How Graham Cooper “Squeezes the Slop Out of Life”
January 28th, 2009, 1 comment
Ultramarathoner and Ironman triathlete Graham Cooper is a 38-year-old father of two who lives in the Bay Area and holds down a full-time job 500 miles away in San Diego. His athletic accomplishments are impressive enough, but it's his ability to find the time to train between commuting to work during the week and being a weekend dad that makes you think he must be a robot who doesn't sleep. Turns out he's not; he's just ruthlessly disciplined about cutting out every unnecessary activity out of his day in order to log his training miles. Competitor magazine reports:
When Cooper is in serious training mode, a few luxuries fall by the wayside.
"I don't watch TV. I don't socialize much. I don't read as much as I'd like. I don't do long lunches and I don't drink. When I'm training, I get about six hours of sleep a night. When you're getting up at 4:30 or 5:00 and starting your day with a workout, you get a lot done."
Cooper starts from a thesis that most of us have an inefficiency in the system. The key, he says, "is to squeeze as much of the slop out of our lives as we can."
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