How to Manage Family and Training

Please don't look at my training log as I haven't been healthy enough to train for about two weeks. 

So, when healthy enough, as it was mentioned, become friends with the early morning moonlight (if you run outside in the winter), or run/trainer ride after your daughter goes to bed.

Our son was one last winter and I lived on the trainer after he was down for the night.  Wife has a busier work schedule than mine and gets home late, so feed and play with the boy, he goes to sleep by 7:30p, do about 30-45 minutes of house chores, then hop on the trainer for 30-90 minute ride.  Some nights after the wife gets home, I don't get out for a run until about 9 or 9:30. 

Swimming is generally a morning workout before heading to work (on a day when my wife takes our son to daycare).  So that means the night before I prep the diaper bad with bottles and get what she needs ready.  (by helping her in those small ways, I think it's easier for her to support me by kicking me out of the house for run...or rides in the summer).

As for time flying by with your kids.  Yeah it will.  I think we blinked and our son will be two on Monday.  Also, realize that it's not about quantity time.  It's quality.  And you will be setting a good example for your child as she gets older.  When she's old enough she may even want to ride with you while you run.

If can be done and you can work it in.

Always feel free to send a PM if you have questions or need a nudge.

Ty

Tommy,
There are no hard and fast rules for how to incorporate both family time and workout time.  I don't know how old your daughter is, but my oldest is 11, and youngest is 16 months.  What follows is some of my plans.... methods for handling the interaction.

1. Early morning or Late Night - I personally am NOT an early bird, so I will run/bike after my kids are in bed.  That does mean there are a LOT of nights that I am running after dark.  This can be pretty hard since you will not want to eat prior to working out (well for me a hard workout an hour after eating will result in needing to eat again and cleaning up the puke.)

2.  Weekends - Long runs on a weekend, I have a child or 2 grab their bikes and be my water boy/girl.  We also own a tandem (well 2) so I will do a long ride including a child.  These are not always "fast rides" but they are (Time in the Saddle).  I'll do a 30-40 mile ride out to lunch and back.  The kids generally like doing this, and it is good time.  If your daughter is under 4 you can purchase a bugger (trailer) and during nap time take her for a spin.  That will work 2 things together as well, your WIFE will love having the time as well.

3.  Swimming - a little harder for younger kids, but my YMCA has lap lanes open nearly all the time.  So I will race my kids in laps.  I need to swim a 200, I'll race my son 150 to 200.  I need to swim a 500, swim 350 and race the final 150 to 150-100... depending on which child I am swimming.

4.  Trainers and Treadmills - I own several fluid trainers, since we are avid bikers (biking vacations for the 3 of the last 4 years.)  So I get them on their bikes and we ride together on the trainers.

I am sure there are other things I have done.  Invent ways and times to work out with your kids... jogging strollers, run while they roller blade.

I personally have elected to put off doing longer (HIM, IM) races until after my kids are older.  I have a LONG commute (45 min one way) and work fairly long hours (45-50 a week.)  so balancing between the workouts and family is a tough act.  I have thought about moving, but housing prices are reasonable where I live, and not so much where I work.  You don't say if you are only hoping to finish your HIM or place high on the AG scale.

Good luck.

Somebody on the board (hangloose, I think?) put it best, I think, which is, "you need to train on your time, not your family's time." That means different things to different people. For me, it means training at night, after my son's asleep or on weekends when he naps or is out with my wife, for others it means training at 4:30am.  And sometimes it means missing workouts because of obligations that I have to the family.  So be it.  I don't think there's any reason why, with a reasonable amount of dedication, you couldn't find ample time to train for an Oly without burdening your family at all.  I think that a HIM might be a little trickier to negotiate, especially with a new baby, but it's certainly not impossible, especially if your goal is just to finish the race and not to win your AG.  At this point, it's as much about supporting your wife as it is about being there for your daughter, so you have to decide together where the line between your time and your family's time is.

My 2 cents.  

My $.02:  Family first.  I am very new to this training for a triathlon thing (about 3 weeks now) and also new to this daddy thing (1 year now).  But I know that for me there is nothing more important than my time with my son and my wife.  So what I have done is forced myself to become a morning person.  I work 7-5 Tuesday - Saturday so I now get up at 4:30am and am in the pool at the local gym by 5:15.  Is it hard? Hell yeah.  But is it worth it?  H-E-L-L yeah!  I get to hang with my boy from the time I get home (most nights) at about 5:45 until he goes to sleep at about 8:30.  I then get to hang with my wife (when she's not working) until about 10:30.  I get about 6 hours of sleep a night, not optimal but enough.  In the end I'm not taking much time away from my "family time" yet I still feel like I am training enough for my goals in triathlon.  As far as the HIM, I have no idea.  Like I said I'm new to this, besides I'm only going for a sprint.

Best of luck with whatever you do and congratulations on your baby girl, being a dad (or a mom) is the best thing I know of.

It's already been stated, but I'll re-iterate that you can certainly get a LOT of training in without impacting your family during the early morning hours. 

Since no one answered this, I will...YES!  I did a HIM with perhaps occasional lunch swims, and some shorter bricks in the mornings, but otherwise one sport/day.  I didn't do exceptionally well, but I survived and had fun.

I missed this question as well.  Did my first HIM with primarily all AM training and only 3 or 4 workouts (primarily long rides) that cut into family time.  Just tack on a run with swim or etc, etc.

I have an 8 year old, 6 year old and 2 year old and I did an HIM last summer, so here is what I can tell you.

The morning is your friend (as others have opined).  I can't make the night time thing work because from the minute I get home until about 8:30 I'm chasing the kiddies around.  Then I clean up the kitchen from dinner and on a good night I am free and clear around 9:00 but it usually seems later.  Well, then it's go train or hang with your wife who hasn't had an adult conversation all day long...you get the point.  If I take the 5:40 a.m. train I get to my health club by 6:30, then I can squeek in two workouts and get to work close to 8:30.

Be realistic.  Don't think you can do something like this and think there is NO impact.  There will be some, but you can minimize it.  Talk about it with your wife and make trade-offs.  One of the hardest things about committing when you have a family is your workouts are hard work but this is your free time.  I can't tell you how many times I said no to friends that wanted me to do something last summer.  When the season was over my wife went on 2 girls weekends which I encouraged her to do.

Have an off day.  Look at my training calendar from May through July.  This is when I was training the hardest.  There are almost NO Saturday workouts.  This was difficult because it put more emphasis on the weekday mornings but it meant that from Friday night when I got home until Monday morning the only workout I did was a long workout early Sunday morning.  I always tried to time that so I was home in time for 9:30 mass.  Back-up the time and yes I was riding before 5:00 a.m. some mornings.

The end result was that my wife still found it a little hard, but I don't think my kids were affected in a big way at all.  We made race days family events and they really enjoyed those.  In fact, when I went to my 6 year-old's parent teacher conference and I looked at here writing log it started with a bunch of stories about attending my triathlons.  That was cool.

Having done the HIM, I plan to back off for a year now and let the youngest get a little older.  Hopefully, I will be able to do the longer distances again starting in '08. 

Hope this helps.

It can be done. I've got a 4yr old and a 5 month old and I've been able to train almost everyday. Like others have stated, become friends with either the morning or night. I also use my lunch hour to put in swim time.

Couple thoughts to add:

1. Taking care of yourself and your fitness is not selfish!  It is your responsibilty as a Parent to make sure you are alive and healthy to raise your kids and help with the grandkids.  
2. That being said 10+ hours a week probably is a bit selfish because you only need an hour a day to stay in great shape.   Pick shorter races if training becomes a conflict.  You can rock a sprint or olympic on an hour of training a day. 
3. Be realistic.  As others mentioned, you probably can't work full time, raise a family, sleep and workout 20 hours a week for a big race.  
4. Decide what your priorities are so you know what to skip when you have a "family-first" conflict.  This winter I am focusing on swim and run, so I use my bike day to make up  if I have to miss a high priority workout. 
5. Give up your other time-wasters.   No time for TV or videogames anymore!
6. Workout on your way to or from work and on your lunch.   If you can find somewhere on the way to or close to work, it doesn't take any extra travel time to workout.   Sometimes just drving to and from the gym can take 30mins a day!  

from the department of redundancy department: 

oh-dark-thirty is your friend...

Here's the quote I like that someone mentioned earlier:

Train on your time, not your family’s: basically, if you're a busy family person, the sun is up and you're not training then you're either sleeping (which is fine) or you've shifted your training to your family's time. -BT article by Rich Strauss.

obviously it is skewed toward morning time but applying it to training at night may work for you too.  I have plans to do a HIM this year and an IM next year.  I hope to do about 80-90% of the training without infringing any more than I do now on family time.  I don't know if this is doable or not, but I'm giving it a shot.

There are ways to make the training time pay off for your family too.  Example:  I go out early to train but I also pick up donuts as a treat for the kids on the weekend so they benefit from me being up early.  Try to be creative.  As your kid(s) get older if you can take them along if can give your wife some alone time.  Our gym has a great day care for that.  Sometimes I don't get to train much if I'm taking the older kids into the pool with me but it is still a worthwhile trip.  They really love going to the gym because of the things they get to do there.

FInd a gym with Day Care.

It's not the optimum type of training, but I have to believe that running on treadmill is better than no running at all, swimming in gym pool, spin classes, yoga classes and trainer at home, has allowed me to kill multiple birds with one stone.  I get my workouts in, usually when wife is working, son (2 year old) gets socialization skills and on weekends wife gets much needed/deserved "alone" time.  I'm sure I'll be attacked for the alone time thing, but it is important.  As seen below, son also helps with upper body training:

Kind of the same way I manage the time.  I spend "my" money, not my family's.  I've made it clear to everyone that tri-related stuff is what I want for xmas/birthday gifts, and most of the stuff I've gotten has been from presents.  I set aside money from my weekly personal budget to spend on other stuff. I umpired in a local softball league in return for a free gym membership.  I try to limit myself to smaller, local races that won't cost much in terms of entry fees or travel. The one exception is LoneStar, but since my parents live in Galveston, they're so excited to have their grandson visit them that they're gladly paying part of the costs, and we're extending it into a long weekend with them. 

• Help get the 6 yr old up and to school 2-3 times a week
• Keep at least 3 nights per week workout free
• The weekends are about the family - no workouts that don't involve the kids (bike trailer, jogging stroller) while they are awake.