Travel Workout

I have a terrible terrible habit of packing workout clothes while traveling (vacation, work, whatever) and never using them. They just take up room in my suitcase.

Before leaving for Houston, I vowed that this would not happen.

So far, 3 days in, it’s been pretty good. I’ve worked out 2 of 3 days (I needed a break to work and relax this evening – working on the hotel bed FTW!) and I think I’ve found the perfect 33 minute workout.

Yes, 33 minutes.

Exact and wonderful.

The hotel gym has the fancy new LifeFitness treadmills that have a TON of programming options.

Here’s the workout:

• Select Hill option
• Enter weight
• Enter goal distance of 5km
• Difficulty of “4″ (I’m never certain what the levels mean, so I usually pick somewhere between 4 and 6 and the inclines on 4 seem to work well for me)
• 1km warm up at 8.5km/hr (7:03min/kilometre)
• 1km at 9.5km/hr (6:18min/kilometre)
• 1km active recovery at 8.5km/hr (7:03min/kilometre)
• 1km at 10km/hr (6:00min/kilometre)
• 1km active recovery at 8.5km/hr (7:03min/kilometre)
• 5min cool down at 4.8km/hr

Time: 38 min including cool down

Calories burned: ~400 (I usually log a bit less in MyFitness Pal, just in case……exercise machine calorie counters [and distance logs] can be horribly inaccurate).

Re: distance travelled – I know my speed and how long it takes me to run 1km, so I’m pretty comfortable that the distance covered in 33 minutes is 5km. If I was told I was running 11.2km in 60 minutes, I’d be pretty concerned since my best 10km time (running HARD) is around 57 minutes.

Take away: unless you know your pace (and have run a LOT with a Garmin) take the distance covered with a grain of salt – thankfully the machine I’ve been using is pretty dang accurate.

What’s your “got to” travel workout?