training plan as well as a plan for how you're going to tackle each day). I do my best both at the start of the week and each morning to budget my time for each coming day. I start with the things that need to get done, prioritizing family and professional responsibilities, then figure out where best to slot the training planned for the day. Obviously, some of this is easy when certain workouts (e.g. swim practice) happen at particular times.
2. Be flexible with your plan. The reality is that, with rare exception (Macca, are you reading this?), you and I are not getting paid to train for and race triathlon. But we do need to get paid to live. On the right side of that equation is the fact that we have priorities that must come before triathlon. So if work runs long or you have a business trip scheduled over top of a planned weekend of race simulations, you need to adapt. This leads to my next point.
3. Hire a coach. This may sound self-serving given I am one myself, but keep in mind I'm also an athlete who himself pays for coaching. Why? To help me adapt to the uncertainties of life and training. To help put me at ease when things don't go exactly to plan. To act as an objective advisor when I hit those unavoidable bumps in the road. To kick my ass when I need it (yeah, it happens).
4. Train with a group or training partners. Not only will they also help with that ass-kicking, pushing you to places you likely couldn't get to on your own (there's still no truer aphorism than "train with your betters"), they also build accountability into your program and into your day. When my Three Roads to London crew has an ensemble workout planned, no matter what the weather's doing there's guaranteed to be at least a 33% chance one of us is ready to punch the accelerator. The rest then follow in the contrails.
5. Multi-task. Years ago when working out at the gym, I used to follow the muscle-head philosophy of isolating individual body parts on individual days. Granted, I had bigger biceps back then, but I no longer have the time nor the reason to take such an approach. Instead, each workout focuses on multiple body parts – compound exercises incorporating numerous muscle groups. Furthermore, all exercises are highly specialized for the type of sport I'm training for (something I've built with the help of my strength and conditioning coach Trevor Millar). So, if I have an adventure race planned, I'll incorporate paddling-specific exercises. The same philosophy of specialization and combination can be built into other training. For example, my running coach, Jim Finlayson, adds strides, drills or hill sprints into easy run days. These build strength and form while not taxing the aerobic system on a recovery day.
6. Race the clock. Though not all coaches advocate doing so, I'm a fan of building races into your program. They provide tangible goals, instantaneous feedback and, most important for the time-strapped athlete, a built-in workout to look forward to during those training doldrums or through the three-o'clock sugar low at the office.
7. Actively commute. Speaking of the office, you have to be there, but it's up to you how you get there. Why not turn your commute into training time? At worst, running or cycling (or roller-skiing if you're feeling adventurous) can act as base or recovery mileage. Two-time Canadian Olympic marathoner Bruce Deacon is notorious around his hometown for being spotted somewhere between home and work, clipping along at 6-minute miles, backpack on his back, aerobic mileage being added to his training log. He gets in around seven miles a day on these easy runs, mileage he'd otherwise have to fit in some other time; time he'd have to carve out of the rest of his schedule. Studies point to the fact that, door-to-door, it's faster to cycle than drive on urban trips up to three miles long (and these data are for the average cyclist, not car-racing triathletes).
None of this is rocket science, but as I said above it sometimes helps to get that objective view, to take suggestions from one who's traveling a parallel path. And really, no matter our race times or tax bracket, wouldn't we all like to steal a few more minutes from the day?