Is there enough time?

Is there enough time to fit in everything you want and need to do?  That is a good question!

I train a lot and my husband trains a lot and we have a son (who is almost 20 years old!) and if I had a pound for every time someone commented on where we find the time I would be very rich!  But it is a valid point and really something very important to me.  It can be very easy to fall into routine and where is the fun in that?

I did a write up post my husband completing his first Ironman event last year from my perspective and this is on a similar theme.  You can read the post here but I did open by saying I debated on writing it for a long time, as was the case with this post, as I don’t want to sound like a spoiled brat but this is a consequence of the journey’s we are both on.

Now this will sound totally geeky but we have a board at home that notes both my mine and my husbands training schedule on a weekly basis and the reason for this is so we can make sure we have time for each other and family time.

It is so easy to say you don’t have time, or something I find myself saying a lot is that there is not enough time in the week.  But there is.  We make time for what we love and those around you will do the same and that shows you just what your worth is to them and vice versa.  You will always have some free time and if it is of value you/they will free your time because it is not about having time, it is about making time.

I know this all sounds terribly cliche but as busy as we all are we are never too busy, it’s all about priorities.  Don’t get me wrong most of us live by the old ‘train hard and race easy’ logic so we live lifestyles where we expect our races to hurt but our training prepares us to be able to tolerate that and as such can be all consuming.  It’s about balance.

I recently found myself overwhelmed with the training that both myself and my husband are doing and realised our Friday date night (yes I hate that term too) and Sunday afternoon family time has turned into our ‘we have trained hard all week and now just want to go to bed early’ and it is important to change that and there are ways.  We are training for different things and are at different abilities but there are still workouts we can do together and so where we can we will.  Our son is now in the gym 5 to 6 times per week and so I am totally including him in this also. It’s important so we find a way.

When you voice this you realise most people in a similar situation, at some point, probably have the same feelings.  When I wrote my post about being an Ironwife I was surprised at how many people commented and could totally relate.  If you are training you have a constant guilt that you are not present enough and when you are you are inevitably tired/exhausted/just want a nap.  There will be times when you hate that event/sport that is all time consuming for your significant other and that is not uncommon either.  It’s important to remember it’s not personal.

We discuss our events with each other and whilst we do not ask permission from each other we try and balance what we both want to do and achieve to ensure we can be there to support each other as that is important to us.

So is there enough time?  Yes, in my opinion there is if you want it.  The journey is yours to experience together and on race day, after all the training, the feeling of pride makes it all worth it……..until the next bout of training for the next event that is.