There is never enough time. Outside of eating, sleeping, cooking, cleaning, personal hygiene, socializing, walking the dog, quality time with the boyfriend, and a Monday to Friday 8-4 job, I’m left with few precious hours to train. Sometimes I look at my training schedule and wonder how it will all fit into my day. In fact I find it challenging from week to week to properly fit it all in without overdoing it or missing something. Today was a prime example of trying to do too much at once. I was scheduled for a two-hour endurance ride and a form practice swim lesson at 7pm. Waking up at 430am to get in nutrition, stretching, the ride, a shower, and travel to work, seemed a little unreasonable, so I figured I’d make a mad dash home at 4pm, hop on the trainer, then rush off to my swim class at 630; totally doable. Cue 415 and I’m flailing through the front door, scrambling into my bike shorts, filling up water bottles, and grabbing TV remotes (trust me, you need TV for an endurance ride on the trainer). I finally got properly seated in the saddle and I had a Gatorade in one hand and two remotes in the other, surfing for the hockey game. At this point I was still frantically settling myself in for a long ride, and as I reached down to the coffee table, mid cycle, for my water bottle cap, the law of gravity embraced my large off-balanced body and, wham!  I had the trainer and bike on its side and on top of me, my body slammed up against the side of the table with a handlebar jammed into the top of my thigh. In the moment, horrendous curse words flew from my mouth and rage, panic and frustration welled up inside of me. I learn a valuable lesson today about training and about being reasonable. My training schedules are automatically generated for me based off my goals. It doesn’t take into account eating, cooking, sleeping, my boyfriend, or life in general. It just demands hours and mileage. But as an age group triathlete who will probably never grace the podium, I have to be realistic with my goals. I want to get better and I want a challenge, yet I still need to have time for everything else. What I learned is that training needs to fit your life, and sometimes it’s OK to miss a workout, or to take an extra day off. The top age groupers may believe their life revolves around the sport, but for me, until this sport will pay my bills, I will be left scrambling for time to fit it in. It will be a delicate balance, but frantically rushing from one thing to the next and falling on top of coffee tables seems like a bit much to me.