PInk Floyd sang about it.....

 

Big Ben keeps it......

 

and we multitask like crazy to save it..... But what about working out and trying to race too?

 

Racers,

I want to attack an issue that gets to the heart of Racers Workout or any other workout routine.  We are all busy and no one more busy than a Racer. Many of them race at nights and on weekends, and keep a regular job to pay for life during the other waking hours. Many also have families. They also have to sleep at some point. So what to do?  It's about a plan. Say hello again to my friend Aaron. We met him a few weeks back. He was sharing his insights on Ross Bentley's racing visualization eye training. Aaron is with with RIT Racing and the man has too many irons in the fire to count. He gave me some thoughts on still becoming fitter while taking care of the business of life. I know I learned a lot from his approach and I thought you might too.

Russ,

Sorry again about the delay. The weekend was filled with racecar design  and driver training back in Rochester, and I only got back to Detroit at about 3am this morning, so that made for a sultry day of work today. This week has really tested my dedication to everything I do, and everything I desire to succeed in- driving, engineering, and fitness.

I can't really elaborate too much on how I balance it all, because it honestly changes every week. However, I do have a general practice that seems to work decently well for me in terms of not falling too far behind with one commitment or another:

My days often include 10-12 hour days at the engineering firm I work for, an additional 4-6 hours of engineering design work for my school's race team, and trying to squeeze in fitness wherever possible. Every day, it seems that I can plan out just enough for that particular day to know about how much sleep I will be able to get that night. Based on my best estimates of this, I change the depth and length of my workouts. For example, if I know work will be easy that day, and I'll only have to do a few hours of design worn when I get home, I give it the full blown Racer's Workout and really push myself to the edge. Those are the days that I love the most, where I can do everything I enjoy and still get a good 8-9 hours of sleep. However, if there are days like this past one where I was fortunate to get 2 hours of shut-eye, but had to work a 10 hour day at the firm and design a racecar subsystem until it is finished, I just can't work out. My mind is not capable of doing it on that little sleep, when I still have to come home and do design work. I have found, in past experience, that this is where I get hurt, when my mind is not focused enough on my ultimate goals to put the work in. The best I can do for days like that is eat very very well, which I do. Finally, and most often, I find that I have what we can call medium days, where I have maybe a 9 hour day of work and 5 or 6 hours of racecar design to do when I am finished. These days, I scale my workout according to what kind of sleep I estimate that I will get and how I am feeling in general from the last night's sleep. These generally end up being on the higher side of medium-high intensity, and I feel that I still gain something from doing this than doing nothing. Lastly, I always save time to relax when I'm completely battered, but I do try to make up for this sleep-scaling of workouts on the weekends when I can, just being outside and sweating a little.

 

See Racers, do what you can, when you can and don't worry if your schedule won't allow you to do what you'd like to do.

Filed under: Motivational Messages • Workout Tips

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!