Ironman–a part time job

I heard someone say that the cost of drug addiction was not just the time spent doing drugs but the time spent thinking about doing drugs and the time spent getting the money to buy drugs.  Fortuneatly I have never had to experience this in person.

But, that got me thinking about ironman training (and to a lesser extent about triathlon training in general). I have often said that training for an ironman is like a part time job. I was only referencing the 12 – 15 hours a week of training.

However, most people that I know that are training for something big, the actual time spent training is only a small part of the total time.

You also have to consider the time spent thinking about training, the time spent talking about training, the time spent procuring, adjusting and working on equipment, the time spent practicing and working on nutrition, and the big one, the time spent recovering from the training.

When you calculate all of this time, training for an ironman is not a part time job; it is a second full time job.

It is just lucky that we actually like doing this stuff!