Work Getting In The Way

A couple of thoughts regarding workouts on the road. If the hotel has a workout room you can usually find a treadmill and a cycling machine. If not, just bring your running gear and get a quick run in before or after work. Get a set of stretch cords and you'll be able to work on the pull for your swimming...keep your elbow high and your wrist/hand flat when your pulling. Google Shelia Taormina for the proper stretch cord practice technique. Good luck...it's hard maintaining fitness when you're bouncing around like that...just have to be a little creative.

Not in nearly as extreme a situation as you, though my work definitely throws some challenges at me. I teach at an international school in Vietnam. Regular hours, but I do deal with long hours on my feet, starting work early, being exposed to lots of cold and flu germs, living in a developing country with crazy traffic, and often difficult weather. My $0.02:

1. Do what you can. Recognize that your situation is not going to be ideal (as in your summer job, or my summers when I can essentially train and recover full-time if I want). But anything positive you can do training-wise or diet-wise is better than giving up and doing nothing. Compare what you are able to do each day to a baseline of doing nothing, not what you can do in an ideal situation. In reality, very few people have an ideal situation.

I had the interesting experience recently of meeting a woman who won the Ironman 70.3 championships a few age groups up from mine, and her husband. She's retired, lives in a warm climate, has a supportive, athletic spouse who can help her out with logistics, plenty of money for training and travel, a great club to ride and run with and safe places to do that, and can pretty much spend her days training and recovering. That's not my life. Even if I had her talent (I probably don't; last year I had a good year and was ranked in the top 20 in my AG in the world, but nowhere close to #1; this year sucked for a variety of reasons), I don't have those advantages and probably never will. Without them (and probably with them), I'm not going to be her caliber of athlete. I have to accept that, and do what I can with what I have. That is true for most of us.

2. Same for diet. There are many kinds of healthy diets; for most people, vegetarian or plant-based, or even with some meat or fish, is probably fine. Do your best, and make your peace with that. It's better to do a pretty good job consistently than give up because you can't be "perfect". Know your challenges (meals when traveling? snacks? breakfasts?) and try to carry some foods with you to deal with those, rather than depend on what's available in a store, restaurant, work site, etc.

3. I'm not sure about online programs. With a silver or gold BT membership, I believe you can customize the plans available on this site by moving workouts around to different days, etc. I have done that in the past. But if you have serious health or competitive goals, you might consider working with an actual human coach whom you can familiarize with your needs and training situation. This is one of the reasons I decided to get a live coach rather than use online plans--I was having difficulty adapting them to both my strengths and weaknesses as an athlete, and my situation living in a developing country where times and facilities for training can be quite limited.

Edited by Hot Runner 2017-09-29 10:30 PM