Chasing the Work-life Balance

Although this was the most prestigious event that I had been selected to compete at, the moments before the race were much like any other. I stood shoulder to shoulder with my teammates and competitors, shoes already covered in thick mud, and enjoying the final moments of calm before the gun went off.

The course comprised of six 1-mile laps around the park under Brussels Atomium statue. Every inch of the perimeter was lined with spectators armed with cow bells, megaphones, and homemade signs to cheer us round. Thirty-five minutes of gruelling running later, we re-grouped as a team just beyond the finish line. All six of us had finished inside the top twenty, seeing us not only come away with a team gold but also put together the best performance by a GB team in the history of the event. It really was a day to remember.

Two weekends previous, in a breakthrough race, I had snuck into the team at the trial in Liverpool. I had started off conservatively and worked my way through the field, moving into a qualifying position in the last mile. Of the selected team, I was the only one who hadn’t represented Great Britain before and, bar one other postgraduate student, the only one not on a professional contract. In a sport like cross country, 25 is quite old to be making a team for the first time. Due to the time demands of training at an elite level, unless you can consolidate junior success into securing a sponsor that allows you to pursue athletics full-time, very few people manage to remain competitive.

I had experienced this acutely in the year I spent working for a management consultancy between finishing my undergraduate degree and returning to start my PhD in 2021. Any training I wanted to do had to be done first thing in the morning due to unpredictable finishing times and this odd schedule mostly kept me away from training with others. When I was running, I was often exhausted, unable to hit the splits outlined by my coach and I found myself picking up small injuries that I struggled to shift. My experiences over this year quickly led me towards applying for a PhD.

My desire to start a PhD was motivated by two key factors. The first was academic interest into questions of how we balance work with life, how many hours each week we should work, and how the outcomes of these relate to our wellbeing. For my MPhil thesis I had touched on these topics, but following my experiences in the private sector, I felt they warranted further enquiry. The second was that I recognised the PhD would better support my own wellbeing; providing me with high levels of autonomy, opportunities to use my skills, and discretion over the way I structured my time.

Over the last three years, I have seen my academic and athletic careers flourish together. I’ve had the pleasure of working as part of a research team on the global four-day week pilots, presented the findings of my own research into working time reduction at conferences, and recently delivered a short lecture series in the Sociology Department on critically evaluating the role of paid employment within contemporary society. On the running side, I’ve seen year-on-year improvements, becoming a regular feature of international teams and opening up possibilities to pursue running full-time once I finish my PhD.

That isn’t to say that everything over the last few years has been simple. While managing my time may be less challenging than previously, correctly managing my energy remains an exercise in continuous negotiation. Recently, my partner described me as “intentionally boring”, a slightly tongue-in-cheek characterisation, but perhaps not an unfair one. Time before and after work spent training and weekends spent away competing tend not to leave much surplus for seeing friends and family. Rather than social commitments, spare time I do have tends to be put towards rest – that or trying to address the ever-growing pile of laundry I seem to generate.

By Ms Niamh Bridson Hubbard (2016), Bye-Fellow

This article was first published in Magdalene Matters Spring/Summer 2022 Issue 54.