Training on the road

So if you are like me, then you like to travel. As noted in my Mountain View Moves post, I like to get to the great outdoors. However, when traveling training, in the proper sense can be troublesome: from finding a gym that will allow one-three day access for an affordable price to feeling like you actually got a decent workout. Because, also if you are like me, going 3 days with out going to the gym is really not an option (injured back or not). So here's my solution and it partially bears on another post of mine dealing with moral support - that is, have a partner who appreciates wanting to workout and plan trips accordingly. This weekend, Aussy and I took a long weekend to the Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina. We have discovered/developed several ways to get excellent workouts while at this little weekend retreat. One way is to run up the .5 mile 50 degree incline hill to the cottage. This comes at the end of a 3-4 mile hilly run and it is a quad killer, to say the least!  Another way, go hiking. The Appalachian Trail is very hilly, and very rough terrain. It demands not only decent cardiovascular fitness (the altitude does not help as I was huffing and puffing the whole time), but it also demands a sense of core strength and stability. When stepping up a few feet onto a slippery rock or log you need to balance yourself to lift up - it's where all those 1-legged exercises really came in handy. Then there is my trusty traveling suspension trainer, which attaches nicely to any of the trees littering the yard, allowing me to get a full back, chest and shoulder workout. 

This strategy may not work if not in the woods, but at a city retreat. For example, we got hitched in Vegas - not much in the downtown vegas area for hiking (there are about 30 minutes drive outside of vegas in the Spring Mountains), but we did run the Vegas trip and went in and out of about a dozen hotels. We were not the only ones doing this. It was awesome. So where there's a will there's a way. Get out and get fit!