Sometimes being an endurance athlete requires an advanced degree in time management. You may be the parent of small children or very active children. There are no “bonus points” earned by missing out on important events or opportunities to be active in your kid’s lives simply so that you can get your workout in.

Once you find a race distance that fits easily into your life (notice I said easily and not possible), then you can go about structuring your training to meet whatever your expectations are of yourself.

Not only should you find a race distance that fits into your life, but the expectations you form on how you want to perform should also fit into your life. Expecting podium results without the ability to train for that kind of performance is going to get you injured, frustrated, or alone or some combination of those. We discuss questions you may need to ask yourself when picking a race.

We discuss several different types of lifestyle challenges and some may overlap.

Working parent/stay at home parent with younger kids: We discuss challenges which may include having to wake up early before the kids wake up to workout or doing the workout later in the evening when the kids are in bed. This is a balancing act of figuring out how to fit in the workout around the work schedule and your partners work schedule.

Several strategies are discuss to fit in the workout including being creative with how and when you do the workout.

Working parent/stay at home parent with school age children and teenagers: As kids get older, they start to become more active. Sometimes this requires a little flexibility and creativity when it comes to time management. As kids reach those teenage years, you start to gain a little more flexibility in terms of being able to leave them at home while you head out for a long workout. However, the level of activities and commitments tend to be greater as kids get older.

Strategies are suggested including slit training sessions and trying to get in a workout while the child is at an activity.

People who work shift work or extended shifts like nurses: The main thing these athletes tend to struggle with is quality sleep. This is especially true if the shift work is on a rotating schedule. With the disruption or poor quality sleep, the ability to recover from training sessions can be slowed.

We discuss strategies for shift works/12 hour shifts including scheduling the bulk of training on non-work days, getting shorted workouts on work days and being creative with how they do the workout.

Tips for shift workers working the night shift: For night shift workers, training will typically need to be structured either after the shift and before sleeping for the day or after waking up before starting the next shift. It might be most ideal to schedule the exercise after getting some sleep and before you start your next shift.

Expectations for this type of schedule and trying to train might need to be adjusted due to issues with sleep and disruptions in circadian rhythm.

Service workers with atypical work schedules: Most of the time, these types of athletes are your “night owls”. So structuring a training plan where you may be prescribing morning and evening sessions is not going to work for these types of athletes. This is a very challenging schedule due to lack of consistency.

People who travel for work: For athletes like this, it can be challenging to get in consistent training especially if your focus is on triathlon. Bike and swim training are the most challenging to get in while on the road.

Suggestions for this type of scheduling including researching the hotel and location of travel ahead of time to see if there is a gym available or safe paths or parks for running.