Fat Man Running: On The Road Again
by Jerkwheat on Jan 31, 2012 12:21 PM PST
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PrintJust when I think I'm hitting a groove, something stupid comes along and knocks me right out of it. There I was, solidly into my third week (and my first "serious" week), when something comes up out of the blue that had been on my schedule for months. I had to leave town for a few days for a wedding reception. Stupid sexy travel.
For me, there's not much worse than trying to maintain some kind of workout routine while traveling. Bless those of you who can get down to the hotel gym and knock out your hour on the elliptical or whatever it is you do down there in that cramped converted meeting room that smells of missed sales quotas and too much family time. I have a bad enough history with sticking to my routine (and thus making it an actual routine) without the challenge of being out of my comfort zone at the Airport Hilton.
After starting my week off with two really great runs - at least great by my standard - I found myself on a plane to Boston and without a hotel gym to rely on. We had a jam packed schedule and we did the best we could to fit in something active over the course of the weekend. My standard running/activities for the week consists of two timed runs, one long walk, and one distance run. I knocked out my timed runs earlier in the week, and I knew it would be damn near impossible to get both my long walk and distance run in - we settled for a long walk. Unfortunately, there was also a brewery tour in the middle of that long walk. So, the benefits of a brisk three mile plus walk around the Boston harborfront were likely negated by my embrace of Harpoon's offer to keep me full of beers to try. Wamp wamp. Live and learn, right?
The siren song of travel is once again staring me down next week, and I'm trying to figure out what time I'll be able to exercise and what kind of running is available for me around my hotel. This is work travel and my days are generally tightly scheduled from early in the morning to well into the evening. I'll be in the delightful burg of Orlando's convention center for 5 days and 4 nights, three of which are my normal workout days, so if any of you know of a safe place to run around on International Drive that isn't the hotel treadmill, do pass it along below. I'm also obviously really interested in hearing what your routine is when you're on the road for work or pleasure.
I've got a planned 25 minute run tonight to get this week started off right. Let's get at it.
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Bawb Seger
Says get runnin.
So does Kerouac.
'There's nothing that cleanses your soul like getting the hell kicked out of you.' - Wayne Woodrow Hayes
I’ve always tried to squeeze some runs in while on business travel. Sometimes it’s great (downtown Minneapolis), sometimes it’s boring but good running (a big corporate park area on the outskirts of Chicago), but most of the time it sucks — hotel is right off a busy highway or access road and I settle for the dreadmill as a last resort.
I have some good luck w/the Route-finding tool at usatf.org
http://www.usatf.org/routes/search/index_advanced.asp
If nothing else, it might give you a sense of where is a good running area nearby, even if you don’t use one of the routes that someone’s mapped.
I got bunch of hits just putting in “International Drive” so you might at least be able to use one as a starting point or maybe even find one starting from your hotel.
Good luck!
Mapmyrun and Runkeeper both have huge searchable databases of runs
You can search by address to see what’s near your hotel. I use runkeeper to track and catalog my runs, so I’m more familiar with it, but I think mapmyrun has more routes and the search interface is a bit more intuitive IMO. A couple quick tips: when you search routes, mapmyrun sometimes automatically set the distance to “at least” 3 miles— if you set it lower, to .5 miles, you’ll get many more results. Also, if you want to see what’s available at different search radii, you can set the map on the view you want to examine then click “search this map location” in the top left corner.
The few times I have traveled since taking up running, I’ve ended up doing late night runs on the hotel dreadmill (I am SO stealing that from Brian S.) It sucks, but on the first trip I was just too busy to fit it in any other time, and the second was to Knoxville in late July when it was still 100 degrees at sunset. Personally I think any workout you can get in while out of town should count double, since it’s such a pain in the tuchus.
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