We’re a family of many hats. First, and foremost, we’re a military family (Mike is a Senior Chief in the US Coast Guard). We’re also a triathlete family. Sometimes the former makes it hard to be the latter. Mike has been “geo‐bachelor” since 2015, which means he is stationed away from home. Since our family time is limited to the weekends, we try our best not to compromise it with training. Sometimes that means turning training INTO family time.

Date nights are hard to come by for most parents, but especially hard when you live apart. Mike and Maddie miss each other pretty desperately during the week, so it feels selfish to ask for alone time with him. So, we multitask and combine date night with training or recovery! That can mean anything from swim dates at the pool or getting his‐and‐her back crackings at the chiropractor. It seems silly, but it really is special getting to share our hobbies with each other.

 
We also try to involve Maddie in our training as much as we can. We will take her to the lake with us and take turns open water swimming. I’ll take her to the track with me for my speed work and run my recovery intervals with her. A lot of the times, it’ll just be her hanging out with us as we’re training at home.

 
We are often asked, “How do you do it?!” This is how we try to fit it all in. It’s not ideal or perfect, but as the saying goes “strive for progress, not perfection.” We try our best to make time for it all and hope that the adrenaline on race day makes up for anything that might be lacking during training!

Written by Susan Oyler, Siren Luminary 

Follow Susan on Instagram! @suchosoft