You wake up early (4-4:30am) and get a ride in. You then sneak another hour later in the day. That leaves around 3 hours with the spouse at night. Then long on the weekends done by 11 or so. Pretty easy to get in 20-25 hours if you stick to a structure.
Yupā¦what @pvolb said.
Plus it helps when you get older. house work / maintenance has been reduced a fair bit and your kids are at the age that they donāt want anything to do with you. ![]()
It never would have been possible with young kids but now that they are older we kinda have a routine where she works out from 5-6 pm (ish) and I go for a ride. We usually have dinner later around 7 pm. Our kids are in the teenage years and like to sleep in⦠so on weekends as long as I go early and get back before family stuff kicks in all is good.
Mornings are tough but as I have gotten older there are times I wake up and canāt go back to sleep. If I wake up naturally I will hop on the trainer for whatever time I have before I need to get the kids up for school (about 7:15).
I am enjoying these years! We actually get to leave them at home (they want to stay in their cave anyways) and go out to lunch or breakfast without the complaining and fighting. ![]()
I wake up at 4am, too. However, sneaking another hour later in the day is tricky. Do you take two showers? The showers, for me, are a major time suck, especially during the day. Then in the winter (Northeast USA) getting changed from the trainer ride to my winter running kit - big time suck, too.
Before work, lunchtimes, commutes, after dropping a child somewhere and before picking them up again, etc.
Yes to 2 showers - thatās less than 5 minutes total though so not a big deal (Iāve cut my hair short for 25 years so I can be efficient with my time and not have to brush it).
Regarding the winter run clothing, what Iāve done:
- I have a treadmill
- As big of a loser as it may make me seem, there is zero reason to not use that time to practice fast transitions and get out the door.
- Set up enough fans so youāre not a sweaty mess getting off the bike and freezing as soon as your run starts
@JoeX - Is this graph from TP?
@pvolb - treadmill is top of my list of items to acquire. Will use it for speed work and/or runs <1 hour.
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I work home-office, therefore no commute. My wife works crazy hours in a hospital and has a fairly long commute. I lead a team which is scattered across the globe, I work in different time zones. This means I donāt have a 9-5 job.
My wife has her own interests/life/hobbies, too. Sport is an important component in our family life. Same for the kids. Here kids can go to their activites on their own by bike, no need to be a taxi driving soccer mom.
I do most of the house work, there is nothing to share.
When I ride at lunch, we donāt have showers in the office, soI have gotten quite good at the Trailer Park Sink Shower. ![]()
Before home-office I used to bike commute, fairly long distance. this was my approach for āno showers in the officeā (we had our own office rooms, not really sthg for shared spaces)
(this is an early development stage pic, I refined the system later)
Iām normally between 11-18 hours a week. Thankfully I have a very supportive wife who values her own time as much as I do and doesnāt mind seeing me in passing during the week when Iām squeezing in 3 hours after work. My rest days are usually Monday and Friday so that helps a bit too. We will also ride together on the weekends before I break off to add extra endurance hours on my own.
I suppose for me is that I have very poor sleep generally so early mornings is not possible without effecting my recovery.
I do 3 days a week.
Monday - 3.5h MTB
Tuesday - 3.5h MTB
Sunday - 4.5-6h MTB
Weekday workouts start right after work at 4:30pm. Sunday leave the house at 8:30am.
I commute 5 days a week totalling 5 hours throughout the week (I donāt count this), so I average 10h (15h if you consider commuting).
This is my base phase, for other phases, Iāll just replace my Tuesday and Thurs sessions to TR workouts, Volume drops but intensity increase. In the summer Iāll go back to MTB on weekdays and the odd MTB race, so the volume is similar to my base phase or higher.
Iāll learn from you guys and try to squeeze in a short 1hr or 2hr zwift race/ride on Saturday. My Girlfriend cycles too so we sometimes hike or bike on Saturdays, but generally only in good weather. (which is rare here in Ireland).
Due to work/life/kids/wife etc I find 10-12hrs is the sweetspot for me.
Mon-Fri 1-1.5hrs @ 05:00
Sat/Sun 2-2.5hrs @ 06:00
(all training done before anyone in our house is awake)
Bed @ 22:00
Once a month Iāll have a 15hr wk by doing a 5-6hr ride at the weekend.
Managed to get to 4.5w/Kg on this (after 3 very consistent years).
Good going! That is pretty solid on those hours.
Iām averaging 14h per week this year, but January (14h total) and February (35h) was very low volume for me due to sickness and lack of motivation, so in reality it is a bit higher. I am usually between 15-18h, with the occational high volume week. Five weeks over 20h so far this year (23.5h is the biggest one).
After I started logging my training online 12 years ago I have been between 450-600h annually, but I have been very active all my life except 2+ years mostly on the couch after an ACL tear.
I converted to āfull timeā cycling 3 years ago due to arthritis from an old toe injury. Prior to that I was mostly running and cross country skiing. I can handle a lot more hours on the bike. More than I have time for with a normal 8h work day, 5 days a week. With the hours Iām at I do 3 high intensity workouts per week consistently. In comparison, running 10h weeks with two interval workouts used to be killer, and lead to overuse injuries long term. If combining it with rowing or roller skiing it was manageable.
You should absolutely include your commutingā¦.it all adds into your training stress.
For clarity I should add Iāve done some sort of endurance excercise all my life (5-6hrs / week running or cycling) so had a big base, itās just 3 years ago I focused on cycling with a very specific goal and was very discliplined.
Since my event the hours and discipline has dropped slightly so has my w/Kg ![]()
Winter 8 - 10 hours/week - 5-6 hours bike, 1.5 hours weights around 2 hours of running.
Summer 10 - 12 hours - 10 ish hours of cycling and 1 - 2 hours of running, no weights.
I race 10k road running races in the winter and 10 - 50 mile TT in the summer with the odd 5k evening road running race. Aged 55 weight 62kg FTP is around 270-275W on the road bike (last TT was 269W for 30 miles so a bit more distance than the classic 25 milesā¦I never measure my FTP on anything other than a full hour race effort as Ramp tests have always overestimated my FTP) - although I did 293W for a 21 min road bike 10 mile TT which is about in line with the 20 min test protocol. My TT bike FTP is about 20W lower and I can still run 18mins/37-38mins for 5k/10k. Donāt think many more watts are available at my age but I have just ordered a new TT bike which of course will be much fasterā¦
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Due to events this week itāll probably be just 3.5hours (my commute twice a week) but Iām normally 14-20h in the summer.
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