Adrift

Over 700 miles from home and far, far away from my finely sculpted daily routine. Traveling for business is always a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it's nice to get out of the office for a little while, however, on the other hand, it makes getting the training miles in a tad more difficult. And with my next big race coming up in a week, it's an important time to be focusing on the key workouts.

With an eye towards training, I thought I had this trip all figured out. I'd reserved a room in a nice hotel, one which boasted an "indoor heated pool". Perfect, I thought, for my morning swim. But as I found out this morning at 5:00, this "pool" was not much more than an oversized bathtub where, to my best approximation, my 1500m workout would have consisted of nearly 680 laps. Okay - Take 2. I'd intentionally chosen the location of this hotel for the decent running roads out the door. So despite my extreme dissatisfaction with the kiddie pool, I could at least take solace in pulling on the running shoes and enjoying a nice 10k out in the early morning sunshine. Wrong again. As I strode out the door, I was greeted with pitch black skies, 50 degree weather and rain. Delightful.

So it wound up being coffee and a newspaper for 2 hours before getting on with my day. I called virtually every YMCA in the area trying to coordinate their lap swimming times with my schedule for the day. No luck whatsoever. In the afternoon, I did end up doing a nice hour-long run and felt as though I'd added some value to an otherwise mundane day. But with only a week and a day until my first triathlon, I can't help ending this day having wished for some time in the pool.

In the "good news" category, I'll happily be back with my family and sleeping in my own bed tomorrow night. And there are few things better than that.

Thanks for reading.