I’m just guessing you’re at Rob’s blog because you are a bicyclist.  I’m a good guesser, so I am also guessing that you are an adult with competing responsibilities and interests, and that finding time to train is hard as hell.

I hear you; I feel your pain.

My husband and I ride for endurance.  Neither of us are known for our speed, but we are still holding our “first hour” pace at hour five, when we have the time to train.

But there’s the rub.  Finding the time to train.

I have three teenagers at home – and yes, I want to donate them  to another family a lot of the time.  I own a business and work full time.  I write novels, and I have a rockin’ blog. And I happen to adore my husband and like to spend time with him as well.  Like you, I’ve got a lot going on.

I’m no expert on your life, so I can’t imagine how you manage to squeeze it all in.  I will tell you how we do it, in case our experience helps you at all. We deem training both urgent and important, and we eliminate all the non-urgent, non-important stuff from our lives to make room for it.  Sounds like hopeless babble, I know.    But it works.

Here’s how I make training fit.

1.    Schedule races.  Training becomes urgent and time-sensitive when you have a big race coming up.  Never let your calendar become empty.  If I don’t have a race, then, training always slips down the priority list.
2.    Make health and fitness a core family value.  If your kids and other family members never lose sight of the importance of wellness, and you do all that you can to promote theirs, how can they argue the importance of your training?  Go ahead, make a family mission and values statement.  We did.  It works.
3.    Eliminate the crap.  Most people don’t like to hear me say this, but I eliminated all TV except for football from my life.  I also don’t drink alcohol because it dehydrates me and makes it harder to get up early to fit everything in to my day.  I don’t take long lunches with friends.  Making these changes freed up a tremendous amount of time for me.  Find the non-urgent, non-important things in your life, and dump them.
4.    Learn to love your training stand/stationary.  I highly prefer long rides on the open road, taking in the scenery, and smelling the roses.  In the real world, I only have the opportunity to do that once a week on average.  The rest of the time, my beautiful pink Trek Pilot is up on the training stand in the living room.  That way I can ride when it is dark outside, I eliminate driving to and from (lovely) riding spots, and I can remain available to meet my kids’ needs, which brings us to #5.
5.    Multi-task, multi-task, multi-task.   My husband and I discovered that, with the right attitude, training can substitute for date time   We are together and we are doing something we enjoy.  And if the bike is up on the training stand, we can add a third category into our multi-tasking and look over kids’ homework, watch movies, or, in my case, throw a lap desk over the handlebars and write!

We still don’t train as much as we would like to, but we manage to get in enough training time to stay respectable in our distance riding.  Someday, some magical day, the “time” fairy may grant us some more hours for training, but, until  then, we treat training like a heart attack: it’s urgent, it’s important, and we have to force ourselves to take care of it RIGHT NOW.  Instead of calling for an ambulance, we elevate training into a priority position by eliminating the other crap, loving our training stands, and multi-tasking like pros.

See you on the road.

Pamelot

Well gang I am closing the poll earlier than this Friday as I am taking tomorrow off to get some much needed chores finished at the home stead. Thanks to everyone who took time to vote. Thank you very much!

The poll results indicate that I will be writing articles in the following order:

• Racing Tactics
• Training for Strength
• Nutrition
• Bike Upgrades
• Training for the Hills
• Training for Speed

I will write on one or more of these topics a week for the next few weeks. I will also be moving The Coached Cyclist over to its new home where I will be opening up shop as a coach. While my articles are full of pointers, tips and suggestions as a coach I can help you 1 on 1 dial in any of the above concerns.

Interested in coaching? Give me a shout at: (502) 509-7624

Rob Grissom

Positive Performance Coaching

A friend that has a young daughter and races competitively asked me if I would write an article on how I manage to balance my training, racing and family. Oh lets not forget work.

This one is for you Diego.

The short answer to Diego’s question is sometimes the balancing act is smooth and other times not so much. The tools I use are time management, communication, sacrifice, flexibility, planning, goal setting, oh and did I mention communication?

Like my friend I have a daughter and a son. They both have very different likes and dislikes when it comes to activities. My daughter has taken great interest in sports of all kinds even cycling. While her first love is soccer she does like to get out and ride with me when our schedules permits it. She even wants to race juniors this summer! My son likes fishing when we have time and is learning to ride his bike now. It wont be much longer now, I can already see he wants to be out with us. To top it all off my wife is a cyclist as well.

Add school, training and the jobs of two professional parents you might think how is this lifestyle even possible. One simple answer, we choose to make it possible

Now here is the hard part, making sacrifices. I am an IT consultant by trade, which in itself at times can be an overwhelming job. It had become so stressful that I chose a job that is not as lucrative but allows me significantly more time away from a desk.

When I took the job I have now I noticed a huge hole in my life, fierce competition. So I talked with my wife about it and we knew I needed to do something that would allow me to be competitive but not be detrimental to my health like working 80 hours a week. We discussed racing a few times and after much time selling the idea and sharing how I could squeeze time in the big boss said OK.

In an effort to figure out how much I could train I decided to dissect my week Monday-Sunday 24/7. I did this by creating a spreadsheet that accounted for the following:

• Time sleeping
• Time driving to and from work
• Time at work
• Breaks and lunch at work
• Daily children activities
• Family activities
• Chores

Time left over is used for training, coaching and writing.

The above is not a fixed schedule, far from it. It’s an approximation. Things come up at work, home, injury, and illness…. So even if you find that you don’t have as much time as your favorite Pro to train you do have time to train.

There are workouts that can be done in 5-15 minutes a week that are off the bike and will prove beneficial over the long haul.

Keeping with thought of being flexible don’t forget about the family. If you start feeling like life is all about you and your training go ahead and miss a work out or whole day and spend time to reconnect.

As I wrote earlier, 5-15 minutes is all it can take to make an improvement in your training. Get up earlier in the morning even if its only 15 minutes. In that 15 minutes you can do a core, yoga or plyometric routine that I promise you will leave your muscles quivering.

If you get a break at work, use it. Go outside and stretch legs, back, shoulder and neck muscles. Desk jobs are hard on the posture. If you get a lunch hour pack your bike to work and ride. If you can’t ride at lunch go to the gym at lunch and hit the weights and a spin bike. Can’t get to the gym at lunch? Hike around where you work or better yet go climb some stairs.

Get home late from work and running out of daylight? Go hard, I mean really hard! Intensity is critical for competitive cyclists.

Done with your day and your veging’ out in front of the TV, why? Get on the floor stretch and massage your legs. Also invest in a foam roller and learn how to apply myofacial release, your legs and back will reward you with better performance. If you train hard you need to learn how to recover harder.

Now that your relaxed and its time for bed your still not done training. Practice relaxation techniques and visualization. Think over the day’s training, what went well what could have been better and what you’re going to squeeze in the tomorrow. Think over your goals, are you getting close to meeting one or more of them? Do you have a race coming up? Try to add as much detail as possible when visualizing meeting your goal in this race. I only recommend visualization before sleep as long as it doesn’t get you too excited.

Do I practice everything I have written every day? No. There will be days where a complete day away from training is beneficial.

Good luck to everyone with their training and remember there is always time to train.