This post is really a follow-up to the post from a couple of weeks ago. If you haven’t read that one, you might want to do that first.
At the peak of my marathon training, I was running around 44 miles per week. The majority of this running is classified as “easy” which for me is a pace of about 10mins/mile. Whilst some runs will be faster than this, this means that I will be spending approximately 440 minutes per week running (or just under 7.5 hours).
There are 168 hours in a week. Here’s how that is broken down:
I like to get 8 hours sleep a night, or at least that’s the amount of time I like to allocate to sleep. That works out at 56 hours per week.
I’m contracted to work for 37 hours per week, but at the moment I’m often doing an extra 8 hours on a Saturday, making 45 hours per week.
My commute to work takes just over an hour each way. Some of that commuting may be replaced by running, but some days it may add extra time (travelling to the running track after work and travelling home afterwards, for example). However, assuming a standard commute of one hour twice a day for six days adds up to 12 hours per week.
And then as calculated earlier, 7.5 hours per week for running.
Adding all of that up leaves 47 hours per week which should be free, which is a lot more than I was expecting. Although I’ve not included everyday things such as eating, maintaining hygiene or household chores. This will all take a significant chunk of time too. And this leftover time is not a continuous time period, but dispersed throughout the rest of the day so it’s not all usable.
All of that is essentially to say that running currently feels like it takes up a significant portion of time. Looking at the numbers it doesn’t seem like as much time as I thought it would be, but it does all add up, particularly when taking into account the extra things like route planning beforehand and showering afterwards. But the marathon is now only 11 days away so it’ll all be over soon…