Finding time to train

How many times have you abandoned running goals, binned running entry forms or missed a running workouts because you just haven’t got the time? Unless you’re an Olympic contender or an obsessive/compulsive workout junkie, training plays second fiddle to family, friends and careers. However, what it doesn’t have to mean is an end to your goals – because by better utilising your time and understanding basic training principles even us mere mortals can achieve results of which we’d never dared dream.

Finding time to train
First things first: if you can’t find an hour a day for a sport that you love then you’re either wasting a lot of time or seriously need to find a life!

Think about it… lunch, the morning commute, your Saturday café stop, Sunday sleep in, Friday drink and summer evenings sitting on the deck. All worthy past times, but each taking approximately 60 minutes – the very same time that too many of us can’t find for training. People talk about time management, but really it comes down to creating some time to manage.

• One day a week wake an hour earlier to fit in a workout.
• Workout straight after work before going home.
• Make use of that commuting time by running in and out of work.
• Make use of your lunch hour with a workout and make up for the lost calories by snacking throughout the day.  
• On weekends, rise early and get the workouts out of the way before the family even rises – you’ll be more popular and fitter. Heed Ron Hill’s example and have your gear in the car ready to squeeze in workouts in any spare time – how many times have you sat on your thumbs in the car while kids are at ballet or the car is being fixed.

All these and more are examples of ways to free up time for running. Finding this hour holds the key to exploring your potential. An hour of running is the benchmark to good fitness. Being able to train for an hour non-stop generally means you could race for two or three hours non-stop, which means a half marathon or more is within your realm.

Fit running around your working week
Athletic development – no matter how fast, slow or serious the athlete might be – development is dictated by recovery. How much we improve relates to how well we recover – if we don’t then we get injured, ill or just plain tired. As well as an inbuilt ability to absorb huge workloads, most elite athletes have the advantage of not working. As such they recover faster because of the absence of stresses outside training. But for most of us, both the time available for training and how well we recover is dictated by the working week.

You need to work with what time you’ve got and how it affects your running.
Long sessions are reserved for weekends because few people have the time or can handle long and tiring runs during the week. Next, if we’re going long on the weekends we need to reserve Mondays for recovery, which is great because Monday is usually a hell day at work. Likewise, by the time we get to Friday, the working week is getting us down and we’ve done a few days training since Monday, so Friday becomes the other recovery day. That leaves Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, which being in the working week, are still limited for time. This makes them perfect for higher quality workouts like tempo runs, intervals sessions and hill workouts. Try harder workouts on Tuesday and Thursday, with shorter, easier recovery run on Wednesday.

Use hill sessions as a shortcuts
Of course, life doesn’t always favour routines. How many times has your long run been missed because of family commitments? Life has a habit of upsetting even the best-laid plans, but even then there are tricks of the trade that allow the odd shortcut.

For example: what do you do if you don’t have time for a long run? You head for the hills! Long runs build muscular endurance via repetitive stride patterns, but hills can build a combination of strength and endurance via resistance that is the next best thing. Long runs on hills are the ultimate!
Hills are also good for replacing hard interval sessions. If you haven’t got time to head down to the club a short hard run on the hills is the next best thing. The resistance builds leg strength while the effort of the hills produces similar heart rates to speed work. In short – you’re working just as hard.

Annual fitness base plan
While we all struggle to fit our sport into every day life, most of us do actually manage one big goal a year. Every year we scrounge together time for the Flora London Marathon or Karrimoor, or maybe it’s just your local 10k. However, once the big race has been and gone we usually lose the plot as life takes over training once again.

It doesn’t have to be his way. What most people don’t realise is that the training you do for a big goal can also set up the rest of your year. It’s called a base and once established you can maintain that fitness on less than half the work it took to establish it. A well thought out maintenance program can see you maintaining fitness and racing surprisingly well for several months. (See Table 1 below)

Table 1: Annual plan (adaptable to any major event.)

Maintenance training
The focus for this article is on finding time to train. In fact, many of us would be quite happy and race quite well simply by following the maintenance schedule all year round.

Essentially, maintenance training is a cyclical regime covering the standard principles of long, hilly and hard, but mostly the emphasis is on using the actual races as training. That’s right – when done correctly racing can be the best sort of training. A four-week cycle where you train for two weeks, taper for a week before a race, then take it easy for a week after the race, before going back into the two weeks training for the next race, is an ideal way to maintain fitness. (See Table 2)

Looking at the four week schedule you’ll see that the long sessions, hill sessions and hard sessions are still in there, but weekly races in the individual disciplines and the major monthly tri-type race is the main focus. Note also that the overall structure is based on recovery from both training sessions and your workweek.

The program will work best when you have a solid base such as you’re left with after building up for a big goal. Of course, some of us might never have the time or inclination to build up for something like London. That’s okay; the maintenance training will still work for you because it is designed to get the most out of whatever time you have to put in.

Table 2: Four-week maintenance cycle (The following four-week schedule is based on the recreational runner looking to get more out of whatever time they have to train. It is designed to follow a major build-up, but could be used as the basis for time efficient training at any time.)