On the road while on the road

Last week was my first week of Ironman training while traveling for an extended period. For me, due to my work this is not that uncommon of a practice but working out while on the road is not easy. It's like cooking dinner in someone else's kitchen you have never been in. You spend significant time just trying to find the items to cook with and when you do it's still different as they are not the utensils you are used to.
So for me, I traveled to Cincinnati for our annual sales meeting on Thursday and Friday followed by our Christmas party Friday night. After that, my wife and I travelled to Louisville for our daughters swim meet on Saturday and Sunday. My training schedule had a swim Thursday AM, a run on Friday, Saturday was a recovery day, and Sunday was a bike ride.
To keep in line with my Thursday AM swim I pushed it to Wednesday night, 8-9PM since I was leaving at 6AM Thursday. Thursday was all good and it was a very productive and enjoyable day.  Friday I awoke to that sinking feeling. A cold was afoot. Nooooooooo! I sneezed, sniffled, and coughed my way through the day. I hit the treadmill post meeting and pre party in desperate hope of sweating the infestation away. No such luck was to be had. The upside was the training was still on schedule despite my condition. The added bonus was the humorous visual of me running hill intervals on the hotel treadmill circa the last century on its last leg in a semi asthmatic breathing pattern with my fellow workout partners being attendees for the Chinese English teachers association giving me the constant look of expected collapse at any moment. Needless to say the evenings party was not one I felt very up for but it was still nice to share a little holiday joy yet it ended rather early an off to bed for me.
Saturday as a recovery day and was perfect timing as I pushed the fluids and meds while soaking in the chlorinated heat of an indoor pool for my daughter's meet. No training was a great relief.
One of the great coincidences of the meet was its location. Being in Louisville it gave me a great chance to get an early look at the set up for the race. I checked out the hotel I will be staying in during the weekend, I checked out the transition area, saw the swim start location, and it was very exciting to see the finish line. It was recently voted as one of the top 5 best finishes of all Ironman races. The Louisville finish is on what the call 4th street live. It's one of Louisville's hot spots and is very impressive as they have basically roofed over a few downtown city street blocks full of restaurants, bars, and shops. Most describe it like finishing in the midst of a rock concert.
Sunday, I arose with some relief that I felt bit on the mend but a little disappointed as a steady rain was coming down. This was definitely dampening my enthusiasm as I was planning on riding part of the bike course. Again, some good luck quickly hit as the rain suddenly stopped and allowed me to go ahead and give it a go. The unseasonably warm temps of 55 were a bonus too. The ride was rather damp as the roads were still very wet and marred with a lot of standing water. It was still really nice to get some miles in with a double purpose of seeing the course and meeting my days workout plan. Plus it was great scenery riding along the Ohio river for the 22 mile round trip. The grand finale bonus was the smell of fresh cut Christmas trees that were staged at a stand at the end of the ride. Definitely, a new sense to be had while on a bicycle yet good news that my cold was receding enough to allow for a sense of smell.
And now.....Home sweat home.