Anyone ever drop everything and just ran?

Two stories:

Personal: I got laid off with generous severance once, and decided to "just run" while looking for my next job. One problem was that I was in Sacramento, CA during a heat wave, with temperatures hitting 105 daily. I did my long or hard run of the day in the morning, a short one in the afternoon, lifted every other day. Was bored to tears. I intended to read all those books I'd always wanted to, but ended up sleeping most of the time between workouts.

Second hand: I knew a guy who ONLY ran for a semester in college. Skipped most (almost all) of his classes, apparently showed up for tests, but other than that, just trained. He got better, but his grades suffered. After one semester, I got the impression he wouldn't go quite so overboard again.

yeah, that's about what the schedule of my college xc team looked like. especially fall of '98. life was running. we fit in time for class, but mostly just sleep and running. our girlfriends hated us and dumped us b/c our running was more important, and life for the entire team was focused on getting to nationals. i imagine that's how many college xc teams operate. so we did pretty much drop everything, only we were paying $30 grand a year to do so.

I did this for a couple years, but as a triathlete, not just a runner. It's a pretty decent life, if you can handle not being a social butterfly. I did at least 2, most times 3 workouts a day during the summer. Spent a lot of time sleeping, and really had to eat constantly (4000-5000 calories/day) to support all the work. I had a full time job but no social life.

A typical day might've been swim 5:30-6:30, get to work by 8:00 at the latest, then bike and run after work..say, 8 miles run, 30+ miles bike, etc. Lots of daylight in the summer. The running volume never exceeded 60mpw, but there was several hundred+ cycling in there. Often to make mileage totals, I'd race Saturday AM and then run that night as well. In bed by 9:00 usually. I took it to extremes - for example, knew I had to race in summer heat, so I decided to live without air conditioning (even though I had it) to condition myself. It was well over 90 in my house most of the summer (you get used to it).

I often did speed work on Tuesday night, then raced on the track (800-mile-5k) on Wednesday nights, then I would do a triathlon on Saturday. The back-to-back hard days worked well for me.

This was by far the best shape I ever got in - I was running tri splits (5mile, 10k, etc) faster than my road PR's at those distances. The work paid off - I went to USA nationals.

Then, the injuries set in.....but, it was a glorious time.

definately a college schedule. my jr year we swore off going out on weekends, ate good and "lived right". it was so frustrating because we did all the little things that year and it was, as a team, the worst of my 5 years of running. i think there was no way to release the pressure. it was so bad we wouldnt go to the movies because we were afraid i would get sick from all the people hacking and coughing.