Time Check
Did you remember to reset your clocks yesterday? This is a ritual that we go through twice a year. We also use it as a reminder to do such things as change the batteries in our smoke detectors and our carbon monoxide detectors.
- Time Check
Athletes are hooked on time. Many of us wear our sports watches all the time just in case we need to time something. We know our race times, our splits, our goal times, and most of our training times. Time checks are important to us.
Perhaps resetting our clocks is also a good time to check our allocation of time. Thinking about allocating time got me to reflect back on the four anchors and making sure we properly allocate our time between our professional, family, spiritual and physical aspects of our lives.
Last Friday I had lunch with a good friend, and his friend an Army Captain who is an aspiring Ironman. Since I don’t have permission to use their names, I’ll reserve them for now, but they certainly might be subjects for future articles. Very impressive young men!
The Army officer has quite an impressive background including special forces training, Army leadership, and working to prepare combat troops. He is a real go-getter and is intrinsically motivated to go hard. That’s all he does – go hard!
As we discussed his plans for Ironman training, we realized that his ability to train long and go hard is not a question. So, we spent most of our time discussing how to weave training into our lives. We discussed his triplets, his lovely wife, his spiritual commitment, and obviously his already amazing fitness. The challenge is not the ability to do the training, but the “Time Check” in weaving the training into life.
This was a good reminder for me. It is very easy for me to go hard and train long hours. I enjoy it. That is the same for many of us. Perhaps it is more difficult to properly allocate our time into the various aspects of our lives.
Resetting our clocks is a good time for a “time check” to make sure we are giving all of the important aspects of our lives proper priority and proper time.
Checking time,
David
Ironman for Life! 
I admit to being a bit nervous about this round of Ironman training. I drank from the Endurance Nation kool-aid and trained using a Basic Week with back to back long rides of 80 and 50 miles respectively. I threw in three Iron race simulations of 85, 100, and 112 miles. Then I stumbled across a comment you made on ST and followed it here, even though we had been “friends” on Facebook for a while. Your four pillars and your own example of year round basic triathlon training boosted my confidence from IM AZ next weekend. I am an owner of the “Triathlon Training in 10 Hours a Week” eBook, and I just purchased the new 8 hour book from Velopress. Next year, its all about quality! not time. not volume. Good stuff!
By: Wes on November 9, 2010
at 12:47 pm