The holidays are nearly upon us. It seems that only yesterday, it was the middle of summer and now Thanksgiving is only a week away. Time truly does fly by! Life has been keeping me very busy of late. My work commitments seem to multiply by the hour. Of course, spending time with my wife and kids is a high-priority. And I'm working on a few other business initiatives (sport-related) that are taking up a lot of the in-between time...late nights, early mornings, times when I would normally be relaxing, watching the Chargers or otherwise being mellow. I'm embarrassed to admit that I have not watched a single football game this year from start to finish. And it's week 11. What kind of fan am I?? Oh well, thank god for my DVR.
On top of all that, I'm starting to ramp my training in preparation for Oceanside, which is only about 20 weeks away! The map above is my ride from this past Saturday...right on 5 hours in the saddle. Good stuff. As the saying goes, 'cycling is a blue-collar sport, you have to do the work.' So, I'm doing the work and doing my best to log lots of quality miles now and over the next several weeks. It will pay off in April.
You could say I'm burning the candle at both ends right now. That's ok, sleep is over-rated anyways. :-)
In all seriousness, balancing these multiple commitments without short-changing any one of them is my biggest life challenge at the moment. Indeed, it is a problem facing every age-group triathlete.
Some of the small things I try to focus on when things are getting hectic.
- Stay present and in the moment - i.e. avoid multi-tasking and the risk of being preoccupied. Put down the Blackberry at night when I'm with my family. For me, this means no computer, email or text messaging from around 5:30-8:30 pm every weeknight and very limited computer use on the weekends.
- Be flexible with my training - Life with young kids precludes any sort of rigid schedules. That's part of the adventure. My coach and I build some 'overage' in my weekly training program. While I have a full seven day schedule of workouts, inevitably one day becomes an off day due to some unforeseen circumstance. So one missed day, no big deal. Now two days in a row, that's a different story.
- Go to bed early. Or Don't. - I'm a natural night owl...so I'll often choose to hop on the trainer at 9:30 pm rather than get up at 4am. As long as it gets done, its all good.
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I mentioned some business ventures a moment ago. While most are still in the incubator and not ready to be publicized, one thing I can mention is that my wife and I, through her company Unbeatable Travel, are working with some friends at Gorilla Multisport to put on a training camp this coming February 25-March 1 in Tuscon, AZ.
Here is the link to more info. Check it out. Perfect timing for a early spring race like Oceanside.
Gorilla MultiSports 2008 Winter Training Camp
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