August 14th, 2008
So I’ve had a pretty bitchin’ summer for training and racing. I’ve exceeded most of my expectations, and am now changing training focus to fall mode, another bump in hours, and forming some slightly new perspective on train activities. One thing that has changed is that the amount of energy I’m putting into training is starting to cut into the energy I have for my job for the first time. There is a point around 15 hours a week for a single, childless athlete when combining 3 hour workouts and a full time job starts to get a little difficult. I thought I’d try to write about the training/work mix, with regard to what works, what doesn’t work, and what’s [still] possible.
UPDATE: There is a really good spread about men who make a full-time training plan work with a full-time job the September 2008 issue of Outside. Check out this link.
The Dilemma
Things get difficult when you want to train more than around 14-16 hours a week while supporting yourself financially. Poles break, skis need waxing, USSA memberships need renewing, entry fees need paying, 6000-8000 calories need replenishing, plane tickets and hotels are expensive, not to mention how unsponsored people don’t even have the resources to find and use important things like fast skis. This is a pretty standard “poor athlete” dilemma, where one trains and goes to the Olympics and kicks butt, then comes home and faces the new challenge of supporting themselves after not making any money or building business relationships to fall back on. A lot of us aren’t training at such a high level, but even trying to rule domestic or local races takes a certain amount of support.
Most younger nordic skiers have the benefit of relatively wealthy families (compare to the average Harlem street baller for example) that can still help with coaching fees, glacier camps, all that stuff. But when you don’t have a coach to hound your crappy technique and correct your spotty training plan, things start to get pretty tough for the aspiring athlete. Regular and effective training requires at the very least a regular shower, a place to sleep well, a place to prepare food, and a place to relax and rest, which rules out the hard-core ski bum thing (At least wherever it gets cold. See my earlier blog entries for a take on that concept.). As a result you’ve got to take the initiative a bit earlier by getting creative and mashing the training lifestyle into a regular work day as best you can. You need to learn training and nutrition philosophies on your own, get to understand your body by feel, and start hanging around people for advice.
I was fortunate enough to have a good friend by the name of Rob Whitney, who offered some attention and assistance by putting together a training plan for last year when I was really floundering. Without him constantly calling me a wuss and correcting my training mistakes, I wouldn’t be close to having as much fun as I am now.
Waking up
Two double days during the work week seem to be possible - until now I was hitting the gym with 30 minutes of running and 45 minutes of strength every Tuesday and Thursday before work. The main goal was to maintain general fitness and keep my knees strong to avoid running injuries. I hate running injuries. Waking up at 6:45am to run to the neighborhood co-op gym by 7:15 was tough, and it took a couple of weeks to adjust. A training partner is key - if Tor hadn’t been there to complain with about how tired we both were, it never would have happened. It also wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t convenient. They gym was a 10 minute run away, and there was a coffee shop on the way home. Smart training isn’t all logged hours and intervals, you know…
Sunrise always my fave over sunset for added workout bonus.
On the positive side, being awake early and getting a workout in before 8 hours at the office was a great energy boost and rest for the conscience. No matter how tired I was when I got to the gym (I could barely see straight some times), I always left feeling fairly balanced and ready to tackle the day after the workout. Gotta hit that convenient coffee shop on the way home though. An unfinished 12oz is plenty until about 1pm.
Work (out?)
A restful desk job is a great advantage, and it helps quite a bit if you are engaged in your work. Actually enjoying your work can both help and hurt you, because rest is important while you are at work as well as at home. If you enjoy your work you won’t mind sitting still for 8 hours, but you may also not take those 15 minute mental breaks to stare out the window and disconnect. Conversely, being uninterested just enough in those TPS reports makes it easier to get up, stretch out a little bit and think about ice cream or that cute new secretary or something. “Conversely” is a great word because it reminds me of cool shoes in the 80’s. Wait**What? At any rate, this is basic balance stuff, and you’ll have to break in even the most desirable jobs for a while before you find if the balance will work for you. If you just can’t ever get the work-rest-work-rest phases figured out, then quit! Find a better job.
This guy spends his time “Gathering The Light”. I’ll bet his OD pickups are pretty money. Vegas, baby, Vegas!
Feed me
The biggest problem for me at work is staying fed. Assuming you’ve gotten over the idea of eating M&M’s all day, it can be difficult to keep enough food around just to keep from getting hungry all the time! And class, what happens when people forget their lunch and get hungry at work? They go out to eat - a lot. If you can afford it, there isn’t anything wrong with going out for lunch as long as you are eating healthy food. In fact, it is great to be able to walk out the door for break in the sun to a shop or deli for a cup of tea and a sandwich. It moves your legs and gives you some external stimuli to stare at instead of your computer screen. Oops! Its Friy-day, better grab a sixer for the other guys at the office. This is how Friday became the rest day…
A typical pattern I fall into during the day is to eat more than I should to avoid getting hungry later. To help with this I always try to spread my meals out over the day with high-quality snacks prepared at home. The pair of trusty PBJ’s is a good choice, and so are bananas, carrots, and whole wheat bagels with cream cheese - stuff like that. If you have a fridge in your office you can bring a carton of orange juice (I like Tropicana) or mix plain yogurt and chopped apples in a bowl for about 45 minutes of relief. It’s cool to get the buffalo burger with pasta side for lunch, but unless you are recovering form last weekend’s adventure race, take the second half with you to the office and eat it as a snack. You don’t have to get it all down at once!
When you want to stay fed at work, the most important thing to do plan before hand. Make a list and go to the store regularly to keep your home pantry stocked, and get used to rotating choices every two or three days or more so it doesn’t get old.
Transport
I heard a show on NPR last year about a national poll (what, they didn’t call you?) regarding the top 10 or so things that affect the quality of life. You know what the number one item was? I was eliminating the daily commute, and I totally agree. Driving a car in traffic prevents rest and meditative thought in the same way that T.V. and video games do, but to a greater degree. Unless you have spectacular mental control or abuse recreation drugs, you good defensive drivers will spend the entire trip experiencing a mild form of anxiety watching out for other cars and constantly reacting to the unpredictable environment. You’ll use up valuable rest and relaxation time burning SQUAT for calories. Speaking of fossil fuels, I’ll bet you didn’t know anxiety was that expensive! Anyway, if it’s possible, riding a bike to work is one of the best things you can do for yourself when trying to merge daily workouts into the daily grind. It seems silly to take the bicycle out for a spin every time you take a 15 minute break, but if you can run an errand or two or hit a cafe for lunch you’ll wake up over half of the muscles that tighten up from sitting in a chair all day.
Office Injuries
What? You just ran a backcountry marathon and you are afraid of getting injured in the office? You can’t be serious…
Actually just like those sport-coat wearing nerds on the ten-year-old safety tapes said, the “office is a dangerous place.” Well, I wouldn’t go that far but it is a fact that your body wasn’t made to sit in a chair all day. A few years ago I actually injured both hip flexers by sitting and allowing them to cramp. When I stood up and went running at 5pm the cramp would cause me to pull them, and I spent a summer on the bench. Stretching the hip flexer regularly with the goofy looking lunge stretch will take care of it. 15 minutes of staring into space in a slouch every hour doesn’t hurt either…
Going Home
Ding Ding Ding… Ahhh freedom! I remember at my first indoor job in ‘97; I was 17 and would rip off my shirt in the parking lot on the way to my car. There was another guy that did it too, but he was way more ripper-ed and tanned than I was. It was sunny and warm, and I was really stoked to be outside with nothing but what I thought was an “infinite” amount of time before the next work day. You’ll find that most of your available training buddies - that aren’t otherwise engaged in team-oriented training sessions - also work a typical work day and will want to hit the dirt somewhere around 5:30-6:00. So you gear up and meet your friend at 5:30pm for a long ski, but when you get back suddenly it’s 8:30 - and that was hauling butt to make the meeting time. Herein lies the undying dilemma: when you work out too late you can’t sleep. If it was a solid workout and you do manage to fall asleep, you won’t sleep as deeply. Also, when did you squeeze dinner in? Did you get another take out burrito, or did you have something simple and planned ready to turn on right when you got home?
When you are trying to plan workouts that allow you to reach your potential while working 40 hours a week, you *have* to remember to have down time in the evening. You can say science-this and science-that about what you’re body does when it rests and what is considered good rest, but there are magic things that happen when you truly spend your time in a relaxed meditative state for a period of time during the day. For one, keeping your mind off of work is important, and these two or three hours will be the only chance you get to reflect on, and collect your life in order to be ready rock the next day. Again, don’t stuff yourself if you bonked on that run or rollerski, because going to sleep with a heavy stomach combined with buzzed muscles is a sure thing for bad sleep. A decent dinner within 40 minutes of your workout and a light toast or yogurt snack before bed is a good way to go. Gunde Svan (was it him? I can’t remember) had some outlandish eating schedule because he wanted his body to use it’s energy over the night repairing all the damage he’d done to it during the day instead of breaking down the food he’d crammed into his tiny norsk magen. Without solid sleep, training is worthless. Well, unless you are one of those masochists about which the rest of us joke about being, it’s worthless. If that’s you then I guess “anything goes.”
Bottom Line
Fact is, a lot of this stuff only becomes essential when you realize you don’t have time outside your job to support the overhead associated with training as much as you do. For example, getting groceries, making meals, keeping your house clean, trying to break this endless single streak, all become harder if you don’t nail down the essentials to support your workout plan. The wonderful part about it is that you get to line all those things up together and figure out which are and are not important to you. Want to do that big OD tempo workout after work? Better figure in transport and shower time before the hot date afterwards. Want to use a strength session as an energy boost for that early department meeting you are about to have? Better eat early enough, and sleep well the night before to wake up and make it happen.
There is a point around a 12 hour training week where you will notice your 8 hour work day starting to drag on a little bit. From my experience, this is the lowest volume that requires multi-day planning, including meals, social life, and sleep. My belief is that with more of a flexible performance-based job you can get by quite well training hard and working less but harder at work, but not much else. Once you get over 16 hours a week, I found that work becomes more of a burden, and I end up abusing my “flexible” job a bit more than I should. Fortunately, if you are training that much it has become the primary activity of your day, and you will be happy to now that cutting back from a 40 to a 30 hour work week has the biggest gain over any other adjustments you can make. With a 30 hour week you can get out two hours earlier every day and finish a 3 hour workout by 7. Or, you could take Friday completely off and get out an extra 30 minutes early the rest of the weekdays. When you look at the difference in the money you’ll still bring in after taxes, your little creative jinglets will start to rattle a bit.
søvn
I assume that part-time work (20h/w) is a possibility for top athletes. Though once races and traveling begin it’s pretty tough to mentally stay in the game once you are on the road. Last winter I was working 40 hours a week while driving alone to races around the Rocky Mountain Region, but not training at a top level. My workouts were an average of 2 to 2.5 hours per day and they left me thoroughly exhausted to the point were playing tourist sounded like a lot more fun than porting our sampler engine to OpenSoundControl. Plus, it was fun being somewhere else and taking in the atmosphere from somewhere other than my laptop heat exhaust. I don’t know much about what it’s like to train over 20 hours a week and have a sponsor pay for my entry fees and plane rides, but I imagine it is pretty tough to do anything more than to stay in touch to support the people that are doing your work for you back at the office. Job security: -2 points.
But at the end of the day…
Jobs are great because they give you a purpose that is completely unrelated to training and racing. You have strict goals & requirements, generally will have other people guiding your work, and you get PAID every now and again. Your job forces you to forget your training goals and philosophies and do something *else* that matters just as much as all that fun stuff. Imagine the opposite: The independently wealthy athlete who gets to sit at home all day looking for something to do between workouts, like play XBox, watch cable TV, druge the internet, eat microwaved food, enhance laziness. With rounded daily engagements you will do well, and with a harmonious life comes successful and well-deserved athletic experiences as the reward.
All together, now!
- Prepare healthy snacks to spread food out over the day.
- Find a way to avoid traffic madness before and after work.
- Ride a bike to lunch or to a cafe for a healthy break.
- Get up and stretch, walk around, stare out the window. Think about fluffy clouds and mermaids.
- Try to work out as early as possible in the afternoon to promote healthy sleeping.
- Enjoy your job, enjoy your training. Doing one well will improve the other.
Tags: coffee and donuts, converse high tops, sleep, Training
