Accounting- Can I Still Run 100 miles A Week?

Anybody who says you don’t have two hours a day to run, have a social life, and have any career you want is full of it. Just get out from being in front of the screen like all the angry nerds on here and just do it.

I agree with a lot of people on here who say it is doable. But I really do think there is no need to associate work and running except in some corner cases. So if you have anything resembling a normal 8-5 where your commute isn't 1hr each way, choose whatever career you are interested in as you will spend way more hours doing that than running in the short and long term. But certainly chase your goal. Here is my sample schedule. I have nothing to brag about like some of the OTQers who responded, but I do hit your 100mpw goal working ~50 hours a week, have a wife, two little ones, and a small social life.

Wake: 5:15

Out the door for 5:30-5:35. Back by 7. ~12 miles - 7 min/mile or better makes this very doable. Depending on how quickly you can get your body to wake up

Shower quickly and try to join into a normal day as if you didn't just run 12 miles.

Lunch run: 6-7 miles - Keep this no longer than 7 unless you are going to do a long tempo or something fast. Don't go over an hour for the whole workout start to finish (prep, run, shower/cleanup) or coworkers won't be happy with you.

Night before: Make sure you lay everything out you need. It is very frustrating to lose miles due to poor preparation. Doubles make for a lot of laundry.

Now 12 + 7 = 19. That is 133 mpw. I never have nor will hit that. The point is you have to schedule that much because your days will not work out as you expect. Two lunch runs a week won't happen and you won't be able to wake up in time to get 12 some other days. I always can get 100-110 on this schedule.

As an accountant that runs a lot myself:

Yes you absolutely can. Accounting is far better than Supply Chain for job prospects. Get your CPA and go into public accounting the 1st 3-5 years of your career. With the CPA and that public accounting experience on your resume, then you can finally go work somewhere that you actually want to work that has a better work life balance.

Personally I want to go government, but be warned, employers have a bias against government accountants. They think they're lazy. Once you go into government, you'll probably have to stay in government the rest of your career. There is also private industry, but you make less money than public and it takes much longer to make it to the same position as someone that started in public then went private.

As for balancing it with your running, you'll have plenty of time most of the year. During busy season, your life will suck. You'll run, work, run, sleep, repeat for 2-4 months (depending on your clients and your specific busy season timeline). Rest of the year you'll have time to actually relax and have fun because you'll only be working 40 hours a week rest of the year, which gives you so much time on your hands.

Over 30 years ago I took a job in a large public accounting firm. Was able to run 100 miles a week while working there. Worked in tax department so I did not have to travel to clients. February to April was tough but doable. Hardest thing for me was finding group to run hard workouts with. It can be done. Give it a shot while you can.

Chose a career that will get you as close to 40 hours a week as possible. No matter what it is. There are a lot of chubby former runners on this site that traded in running for the chance to make big bucks, way more than one needs to live a decent life, working 80+ hours a week. Now they're jaded and telling everyone they can how running is just a hobby to justify their miserable existence, having no work life balance. Whether you make 40k or 40 million, working much more than 40 hours a week is going to limit your time to do anything you want to do. If you can stick out accounting with high hours for a few years to get to a 40 hour a week position, maybe the trade off is worth it. I can guarantee you that if you work 60+ hours a week, whatever hobbies you have whether they're competitive running or something else will fall by the wayside. Its for you to decide though.

Its funny, how people are saying 2 hours of running a day is oh so much. Why do it for a race you'll be 55th in, but yet plenty of people watch more than 14 hours of tv/movies/media a week outside of work.

Bingo. We’ve found the guy with the “stamp collector” mentality..

100 miles per week is not feasible if you are going to work in public accounting. During busy season (at least January - March) you should expect to leave the office at 8 pm, at the earliest. You should also expect to be in the office until 10 - midnight at least a few times. You’ll work at least a few Saturdays. Potentially most Saturdays.

It is also likely that you will be traveling on business consistently (i.e. not just during busy season). Expect to be on the road Monday mornings (or worse, Sunday evenings) and Thursday/Friday evenings.

Also keep in mind that you are working in a client-serving role. Last minute long hours, business trips, or weekend projects can appear out of nowhere when the client or partner has a need. I wouldn’t expect anybody to be sympathetic to your training program when there is time-sensitive work to get done.

While all this is going on, you should be studying for and passing your CPA exams. Do your best to get the exams passed before starting your job, if possible.

I don’t mean to scare you or necessarily dissuade you from going into public accounting. It’s gruelling, but it is a great place to kickstart your career and you don’t have to stay very long to reap a lot of job opportunity/income benefits. Be honest with yourself about what is important to you. A few years in public accounting will give you solid experience, skills and network but they will be a huge investment in terms of time and effort. A few years will give you a platform to jump off into an industry role with good advancement opportunities. At the time you make that move, you can significantly increase your CPA firm income while realizing a major improvement in work/life balance. If making a lot of money is important to you, making partner at a Big 4 firm is a very clear, structured approach to eventually earning 7 figures per year with a guaranteed pension of 25% of your best year’s income. In that case; however, you are signing up for the brutal lifestyle I described above for 30+ years.

Most industry positions (read: nor a CPA firm) at your level will be standard 9-5 roles whereby a 100 mpw training program is totally feasible. That being said, going straight into one of these roles straight out of college will usually limit your advancement opportunities pretty significantly compared to your peers who did a few years in Big 4 at the beginning of their careers. Again, public accounting is an investment.

Lost College Student wrote:

I’m a Business major and was planning on switching my major from Supply Chain to Accounting. With that said, I want to continue high level running as I have a chance at qualifying for the 2024 Olympic Trials Marathon based on my current pbs (and I also want to continue high level running after that). I’m fine with having 0 social life and no family- with that being said, is it physically possible to run 100 miles a week as an Accountant and still be able to get a good amount( 7-8 hours) a night of sleep? Should I continue in Supply Chain? Try something else? What are the options here?

Thanks

Why on earth would you have to have 0 social life for less than 2 hours of running per day? Accounting is not that time consuming. When you get a family, it will be tough though. As a bachelor, you could run 200+ per week as an accountant and still get 8 hrs of sleep.

Big 4 accountant right here. Graduated in 2019, started work in September 2019, got an OTQ that fall, trained for the Trials while working busy season, client filed less than 48hrs before the race. It can be done but there are sacrifices to be made. Outside of busy season it is relatively easy to get in 100+ mpw.

If you want a Ph.D. in Finance, accounting classes are next to useless. You need a math or stats degree and be very good at both.

The amount of time spent running is not an issue. I was a very good college runner and could not run more than 50-60 miles a week. Running twice in one day wiped me out. I just don't have the make-up.

Of course, you can. I see no reason not to be able to. I'm not actually an accountant myself, but I do keep the books for my company myself. I have a lot of stuff to do apart from that as well, but I still manage to lead a healthy life because I know to not put my work before my personal life. I think that's the secret for any domain. Also, in my case, the bookkeeping has become pretty simple since I started using an accounting software on the side, not just the spreadsheets. You can look at some on here https://lukates.medium.com/best-software-for-data-analysis-in-2021-eea6eb404603

Lost College Student wrote:

I’m a Business major and was planning on switching my major from Supply Chain to Accounting. With that said, I want to continue high level running as I have a chance at qualifying for the 2024 Olympic Trials Marathon based on my current pbs (and I also want to continue high level running after that). I’m fine with having 0 social life and no family- with that being said, is it physically possible to run 100 miles a week as an Accountant and still be able to get a good amount( 7-8 hours) a night of sleep? Should I continue in Supply Chain? Try something else? What are the options here?

Thanks

Yes, it's possible. Whether or not you should do it, depends on how bad you want it.

I work as an accountant and run. You can do both. Just requires time management skills. Wake up early, run, work, run again, and go to bed early. It can be done but you won't have much free time on work days.

Also accounting has much better job prospects than supply chain.