Why Is This Schedule "Crazy"?
As a working mom I'm pretty obsessed with other people's schedules and routines. So the headline Sarah Sellers and the Craziest Schedule in Running caught my eye. It's the story of the young woman who came in second in last year's Boston Marathon and also happens to work 30 hours a week a nurse anesthetist.
It is certainly unusual for someone to be an elite athlete and work near full-time hours. But is it "crazy"? The evidence that it is: She gets up at 4am to run on the days she works (she generally works 3 days a week in 10-hour shifts).
But putting aside the early wake up for a second, let's do the math. If she works 30 hours as a nurse and puts in another 40 hours of running/training that's 70 hours. I'm guessing she doesn't actually work out 40 hours, but I'm throwing in time spent getting massages, foam rolling, stretching, whatever else she needs to do to be an athlete at that level. I'm probably still over estimating, but let's go with it since, for some people, elite running is their full-time occupation.
Now, let's say she sleeps 8 hours per day, that's another 56 hours per week. Let's throw in another 21 hours per week for the stuff of life -- housework, eating, grooming, etc. That's 3 hours per day, likely more than adequate given that neither of her jobs requires the elaborate grooming that a woman with a corporate job might have and she doesn't have children. That leaves her with 21 hours per week -- 3 hours per day! -- for whatever else she wants to do. Read, knit, write, paint. You can do a lot with 3 hours per day.
Yes, the days she works at the hospital sound long. A 10-hour day is long no matter what else you are doing. But the other 4 days of the week sound -- again, to quote the Times story -- "downright relaxing." (I see that snark, NYT.) But they do! She does hard workouts on Thursday and Friday, does a long run on Saturdays and doesn't run at all on Sundays. Presumably if she found the early wake ups on Monday through Wednesday that terrible she could trade at least one of them for runs on Sundays. I'm going to trust that it works for her.
Look, the truth is that the average American watches 35 hours of TV per week. A point that Sellers hints at with this quote: “Nothing against full-time runners,” she said. “I honor what they do, but it seems like they have a lot of Netflix time." What's crazier -- continuing to build her medical career or watching 30 hours of Game of Thrones?