once you become an adult you have to make the time to run, ie before work, during work, or after work. You are either tired before, tired during, or tired after. choose your tired. once you have a spouse it's harder, and then kids, forget about it. A strict schedule that is bendable is the only way to go !
I used to think that when I was recently graduated. Now, at 37, I realize what a little B*TCH I was being. If you want to run, you'll find time to run. It's that simple
The truth is that post-college you're doing it for the love. Plenty of January days when it's 6 pm, 20 degrees, and here you are on the dark track all by yourself. You gotta love the grind to keep at it in those conditions.
I lost the running bug around college but probably 2 years post-college I would see people running in my neighborhood and wished that could be me. Once you come back to it for yourself you appreciate it more.
Yes i know. But those times (mainly the 80s) was a totally different running scene than now. A bunch of guys ran 2.2X and was more or less nobodies. Now you get famous on youtube if you run those times n get labelled super elite. More people ran fast times back then. And with no internet or tv one had plenty of time to train. Training once a day was nothing, most serious runners trained 2-3 times a day (mostly easy runs). Stress at work was not so prevalent back then, it was more relaxed in general.
If you ran in high school and then in college your life was set up so there was a block of time every day when you could do your main run. And it was usually no problem to find a little time for a second, shorter run. Once you graduate that's no longer the case if you don't get a shoe contract or unless maybe you become a teacher (which is probably why teaching was such a popular career for those of us who wanted to keep running seriously in the "amateur" years.)
If you keep on after graduating it may take some thinking and creativity to arrange your life to fit in work and running. Ron Hill decidied the way to do that was to run back and forth from work and that determined where he was going to live. He decided his home couldn't be more than maybe seven or eight miles from his job. Ron Clarke found a group to run with near the route he took driving home from work. One of my favorite posters here was Orville Atkins. Orville was once fifth at Boston and managed a sub 2:30 marathon in his forties. He had a very successful career as an office manager. But he was never a massive mileage guy and when he got the 2:28 he was doing a 25 mile run on Saturdays and a 15 on Sundays. During the week he'd do something like a five mile run each day. Kawauchi found a job that let him get his run in before work. Not everyone did. Both Jim Ryun and Gerry Lindgren retired to a large degree because they couldn't find a work situation compatable with what they thought they'd need to do to remain world class runners.
It really comes down to deciding if serious running is something you really want to do and if that's the case you may need to be selective about what job you take, how long a commute you'll have, what sort of races are in your area, or just how determined you are about keeping on. John Downes was running 150 mile weeks at times while doing full time construction work in London. If you're not that determined it's fine.
I'm going to assume you're a male? It's about time management and being efficient. Stop fussing about getting everything in perfectly.
I work a full time 8-5 job. Have 2 young kids, their activities, my husband works full time. I maintain the household. Sometimes my runs are done at 9-10pm. Sometimes they are at 3am-4am.
Give us a breakdown of what your day looks like and maybe we can help.
This guy's post is spot on. Unless you are loving it, soccer is a corporate-style machine with a million kids as both the product and the customers.
But back to running, if you can get your run in while you kids are at practice, great. We all did that. When I had an hour and a half, that was time enough to change and run ten miles and show up sweaty (but on time) to pick them up.
I live in MN and while I'm not familiar with club soccer, it's scary how this post reminds me of Hockey around here, except replace the Europeans with Canadians. The amount of money and time that parents will spend on their kids' hockey... you could probably pay most college tuitions if you put HALF of the hockey money into a 529, and they can probably go to a better college since they'll actually have time to study.
The only sport we encourage our kids to take "seriously" is swimming which is a godsend and so much more chill than the higher-octane sports.
I would imagine they are similar. We could/should have a separate thread on this for younger parents. I won't post anymore on it in here... sorry to the OP.
The thing is you tell yourself you're not like the other parents. They are all idiots who think their kid is going to get a full ride. But they are saying the same thing about you. I don't think many actually believe their kid will make it that far. The problem is that these club sports have run the other leagues out of existence. With our third kid, we tried to find a mid-level rec league and the kids were miserable. We even had a pretty large group of kids agree to try rec so that we'd have a bit of a group. Still did not work. So it was back to the club league.
I am sure the 0.1% cream rises to the top, but the problem is most kids just want to play the game, learn, get better, and have fun. Spending your whole weekend driving around with your parents or some teammate's family from sportsplex to sportsplex isn't a great time. And there is so much BS involved that the kids start to resent it around their early teen years (12/13). I have seen three separate groups of kids start hating soccer around this age. My oldest played until 16 and we saw so many really good girls quit along the way due to burnout (not from the sport, mind you, but from the freaking schedule grind and financial grind).
They get away with it b/c they hook young kids (especially first/only children) and get their parents excited, and then they manage to keep so many because it starts to feel like an investment. Think of it like, "We bought you a piano, you have taken piano lessons every day for 12 years, you've played in concerts all over the region, you've won so many awards, you're ranked 14th in the XQIASDPRT rankings... how can you just decide you're not going to ever play again?"
I live in MN and while I'm not familiar with club soccer, it's scary how this post reminds me of Hockey around here, except replace the Europeans with Canadians. The amount of money and time that parents will spend on their kids' hockey... you could probably pay most college tuitions if you put HALF of the hockey money into a 529, and they can probably go to a better college since they'll actually have time to study.
The only sport we encourage our kids to take "seriously" is swimming which is a godsend and so much more chill than the higher-octane sports.
I would imagine they are similar. We could/should have a separate thread on this for younger parents. I won't post anymore on it in here... sorry to the OP.
The thing is you tell yourself you're not like the other parents. They are all idiots who think their kid is going to get a full ride. But they are saying the same thing about you. I don't think many actually believe their kid will make it that far. The problem is that these club sports have run the other leagues out of existence. With our third kid, we tried to find a mid-level rec league and the kids were miserable. We even had a pretty large group of kids agree to try rec so that we'd have a bit of a group. Still did not work. So it was back to the club league.
I am sure the 0.1% cream rises to the top, but the problem is most kids just want to play the game, learn, get better, and have fun. Spending your whole weekend driving around with your parents or some teammate's family from sportsplex to sportsplex isn't a great time. And there is so much BS involved that the kids start to resent it around their early teen years (12/13). I have seen three separate groups of kids start hating soccer around this age. My oldest played until 16 and we saw so many really good girls quit along the way due to burnout (not from the sport, mind you, but from the freaking schedule grind and financial grind).
They get away with it b/c they hook young kids (especially first/only children) and get their parents excited, and then they manage to keep so many because it starts to feel like an investment. Think of it like, "We bought you a piano, you have taken piano lessons every day for 12 years, you've played in concerts all over the region, you've won so many awards, you're ranked 14th in the XQIASDPRT rankings... how can you just decide you're not going to ever play again?"
There was a study done some time ago, something like 60-70% of the crazy Hockey parents never played the sport themselves as kids. The hypothesis was that parents are using their kids as a way to live out something they failed to achieve (or didn't even do) as kids. Most kids end up burning out by high school and resenting the sport (and sometimes their parents) afterwards.
I absolutely love your upstream comment about the composition of collegiate soccer rosters. What a lot of kids and parents fail to understand is that those Euro players are rejects/losers that were not good enough to be signed by a professional club’s development academy. That demonstrates the huge talent gap between USA soccer and the rest of the world.
It is essentially just a big money grab for organizations that run youth team sports and a scam built on the hopes that Jayden or Elle will get a full ride if you commit to spending over $50K in fees and travel during their primary and middle school years.
There are so many examples of runners making it work.
That guy who wanted to be elite but had a day job 13 miles away... so he ran both ways as a commute Monday to Friday, and had the weekend as full rest. Think he did pretty well, a bronze major medal I recall.
Have a look at Clapham Junction on a weekday morning and there are 100 runners who get off their suburban train a stop early and run the remaining 5-10 miles to their work. Then they double in the evenings, maybe stopping at Battersea Park for a session.
Full time runners are everywhere. Remember your job is only 37.5 hours a week.
I work 6a-230p M-F and have two elementary schoolers that play club soccer. I spend more time driving to and from soccer practices and games (10+ hours last week). I utilize all the hacks that others have listed but here’s where I find time to run:
- I live a 7 mile run away from work, can take pub transport to work and run home to meet the kids bus at 4pm (7-13miles easy running)
-hour and a half soccer practice… usually there’s a track nearby, but this is a great time to run a workout (again choose your own length and intensity)
-as a shift worker, my benevolent employer give us an extra 15 min lunch on Thursdays. 45 mins is perfect for an easy 5-6 - and there are plenty of fartlek workouts designed for this specific amount of time. - Saturday and Sunday can be for your artwork (two easy long runs; LR and a progression run; however you want to do it and you’ll be getting plenty of recover after these longer efforts.) I did 24 total this weekend, 60 for the week.
Lol, it amazes me how soft some ex-collegiate runners are. These are usually the types that were D1, pampered for four years in college and likely put minimal effort into their education. This resulted in them not acquiring the most important skill for life after college: time management.
I am a private practice radiologist. I work 45-50 hours per week, and its all grinding. I also have a family with two kids, and I actively participate in bringing them to activities/events. I still make time as an amateur triathlete to train 15-20 hours per week. Basically this means that I only have time in life outside of work for my training and family.
Weekdays with work:
Wake up at 5, start first training session by 5:30. This can be between 75 minutes and 2 hours depending on if I have to commute or work from home.
Second session usually starting at 5:30 to 6 p.m. This can be between 30 minutes and 90 minutes depending on kids activities.
In bed by 8:30, asleep by 9.
Weekends: Between 2 to 5 hours each day. I start my long bike sessions very early, so I can be done by 10 or 11 and have the rest of the day for family.
I do most of my biking on my trainer in my basement, and I do a few sessions per week on my treadmill, also in my basement. This saves huge amounts of time.
Other tips include eliminating TV during the week, making large batches of food at one time, and having an automatic coffee maker for your early morning sessions.
So you live a privileged life and we're likely brought up in privilage. Try doing all of that on a low wage physical job.
I can see how being a radiologist could be mentally tough... but grinding? I had a friend who laid cement all day and then ran 10-12 miles AFTER showering to get the concrete dust off of him. Now THAT is grinding...
I trained for a 50k while working an early morning forklift job (4am-12:30pm). I wanted to do the race, so I made it work and did my runs after clocking out. I was tired, but it being light out made it easier.
Ask yourself if you really want to train while balancing a job. For me, it's not the time constraints (or lack thereof) it's the desire.
How does anyone have time for this crap after college?
You make time. I know tons of people who run well working a normal job. Some get up early. Some run at lunch. Some run after work. Some do 2 of those on the same day.
Peter Elliott, a great British middle distance legend, worked full time as a brick mason. Whenever asked how he found time to train, he would reply “It’s five o’clock two times a day.”.
If you want it badly enough, you will find the time.
It was actually a foundary worker, but you're point is valid.
Steve Jones was still an RAF fitter working shifts, I believe right up to the point that he broke the World Marathon Record.
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