Thursday, August 19, 2010

Everything Counts

I need to re-remind myself of that.  I had an awful week in terms of diet and training.

Business travel is not as glamorous as some people think. There is no glamor in being prodded onto a metal tube like cattle.  There is no glamor in conducting business on a cell phone surrounded by strangers who may be listening to your conversation and noisy loudspeakers blaring gate change and TSA announcements. There is no glamor in cancelled flights and running from gate to gate trying to get the next flight to your destination.  There is no glamor in waiting in line and waiting on hold at the same time just to see which queue is shorter to re-book a flight.  There is no glamor in flying during dinner hours and landing after all the restaurants have closed and your options are a 24-hour drive-thru grease bomb or a vending machine.

In spite of all of that, I don't really mind business travel except for one thing.  You see, while I'm actually in the air or on the customer site, nobody is doing my job.  If someone would take care of my daily duties while I travel (and if my family could accompany me on every trip), I'd love it.  So that's what I do in the evenings in the hotel -- catch up for the day.  And that totally messes up my sleep patterns and my diet.

I had a horrible week of nasty fast foods and I took two zero mile days because I simply was too tired to run.

I wish this week didn't count.

But the up side is that I did get in an 11 miler with 4.5 miles at tempo pace on a surprisingly hilly route right along the Minneapolis side of the Mississippi River.  The run felt great, was very scenic, and I was able to hold about a 6:45 pace for the 4.5 miles.  It turns out that 75F and 47% humidity feels a LOT different from 77F and 95% humidity.  I wish I could have found a way to run in the morning when the temp was 58F.

1 comment:

Dana said...

I am so glad you spent the first 4/5s of your post telling all the terrible aspects of traveling (one of my very FAVORITE things in the world to do) before you rubbed all of our noses in the fact that you got to have a SUPER-FANTASTIC run in sub-80 weather and sub-50% humidity....on a scenic route no less. YOU DOG!!!!

GREAT RUN. I'm glad you got to have a real-life comparison. Maybe you'll stop beating yourself up (hopefully, but not likely). :D