Having an office-based job...
Having an office-based job...
...is not the worst job; but definately hard labour or long stressful hours do not help at all. I know one guy who was a fitness instructor by day, and long distance athlete by night (or very late evening anyway).
desert rodent wrote:
Believe being camp counselor at a running camp would be different than being camp couselor to Jewish kids in the Catskills.
F*** you.
Being a SUMO WRESTLER!!! - Never is easy to go out for your easy hour after a (hard) days sumo-ing! - I won't even go into the tempo runs/ fartleks etc. - v. tough!! Jokes.
sfsadfd wrote:
How about something that doesn't have a regular sleep cycle? I end up staying up for 30 hours straight a couple times a month for work (experimental physics), which isn't *too* bad, but i'm sure it would be worse for, say, an ER intern or something with shifts at random times all week.
What kind of experiment do you work on for 30 hours straight?
yeah the hotel job isnt hard either....been there, done that, doing it now....and running 120 miles per week.
If you arent weak it is easy to get your butt out of bed and run before 3pm. Think about it, if you get out at 11 pm and then are in bed by 12:00 you can get 8 hrs of sleep by 8 and run when it isnt the hottest time in the world.
Oh yeah, i am living in the south too, so its not like it isnt hot and humid here (mississippi)
sfsadfd wrote:
How about something that doesn't have a regular sleep cycle? I end up staying up for 30 hours straight a couple times a month for work (experimental physics), which isn't *too* bad, but i'm sure it would be worse for, say, an ER intern or something with shifts at random times all week.
Experimental physics? Really? What do you do, exactly?
Working field for a presidential primary campaign. Days are 12-14 hours long, 6-7 days/week.
So a couple people asked what I do...
Well, basically, we do angle resolved photoemission (arpes), which is where you have a crystal you want to study, you shoot in some light (photons) of a certain energy, some of the light will interact with the material and ejects electrons (photoelectric effect), and if you are able to measure the energy and momentum of the electrons that have been ejected you can use conservation laws to learn a lot about the states of the electrons when they were inside the material. It's a fantastic way to probe the electronic structure of a material, and this is a big deal to a physicist because a material's electronic structure determines many of its properties. You can email me if you want to know more, or use google. :)
Ok, so that's some background, here's why the hours suck sometimes: The best place to do these experiments is at national synchrotron laboratories, where they have lots of light for a whole spectrum of energies. But a lot of people want to do these experiments, and there are only so many places to do them, so you have to write proposals to be allowed to use the endstation at the synchrotron. So we're given blocks of time once or twice a month, typically 24 hours or more to do our experiments (we were once given a 120-hour block). It's precious enough that someone should be there all the time, and sometimes the easiest thing to do is break things up into 24 hour shifts (and this ends up turning into 28 or 30 hours awake). Even if the time weren't hard to come by, the surface of your sample gets worse over time (experiments are done at around 10^-11 torr, but even so some samples decay in a couple days), so you wouldn't want to go home for the night if you were getting good data because you might come back and find that your sample is dead.
Anyhow, it's very hard to run those days -- I can't run if I need to be there for 24 hours, and it's hard to run the next day. For example, if I have a shift that ends at 9AM, I'll typically get home at 11AM (sometimes an hour earlier or later, depending), and it's hard to sleep for 8 hours after that; I'll get 3 to 6 hours, wake up and feel hung over, and the run will be awful if I decide to do it. So I often end up just taking two days off from running.
So I was thinking that someone who has to do this more regularly than me would be in worse shape, and I'm sure such jobs must exist... hospital interns or firefighters or something.
Being a full time dad with a full time job. Just ask the other 3 people in the world that are in my shoes. (Or ask any of the 500 million women/moms in my shoes).
How do you define a "full-time" dad? Are you raising the kids solo while working full-time? If so, you could run at lunch a few days a week, perhaps get off a little early a few days a week and on the weekends arrange for someone to watch the kids while you run. Are you going to run your best? Probably not, but you'll be running.
I've been to SSRL and ALS a few times to collect data, and it's definitely tough to keep up a good training schedule. Fortunately, my professor takes the night shifts. It's also nice when we have an Austrailian with us - they're perfect for the night shift!
the430miler wrote:
the correct answer is ANY job.
one reason why the elites are so good is because they do NOT have a job. running is their job, therefore they have all day to practice it.
all of us in the workforce can only continue to do our best and realize how much better we would be if running was our only daily required activity/task.
Some jobs are better than others. You can work in an office all day and still have energy to run well at night. If you are lifting or digging or anything physically demanding for longer than six hours a day it is harder to train.
Some jobs are better than others. You can work in an office all day and still have energy to run well at night. If you are lifting or digging or anything physically demanding for longer than six hours a day it is harder to train.[/quote]
From my experience, it has been the quality of training, or the ability to recover from say...threshold work, that suffers most when working in a laborious position. Although during the day one rarely encounters a "maximal" load lifting, or performing a repetitive activity, the constant straining, stretching, holding static positions, takes its toll on recovery. I can still get my body out the door and can still put in the miles (although now that the temps are going, and staying up, this may change) but to be able to consistantly do faster-pace work and "sharpening" workouts I'd have to cut back on the job. The nature of seasonal work, baby...should have thought twice before taking up a trade.
Dadddy wrote:
Being a full time dad with a full time job. Just ask the other 3 people in the world that are in my shoes. (Or ask any of the 500 million women/moms in my shoes).
Yeah, being a single parent with a baby has got to be tough, although you can try to put the kid on a schedule.
I had actually posted "single parent" before, but my post got deleted... I'll admit I also included a few less "savory" professions as well. I just don't see when you would get a chance to run -- I knew a guy who would put his kid in a stroller designed for running, but if the baby starts crying your workout can be screwed pretty easily.
Lumberjacket. To dress in women´s clothing and hang around in bars is not good for running.
Sumo wrestler
best job; also a camp co. 11-5:30 m-f 10 dollars an hour. yes
Seguru wrote:
Division I Men's and Women's Cross Country and Track & Field Coach... tough to get in my training working very long hours recruiting and practices, etc.
You are kidding right? Thats the best job for running out there. You can workout in the middle of the day or before the team does track workouts. When the team goes out for runs so can you. You are not recruiting that much during the day just calling in the evening.