Finding time and skipping sleep

This morning the alarm awoke me at the early hour of 02:35 and it was time to make a coffee and hit the road. It’s reaching the end of the 2017 triathlon season but there’s still a few races left that I registered for some time back  – the Kingscliff Triathlon (today) and the Luke Harrop Memorial on the GC (2 weeks). The daylight savings difference means an even earlier than normal start and a few hours less sleep than is probably ideal!

On the drive I had the time to think about how busy life is and how much you can fit into a weekend (or week really). A household with two professional careers, two young kids, two busy hobbies/sports, an acreage property, MBA studies, a longer than normal commute, volunteer commitments and work travel makes for a challenging balancing act. It basically means no sleeping in beyond 6am (although with a daily alarm of 4:50 the 6:00 alarm IS a sleep in) and getting by on 5-6 hours sleep a night.

Then it’s a question of balance, keeping moving and organisation. There are plenty of hours in the day if you want to make the most of them. Fitness can easily be the first to go and requires a focused effort – this last week I’ve been running twice after uni classes (and even at 9pm Brisbane is really hot / humid!), some early morning sessions on the home cycle-trainer with Zwift (an amazing innovation), a 5:30am class at the gym, a 5am running group on Saturday, and now the 2:35am alarm for a 6:48am triathlon (7:48 down here in NSW).

The benefits are you get to enjoy beautiful mornings like this one and get the blog updates done on the beachfront while the sun rises over the ocean.

Anyway, it’s an hour until my race so it’s off to kit-up, warm-up and get another Kingscliff Tri under the belt.

Intentionality: why do we do what we do?

The question of what we were hoping to achieve from the Oxfam Trailwalker / Adaptive Leadership Unit was posed in our Intentionality class on Thursday evening. It highlighted that I hadn’t given this issue deep thought and it reminded me that we need to constantly be reflective of what we’re doing, why we’re doing it and whether it gets us closer to our end goal (if we even have one).

In our first class presentation one of the quotes we used was the oft-repeated statement by Simon Sinek from his great book ‘Start with why’ (if you haven’t read it or heard of Simon you absolutely have to watch his TED talk which is one of the Top 10 TED talks with over 31M views):

“People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” – Simon Sinek

In the busy-ness of life we can easily cruise through and not stop regularly enough to make sure we have intentionality and actively plan our lives. It’s hard to believe it’s already the end of March in 2017, and if we’re not careful the days and months will continue to blur by and we will still be standing in the same spot as we are now.

Hell, if John Farnham is also telling us – we really need to listen.

 “We have the chance, to turn the pages over
We can write what we want to write” – John Farnham, You’re The Voice

Finding time to train

One of the major challenges with any sort of endurance event is finding the time to train. The days, weeks and eventually months tick by with an alarming pace and suddenly it’s game day and you’re not as ready as you intended to be.

I see two major mitigations to this issue:

1. A training plan – one of the great aspects of doing the Oxfam Trailwalker within the QUT MBA program is the focus on an structured pedagogy, and ensuing focus on ensuring we are all approaching the activity with structure and planning; and
2. Fitting it in wherever is possible – last night I did my first post MBA class run around South Bank and out to Toowong. It was a beautiful time of the day for a run, was well lit and felt completely safe.

The next challenge will be finding the time to train together as a team – not a simple task when you multiply the time constraints of four individuals each leading busy work, family and study lives.

Preparing for a 55km walk in the bush

I remember crossing the line in the GC Kokoda Challenge last year and swearing “never again” – a resolution I’d made somewhere during the 32 hours in the bush, walking through rain showers, mud, creeks and the dark night of the Canungra Army Lands. I think deep down I knew it was a lie and it wouldn’t be too long before I readied myself again for a tortuous event like the GCKC.

Efforts to draw together a team for 2017 to have a proper crack at a sub-20 hour effort were hampered by injuries and illness. As February 2017 rolled around, and with about 5 months to the start line, it was time to make a call about a 2017 campaign – and it definitely wasn’t looking positive (spoiler – we pulled the pin and will focus on 2018). Fortunately, QUT Graduate School of Business offered a way to scratch that itch when they had announced in late 2016 the intent to offer an Adaptive Leadership unit that involved the completion of the 55km Oxfam Trailwalker. So not all was lost!

After a few stumbles in pulling together the requisite team of 4 (unit swaps and work travel took out 2 of the team before we even nominated), some latitude from the QUT MBA team to let us draw in a not-QUT ‘friend’, and some agonising over a creative team name we enrolled into the Oxfam Trailwalker under the moniker ‘these suits are made for walkin’ and committed ourselves to a 55km walk in the bush.

So, now it’s time to get serious about training – the next 13 weeks will involve trails, strength condition, cross-training (lots of Zwift), nutrition and logistics, as well as a few assignments along the way (you don’t get 12 CP of your QUT MBA just by walking 55km).

Click here to donate to our team or follow our progress – and help us tackle poverty!!