hotel gym

katedraal

Sep 16 2018

A week in Sofia

After the “failed” 7.5k, I took a train to the airport and then a plane to Sofia.

On Wednesday morning, I went running. I was messing around with the Polar Beat app so the run is reported in two parts:

I ran south from the hotel and found a park with a big statue of a Soviet soldier. That park turned out to be a little small for good running, but when I continued south I found a nice big park behind the national stadium. I turned around at the end of the park and ran back, and then added a little loop through the center of Sofia, taking pictures of a few landmarks. The pics are embedded in the Strava activity.

I love how the mountains are so close to the city

On Wednesday afternoon, I did a weights session in the hotel gym. Pretty good 60 minute session.

On Friday morning, I did another run. This time I turned right at the end of the park and discovered that the park continued as a forest. I had to turn around in time and limit the run to 50 minutes in order to be on time for the conference.

My Friday afternoon flight out of Sofia got canceled and I had to wait until 9pm to fly home.

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Mar 19 2017

A week in Parsippany

On Sunday I flew to the USA, and spent a week in a hotel somewhere in New Jersey.

I attended a week-long job-related training course, which included mandatory fun in the evenings. I did wake up early, but often spent too long answering emails from and making calls with my people back in Europe. So this week was a bit light on the training. Luckily I had scheduled it as a light week.

I just spent time on all of the equipment in this picture, staring at the wall painting and wondering what the heck it was depicing:

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loft--v4244385-1280

Dec 18 2016

No fruit or vegetables were delivered

Thursday. A long version of the hotel gym workout.

15 minutes elliptical

15 minutes treadmill

15 minutes spinning

Followed by 45 minutes of weight lifting. It left me quite sore on Friday and Saturday, but that’s good.

Here is a photo of the view from the hotel gym. Exactly what I am staring at during the elliptical and treadmill part of the workout. There is a traffic light in front of the hotel, so one can study cars and trams driving past and waiting for the traffic light. Sometimes, fruit and vegetable delivery to the Carrefour Express on the corner coincides with my hotel workout. This time, such a highlight did not occur. I must have studied every detail of those roofs and of the brown building on the right during the past 7 years.

The plan for Friday was to cycle to work and come back with the car, which was waiting for me in the parking garage of our office. It was too cold and slippery to cycle. There were other priorities in the afternoon, so no exercise took place.

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h03

Nov 16 2016

Monday/Tuesday – Bulgaria

Monday

A long day. I left for Brno airport just before lunch time, to take the flight to Munich, expecting to take a lunch at the layover in Munich.

The flight to Munich had a 3 hour delay. We were offered money to buy refreshments at Brno airport, but the choice of healthy food is not exactly overwhelming there. Anyway, with work to do, documents to read, and internet connection, the three hours of quiet working time was definitely not wasted.

Arrived in Sofia at 10pm, which means I missed the business dinner with our local partners that we were invited to. A good start!

The taxi from the airport to the hotel drove 140 km/h on a road with a speed limit of 80 km/h and signs warning for speed cameras. Crashed into hotel bed and slept.

Tuesday

Headed to the hotel gym and did an aerobic warming up (or was it a waking up). Ten minutes on an elliptic, ten minutes on the treadmill, and 10 minutes on a spinning bike. The elliptical fitness trainer was of an interesting make. It was constructed in such a way that you could vary the stride length, which meant you could vary between something resembling stairs walking (short stride) and cross country skiing (long stride). It was fun, actually, to vary this.

Then it was time for weights. The problem was that the 25 square meter gym was by now filled with about 7 people, which made it a bit difficult to work out. On top of that, the hotel was the venue for some kind of military conference, so the weights stations were quite popular. I did some bench presses, and then I headed back to the hotel room, where I completed the workout with sit ups, reverse push ups across the bed and the cupboard, and back exercises.

This morning’s taxi driver was even more interesting than the one of Monday night. This time it was a bipolar guy with an economics degree, who took the outcome of the Bulgarian elections very seriously. At one crossing he got fed up of waiting to turn left, crossed over to the opposite side of the street, drove 150m into upcoming traffic, exclaiming that he didn’t care any more, passing police (who didn’t seem to care), and turned left. Then he started to talk about moving to Germany to take a cleaning job.

Meetings were good. At the end of the day I took a taxi ride to the airport and a flight to Vienna, and after two hours in the car I arrived home. The taxi ride to the airport was extremely boring (for Bulgarian standards).

h03

Interestingly, the Garmin Forerunner seems to have captured speed from the treadmill:

https://www.strava.com/activities/775807378

 

capture

Joe Friel’s blog is relevant: http://www.joefrielsblog.com/2016/11/travel-and-training.html

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saintemarie

Oct 16 2016

Wednesday – Friday: Business Trip

saintemarie
The Rue Royale, my usual base camp when staying in Brussels

Wednesday

Flight to Brussels and a planned rest day. Preparation of the Thursday meetings and a solo dinner in Hanedan, a Turkish fast food close to the hotel. Fast food sounds awful, but to be honest I think this place serves healthier food than the hotel restaurant. You don’t have to eat all the meat, and there is a lot of vegetables and salad around it. The problem, of course, is that all the meat gets eaten.

Not bad for fast food
Not bad for fast food. The starter was a nice salad with olives. 

Thursday

Workout: A mini hotel triathlon, i.e. 10 minutes elliptical, 10 minutes treadmill, 10 minutes spinning. Then a 45 minute weights workout.

Then a full day of meetings, and a late flight home.

Friday

My planned exercise for the day was 2×45 minutes of easy cycling, the ride to work and back. Unfortunately, I discovered my tire was flat. So I changed to normal clothes and drove to work in the car, planning to return in time to get in a 90 minute erg.

Work was longer than expected and I arrived home late and tired. No energy for a workout.

On a day after a business trip you have to have the little tricks ready to make sure you do the workout. This time, the tricks didn’t work because of the flat tire.

Also: DOMS.

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Sep 14 2016

Monday – Wednesday: business trip

Monday

Traveled to Brussels through Munich. Then dinner in the hotel with colleagues. No training.

Tuesday

Hotel fitness at 10am. I am not in my usual hotel. In the Hilton Brussels City, where I had to stay to be with the colleagues from the US, you pay more for a smaller room, and the hotel is further away from normal streets and restaurants. But the gym has an indoor rower. A model C with a PM2 monitor. Just like I had in the old days. I rowed a 2k warming up, then 10 minutes of spinning and then I did 3×15 push-ups, sit-ups, bench pulls, pistol squats and that was it. 45 minutes of exercise before a long day of meetings followed by a 3 hour business dinner.

Wednesday

3×20 min of steady state with 1 minute of rest. A quite sweaty affair in the very hot fitness center. In the first interval I just rowed for 10 minutes, then did a Wolverine L4 4/3/2/1 sequence at 20/21/22/23 spm to break the bore. In the second interval I did 4/4/4/4/4min at 170/180/190/180/170 W. The most successful boredom reduction strategy was the last interval. I started at 190.5 W for one minute and then let the average drop by 0.5 W per minute, which means you row at 170W in the final minute and end up with an average of 180.0W.

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Jan 29 2016

Hotel Gym Double Triathlon

6×10 min, treadmill, elliptical, pedaling, treadmill, elliptical, pedaling. 

Boring as hell. Watched the traffic jams at the intersection of Waterloo and Louise from the 23rd floor. 

Sweaty business. 

  
I didn’t leave the building but the Garmin thought otherwise. Le Confucius on the map is where I had dinner last night. Excellent Chinese food. 

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