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Dev Paul: Road Warrior - Managing Travel and Triathlon Training
By Devashish Paul
8/7/2008 |
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Over the past few years, I've done six trips to Asia, a few to Europe and several throughout North America for business purposes, which takes me away from home, my family, training partners, regular diet, training equipment and routine for what amounts to multiple months per year. If I let business travel be the end of training, I'd miss a lot of training every year. So over time, I refined a system that lets it all happen. Not as good as when back home, but a reasonable stand in, delivering me back home ready to train hard, having not lost any fitness, and in some cases, even getting fitter.
One thing I learned many years ago about age group racing, is that there is something to be said about the "brute force approach" to training. What does this mean? While there are probably some magic highly optimized workouts to make you super fast, you get 98% of your actual results through day in day out consistent volume and intensity. To put this into perspective, if you are doing an Olympic tri in 2-2:20 hours, you probably get within 2-3 minutes of your "highly optimized results" but just going out there swim-bike-running regularly, doing some long days, some hard days, some easy days, eating well and resting while you can (don't quote me on this, it might be 1% of 10% or 15%, but you get the picture...).
So just going out there and piling on the training as we all know is hard enough when you are at home. Hit the road, flip time zones upside down, sit in a tin cup at 35,000 ft for 14 hours, eat in restaurants daily, attend business meetings at odd hours, become sleep deprived due to either travel schedules or insomnia from being in the wrong time zone and pretty soon, your best laid training program is out the window.
In fact, who on earth can even design a training plan when you are going to hit 4 cities in 7 days with 6 flights, over multiple time zones, eating some pretty good, but certainly not triathlon friendly food! The only "program that works" is "working with what you have" and just getting out when possible. Life just gets in the way of actually trying to apply any structure to training on the road.
Before getting into the guts of this article perhaps I can share five thoughts:
1. Train whenever you have a window of opportunity no matter how crappy you feel, no matter how terrible the facilities...some training is better than zero and you will feel better later.
2. Always stay in bed between 11 pm and 5 am in your new time zone...even if you are wide awake
3. Sleep whenever you have a window...buses, trains, taxis whatever...even if it is 15 minutes of keeping the eyes shut
4. Don't obsess about diet. Eat a bit of everything, but don't overeat. Just keep the portions small
5. Wash your hands frequently and avoid touching your face
I've found that if I can stick to the above I can:
1. Get some training in daily
2. Maximize rest
3. Enjoy local cuisine without feeling bad
4. Return home as rested as possible while not losing fitness nor getting sick
So I'm on a flight from Tokyo home to Ottawa, and thought that some of my experiences might be of use to readers out there. No doubt, there many trigeeks out there, trying to figure out how to keep up with their age group competition while at the same time, closing deals or meeting with partner companies on the other side of the world, so why not share what I have learned. It seems there are some months when a Star Alliance aircraft of some sort (Air Canada, Lufthansa, United, ANA, Asiana...) is more of a home than my real home. What I do on the road sets me up for good training when I return home!
When to train ?
On a business trip, the only "window of opportunity that I can bank on" is before breakfast. Once the morning kicks off, it is pretty well guaranteed that there will be no more training for the day unless I get another window before bed time. But even then the fatigue is high and I generally don't want to rev up my metabolism too high right before bed time in a new time zone.
Basically, the triathlete is thrown into this tradeoff between waking up early and sacrificing rest (often after a night with no sleep), or no training at all. My advice is just get up and get out the door. To make this easy, I travel with a Starbucks French press, so that I can boil water and make my OWN strong black coffee, and I travel with packs of quick oats, granola bars and sometimes even some raisins. Wake up, turn on the "boiling device" in the hotel room, brush my teeth, pour half the water in the coffee press and half in with the oats¡K.put on my running shoes, and shorts...20 min later, having eaten my "get me going small meal", I am out on the local streets. I want good coffee and I don¡¦t want to waste 15 minutes of valuable sleep or training time going down 20 floors just to spend $25 on bowl of cereal or a toast with jam...it is all about streamlining the process!
While morning is my preferred time to train, sometimes, it just does not happen. Early morning flights are big culprits that get in the way, as are early morning breakfast meetings. Even if it means getting out for 15-30 minutes of running or¡K.or if you have no trained all day and have a small window before heading to dinner or heading to bed, then use it. If you get 3x30 minutes of extra running done, that is 90 minutes of mileage that week. Certainly better than nothing!
Where do you train?
The sport of choice when on the road is running. Travel weeks automatically become "run focused" while weeks at home become swim and bike focused. Any swimming or riding on the road is a bonus. The goal is to always have enough run fitness so that when I hit the road, I can run DAILY for 40-90 minutes, without injuring myself. If and when I do have an extended period at home, there is always a week a month when I do the same, just so that I can so it again when I hit the road.
Now that we have established that running is the main workout, where do you run? Well, that is the beauty of running. The easiest thing to do is head out the front door of the hotel and just start exploring. Yes, at times, I might end up in the wrong neighbourhood, but usually it is early enough in the morning that this is a non issue. Just go left-left-right-left-right etc etc etc for 20,30,40 minutes and retrace my path...if I stumble upon a nice stretch, it might be repeated a few times and an impromptu interval set is formed...oh check this one out...looks like a 15% grade...time for some hill repeats. I got to explore cities from Munich to Miami to Hong Kong to Helsinki exactly this way. In the process, often getting an "on foot" tour of the local neighbourhoods. Sometimes you end up running in pretty horrible industrial areas, or through back alleys in Hong Kong smelling Cantonese cuisine, or through a strip mall section outside Chicago O'Hare, being pelted by sleet in January in a 30 mph wind chilled to the bone, being stuck at the airport Holiday Inn having missed a connection home.
But that's all part of exploring, while at the same time sustaining fitness and getting "day over day consistency". While I understand that this works for those of us with a sense of adventure, you can run on the hotel treadmill, or of you don't feel safe, run laps around the hotel block. This is no worse than running on a track or swimming in a pool. I remember running up and down a quiet calm road that was perhaps all of 200 m long beside a hotel in a very congested area in Beijing last year. If I ventured off this little strip of personal tarmac, I was in the way of thousands of Chinese guys riding their bikes to work. God help that city if all these guys actually start driving!
What if I can't Run?
Now, all of us can't or do not want to run daily.
There are options. Hotel gyms, while often lame can still be used for some fitness. Please keep in mind that some exercise is better than none. Some hotels have reasonable elliptical trainers, or stationary bikes on which you can sustain some good bike fitness with really short 15-20 min efforts at high wattage. I used to think that those elliptical trainers where the lamest torture devices on the planet, then I tried one and found that I could actually get a better workout on one of them than when I run...then I returned home and bought one for my home gym (OK, I know that is lame too, but I digress)!
It is better to return home having NOT packed on 5 extra pounds in the middle of race season. It is always possible to do body weight exercises such as squats, pushups and sit ups continuously for half an hour in your hotel room. Recently in Tokyo, where the hotel was charging $50 to use the gym, I just said "screw it" and took out my backpack, stuffed my laptop and electronics in, took all the beer and pop out of the mini bar...and stuffed it all in the backpack. Now, watching the latest on Obama vs McCain on CNN Asia, I proceeded to do 15 minutes of squats, step ups and lunges, with perhaps 30 lbs of extra weight in my backpack after a steady 65 minute run...no excuses, I have Ironman Canada in 3.5 weeks :). Remember, the goal is not so much to gain fitness but to return home and dive back into "regular training"...whatever you need to do to make that happen. Yes, I could have expensed that $50 gym fee, but I can't bring myself to spend that much money for a 20 minute circuit workout...makes an Ironman entry fee certainly look cheap.
Anyway, in those 20 minutes, hopefully the beer from the mini bar is not too warm¡Kfeel free to grab one and relax, but as you will see from the "eating rules below", you might not be permitted to consume all of them, and might just have to put the bulk of them back in the fridge!
Hotel Swimming Pools
Yes, they can be ultra lame, but if you do some research you can often find a hotel with a 15-20 m pool, or one close to a "real pool", but keep in mind you are restricted by local pool times. As far as I am concerned, every pool is a good pool...even if it is 10 m long. My morning is reserved for running, but if there is a pool, I will hit it for at least 15 minutes before going to sleep...I manage to "elongate the pool" by doing almost zero push off and sometimes even wearing a T shirt to increase a "10 strokes per length pool" to 11...hey that is 10%. Even if I get 4x15 minutes in the water, that's better than 0x15 minutes. When it comes to "consistent training" you don't want to be entering goose eggs in the training log...not good!
Sleep is the Key
Coming back to one of the previous points, the goal is to return home, not having lost too much fitness and ready to "hit the training hard". This means, returning home, not too exhausted and also not sick. Long business trips, bouncing from city to city, across multiple time zones is a recipe for sleep deprivation and the path to getting run down and sick, especially if your travel is right after a big training week (which invariably you are tempted to do, cause you know the training will be terrible on the road), or after a big race.
I get to test the extreme of adjusting to jet lag several times a year, flipping 12/13 time zones. My middle of night becomes the local mid afternoon. When you wake up at 3 am to go the washroom, your body recognizes it as 3 pm and wants to remain awake. Whatever you do RESIST the temptation to get up. If it is between 11 pm and 5 am in the local time zone, stay lying down in the dark. Do not start emailing your family, or colleagues, or friends or pick a battle on a triathlon forum, cause everyone is awake...you need to be sleeping, or at least resting.
If you have to travel in "sardine" economy class, get some ear plugs or noise cancellation headphones and one of those dumb looking foam pillows that holds up your neck. Try to sleep or get shut eye in the time frame which is "night" in the time zone you are heading to, or if nothing else, do keep the eyes shut. This does wonders...same in taxis, or trains. Each time you have an opportunity to close the eyes, you are cumulatively adding to your rest on the trip. Just like sleep deprivation is cumulative, the same can be said for rest...8x15 minute bouts of rest, still add up to 2 more hours of rest and the effect of these small naps (even if you don't actually fall asleep) is still positive.
Diet
I once read a really great piece of advice from Greg Lemond. When asked if he followed a special diet, he answered, "I race for three weeks around France. I sleep in a different bed every day, and I get different food every day. I have to eat and race off what they give mw". If you are a businessman-triathlete, this sums it up quite well. While we aren't racing in the Tour de France, we might in fact, be sleeping in a different city every day, eating airline and restaurant food and dining with customers. It is pretty easy to gain weight in a hurry. My friend Brian Stover, who coaches triathletes out of Tuscon Arizona, suggested a good approach. It goes something like this:
1. Eat as much as you want for breakfast
2. Eat as much as you want for lunch as long as it fits on one a plate
3. Eat as much for dinner as long as it fits on one small plate :)
Basically what he is getting at is to eat the calories early when they are going to fuel a solid metabolism for the day and after that, don't go nuts...eat everything, just keep the portions reasonable. Again, the goal is to return home, not feeling completely out of shape and ready to "hit the training hard". Sometimes gaining a few lbs might not be such a bad thing for those of us on the lean end and enjoying a variety of diet compared to the "at home diet" can often a variety of micro or macronutrients that we often do not get. Bottom line, is that you can't control what you get, but you CAN control the amount you put in the your mouth, so enjoy the local cuisine, don't stress out and go with the flow!
What to Pack
Finally, ALWAYS travel with your running shoes, running gear, bathing suit, and goggles in your carry on. If you are travelling to a race, make sure your bike shoes and pedals are in the carry on too :). Personally if my business trip is 2 weeks or less, I can manage with a carry on for everything, leveraging hand washing my workout gear after daily workouts and hotel laundry service for business / other clothing. Nothing worse than lost luggage! Also keep in mind that running shoes usually use up more space in a carry on than dress shoes, so if you don't have to be in a suit upon arrival (or if you don't care if you are seen with a business suit and running shoes), then wear the running shoes on your feet and throw the leather ones in the carry on! Now please don't show up at the gate wearing your running shoes, aero helmet and goggles in an effort to save space in the carry on. :)
OK, that's all I have. Remember, the goal is to stay consistent, not get injured, nor sick and return home from that trip ready to hit the training hard. Your training buddies were gaining fitness on you while you were away and will no doubt be ready to put down the hammer hard...but your legs should be tapered and ready for the challenge!
About the Author: Devashish Paul is a masters triathlete based in Ottawa Canada, who like many of us, has to travel frequently for work. He just did Ironman Lake Placid and has Ironman Canada in a few weeks, so he used a recent business trip to Korea and Japan as his "run focus" 93K week and will hit the bike and swimming hard when he gets home before tapering again for IMC. He thought that sharing some road warrior experiences might be useful for those of you fearing a disruption in your training from business travel...don't let it get in the way. It can be done!
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