Zoefitness Response to FB Post = Balance
Face Book Post:
“How do you work 40 hrs, take care of your kids while riding etc, 7+ hrs a day, plus take care of your home life with your husband while posting everyday about how you ride 100+ miles…what gives?”
I’ve touched on the topic before.
At first, I was really offended. I wanted to delete the post, I was upset, because I felt it unfair that one of my client’s glorious accomplishments had been hijacked for this.
But then, I realized that perhaps, really, it is a question that should to be answered, and learned from.
1st off, I want to say that everyone has a different circumstance.
All of my clients have day jobs. Some of them travel with work. And no matter what their goals are from 5k to 24 hour Mountain Bike Race, to multi day events, they manage to get the training in that they want to to do well at their events. Most of the time this is why they hire me, because it’s difficult to balance family life, with work, and training. That is my job, to write a program that suits their goals and their life circumstances to get them their best result possible, given all the different factors.
I schedule around all sorts of interesting things: sick kids, sick adults, travel, trail closures, you give it to me, and I WILL make it work for you, so that you can have your best race effort possible. The more challenging schedule, the better my talents get to shine. This is the same in my personal life.
My circumstances are much different than most.
I own my own business. I write my own schedule. Some weeks, I may only have to work 15 hours per week. Some weeks I have to work 50-60 hours per week. And when it gets really heavy with sponsorship and kit orders, I will put in 70-80 hours. Ouch, those hurt, and those weeks, don’t have any financial dividends in them. Although, I hope that every free hour I give, there is a return. I feel that it’s all worth it, or I wouldn’t do it.
I get paid to ride my bicycle. I sometimes get paid, when I am actually riding my bicycle. But if I did not ride my bicycle (or do Triathlons, or even ultra-running) my client base would be minimal. I am not the fastest athlete out there, I could be faster, if I wanted to be. But I like to dabble in this, dabble in that, try new things, and do crazier and crazier things every year. If I wanted to be faster, I would stick to one sport, or at least a sport, that complimented another and then excel. Lots of the folks I coach do that. I will be headed back in that direction. But I have to say, I miss those really long runs of last summer!! (I think 🙂 )
This summer has not been the average summer for me. Ken has the dogs and girls up in Minnesota right now. 1) so he can spend quality time with them, after having to commute the last 2 years. 2) I have a lot of travel with work to do, and visiting the family and this seemed to be the easiest solution 3) I have a lot of work at the Townhouse to do 4) After being a single mom of 2 pre-tweeners for 2 years, I was exhausted ( I have no idea how single mom’s do it!) This brings a lot of new respect, to the already huge amount of respect I had for single mom’s to begin with. And I just felt like I needed to sleep for a couple of weeks to regain my composure.
So this brings me to my summer training.
My summer training has been interesting and very different than my usual training. I have been doing big blocks, really big blocks, when I have been in ABQ, and then, doing smaller high intensity stuff when I am traveling.
I was home for a week, without the kids, so I had to take advantage of the time. I rode 3 x 5 + hour bike rides.
I have to get on the bike tomorrow, or I am pretty sure, I have lost some of that fitness. That’s my own fault. I have run, swam, but it’s been tough for me to get out with 100+ degree heat index. So when I do go out tomorrow. I will probably want to emerge my head in a bucket near the end of my intervals.
I always get my domestics done. My house is clean, and tidy most of the time, it’s only perfect one day per week for about an hour.
So in my usual training the last 13 years.
Generally speaking, people, including myself, don’t have more than 1 long day per week.
1 long day is manageable, and negotiable with your family.
When the kids were young, I would pull them in a Burley, or push them in a double jogger.
Some days, I would hire a babysitter. Now they are old enough, they LOVE when I have to get a workout in, because that means, they get to hang out and relax, watch TV, or play on their phones. This is win win for both of us.
It’s in my nature to pay a babysitter to exercise, vs, going to a bar or a movie. I have never lived close to family, so I have always had to manage child care around, sitters, or friends, sometimes we would trade off child care to find free time.
That’s just who I am. It’s who I have always been.
I don’t go to the nail salon, I would rather ride.
I don’t go to the mall, or the movies (I do sometimes) I would rather ride my bike.
I don’t go to the bar, I would rather ride my bike.
My social outings, are generally with like minded folks who want to ride their bikes, or we meet up at races. Go Running, hit the track, go for walks, whatever it may be. That’s who we are.
I don’t like to drink, I would rather have a half pint of chocolate ice cream and curl up on the couch and snuggle with my family for “our shows”.
As for my work schedule. I am generally on line between 5 and 6 am everyday. Checking several things, emails, texts, phone calls, and social media.
Then, I will either work for several hours and go my swim, or bike in the winter.
Or I beat the heat or go long, and work during the heat of the day, and work into the evening.
When the girls are in school, I workout while they are at school, and then, if I have gone long that day, I work into the evening while they are busy with homework. It’s our together time. We’re all working. The other 6 days, I work while they are in school.
I do have to force myself to take 2 days “off” per week. But I am working those days too. I work every day, but then, I can afford the luxury of going for long bike rides, and the posting them on social media. On my “off” days, that I have already worked, and will be working into the evening if need be.
My biggest work day is generally Sunday. This is when I finalize everyone’s programs. I spend other time during the week, looking and analyzing data, when it comes in, reading comments that accompany workouts, knowing what each athlete is doing on a daily basis and how they feel, helps me think ahead for the next week, to indicate if I need to fine tune anything off of their annual training plans.
I do the hum drum stuff of working out while the kids are at school, as well as work, before, after, and sometimes, yes, during workouts.
So like right now, it’s 5:15 and I consider blogging part of my work. It’s part I don’t get paid for, and it’s fun, but then, all of my work is fun. My youngest, is reading her book next to me, and the oldest is crafting downstairs. It’s quite productive time.
The family and I hung out all day, did chores, laundry ran errands, so in essence it would make sense that I would be accomplishing this task after “normal business hours”.
Owning your own business can definitely have it’s advantages, and every business owner knows it has it’s challenges too.
Part of what I do is “class room time”. I spend roughly 30 hours a year, learning the latest, greatest, research, and weighing in whether this is a pertinent change to the field or a passing phase.
I also use social media for this aspect of what I do. I follow certain organizations on Twitter and Facebook, and read the latest in sports medicine, and if it’s good stuff, I post it to my social media sites.
It took me a very long time to get into social media. It can be very time consuming. Most of my social media time is spent in one size, shape or form related to my work.
In my field, social media is like texting. I didn’t start texting until a couple of years ago. I held out as long as I could, and then, well, I eventually was forced into it because that is where industry took me.
It’s just the wave of the future.
And if we don’t jump on the social media bandwagon, it’s likely we will miss the train.
When athletes are balancing, work, family, and training, there may be a few weeks that are heavy in the training, most everyone I coach knows when those are going to be, months in advance, so that they can plan it out with their mates, and family. Not every week is a hard, long week. There are easy weeks, short weeks, off weeks, family vacations, and race weeks.
It’s all what we are given, and we stay true to ourselves and what’s important to us.
And making sure, we do what we love.