So a lot of my Instagram posts are tagged with #trainwhereyouwork
I work for an international exhibition tech company which takes us to lots of different cities. Amazing you might think, but actually it’s not all that great. Don’t get me wrong, I love to travel and love seeing new places, it’s definitely a perk of the job, but it does make training difficult.
I can always pack my trainers and typically my swimmers too. But hotel pools aren’t normally designed for lap swimming. I remember one a month or so ago that was probably about 15 metres in diameter and I must have swam about 100 laps in a circle. Great for practicing turning around buoys, but not so much for skill or distance training.
And my bike? Forget about it… Trying to get my bike boxed up and flown on short trips is a nono or likewise, even if I go into the city for a few days, it’s not really practical to get my bike on the trains / underground, so I think that part of my training suffers the most.
The running is great actually. Normally I can sneak in a 5-10km route from the hotel, typically late at night when the work is done and actually it’s good practice for feeling absolutely knackered, similar to following the swim / bike of the tri! And it’s great to see new cities come to life after hours!
As an example, this week, one afternoon I was playing in a charity footvolley match for Action4Kids in the middle of Canary Wharf. Great fun, great for charity and a great work out!
The next day was an industry cricket tournament, which involved a lot of sitting around in the sun chatting to people and having a generally pretty good day.
Tomorrow I hear you ask? Well I’m currently on a train to Birmingham to present at a conference, so hotel pool it is tonight followed by a run around the venue tomorrow morning!
It’s not all beach days or sitting in the sun though. This is a good week! It’s more often than not stuck at some stuffy exhibition centre not really close to anything interesting!
My point? It’s hard to get all the gym work in or the training hours that you really want to. It’s tough when you get home knackered from the work and what training you can fit in, but if you really want to cross that finish line, you have to fit in the leg work somehow.
According to comments I’ve received, there are a lot of people in a similar situation to me, so my advice? Do what you can. #trainwhereyouwork and last of all… Try to enjoy it 😉