Accountability Corner
Embark on an adventure with Darren, Morgan, and Chris, the dynamic trio steering the ship at "Accountability Corner." As passionate OCR enthusiasts, they're on a mission to share their expertise and enthusiasm for obstacle course racing with the world. From sharing insider tips on overcoming training plateaus to demystifying the complexities of race registration and gear selection, no stone is left unturned. Whether you're a seasoned competitor hungry for fresh perspectives or a newcomer eager to dip your toes into the muddy waters of OCR, these hosts are here to guide you every step of the way. Join them as they peel back the curtain on the electrifying world of OCR, revealing stories of triumph, camaraderie, and boundless adventure.
Don't miss out – tune in and discover why OCR is capturing hearts and minds around the globe!
Accountability Corner
#34: Mastering Time Management in Obstacle Course Racing and Daily Life
Have you ever wondered how time management plays a critical role in the high-stakes world of obstacle course racing? Join us as we unpack the multifaceted concept of time, starting with our thrilling recap of the recently concluded Spartan series. Morgan offers firsthand experiences, sharing heart-pounding moments and fierce competition, including key performances from Dubai and the notorious spear throw obstacle. Discover how the UK Spartan series fosters a competitive spirit and provides financial incentives that benefit athletes immensely.
Struggling with a sporadic work schedule can wreak havoc on your sleep, training, and overall productivity. We dive deep into the complexities of managing time when your routine is anything but consistent. Learn from our candid discussion on the hidden time sinks that rob you of precious hours, and how minor tasks can unexpectedly dominate your day. Gain insights on how to balance the morning rush and the everyday responsibilities without losing your sanity or sacrificing your training goals.
Effective time management isn't just about cramming more into your day—it's about making strategic choices that align with your priorities. We share actionable strategies for structuring your daily routine to reduce stress and improve productivity. From the importance of communication and teamwork in managing household duties to practical tips for maintaining consistent sleep patterns, our conversation offers valuable advice for athletes and anyone striving for better time management. Tune in to hear how small tweaks can lead to significant improvements in balancing training, personal life, and other commitments.
Welcome to the Accountability Corner, where we talk about everything obstacle course racing, from staying disciplined in training, affording the sport, signing up for your first race and, more importantly, how the sport is growing around the world, with your hosts Morgan Maxwell, chris Shipley and Darren Martin.
Speaker 2:Okay, right, Welcome to Accountability Corner, episode 34. Oh, it's hot today, so we have got topics not topic, sorry topic to talk about today, Ships. What is the topic for today?
Speaker 1:Well, if we've got time, we're going to talk about time, because time is important in life, because you need time to do stuff Time.
Speaker 3:And Ships. Do you know what time is? Of course, I do.
Speaker 2:What is the definition of time Ships?
Speaker 1:according to wikipedia, time is a continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past through to the present and into the future, and there's a hell of a lot more on that perfect that.
Speaker 2:That really kicks us off, but before we, before we do. Obviously. The spartan series is just concluded, mo. How did the spartan series go? How was your time, my time?
Speaker 3:well, it was fast, not just my time, but the whole, the whole time. Uh, the whole race was pretty fast. Um, I was running, well, I felt pretty good in myself, and then there was a kind of a group of us. Well, there was me, jason was around, ferg was around, and then Roman was just out the front, and then there was a couple of guys over from Dubai, I believe. They were just a bit ahead, and then Dan was like storming it it. And then in the last kind of mile where they put all the obstacles, all of the dubai guys or the ue guys started to bail stuff and make mistakes.
Speaker 2:so then me, roman and ferg kind of started said goodbye, said goodbye, said goodbye, said goodbye.
Speaker 3:Yes, I like that. And then, yeah, them two kind of just started to get away from me, but we came into the spear all pretty close. Dan missed his spear, which meant Roman and Roman hit his spear. So Roman went through in first but he was with us, and then me and Ferg through but we both missed, but Ferg threw before me so he got on the penalty loop for me and I just couldn't really catch him through the twisty penalty loop, um, and yeah, so I ended up fourth, which I kind of needed I think it probably first or second to do, to even podium in the series. Um, so I was a bit off that, but that was just because my first race was quite bad. Well done to roman, dan. And it was really interesting that the top well, out of the top four, only one of us hit a spear the times are so close.
Speaker 3:If you, if you look at your top five times, you're all within a minute, a minute of each other yeah, well, jason, I think he hit his spear because he ended up just like three seconds behind me, but I had enough time to do my penalty loop and then just finish in front of them.
Speaker 2:I'd love to put all your times, combine them all together to create like how the gap was in all the courses. Like, imagine if you put the sprint, super and beast time together and compared it to everyone. I'd love to see that comparison.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean mine because of my 11th place in the beast. I think it'd be. Wouldn't be as cool, jason, I'd like to see jason's times, because actually I think he was obviously roman as well, but jason had some like real consistency so it's a this will.
Speaker 2:This episode will come out almost probably like a month afterwards. If you could summarize the spartan series, do you just? Would you summarize it like as a good thing? Do you think we still need to sit the spartan series in the uk?
Speaker 3:I think so I mean, like, in terms of we talk about funding athletes, they all walked, I think third come third and he got 600 pounds. I want to say so there was some nice money on the line, not loads, but enough to just like basically pay for your season, um, and also I think, yeah, just it did drive competition. I think it helped as well, especially this race, that it was a UK series race, so there's a couple of other names you might not seen there, but actually there was a few names that you'd normally see there. That wasn't. Obviously dan was there, who you'd never normally find at spartan. But yeah, I think I enjoyed it.
Speaker 3:The last race wasn't my favorite in terms, of course, layout. Um, it kind of it literally was two miles of running and then you got into the obstacles. What it did make is it made the obstacle section like you were even more compromised than normal and we went from like doing like five and a half six minute mile into like seven eights, just because then all the obstacles hit you in a row. So you're pretty fatigued, um, but I didn't. For me, I think they could. Just they could have spread the obstacles out a bit more rather than just having all at the end because it didn't really change much.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've got a space oh, go on chip, see you go yeah, they didn't look too.
Speaker 1:Um, technically, when we spoke to ron who's it though? The they were talking it might be quite dense, but I don't think it had that density that we was assuming or we wanted. It just had that sort of stack of obstacles that weren't that difficult.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it wasn't like. Like, rather than finishing with the rig, you finish with a monkey bars, so that made it a little bit easier. The rig in itself was probably easier than it's we've seen all year. It's probably the easier multi-rig, but that was a bit that's kind of halfway through the race. Um, the carries were long, so the bucket carry was quite long. Um, sandbag carry was also wasn't that long, but it was still. They were good carries. The penalty loops weren't as crazy as we've seen this year as well. They were quite runny, based and short. They weren't like, from what I saw, they weren't as good as what we've had this year. Um, yeah, I think it was. It was not very. It was a weird race to finish on because I just didn't. The other races actually for us, especially spartan, who sometimes get it quite wrong, the beast and the super they. For me they got quite right.
Speaker 2:Like it's a spartan race, it's always gonna be run heavy, but they got the balance somewhat right yeah, the only reason you'd end with a sprint, I guess, is so you could have spectators watch all the athletes battle it out for the final race. But how good was the spectatability?
Speaker 3:uh, actually, to be fair, I don't think it was. I think if you really wanted to watch the race you could have okay. Um, I don't think because the way they did it, all the obstacles are at the end and they're all still a little bit spread out. But well, like you've seen what my dad's like watching the course, he was able to kind of jog in between every obstacle and be at everything um, but that is spectatability if he's jogging around yeah shuffle but I don't know.
Speaker 3:At one stage he was out running me and I was like what's happened here?
Speaker 3:but yeah, I don't know it just felt a bit like anticlimactic to be the last race. All I wanted was maybe a few of the dense obstacles, throw an ape hanger in there or throw one of their more technical obstacles. Even that obstacle that we saw at the start of the year that hasn't been back the was it tipping point or whatever they called it. You know the one that was the ladder. I can't remember what they called it now, but even that throwing that at the end might have just made it a bit more interesting.
Speaker 2:But I don't think it would have changed the race results much, but I think maybe it would have um made it a bit more fun for the races well, that's uh, that's a good summary of it and then maybe it leads into the conversation today as well is because making time for different series around the uk, especially spartan, uk ocr series, the endurance series, the 3k series, and then also making time to go out to the european championships, world championships, and then going out and maybe doing a recce of some of the races. The main thing we want to talk about today is, obviously, we all have jobs. We we've talked about this in the past and we talked about our length is that, no, no one in this sport is a professional athlete. Yes, the dream is to be professional, but we talked with leon. Actually, the gold gold standard dream is probably to become a part-time athlete, no, full-time athlete, but part time in your work life.
Speaker 2:But I don't even know if that's even achievable for most races out there to make time for it. So essentially we're saying is that how does everyone make time to do what we do, to try to train, try to eat right, try to get to races? And it might lead into another episode about money, because time is money shit. How do we, how do we want to go through this? Because it's quite a hard subject to quantify, because there's a lot. Lot goes into time. It's all about what do we prioritize, like our life, how do we? How do we? What do we think we should be making time for? And it's really difficult. Maybe, maybe we should start with you, mo, because I feel like you've got yes, me and Ships are trying to be gold medalists, like our age group, but you've got more aspirations and more time to become an actual pro athlete at this sport. How old are you now?
Speaker 3:23, I think 23.
Speaker 2:And we know for a fact there's you're peaking at this sport currently, like it may change in the future, say 20, 30 years time, when we start getting grassroots coming into the sport, but right now this sport is peaking late 20s, early 30s maybe. So you've you've definitely got time for you to progress, but how are you spending your time currently progressing?
Speaker 3:that's maybe what we want to talk about today I think, over to you well, like you've touched on because your work, I think the main thing is sacrifice. I think when I think of time, that is kind of the the next thing that aligns with it, because you our time is limited, you do have to spend. I find most days I'm spending making choices, and the goal is to just always make the right choice and sacrifice the right things, and that's how you are going to get to a good level. The hardest thing of that is making the right choices, because we all have other things we like doing and people in our lives whether it's relationships or friends or whatever it is that can sort of pull you away from that as well. So I think, yeah, just making the right choices is the first thing I kind of think about when I think about time.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So let's get some good old facts on the table. How many hours a week do you work?
Speaker 3:I'm looking forward to hearing this, yeah well, shift work 32 hours and then I do about rumble as well. Let's say we'll bump it up to 40 plus pt. You're looking at probably over 40 hours yeah, so that that is a full.
Speaker 2:That's absolutely is a full-time job, but the the thing is with your time. It's very sporadic and it's quite hard to manage you. I feel like you have to make more choices than we mean ships do, because sometimes ours can be quite formulaic, like it's not not nine to five, but I'm just using that as an example. Yours could be the whole day could be gone because you might be doing a 12-hour shift yeah, so I don't really have routine.
Speaker 3:And then pretty much every other week the weekends, I do 24 hours work, so I do two 12-hour shifts saturday, sunday so that makes it a little more difficult. I work as a pt in a gym so you can kind of for what we do. I can kind of make time whether it's lunch breaks or whatever to get a little bit in, but it's never quite the same yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna work, I'm actually gonna work this out for you yeah.
Speaker 3:So I find that my work, my training, week wise, is a bit all over the shop and whether some people might have seven day plans where they can fit every weekend long run, and I kind of have to adjust my training every week to make sure that I can fit everything that I want in and work that is making me feel anxious, just thinking about your time yeah, see, I don't have a routine, like you guys do, that is, every week is different, horrible, yeah, yeah, it's stressful right, you ready in seven days.
Speaker 2:Yeah, seven times, which is 24 hours. We have 168 hours in a week. Yeah, yeah, you work 40 hours of that. Yeah, yeah. So you have, I'm going to, I'm going to actually set this up properly this is cool. Okay, takeaway 40, you've got 128 left if he's got a sleep at sleep. So do you get good enough sleep?
Speaker 3:uh, again because of work, sleep is also. I don't have a good sleep pattern because sometimes I start work at 6, sometimes I start work at 2 in the afternoon, but I'd say I'd get mostly 8 hours, sometimes 6 hours, but mostly 8.
Speaker 2:So let's say 8 so we're doing 8 times 7 56 hours, okay, of sleep. You've got 72 hours left. How much time quick, don't it? Training average amount of hours you train a week oh, it's probably about eight hours. Are we including like mobility stuff or we just yeah, uh, no, let's just do training as in sessions and then let's talk mobility separately, because I think we should look, we should uh really delve into how long you spend on mobility sure, training, I'd say about eight, and then probably another hour of mobility hour.
Speaker 2:What a day what mobility?
Speaker 3:yeah no, mine's not as good as it should be. I'm not even writing that down one minute per month okay.
Speaker 2:So just so the listeners can understand this yeah, I have worked out that you do 40 hours a week. You sleep, um, sorry, you. You work for, yeah, 40 hours a week. You sleep 56 hours a week and you train. I don't know, I think I've worked wrong. You train eight hours a week. Yeah, is that what you?
Speaker 3:said yeah, we'll say that.
Speaker 2:Okay, so that means you have left 64 hours in a day, in a week.
Speaker 3:What's that, divided by seven, a day 64 divided by 7 yeah, is that right?
Speaker 2:what that's right isn't it yeah, 9 point. Let's call it 9, 9 hours what extra a day? Maybe my maths is off off on this, isn't it?
Speaker 1:that feels like a lot, but yeah, it seems like you've got loads of time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was going to say I'm doing fuck all what's going on World champion.
Speaker 1:What's happening?
Speaker 2:Divided by the thing is.
Speaker 3:The maths, doesn't the maths isn't mapping right now.
Speaker 1:The thing is it doesn't. When you talk about time and spreading out your days bits and pieces, you never, ever have the other bits, like, just just the little things, like walking to get, like, into the kitchen, turning, sitting down, driving to work yeah, driving to work just the little bits. Making breakfast, just all these little bits and pieces. I don't know about you lot, but when you have breakfast in the morning, right, does this happen to you? So you've got an hour to spare? Right, you've got an hour to do your breakfast. So you wake up, you've got your breakfast going. You've got an hour spare. You look at your watch right, cool. You do one other thing. You look at your watch again. You've got your breakfast going. You've got an hour spare. You look at your watch Right, cool. You do one other thing. You look at your watch again. You've got 10 minutes. Yeah, time's just disappeared, yeah, and you haven't done anything.
Speaker 3:You've just been making breakfast. That's my pet peeve in the morning, when I have to get up for work and I think, oh, I've got up with loads of time to go. And then it always ends up I've got like 10 minutes before I need to leave and I feel like I've done nothing. I'm like I don't know where that time's gone and it does my head in every day it's like you're always fighting for time.
Speaker 2:I'm just still confused with my math, so maybe I'll leave that where it was even nine hours going somewhere.
Speaker 3:So well, no, but even nine hours a day, I feel like. Then we add up. I know it's not loads, but even just doing this podcast, editing the podcast, filming the podcast, you find time for that. Then, like ship said, you got all the little things like making food. Sometimes you could spend an hour making dinner. So I guess nine hours might be about right, but doesn't seem right, doesn't?
Speaker 3:feel right because, well, let's do it like this. Yeah, so I trained. Let's say I've trained an hour a day. Yeah, I've worked. Let's just say I've worked eight hours. Yeah, what's that nine hours? That's nine hours. Do another like, oh, we won't even have an ability. We's that nine hours? That's nine hours. Do another like, oh, we won't even have an ability. We'll just do that. What's nine hours? Takeaway 20. Was it 24 in a day? Yeah, it's a takeaway to. What is that left? Um, that's 15. And then you probably got about six of that sleeping. No, you said eight. Yeah, but I'm just thinking, because obviously you'll pass 12 o'clock. I don't go to bed at 12 okay, this is getting way way too.
Speaker 2:This, that means you've got yeah, that means you. If you just do that, you've got nine hours left of your day yeah, so you probably.
Speaker 3:I think you're right that feels like too many. I definitely don't feel like I've got that well, this is.
Speaker 2:This is the crazy thing there's still time to be filled. I I have the worst I I have a struggle with in the mornings. I don't want to do anything. I just want to be chilled so that I can go into a stressful day of work. Not that work is totally stressful, but it is can be quite. I need to be mentally prepared to go into work of whatever challenges I'm going to present in a day, so I never feel like I want to really um. You know, when you exercise and you go for a very hard session, you feel too, too energetic. You feel too. I just want to feel calm before I go into works. But the thing is at the minute, which happened to the last two years live me and lauren living together, is that she gets up so much earlier, so I've got like three hours in the morning. She gets up at quarter past six.
Speaker 2:I don't start work till nine and I work at home so there's your time yeah, I'm, but am I spending that correctly by just making myself calm and ready to to to work, when really maybe I should just be prioritizing something a bit more productive, productive yeah yeah yeah, you've got to prioritise, do you?
Speaker 3:do the calming things, like the mobility side of things or anything like that in that time, Because I feel like that's quite chilled but also it's working towards your goal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I do, I do. I do mobility and stuff, but I still think that's like wasted. That only takes sometimes like half an hour. I do mobility and stuff, but I still think that's wasted. That only takes sometimes half an hour. I've got two and a half hours left.
Speaker 3:I think also, what we don't add into time is the stress that sometimes training can take as well.
Speaker 1:Yes, because you're giving up time to train. Because you're giving up time to train, it can sometimes take your time away from doing the stuff that maybe other people want you to do, or the chores that you need to do, or the bits and pieces that you should do.
Speaker 2:So you have to prior your priorities change because the time runs out and you don't have the time to do the things that you want to do yeah, because if you you say right now say, for instance, mo, you've got nine hours left of the day, you're not including this podcast eating and actually socializing, actually talking to people, actually, um, like trying to clean your clothes off your bed, but yeah, it just, it just takes up, takes up loads of time. But the thing is, what we're always trying to do as athletes I I don't know if you guys feel like this is I'm always trying to figure out how much more time can I give to the sport so that I can become better? That, yeah, that's. Or help the sport grow, oh, yeah, help the sport grow sorry, I'm thinking more selfishly right now become instagram famous.
Speaker 2:I do think about that a lot but you know I've sacrificed the last few few weeks because obviously I'm planning for the wedding and planning that work's been stressful, spending a lot more time at work even even though when I'm not at work I might be thinking about it. So I procrastinate, doing something that I shouldn't be doing because I'm thinking about work. Is I forgot where I'm going with this? Yeah, completely forgot. It's gone.
Speaker 3:You've wasted time there yeah, wasted time come back to me. I don't think I think you take for granted as well how much so, like a professional athlete, they probably they probably only train a few more hours more than us. Let's say they're doing three out, three to six hour training days, whatever that is, so they're probably not training as much as we're working. So they've actually probably got a lot more time in the day to do the little things and also they've got the time to recover. I think that's the main thing.
Speaker 1:I've always said the difference between a professional athlete and us wannabe athletes isn't the how good they are what they are obviously good, but the benefit that they have and makes them professional is that they actually have more time to be an athlete because they are a professional athlete.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it doesn't even have to be training time necessarily, it's literally recovery.
Speaker 1:No, because their job is being an athlete, so they don't have to fit in.
Speaker 3:All they have of spare time is their time, because their job time is athlete time yeah, and you could probably only be an athlete as much as you can work and about our job, you wouldn't be able to do more than that no, because you wouldn't be able to do it knackered yeah, do you do not think that we just need to be more regimented in what we prioritize to make the most of our time?
Speaker 1:oh, 100 yeah but you say that and the amount of times I get stressed because I think, oh, I'm putting way too, I'm trying to find all the bits and pieces of time I can do, that you run out like you just don't have the time to do everything, and then it stresses you out because you're running out of time so you run you, so your main stressorships is is that you run out of time to put in what you want to put into the sport.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but it's sport specifically, or just life sport specifically, I try and forget about life.
Speaker 3:Life doesn't happen.
Speaker 2:Life doesn't happen. What do you mean? You run out of it. What holds you back? Time, no, but what are you committing to? What's the things you're committing to that's holding you back from spending more time on training and the sport in general, because you've committed to this podcast, which takes time.
Speaker 1:That is true, but that's part of the sport.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, have you not seen him? He makes fancy dinners. No, I shared dinner, he probably spends an hour in the kitchen.
Speaker 1:To be fair, when I chop food, it takes me ages.
Speaker 2:It's really annoying.
Speaker 1:Do you know, like, if I, if some people can chop food really, really quickly it's the little bits that I've struggled with like if I'm chopping like some dinner up, rafi will do it in I don't know 20 minutes, it'll take me 45 to 50 minutes to chop the same amount of stuff you just need so.
Speaker 2:So right, I'm going to prioritize your time here. You need to find something that chops chops food for you, what they call them little chef I need a chef. No, not a chef. What's the little devices that can chop food? A knife? No, no, you put them through like a, you push it through something oh, I had one of them before yeah, I know what you mean.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you push it and then, like press it down, yeah yeah, but do you know what? I had one of them before and it took me a bit of time to sort of like to set it up yeah, but it must, must have been um, it must have been quicker no, it wasn't no, okay, so you run out of time a lot yeah do you feel, do you ever, do you ever not put in the hours that you need to for training?
Speaker 2:then, in a week, that specific, that script, scripted training, no, I seem to get that in just about.
Speaker 1:But it's the other bits and pieces like you want to spend. You want to spend a little bit of time with your girlfriend actually spending time talking and things like that, so you've got to do that. And then it's just, I don't know, it's just always seems to slip by quite quickly. Maybe it's because I'm older and I feel like everything's rushed you're rushing to do this, rushing to get home, rushing to do that. Maybe I just get stressed about it and that makes time go faster, does?
Speaker 2:it absolutely does, because your brain's racing in a You're being quite, you're in high alert, so it feels like things are moving quicker than they should do. But they're not. If you just took a minute to step back and relax, they're actually moving quite slowly.
Speaker 3:I also think that's the harsh reality of what we do is, I think well, I go back to earlier sacrifice. I think that is the you are getting your training in and you are doing the things for the sport that makes it work. You're stressing about the things that aren't part of the sport and that's the harsh reality is, if you want to be good in a sport, you do have to sacrifice some of them things, and that's why it's also not for everyone to be an athlete, because it sounds quite quite. You have to be selfish. You can't. If your friends are like, oh, come on, let's go out, or do you want to go to the pub, or even little things that are, do you want to go for a walk, you actually have to say sometimes, no, I can't, I have to train and that has to be priority, and that's the harsh reality but in our position that's quite difficult.
Speaker 3:There's so many times where I haven't seen family because I've put training first yeah, and then it's weighing up how much do you want it and if finishing with a gold medal around your neck is more important, then you're doing the right thing. If you start, oh, maybe I need to make more time for family, I think then it's time to look at actually, do I just need to make more time for family and not worry too much about the training side of things sometimes?
Speaker 2:Lorna says to me you can have it all, but you can't have it all at once yeah, wise, but you can't have it all at once, yeah, wise. So so if you want, if you want fun, great memories with family and you want a gold medal, they've kind of got to be something. You've got to find a way to kind of separate it a little bit, segment it kind of like a training block. Like at the minute my main aim for my training is to hit everything and also to make things to add more time to my training. Like and I was telling the day that my easy runs used to be like three miles, they for for me to build that engine that I want to be better, they need to be five, six, seven miles at easy pace. But the frustrating thing with running easy and longer is it takes so much more time more time, but you've got to commit.
Speaker 2:That is my commitment at the minute, and also, people may your what you said. Two things that ships you want to be an athlete, you want to spend time with family and you want to grow the sport. That takes so much time to do. That, like growing the sport is is a full-time job as well. Like we've said it, we, this podcast was built built to hopefully spread word of athletes trying to juggle everything, but also try to spread the word of OCR. We, we absolutely love it, but we, we haven't posted much on social media lately.
Speaker 2:It's because we just have time to do it yeah, and, and we're being selfish, like we are athletes, that we want to be athletes, that I want to spend more time training, so I'm not going to post as much on on accountability corner. That's what's happening, listeners. When that happens, that is what we're doing. We're in the pain cave, actually getting shit done. We just aren't posting up on social media all the time. That's what's happening Life taking time.
Speaker 3:The other thing as well is we all have relationships. So a lot of the times when we've done our bit in training or our bit to what we think growing the community is, however that looks, my normal next thought once I've done training is right, how do I spend time with Kira this week? Where does the next bit of time go to spend time with her and make sure our relationship is still okay?
Speaker 3:so as soon as you start to add more. You don't realise how much time that sort of stuff takes and it's finding that kind of right line of I've done this much for the sport and now I need to do this much for kind of my, my other people in my life yeah, figure figuring out what, what is good, what is time well spent for you?
Speaker 2:that's maybe what we need to figure out. Like, what is the expectation of time well spent, that we feel that that was good, good time spent? Like, for instance, if I say to myself I'm going to spend an hour and a half on training and actually the session needs two hours, but I think hour and a half is good. I'm happy with an hour and a half, that I've spent a good time there. I don't know what I'm going with that, but I think it makes sort of sense.
Speaker 1:Here's one right, and this is this is for a lot of listeners as well, because I know for a fact a lot of listeners do this. They spend so. Say, for example, they've got a good training day coming up, they go into a training center. Right, a lot of people spend a lot of time traveling to these training centers. That's a lot of time giving up. Sometimes people are spending two and a half, three hours of a day traveling to train.
Speaker 2:That's a difficult one yeah, well, just to address it, like at the weekend I didn't go to the spartan sprint. I obviously posted up, I was going to go and race with all the fast boys but I didn't have the mental time in my head to sit in a car for two and a half hours at four o'clock in the morning to two and a half hours. It would take me to get there an hour. An hour warm-up for a 30-minute race, then an hour conversation afterwards with everyone and then two and a half hours back home. I didn't have the mental strength to have that much time committed to ocr that day. That wasn't that. It wasn't in my head that that was what would stop me from going. I just didn't have like nearly don't even know. It adds up to nearly five, nine hours of ocr when really all I had committed was two and a half hour run and that was it that's all I did.
Speaker 2:I went and did two and a half hours and I was back to the wedding. I was back to wedding planning. I was back to speaking my family. I was about to just chilling out as well. I needed time to myself.
Speaker 1:That's what I, yeah yeah, you're taking a look at yourself, look at your plan, look at the day and you thought, well, that isn't time, that that's best spent to develop myself as an athlete. I'm going to change it. And I think that's best spent to develop myself as an athlete? I'm going to change it. And I think that's when you need to make the right call on the spot, sometimes like that, which is difficult during race season, because you've already committed to a race, so then you know to drop that race, to prioritise on training for another race.
Speaker 2:Man, I have to realise that it's a decision that I've made because by not turning up, I've I've forfeited a good placing at the uk ocr series. That's.
Speaker 3:That's absolutely happened now, but I can't no chance of getting a good place that time back that didn't mean that didn't mean as much to you as some of the races you've got lined up for the future as well. So I think that's the other thing. I think, especially in our community, that we do as athletes and even age group, as open athletes as well, to be fair over racing. And if you've got the time to race all the time and that works for you, great, do it. But it's definitely something I look at now as I look at my race plan and I look at what is helping towards my goals.
Speaker 3:Does Rude Rampage work towards my goals? Or is it just another weekend spent travelling and spending money and spending time on the sport when, like Darren said, you could just do this similar sort of training run for training at home and it'd take less time? So I think we need to start getting harsher with. I don't need to race the whole uk ocr series as much as I love to. I just need to race the ones that are going to help and if that's none of them, don't race them. Just race what's going to help you towards your goals prioritize yeah, and and we, we want to grow in this.
Speaker 2:It's a bit of a double-edged sword, because we want to grow the sport, so we'd say, yeah, everyone race every single race you can possibly do. But I'm also preaching to the people like the three of us and we know loads of different people that are trying to be athletes, that spend your time wisely and race wisely, but it ships you. It's quite commendable that you said yeah for this weekend we're going down to to I've probably dated this now, but it's be back in the future or the past, whatever time you would have been there now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've been there.
Speaker 1:We are going down yeah, we we have been to um bodyhub for um to to do a ocr long run and we're prioritizing what time we get there, because you want to make, you've got commitments yeah, because I double booked like an idiot because my plan didn't write right, I didn't write down the right day for spending time with my parents, but then it's such a pain like not a pain, but I've said we've got to get there a bit earlier because I can't cancel one of the other ones. But the thing is about that one bit of training. It's a really good priority to do that training where it is, because it works in so many ways. So it's like, oh right, I've got to try and do both now. Luckily, I'll speak to my auntie and change the time a little bit later.
Speaker 2:You're probably preaching to the fact that sometimes we like to burn the candle at both ends, mo, today you've literally spent no time to relax or anything. You've come straight in after working into this podcast. And have you trained today as well? Yeah, I've trained, so you've had no breaks.
Speaker 3:No well, my, my day has been very kind of ocr filled, shall we say, because I've literally, I got up, um, started in the podcast, then started working and then came here now I'm doing this and then, after this, I got to edit some more of the podcast yeah so that's my day, that's my extra nine hours filled as well the frustrating thing about all this is that we're saying that it's good to prioritize time.
Speaker 2:Have a look at yourself. Write it down. Think about where you are spending the most time. Think about where maybe you're procrastinating, because, wow, do I spend a lot of time on my phone.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that's the other thing as well. And also, to be honest, I don't know if that sounded quite negative me talking through my day but actually these are the days I do quite enjoy because I love this sport. So spending time at rumble coaching, even spending time training, I enjoy it, so it's not necessarily a negative. I think maybe we might be coming across like we've got no time with it, we're moaning a bit, but actually the things I do, I do because I love them. Yeah, it's just trying to do them to the highest standard. All the time just gets a bit difficult because of other commitments.
Speaker 2:How do you manage? How would you do you do it? Any of you to manage it Like, how do you manage it? Ships your. You love routine, so is that how you manage your time? Is creating a routine?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. So literally every day is on the calendar. It tells me exactly what it is. I know when I'm training and I can, and because it's a routine, I know that the time scales from what days, I can juggle around a little bit. So because I've got free time here, free time there, if I need to change it there, I can change it there. If I need to relax on that bit, I can, and it's. It's like that.
Speaker 1:When it's it gets difficult is obviously when you got like um, just to like me and Rafi, before the week starts, we like look at who's got the time to make the dinner, because obviously Rafi's a golfer, so she's training as well. So we got the double thing. So sometimes we have to sit down, talk about who's going to make the dinner because they're going to be back late because they're training. Oh, I'm going to be working out later on this day, so I'll do the cooking. But you're going to be working later on this day, so you do the cooking. So it's a bit of communication and working together to try and create a bit more time, and just having that routine is priority, which is probably why I get antsy about it. What?
Speaker 2:about when it changes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because it's like uh-oh.
Speaker 2:Replan.
Speaker 1:Replan. Don't like to replan.
Speaker 3:See, I think I wish I had more of that. I think sometimes I get stressed because of not having that system in place. Luckily, I've done it for a while now, so I've kind of learned how to juggle things. I do think me my personality, though suits a bit more routine, because I can be easy to sack things off if it's getting a bit too much. So I think having a routine would probably be more beneficial. But that's not kind of the cards I'm dealt at the minute, so it's like, well, just keep doing what I'm doing and something's working because I'm I'm doing all right, but I think it could be better.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but you don't need to have a proper system, you just need to have a little bit more planning in Mo. Maybe it's like what you're doing in the am, what you're doing in the pm. That doesn't need to be properly planned out.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think a big one actually for me is sleep as well, is like so I'll have a day off, kind of in the week, rather than having a weekend off or whatever it is. And I sometimes get into bad habits of them days because I haven't had much sleep in the week, I just won't set an alarm, but then again that's then could be a 10 hour sleep that I've had and that just eats it in loads of time. The days I do that, I always wake up feeling like shit because it's like oh, now it's like 10 in the morning and the day just feels like it goes even quicker.
Speaker 2:So we talked about consistency.
Speaker 1:I was going to give you some science, Ed. Oh go on On. Sleep, sleep, science, oh go on. Did you know that you should try and wake up at the same time every morning? Because it sorts out all your cortisone not cortisone, cortisol, Cortisol, Cortisol and it makes it. It's better for you. Can't remember why.
Speaker 3:Does it matter what time you go to bed, though?
Speaker 1:Not as much.
Speaker 2:It all needs to be consistent.
Speaker 1:Yeah, consistent, but not as much going to bed but waking up, because that's when your body starts to activate.
Speaker 3:Yeah, because that's the problem I have is, when I work late, I'll be done at like 11. Sometimes I might not settle down until later. So, then I find waking up early. Or if I was to wake up the same time every day, I'd have to wake up about half five.
Speaker 1:But then I find waking up early, or if I was to wake up the same time every day.
Speaker 2:I'd have to wake up about half five, but then doing that after not getting to bed till one, I just feel fucked. It's a sleep cycle, we're all. We're all creatures of habit. So you just habit, your body gets used to, you know, starting to relax naturally at a certain time if you create that consistency. So that's why you should be going to build a consistency in life, like you're not a shift yeah, you are a shift worker, but you're not a night worker so you can hopefully build more, more of that sleep consistency in yeah, it's definitely something I need to get better at yeah it'd give me more time so yours?
Speaker 2:yours is because you become consistent asleep. It's a small step towards more time. So yours is become consistent asleep. It's a small step towards more time. It is. It is a small step. You don't need to start building out an Excel or planning it all.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because if you sleep better, you wake up more refreshed, which gives you more time, because you get up and you don't feel groggy, so you're straight into training, perfect.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that's ships you need to. We've said this before is you're having that routine and being able to pivot, and accepting a pivot of your routine will give you more time then.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm not doing too well at that, am I? It's been what, a year on, I think you've done?
Speaker 2:well, you would have cancelled training this weekend in the past. I think so.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I reckon shiply a year ago we'd be getting messaging in the chat oh fuck, I've double booked and you could like hear the panic in the message and you'd be kicking off and no one knows what's going on.
Speaker 1:I would have cancelled the parents.
Speaker 3:And then said to us how guilty you felt, yeah yeah, no, you have got better.
Speaker 2:You've pivoted, you've correct you, you're burning. The thing is, you've got just got to be careful with those uh days, because you're completely burning the candle at both ends yeah, I think at the moment.
Speaker 1:At the moment it's a little bit more, because I've committed to doing a few things for um, nuts and that which is using up time that I usually have for other things, so burning an even bigger candle at the moment that's, that's my um, that's my downfall is is that I try to fill time.
Speaker 2:I I always, I always want my time to be filled with something and that's that's an issue, because then that creates stress and it builds up and then I get to like a point where it's just too much and I need to drop something. Yeah, that the same with like this like I mentioned, that social media for accountability corner that's gone for the last few months because there's just so much going on. Even my own social media. I find that. Then you find that you go peaks and troughs with like your own social media yeah, I massively go.
Speaker 3:I'll go through waves where I'm really on it, stories posts every day, and there'll be times where you know just life gets in the way. But I think what you need to do is, in our position, get good at just allowing them things to drop and not spending too much time thinking, oh shit, that's dropped, even with, like this podcast, because it's not our full-time job. I mean, I find it quite easy, yeah, I find it quite easy to just kind of, once it's out there, if I need to take a bit of time away from it, step back and ignore you on the group chat and give myself that time, as much as you hate it why don't you just, why don't you just tell us you're doing that?
Speaker 2:because then, because, then you won't get, because the thing is, my personality doesn't work that way, because I'll be obsessing. I'll think about it more like, all right, we need to get more hats. So we need to get more. Uh, we need to get more tops. All right, we need to build a tiktok account. Oh, actually, we could be, we could build a video, we could become vloggers. And then I'll be like mo mo, mo, mo mo. Then I don't hear from you and then I start thinking about it more yeah, see, I'm very much the opposite.
Speaker 3:It's yeah, I think I have to, to commit to something. I have to almost give myself time away from it. Same with OCR, it's like I have to. It's the one reason I always say I'm so glad I'm not in a relationship with someone in the sport, like it's so nice having Kiara away from the sport because she is like my time away where I'm like think about other things and we just have our own things and we have things in common that we like to do but they're not really ocr related and to me that's like the best thing, because then I can step out, have my time just to process things and then step back in when I feel rejuvenated I've got a question for you which might contradict everything.
Speaker 2:I feel that we I need to train more. Yeah, I always feel that. How, how do we find more time? Because I don't feel, when you look at my strava, the time we spend training, what I spend time on it isn't, it isn't enough I agree, but right, this is the hard bit.
Speaker 1:But where? Where are we going to fit it in? And how many times have you tried to up the training and then all of a sudden, you're like I've done too much training, I'm tired yeah, but isn't it good to feel like that sometimes tired, yeah, but I think this is the difference, because we're we're trying to polarize our training and periodically increase our fitness.
Speaker 1:It's very difficult to not get tired. See that, I look like we'll go back to when you said like to. You need to start running 10k now, whatever. What? Get metrics in? You mean, yeah, get the metrics. So you need to be running six miles instead of five. Oh, the, the recovery runs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the thing is, if you period, periodize your training properly and polarize it, you'll get to the level where the same amount of time running 10k is the same amount of time no, hang on a minute. Yeah, same amount of time as when you're doing less, because you've built it up right, so we should.
Speaker 3:We always feel like we should be doing more, but really we just need to get to the point where we can do more at the same time yeah, I also think most competitive athletes feel like they need to do more and sometimes maybe we don't necessarily need to do more just because of the other stresses, because if you end up doing more and you get that tiredness, it's going to start eating into other areas of your life, like your job, which you you can't really afford to be tired out because then you wouldn't have a job and then you wouldn't be able to even fund the sport. So it's's like it's a vicious cycle. But I do think maybe for myself personally, I can definitely increase training in areas I'll never lie and say that I'm a saint when it comes to training all the time. I could definitely do more. It's just what that looks like. Sometimes I don't know, because it's finding the time for it which brings us back to our podcast about time.
Speaker 2:What would you spend more time on Mo?
Speaker 3:More time on feet running-wise, but even if that's just like biking as well, engine-wise, maybe spend a bit more time doing some engine work, um, and then more time on the kind of mobility and recovery side of things as well, I don't think. I don't think it's bad, but it's just it could do with a little bit more work but wait until you get older and you've got to do more piddly stuff.
Speaker 1:The amount of stuff I have to do now compared to what I was doing when I was bloody 30, it's unreal. And this doesn't and I'm in a way, still quite young compared to some of the top athletes that we race with in the sport in their 50s and late 40s. The amount of piddly stuff that they have to do just to make it to a start line is twice as much as the piddly stuff that I have to do, which is twice as much as the piddly stuff as you have to do, mate it's crazy.
Speaker 3:I also find soon as you increase your training load, you have to increase the little things. So, it almost makes you need more time because you've upped one volume. And that's why I always sometimes feel like maybe I am doing enough training, because if I'm doing more I need to spend more time doing the other stuff. And then you look at oh well, how do I get all that time? And that's where you kind of need to be either semi-professional or professional.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm not generalizing to offend anyone, but I feel a lot of people that get injured don't respect that. That knock-on effect they. They assume I like I'm I'm not. I'm not that person. I'm not going to think that. I'm not going to think my five months, like today, I've done five miles instead of three mile recovery run. That means I need to stretch tomorrow a bit more because I've done two extra miles on feet, slow, pounding the pavement. That is gonna. It's gonna really tighten things up more than it would have done if it was three miles. So I know there's a there's a give and take with with putting more time into training.
Speaker 2:You need to spend more time recovering more time eating more time thinking about your nutrition, more time recovering um is it? Yeah, actually another thing if you train more, more time washing, that's another, especially at the moment oh, luckily though, my washing fairy is on point with that oh, they've returned oh, my washing fairy is just the best at the moment, like top marks to my washing fairy.
Speaker 1:Still haven't seen her. She's just a bit.
Speaker 3:She's done all the time. She's done, I must admit that is the one complaint living at home I get. The most is how do you create so much washing? I'm like I can't wear the same training gear twice. That just doesn't.
Speaker 1:That's just wrong try working oh, you probably do a little bit, but try working in a manual job where you are sweating and I have to wear like a harness and a heart like I one day pair of work clothes now at the moment yeah, that's what I'm like in the gym yeah, they're exactly like gym gym wear. Yeah, and because that's what I'm like in the gym.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they're exactly like gym wear yeah. And because that's what I find. When you're sweating that much as well, you have to wash it, because it does start to smell.
Speaker 1:In the winter you can get away with it. Yeah, you don't have to wash your pants.
Speaker 2:Nah, I fold them inside out, yeah.
Speaker 1:Spray them. I just go commando now. Yeah, I started doing that, but then my willy falls out at work and then I just get. Then I just get, well, out of your jeans out of your jeans out of a short short yeah, my three quarter length trousers. It just falls out so I don't have that problem. All the seagulls start attacking me. There's a maggot around what ships?
Speaker 2:if you had more time, what would you?
Speaker 1:same question to you if I had more time, I would, like mo said, I would just try and get a little bit of steady state cardio in, and I would do my ankle strength when I'm not watching the TV. I'd have a designated time to it and I'd probably cook more.
Speaker 2:Nice.
Speaker 1:Oh, hang on a minute as well, and I would spend another hour with Raph a bit better.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, you've got to say that, oh yeah.
Speaker 3:I'll also do that as well.
Speaker 2:Well done Mo. You failed that one. No, I would, I would.
Speaker 1:And then go on on then same question to you.
Speaker 2:Um, spend all the time in the world with lorna no, that doesn't count now she's watching. She's watching me, right now, every minute of every day with lorna. That's what I would if I had. No, she's gone now. Straight, warm up and cool down, that's what I'd have more time for, because once I really my body reacts to warming up well, and that's what I'd spend more time on.
Speaker 3:I'd agree with that, actually Because that takes time.
Speaker 1:I've started using the band again the small band, to just warm up the glutes and hip flexors before I start running.
Speaker 2:that's such a quick warm-up just before you start an easy run okay, I can't, I can't, I can't really tell people enough how much a good warm-up affects every single session that I do. When I do it done. I just can tell when I've done a good warm-up. I know that sounds stupid, because it's the most fundamental thing that we should be doing, but we just don't have time, we don't have time to do it it takes about 20 to 30 minutes yeah, it does.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you've not even started your hour and a half like interval session. So what's this? This is two hours instead of an hour and a half. Now, like, oh, yeah, then I've got to go home as well. Like, yeah, I've got to cool down. Don't, don't, don't cool down. Hardly ever cool down, which is bad as well, cause there's a lot of science ships. You might you might already know this cause science. Yeah, if, if you can, if you can de-stress your body and calm down to a very balanced state straight after a high intense exercise, you you actually start to really recover much quicker than you would do if you just carried on with your day and your heart rate didn't calm down. So that's why there's a good studies out there is that stretching and doing breath work and really calming down after maybe a very high intense workout is really beneficial for you.
Speaker 3:What I do want to say is that's us if we had more time. But for the people that don't have much time, the other side of the coin is just get it done, just find a way. A good example of this on Wednesday I've got a physio appointment in the morning and then I've got straight into work. So I've decided to run to my physio appointment because then I get my run in, I get my physio in and then I work and little things like that, because running is a form of commuting. If you can do it, use your set, especially if it's an easy run. It's quite easy to do. Just use it as a commute. Or if you know one day that you're not going to be able to do a run, can you do something else else, even if it's less time-wise, or just something to kind of get something done, because that's always going to be better than complete nothing. Yeah.
Speaker 2:When you're training for very specific to either a race or for a fitness goal, you can trick the body. You don't always have to spend like an hour on a hit session to to get that that um metabolic gain that you're looking for. You can trick it to doing some similar sort of workout. Maybe it could even be 20 minutes, but if you go to the right intensity, to the right level, you can get more out of 20 minutes than you can. An hour and a half, I, I think, I, I would. That's my coaching background coming out, mo. You know everyone feels yeah you're a famous coach.
Speaker 3:Yeah yeah, it's true, though, there's ways to do things when you don't have much time as well, and I think it's then working out them little things that allow you to have more time but still get things done. There is little tricks like that. You can do, like I say, commuting's a big one for me. Talking to people, it's like oh, my work's, my office is five miles away, um, oh, but I'm fortunate to have a shower at the office so you could just literally pack a bag. It's not always the nicest thing to do, because you've obviously got a shower at work, whatever, find a maybe, leave the house obviously a bit earlier and then run to work.
Speaker 3:You get your run session in as your commute. That's your drive done technically, but you've run, so you've got your miles in. Um, what I actually used to do with my 12-hour shifts. I don't do it as much anymore, but this is a good one. I'd run to work or no, sorry, cycle to work in the morning, run home the next day. I'd run to work and then cycle home. Yeah, I love that, so that way, you're not doing too much mileage running-wise.
Speaker 3:I've got about a five-hour run to my gym, so it's a nice easy. Five-hour, five miles, sorry.
Speaker 1:That's too much time, mate. Jesus Christ, you've got more things you could do with that.
Speaker 3:I'm too used to talking about time. See, no five-mile run. Well, it's five miles away, so the cycle only takes like 15 minutes, maybe 20th at most, and the run takes what for me? Half an hour ish. So it's pretty good yeah, just leave a little bit early doesn't mean you have to get up early, though, which sometimes sucks, but that's again the sacrifice you might have to make before I didn't.
Speaker 2:Before I didn't know really much about like training, training impacts and everything. I actually over trained accidentally because I was still doing my own programmed sort of ocr program and then I was cycling to work and it was like a like it was almost like five, six miles there and then back and I was I thought I'd do that to stay healthy, but then you end up actually over training. But that was almost like five, six miles there and then back and I was I thought I'd do that to stay healthy, but then you end up actually overtraining but that was nice, tried doing that with scaffolding.
Speaker 1:I was doing 20 mile, 21 miles to work on a bike scaffolding, cycling 21 miles back. And I was doing that and I was like god, I feel sick, why I tired. And then I was doing training at home. I was so over-trained.
Speaker 2:How do you want to finish this episode, because I think we're running out of time.
Speaker 1:I'll tell you what I'd like. I'd like people to just send us their time schedules and just let's just compare time and just think wow, we're not the only ones who don't have time, everybody doesn't have time well, we don't have kids yeah, we don't have kids. I mean, I've got two cats and they take up a little bit of time they're not, they are not kids. They don't talk to us that's one thing parents are.
Speaker 2:You do if you're a parent, full-time parents, and you're training mashing fair play yeah, well, and, and the best way to end this podcast is basically every listener. What are you doing listening to us for an hour? You haven't got time for this?
Speaker 1:go train unless they're doing it, training yeah oh yeah, they might be training good job that is good yeah, well done that is great
Speaker 3:optimized your time time, time, time time yeah, one thing I will say as well just to end off. Like we've kind of spoke to my with my time, like I say my shifts are all over the place and I will give you the opportunity that if you also have kind of shifty work and stuff like that and you want any advice on how to make it work, just dm me on instagram.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you want advice on setting routines, talk to shipley time. You want time, can you say time now? If you want advice or shift work and how to maximize your your time, talk to mo. If you want to advice and how to obsess about filling every minute of every day with something productive or or like that let me know I can, I can do that we are the time keepers, keepers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the time keepers accountability keepers, yeah.
Speaker 3:of time Keepers, yeah.
Speaker 2:Of time Of ACR.
Speaker 3:I'm going to start making a magazine comic.
Speaker 2:I can see, I can see the artwork for this. Now, just a big clock.
Speaker 1:Wow, I talked about my big clock earlier, didn't I? And on that note, let's cut the time.
Speaker 2:Let's finish that now. All right, cheers, guys, cheers, peeps, bye, let's cut the time. Let's finish that now. Alright, cheers, guys, cheers, peeps, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye. Thanks for watching.
