How can I be a responsible adult and still run high mileage?

You can run extremely well on 50 miles per week as long as you do a long run of 12-15 miles (preferably on Thursday night so as to not interfere with your weekend plans).... I ran 50 per week in high school and ran 8:52 for two miles.....Every other Friday can be a day off, no running.....

ALSO, try Galloways book, he outlines great training on even less mileage.

Consider This wrote:

I thought this might add something to the discussion, especially for you guys working such long hours.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124355233998464405.html

thanks for this. not to hijack the thread, but I do agree: the jist of the article is that people overestimate how much they work.

however, I don't. and it kind of drives me crazy when people do. I am a corporate lawyer. I bill in 6 minute increments. If I bill people for work I did not do I can get disbarred and lose my livelihood forever. i keep very careful track of the actual work I do.

I work in my office. I produce documents. I don't have travel time, I don't have dead time. I don't count my commute, my lunch, my coffees, or net surfing time. If my wife calls I stop the clock. I still bill between 50 and 60 hours almost every week.

Keep in mind, billed time is less than actual time spent at work. There is also a lot of non-billable time for me to incur.

Given how exhausting it is, when people tell me they work 50+ hours a week and they are fit, or tanned, or rested, or just generally happy - then I am pretty sure they have no idea what actually working 50+ hours a week is like.

I should note that my personal story has almost nothing to do with this thread. I just felt like getting this off my chest.

To tie it back in, I do find it is damn hard to stay fit between my job and my kids, but for now I am ok with that.

SINGLES. Run a rolling 110 for a couple months. You'll be PRing by Thxgiving.

I know you love running but what do you love more? Family or Running? You have to make a decision. Also as kids get older they need more supervision and not less. You want your kids to grow up into respectable adults and not lazy good for nothing people.

I'm also a lawyer and I work for a magic circle firm in London. My practice is securities law. I also bill 50-60 hours a week.

Differently from you, but similarly to every other lawyer in the world, I don't actually work 50-60 hours, more like 35-40. There's this great solution called "padding your bills" which I really recommend you try. I've been doing it for years and nobody ever finds out. I don't think it has any impact on the likelihood of a client to challenge a bill. There's almost no chance that you'll be disbarred. You might have ethical concerns for a couple of days (or a couple of minutes in my case) but soon you'll become very relaxed about it, especially when you remember what feeling "fit, tanned, rested and generally happy" feels like.

You're very welcome.

You'll continue to be roasted on here - primarily from people who don't have kids or who don't care about their kids.

My advice - plan your training better. Make each run have a specific purpose, you can make your training time more efficient, but might have to sacrifice mileage for quality. You could also dip down to shorter race distances until the kids get older, maybe mile/5k training for awhile.

I have two young ones (23 month old and 8 month old) I double on weekends, taking the jogging stroller with each. I also make sure that if one wakes up early on a weekday, I get out the door with them asap.

i am fortunate that I have a shower at work, so I can do lunchtime runs too.

I also found some colleagues at work that run, so instead of a regular meeting or a lunch meeting, we hit the roads after work once a week and get shit done then.

Running Dad-E-O, thanks for starting a great thread! Many of us can relate!!!

I would like to officially log my vote for endorsing the 2/3 Rule. Statistically speaking, this is where 81.1% (or so) of we humans are. 19.8 % are in the 1/3 or 0/3 rule. 0.1% folks accomplish the 3/3 Rule for a period of their life and many, not all, burn out. Remember you are soliciting advice from a forum of fellow neurotic runners. The general public would suggest therapy for you.

At 54 yrs young and with two adult children, I am with the posters prioritizing 1) family 2) work 3) running. From your replies you seem to have your head in this place.

Best of luck to you.

Hey Running Dad-E-O. crazy person speaks much wisdom.

There was a nice profile of Michael Wardian in the Washington Post a couple years ago. It is seriously worth reading. The man has 2 young children, a "normal" job, and often seems to carry a greater share of the dad duty than most dads (most dads period, not limited to most dads who are national class runners). As a single guy with no children and no competitive aspirations, I would consider myself a success if someday I can be the sort of husband and father that Wardian is, even if I never run another step.

A friend of mine ran a 2:12 marathon in 1976. He ran in the Olympics.

Never been a pro athlete and always had a full time job.

He has 2 sons, born about at that time. I don't how he managed, but somehow he did. His sons (btw, also elite runners, though not as good) are very emotionally attached to him. They love him a lot.

No idea how he managed. In fact, if I did not know him I would swear that's just impossible.[

I found this a few years back and I usually post it in this type of thread:

Training through the early months of parenthood is tough but doable. If you're like me, you may find out that you prefer this type of training to your previous methods. I have been following the same basic schedule for three years now:

M-50 minutes with 7 miles @ aerobic threshold (5:45 pace)

T-50 easy plus striders

W-50 minutes with 3 x 1 mile at 12k pace (90 second rest)

R-50 minutes easy plus striders

F-50 minutes easy plus striders

St-2 hours medium with striders

Sn-50 minutes easy plus striders

On this training, I have run 15:12 5k, 31:30 10k, and a 2:28 marathon---not PRs, but within 2.5%. That is, I'm training at 50% of my former training mileage, but racing at 97.5% of my personal bests. I actually like running again too.

My revised training schedule was precipitated by the birth of my daughter.....good luck.

For this particular question I have two other thoughts.

First, you have to take over the baby stroller runs from your wife. You can easily get to 85mpw if you do your afternoon runs with the stroller. You have to raise your wife in your priority list. She deserves a run without the kids as much as you do. The stroller is a poor choice for a first run of the day and a great choice for a second.

Second, if you are really, "...the only creative guy the sales team is confident enough to put in front of an unsigned client." Then you have some negotiating power at work. What would happen if you suggested to your boss that since your kids were born you have been running less and you have discovered that you get your best ideas on slow short afternoon runs? You could leave work say 45 minutes early, run 5 miles, pop back in to scribble down your ideas and then drive home.

I am a man aged 51. I helped my first son discover the same joy of exploring I discovered as a child, youth and adult by taking him with me on adventures. First I had a Snuggly. Then I had a Gerry kid backpack for long hikes and cross country skiing. Next was a bike with training wheels. I ran, he biked. I'd take another adult and we'd hike Shenandoah mountain peaks. Up and up following bubbling streams. By the time he was age 7 he could to do a whole 9 mile group hike up and down Old Rag Mountain. Our first summit there was using the Gerry kid pack, and we mixed walking, carrying, finding bugs, flowers and critters. I taught him everything I knew by letting him discover it with me. And the most value learned was kindness.

I am a man aged 51. I helped my first son discover the same joy of exploring I discovered as a child, youth and adult by taking him with me on adventures. First I had a Snuggly. Then I had a Gerry kid backpack for long hikes and cross country skiing. Next was a bike with training wheels. I ran, he biked. I'd take another adult and we'd hike Shenandoah mountain peaks. Up and up following bubbling streams. By the time he was age 7 he could to do a whole 9 mile group hike up and down Old Rag Mountain. Our first summit there was using the Gerry kid pack, and we mixed walking, carrying, finding bugs, flowers and critters. I taught him everything I knew by letting him discover it with me. And the most important value learned was kindness.

I've had to hide a good portion of my training for many years...nobody knows how much I run when I head out the door at 4:30 a.m. to run or hit the track.

You are correct, especially amongst professionals in your career - if they hear that you run 85mpw they'll think you "have a problem". I'm dead serious. My family and coworkers think I run 35 mpw, I do 70 including intervals and weight sessions.

It is impossible to do everything. I would suggest that your kids will only be kids once and that is the only chance you will have to spend time with them at these young ages. Once it is gone it is gone forever. Poof! You will wake up and they will be 16 years old. Which do you think you would regret more when you are an old man? Not running an extra 30 miles a week for 6 years or not spending time with your kids because you insisted on running so much?

Depending on your work obligations I would think running 90-100 miles a week is not reasonable for most parents who have small children unless your spouse simply wants to do everything for you. Some (like me) might even call that kind of time commitment selfish. Most of us that have children have chosen to do so and have an obligation to actually raise them and to do so requires sacrifices. If this means running 40 miles a week instead of 90 a week for about 5-6 years that does not seem like too big a sacrifice to make to me. I wold love to have time to read as much as I used to, but the time is just not there. People think they can have everything and do everything but it is just not true.

busy man

[quote]Running Dad-E-O wrote:

[quote]kicker wrote:

"No shower at my office, but I am going to try to figure this one out..."

Try the janitor's closet, if building mgmt will let you. Long ago, I changed in the closet, and used wet wipes to clean-up. The wipes worked great, and I was able to run at lunch.

OR, maybe your kids develop an interest in running because they grew up seeing you run. And, it turns into a hobby/sport/pasttime that you can share with them. That's how it is with my 2 sons. They both started running in middle school and continued throughout HS. We've had many good runs together.

You don't have to abandon your kids to go run. Eventually, they will be old enough to ride a bike and go with you. I done this numerous times. The older they get the more important your presence becomes.

You can make your family part of your running.

busy man,

Reading is NOT the same as running. Running you do away from your kids so they don't see you doing it so it is much harder to use as a life lesson. You should actually be reading MORE than you used to so your kids see you reading all the time.

Here is my story. When my kids arrived, my wife informed me that I could not spend as much time in front of the TV/computer while they were awake. It took me about 24 hours and a hangover to accept this. My wife claims I didn't accept it but she is thrilled with the results of the plan I devised.

Like someone above said, you have to have time for adventures with your kids. In the 90s they used to call it quality time. But there are also many hours that just need to be filled. I always liked reading to our kids to fill this time so I did quite a bit of it but an 18 month old only has so much attention span.

When they got tired of it and wanted to do something else, I would let them down to go amuse themselves. I would pick up my own book and start reading and keep an eye on them but not join in whatever they were doing. I would plan it so I could be back from my run and be reading when they got up most every morning. Any free second, the first thing I would do would be read up to 1000 pages a week. I would squeeze chores in after they went to bed.

My daughter, got the full brunt of this treatment. She started reading at 4 because she saw me do so much of it. Some of our best adventures were discussing books she had read before her older brother learned how. Now at 9, she will sit next to me reading her own book as long as I can stand to read, 6, 8 even 10 hours on a Sunday after a morning long run.

My son, who wasn't a natural reader, now reads compulsively. He reads, when he gets out of bed, he reads in the car, we have to pry the books out of his hands to get him to eat. The point is if you model a behavior enough, your kids are more likely to pick it up, so get reading.