DoSomeTalking

(Cont. from Ironman post no. 1: Why)

“Easy for you. You don’t have kids”. Or friends. Or a life, for that matter.

True. It takes time. But that will not hold in court for a reason not to do it. I know a guy, 40 something, VP in a bank, black belt in Karate (+ couching twice a week), 3 kids, a wife and a hobby of doing one extreme event every year. That includes one special Sahara Marathon (please note - this is not a “usual” 42km marathon…), a 10:30 hours Ironman (check for yourself how easy that is), the Eco Challenge in NZ, and so on. You get the picture. How does he do it? He wakes up one hour earlier. Kidding. That won’t be enough. I’ll assume you don’t want to give up on everything dear to you (like Alcohol, Fried Food and Smoking), and that you need another 3 to 4 hours every day for training (Weekend’s a deferent story. We’ll get to that later). So here’s how you can manage:

1. No more TV.That’s right. Zero. Gurnisht. Nada. that will free something between 2 to 6 hours (in my case) every day. It will be hard in the beginning, you’ll feel the need crawling in your veins, you’ll see moving pictures in front of your eyes when you close them at night (mostly commercials for car dealers) but after the rehab is done, you’ll have more free time every day.

2. Plan Plan Plan. When are you going to train? When are you going to play with your kids? When are you going to date women (not recommended if the above kids are related to a wife)? You’re going to have to plan your day better in order to gain time for training. And I’ll give you an example:

Training in the evening is a problem for the average busy Joe. Why that? Because of food. When do you eat dinner when you work and have to train (for three hours)? you work till 18:00 or 19:00 (let’s say), and by than you’re hungry, right? No way you can train till 21:00-22:00 with no food. So you eat a bit before, like around 17:00. Ahhhh. Your stomach’s to heavy for running.

So what do you do? Go to bed at 21:30. Wake up at 04:30 and do ALL your training in the morning. OR split your training between morning and evening (which is much harder if you ask me, since all day you’re thinking of the hell still waiting for you in the evening. Training in the morning is good since by the time you really wake up, you’re already done!).

3. Free Free Days. You’re not supposed to train every day, and you don’t have to wake up so early on the weekend, so the evening before (these glory days), you can PARTY! That is eat out, see a movie, help with the kids (or whatever one does with them. I still have non. At least not one’s I’m willing to acknowledge). Make these evenings Useful, so you can use the rest of the week for more meaningful activities, like running around the park 37 times.