The hardest thing about training for a marathon or a HYROX isn’t the demand it places on your body. It’s ‘how an earth do I fit in a full-time job’s worth of training on top of my full-time job?!’
The people most follow for tips and inspiration are the runfluencers of social media. They speak a very good game. But are mostly unqualified in what they’re talking about and ironically don’t have full-time jobs…
And so it’s a little bit rich that they tell you to make more time when most of us have full-time jobs to worry about…
The worst part is the constant preaching to ‘dream as big as you can’. They’re not wrong but I encourage objectiveness over delusion.
To start progressing your athletic goals, get objective about your time management. Even more so important in a world where the line between work and life is blurring.
I’ve put together 4 steps to creating the ultimate working athlete’s time management system. It’s designed to buy you back time, reduce fatigue and increase your performance.
But first, let’s bust some myths on time management…
What time management is, and what it ISN’T
When I say ‘time management’, you may think this. Niche YouTuber using an AI-integration to automate and optimise every second of life.
The time management I’m talking about is literally what we’re faced with everyday. It’s just being honest about what’s on your plate and setting the intentions of how you want to spend your time.
This also won’t be how to create the ultimate marathon plan. But it will be the vital time management systems that sit underneath it. Most people neglect these and pay the price for doing so. The price usually being burnout or injury.
Get this right and it can be your biggest return for your health and performance. Fitness takes months to build. But being more intentional around how you spend your time can be a massive instant gain.
Now to get hands on with creating a time management system for your training, plus life. And it starts with a blank calendar…
📅 Step 1: Training Availability
Most plans start with the goal but we’re doing it the other way round. First, we need to be objective about whether the goal is attainable. This in the context of our lifestyle and availability.
The purpose of this exercise is to find the least amount of time we can commit to training in a given week. Important distinction between ‘can’ and ‘feel like’. If it’s objectively possible for you to train, block it out.
We don’t need to be specific about how long a block is. But allow for more time than you think a block should be – there’s always faff baked into life!
- Create a blank calendar – you can do this on Apple or Google calendar.
- BLOCK OUT: working time, social/family time, sleep and any other times you CAN’T workout.
- PENCIL IN: potential training time (least amount of days).
🎯 Step 2: Your Goal
We now have an ‘ideal week’ calendar with slots blocked out for training. Time to fill it with training by getting clear on your goal.
- Is there an event you’re working towards?
- If so, when is it?
- What does that person look and feel like on that start line (or goal date)? Set a timer for 5 mins and scribble down anything that comes to mind. e.g. Is capable of running a marathon in under 3hrs 30mins, can stomach gels at pace, etc.
- Use this as a guide to create milestones along the way, how often you should train, etc.
The steps after are individual to your goal, in designing the actual plan.
✍️ Step 3: Create the plan
Next step is to map out the training weeks to your event on one sheet of paper.
I don’t know your goal and background, so I will keep it generic, but make sure to consider:
- Number of days you train, on your availability in step 1 and the demands of your goal in step 2
- The sort of sessions you do on step 2 (Training for a marathon? Start with a long run, a speed/tempo session. Then populate the rest with what you want, and assign manageable mileage)
- Include enough rest between workouts – try to not have hard workouts next to each other (tempo and legs)
- Putting two programs together is a no no. Any good program is designed to push you to 90% of your limits.
- Reverse engineer the goal milestones
- Is this trackable?
Workout plan now complete, here’s the most important part:
Put every session into your real calendar.
Here’s a snip of mine:
♻️ Step 4: Iterate
“The most important part of planning is planning on the plan not going to plan” – Morgan Housel (The Psychology of Money).
In most cases, a marathon plan will be 12-16 weeks. So that’s a tonne of delusion to think that you can complete the plan without adjusting a single session or something going wrong.
That’s why this is the most important step. Life and work will keep on moving, so we need to stay on top of what takes priority. Sometimes it will be training, other times not. But that’s ok.
We stay on top of our plan by checking in on a weekly review and session-by-session basis.
Session-by-session: How do I feel today? Like Eliud Kipchoge or Eeeyore?
- If like Eliud, continue as normal or even push the pace or a few more reps
- If like Eeyore, and a bit iffy, pull back the effort and maybe reps
If you genuinely feel awful, less is more. But if you cba, suck it up and continue to plan…
Weekly Review:
- How was the mileage? More or less? Hard runs reps about right? Are you still on track? Adjust next week’s plan as needed.
- Did you fit everything in ok? If not, what needs to be moved, prioritised or dropped?
- How did you feel, energy-wise? If fatigued, is this a fuelling/hydration issue or time management issue?
- Is there anything coming up next week in life an work that means I need to re-jig training? If so, move stuff about.
There we go… My biggest takeaway for you from this is to put your training in your calendar. It stands on the same footing as your life, work and dentist appointments. That’s because an hour of training and an hour of work take up the same 24 hours that you choose to use.
If you have any questions on my athlete’s time management system, drop me an email and I’ll see if I can help!
