My college days are coming to an end. I am a 14:00/29:00 track guy and would like to train for the marathon and run at the trials. Can I still compete at a high level while coaching myself and training alone?
My college days are coming to an end. I am a 14:00/29:00 track guy and would like to train for the marathon and run at the trials. Can I still compete at a high level while coaching myself and training alone?
What college did you go to where you had to do fewer than 40 hours a week of work??
werwfds wrote:
What college did you go to where you had to do fewer than 40 hours a week of work??
lol.
Andres Espinosa worked in a steel mill 40 hours a week, ran several 2:08's, including one when he was 40 years old.
Plenty of guys on here train pretty seriously (90 or more miles a week) and have full-time jobs. It's just about time management and making time for what is important to you.
werwfds wrote:
What college did you go to where you had to do fewer than 40 hours a week of work??
Really? I had about 15-20 hours of work a week in college, and that included classes to go to.
Its possible, but then you just end up being a loser with no life like most of the homos on this website.
The time spent actually running does not interfere with a 40 hour a week job. It is all the complementary work (strength, stretch, drills, massage, ice bath, chiro, etc.) that makes running a full time job for elites. Sleep is also an issue if you get up into the 120 mpw range. Thus, it is a question of whether you can manage your time well enough to get in as much of the complementary work as you may need. And find a job where you can leave at the end of the day and won't be trapped into working late and then having to humor the bosses at the bar.
The average American spends 2.8 hours a day watch TV... people have time to do at least a couple of hours running a day if they chose to do so.
Ron Hill was a 14 minute 5ker who had a full time job and ended up running 2:09:28 in his early 30s.
Guys like you have more potential than you think - you've just gotta stick at it.
In my experience as a pretty slow 60 mpw week guy, who works 50-60 hours per week, the key is to be able to run to and from work for your base mileage.
If you can do 5 miles in and 7-9 home then you're there more or less, and you would otherwise be spending that time commuting by some other method. And if you're doing a job you are serious about, don't tell people how much running you do - they will think you are nuts (primitive thinkers abound sadly)
Believe in yourself wrote:
In my experience as a pretty slow 60 mpw week guy, who works 50-60 hours per week, the key is to be able to run to and from work for your base mileage.
Agree totally. Organise life so there are showers at work, you live a decent distance from it (5mi ideally), and nice terrain to run through. Make sure there are good training groups nearby. In a perfect world there would be some great big park in the way so that running is actually faster than taking the bus or driving.
Be tactical. Maybe two nights a week you need to leave promptly for a workout. At other times, you can stay a bit late and create the impression that you aren't itching to get out the door.
At other times, you can stay a bit late and create the impression that you aren't itching to get out the door.
That is a really good rule for any job where presenteeism is important (eg law). Don't be the guy that states 1 hour late every night. Ruin two evenings completely by being the last guy there and then get away early two other nights (plus Friday)
Of course it's possible. When the sport was "amateur" everyone had to work and run once they were done with school.
Go to Bob Hodge's website and check Bill Rodgers' logs from 1974-76. He was working as a hospital orderly or a teacher while doing all that. The real issue that we struggled with was getting time off to go to out of town races.
If your talking 120 mle weeks with full-time work. The energy cost will be the issue, not the time factor. you can mess up your circadian rythym easily under even a minor crisis. With a part-time schedule, you get naps to throw in to keep your sleep and fatigue in check.
The other issue involving time will be general life stuff: Laundry, preparing food as well as cleaning up after yourself. You won't be able to manage an apartment very easily, press those pants. You'll have to be a highly organized person and even then, it's going to be hard to maintain on the fatigue.
You'll be grabbing fast-food more times than you'll want to admit.
It's a hard life. Women won't be part of the equation. Well..at least the committed relationship.
I tried:
1) full-time with running. (Nightmarish)
2) Part-time with running (Great!).
3) Full-time runner (The best, but only if you are on a team. If not social pressures and lonliness will be hard).
Of course, you have some great PR's. You'll be able to do it on lesser mileage and probably still get some results. If you decide to commit long enough, you can break in with the bigger boys. Brian Sell proved that.
I would do what Jen Rhines did, work a little while first in your field, get some experience, then you can decide later to make a bigger push and go part-time. you'll still have something tangible on your resume in case you decide to make a re-entry into your field.
Linda Somers-Smith ran 2:36 in LA this year, while being an attorney and partner in a law firm.
PattiSue Plumer was ranked #1 in the world while working full time as an attorney.
Paul Cummings worked in a steel mill
Bob Schul claims that he was working 40 hours/wk while training with Igloi.
It has been done.
as long as you don't do any of this extra, unnecessary stuff, you should be fine. its even easier if you only run singles. but in the end, youre going to have to ask yourself if its worth it. anyone you ever talk to will already be impressed by your prs, but they probably wont think much of you if you sacrifice your social life or your career just to win a few road races. try to find something else you love, you've already conquered running. there is a lot out there to do that wont tie up every free minute of your life.
This summer I worked full time, ran 60mpw (not that much), took an online class, and lived somewhere that required a lot of time spent on the road. It was definitely hard sometimes, but definitely doable for the most part. Not much room for anything extra. I would say if you're running 100+mpw and working 40hrs/week, you probably won't have much time for anything but work and running, which can get old. People will really judge you too for spending so much time and energy on running, which is annoying. With PRs of 14:00 and 29:00, you could probably join a group if you wanted. You could also work part-time for a year or something and train and see what you can do.
To the guy who said he didn't spend more than 20hrs/week on school in college including time spent in class, you must have been one lazy piece of shit taking bullshit classes. I spend more than 20hrs week just sitting in class or working in lab, and I read bare-minimum an hour every day just to keep up. Factor in studying for exams and writing lab reports it's easily over 40hr/week. What makes running doable is the flexibility and ability to "work" on weekends.
Up until 2000 I trained and worked full-time.
I made the US Half-Marathon team in 2009 and qualified for the Trials while working full-time.
1) The more flexible job the better (I worked in consulting and could control what time I got in the office, not when I left. They also didn't care if occasionally I took off in the middle of the day for a run as long as I stayed late to make up for it).
2) If you can run to and from work that save you a lot of time. Not sure what the average commute is, but it's got to be over 30 minutes. If you have a shower at work and can run there and even home, then you're saving an hour a day.
My work was 2.5 miles from my house and there was a shower in the office so I'd run too and from work most days. Scott Anderson worked a block away and he'd shower at a gym a few blocks away he was a member at. I could wake up and be out the door running in 15 minutes. Now I wake up, get acclimated, talk to my wife, let the dog outside, etc wasting a lot of time.
3) You can make it work if you want to. When all your buddies are at Happy Hour you'll be running. I'll never forget one day it was about 8pm and pouring rain and I was standing in the lobby about to go for a run. The security guard looked at me and said something along the lines of "You're really not going to do this" but not running wasn't an option.
The security guard looked at me and said something along the lines of "You're really not going to do this" but not running wasn't an option.
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Bu
run and work wrote:
My college days are coming to an end. I am a 14:00/29:00 track guy and would like to train for the marathon and run at the trials. Can I still compete at a high level while coaching myself and training alone?
Bull shite you fag!!