| Balancing Life and Multisport |
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| Written by Steve Anderson and Gerald Emerson | |
| Monday, 08 February 2010 | |
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Anyone who has found themselves captivated by the addicting world of multisport has, no doubt, experienced face-to-face the common dilemma of balancing their personal, professional, financial and training lives. Multisport seems to lure many different types of people into her midst, but the common threads in most all participants would include competitiveness, desire for personal growth, and any other type-A personality traits you could imagine. The problem arises when one short race per season is no longer enough. When this happens, we ink more events into our calendars, often extending beyond the shorter distance events and extending to the longer distance endurance variety. When people move through this progression (starting with shorter races and then growing into longer events) there is also a natural progression in the training requirements, including time commitments, personal conviction, and financial resources. This was not the case for me.
My name is Steve Anderson. I am 12 months into my multisport career, having been fueled by the dream of qualifying for and competing in the coveted Ironman World Championships in Kona, Hawaii. To this point, I have competed in one event, a 70.3 in Rhode Island last July. I am married to a wonderful woman, and I have a 19 month old daughter; and because I did not progress from shorter races into the longer ones, I faced the issue of ‘life balance’ at the onset of my training. When training commenced, it started as about a 14-15 hour/week commitment, extending to 20-22 hour a week prior to the race. As such a ‘newbie’ to the sport, I probably wouldn’t have much of a platform to be giving pointers on how to move someone through their base training, into their build phase, and to their peak performance. However, I am uniquely positioned to offer some advice on achieving life, and specifically time, management. So, in that light, I want to offer up some suggestions and ideas that I have stumbled across in my personal journey. Reality Check The very first thing I think we should do is take a personal inventory as to the importance our athletic aspirations in relationship to the rest of our lives. The trick here is to be honest. How important is training and racing to you? What are you willing to sacrifice and live without in order to make time for training? Are you willing to get up early, while the world (and your family) is still sleeping, to put in the time to achieve your goals? Time is finite, meaning, there are only 24 hours in a day, and you have to be willing to take other things off of your calendar in order to insert time to train. Without an honest appraisal of our commitment, training becomes an excuse and a way to avoid doing the things we don’t want to do in our family and professional lives; and it becomes a hindrance to our enjoyment of the things we want to do in other areas of our lives. So, my first recommendation to anyone entering or participating in this multisport lifestyle is to HONESTLY identify their commitment level. With our personal conviction and commitment measured, it would be prudent for us to next identify the issues at hand…the proverbial ‘balls’ that we juggle each and every day of our multisport lives: Family Friends Finances Profession Spiritual commitments Social/Community involvements Training In reality, there are a myriad of time commitments that we all have to figure out how to fit into our schedules. Unfortunately, there is no boiler plate solution as to how to manipulate our calendars to get everything in; that’s why I first suggest that you identify just how important multisport is to you. What we really have to do is to take things out of our schedule in order to put training and racing time in place. It took me three years of marriage and many more involvements in my life than I could realistically juggle for me to realize this personally. The question becomes, if you are going to train and race, what are you willing to give up or live without? And again, this commitment to training and racing is only exaggerated as the duration of your chosen events lengthen. I like to call the first two items we’ve pointed out the ‘reality check.’ In all areas of life, it seems that if we want to pursue a goal, we must first identify where we are now. Without the knowledge of where we stand, it is difficult to devise a plan for moving forward. The same is true in the world of time management. Get Your Family and Friends in Your Corner and Become Accountable. The next thing that is important for all of us to do is to illicit the support of those closest to us. If you’re married, this would mean your spouse. It might include anyone dependent on your time, such as a boss, a friend, your parents whom you help with yard work on the weekends, an organization to which you belong. It is always better to have them on your side before your time commitment to training reaches its peak. Get this up front. Make sure they support your efforts. In the case of your spouse, plan a vacation around the race - maybe immediately following it. Look for races in venues that would lend themselves nicely to family fun. The second part of this ‘getting support’ stage is becoming accountable. Once you tell people what you are going to do, and you tell them that you need their support because of the time commitment you are making, there is an inherent accountability that is suddenly created. At this point, the people that care about you most will start asking you how training is going. They will likely be checking in from time to time. They will notice your physique changing and your energy levels growing. All along the way, they will feel as if they have something invested in you too, and this serves to push you out the door those mornings that you feel sluggish. It is a beautiful thing. Using a Calendar, Working Out Early, & Multi-Tasking Use a calendar. We must realize that time is finite. We can’t ‘manage’ time, we can only spend it as we go. If we aren’t intentional about where and how we use our hours and minutes, time will surely continue rushing by anyway. I would say that most people squander time simply because they fail to plan ahead of time how they will use it most effectively. For me, this means pulling up my calendar just before I go to bed and examining the rest of my week. I will spend just a moment looking at my commitments, and working my training around those commitments. Most of the time, this means getting up early (I get up at 4:50) and lacing up my sneakers or slipping into my swimsuit by 5:15 so I can use the time that everyone else sleeps through. I HATE running and biking early in the morning, when it is cold and wet. But, I do it anyway, and so should you. Work out early, period. If you are not an early riser, then learn to be one – and it starts with learning to go to bed earlier. I have never had this problem, but some people complain that going to bed early is difficult. Here is my suggestion: figure it out. Between 5 and 7 a.m. there is nothing else beneficial that goes on so make the best use of this time. Also, learn to multi-task. Eat lunch at home and mix in a short ride on your trainer, or a quick run. Go to the gym, swim, and eat a sack lunch on the way back to the office. Put training material on your iPod so running can become a ‘learning’ time for you professionally. If you have a favorite TV show, you know you will be sitting and watching the show week in and week out, you might as well stretch, work out your core, or hit the bike trainer while you enjoy the show. This is really a ‘whatever it takes’ proposition, and if you’ll look at your calendar for a few minutes each night and brainstorm ahead of time, you’ll be amazed how much you can fit into a day and still have time to relax with your family in the evening. In addition to planning your time, you should always plan your workouts. Try to get your workouts into your schedule 2-3 weeks out so you know what is coming. Don’t plan your workouts with just a time slot; be more specific. What purpose is this workout serving? Speed work? Base building? Intervals? Long distance endurance? If you don’t have a plan for your workouts, and a progression, then missing a workout becomes a ‘ho-hum’ deal because each workout doesn’t feel important. Several coworkers have access to my calendar and can schedule appointments that include me. This means my full day is planned out on my calendar, including training, travel, and even quality time with the family. To an extent, we are our own worst enemies regarding our schedules and using time efficiently. In my case, I have several that can manage, or mismanage, my time. Because of this, using my calendar effectively is even more crucial. Plan your time; plan your workouts; plan your races; thus, you are planning your success. Finding the Money Like all things, triathlon requires monetary input. It is a front-end-loaded sport, as we have to acquire things like high performance running shoes, swimming aids, a bike and all the gadgets that accompany, and a heart rate monitor. This takes a lot of money. Again, the decision to purchase these items should follow, not precede, an honest appraisal of your commitment to the sport. Also, if possible, you should be re-deploying dollars that were previously going to other kinds of fun and involvement into multisport. If you are taking things off of your calendar to put training and racing in, you should also have less money flowing out of your budget into those activities. Then, you need to have a pre-determined plan as to how much cash flow expenditure you will layer on top of your basic lifestyle expenses for multisport commitments. I intentionally said ‘pre-determine,’ and that means you and your spouse agreeing to this decision. This may require some freed-up cash flow to flow in your spouse’s direction, too. But you should agree up front on this one. Living a Balanced Life Knowing that you not only trained your body to get across the finish line; but that you conditioned your time, your family and friends, and your personal world to get behind you as well, should really serve to make that moment even sweeter. I often find myself watching YouTube videos of Ironman finishes, putting myself there, at the scene. I think about everything leading up to that moment, when I have labored 2.4 miles in the water, 112 miles on the bike, and 26.2 miles on foot. I think about my wife who has supported me; my friends who’ve kept me accountable; the people who surround me professionally; and the hours and hours of training, and I often ask myself one question: “Why do I do it?” Everyone has a different answer, and many people actually have a different race than Ironman that looms on their horizon. One thing is certain; that question sits in our minds. The answer is elusive. I think for many of us self-exploration lies at the heart of the matter. Whatever the answer is, as we’ve discussed, multisport requires physical and mental conditioning, scheduling, prioritizing, and down-right determination. I wish you good luck, and I hope my advice will provide you with encouragement and insight. |
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| Last Updated ( Monday, 08 February 2010 ) |
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