The Athlete Who Takes 30 Minutes to Get Out the Door
How to remove the friction that kills sessions before they begin
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Andrew has been one of my athletes for years.
He always comes back to this line:
“If it takes you 30 minutes to get out the door, you’re never going to make it in endurance.”
It was a one off comment on a team call three years ago.
But it stuck.
The session you’re most likely to skip isn’t the one that’s too hard.
It’s the one where you can’t find your HR strap, your watch is dead, your bottles are still dirty from Saturday, and you have no clean socks.
And by the time you’ve sorted it all out - the window is gone.
That’s what this post is about.
The real problem isn’t time.
I was recently talking to an athlete who’d been struggling with consistency.
Busy season of work. 3 kids. His wife was traveling.
He wasn’t training at all.
On our call, he said something that surprised me:
“I know I have the time. Saying I don’t would just be an excuse.”
He was stuck in a painful no man’s land.
Not under self-deception that he can’t make it work.
But also not making it work.
When I dug in, the pattern was clear.
He’d go to bed with a vague idea of training in the morning. But he’d wake up with more clarity on whatever business problem needed solving.
And a vague training plan is no match for a concrete work problem.
So he’d default to his computer. Every time.
The intention was there. The decision wasn’t.
