Hilton Motivation
The first day of my trip consisted of three legs starting at 9am ending at 4pm in Oklahoma City where I ended up "napping" till 12 midnight. Call it the case of the Mondays where I have commute to work and am just all funked up for a little while. Napping doesn't help either but it feels so good! The gym at the Wyndham Garden isn't that great and I just choose to fill up on water instead of eating dinner. I know it's bad but I ran a 5k the day before, hardly got some sleep and need to catch up on it. I paid for it dearly when trying to go back to bed for the early 4am wake up call. The next morning consisted of only two flights (OKC-DTW-YYZ) and when I got to the Downtown Toronto Hilton, I found the energy in me and hit up the gym on Day 2 of the 3 day trip. The session was set for a brick and I successfully completed an "easy" 1.5 hours! Admittedly, the Downtown Toronto Hilton houses the best fitness center in our hotel system and this makes working out that much easier and more enjoyable. The swimming pool was closed for renovations, but the gym was clean and ready to be used! Hopping up on the bicycling machine for an hour, I ended up next to a woman who was running on the neighboring treadmill at a 10:00 min/mile pace. She was 2/3s into her hour of running when I started beside her. At the end of her hour, she took a break and surprisingly jumped back ont the treadmill for another hour!!! I think she was gunning for a half marathon distance but that was just awesome. That gave me motivation to up my effort level a notch. I found myself yawning here and there as I was still a little exhausted from the lack of sleep but I had the Patriots at Bills game to keep my attention.
I struggled a bit in the beginning but as I pedaled along and found my groove. I even hammered away hitting and sustaining 24mph for 1 minute intervals every 10 minutes. My calves are still sore and now quads and hamstrings are too. At about the 30 minute mark, I accidentally hit the reset button so I just guessed and added another 35 minutes for what I would know would be more than an hour. The entire time I was sustaining a 75-80 rpm cadence as well an average speed of 15.0 mph. All in all, it was a good ride.
By the end of that hour, I was soaked and dripping. I got off the bike, cleaned and anti-bacteria-sprayed it down, drank a cup of water then immediately hopped on the treadmill. I was thinking that I I could go for an hour but my calves weren't going to let me. I could feel a light cramp creeping in my right calf so I just eased on at 6.0 and then back down at 4.5 when I would feel it coming right back. I was able to finish 3.31 miles at 35:00 minutes with some light intervals. The last quarter mile I ran at 8.0 and got my HR to 174 bpm. Good stuff all around.
The crew met up for dinner and I enjoyed a good Salmon + Jasmine Rice Dinner paired with a side Caesar at Jack Astor's. Instead of alcohol, I found myself ordering water. I was thinking of grabbing a Canadian beer and catch the rest of the Chiefs at Chargers game but I just wanted to feel good about my workout.
Of course, today's already been filled with long flights; YYZ-DTW-MTY-ATL where the last two legs blocked in at over 6 hours! Now heading back home to San Diego on another 4.5 hr flight where right before boarding, I was running from E35, through customs, through security and all the way to gate B36! Gotta love the commute! Swimming tomorrow and apparently some hot yoga at Core Power?! I still have to find a Master's class or a group of sorts to help me out with my swim techniques. Any ideas? My schedule sucks so I can't dedicate myself to any set class schedule so unfortunately that's out of the options. I'll have more this week!
Amazon's Kindle Fire Android Tablet Unveiling is this Wednesday!
Here's a picture of my "Atlanta Airport" Mile. I didn't run from E - B but the total .50 miles of running was at almost max speed while pulling my rollerboard, flight kit and laptop bag! I was perspiring like crazy when I got a seat in the back of the flight and as I finish this post, I'm just not feeling cooler.
