First off, love the podcast and really enjoying the TrainerRoad product. I’m new to really training and following a regimented schedule and really enjoying it. My only problem is I regularly travel for work. Is there a way you have found that works for adapting workouts or matching to HR that I can utilize at the hotel gym or various fitness clubs. Almost exclusively stay in Marriott or Hilton brand hotels and almost all have stationary bikes. Would love to adapt workouts to stick to schedule rather then push all to the end of the week when back in town. Thanks for any input.
Check out this blog post, should be helpful!
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I also travel a bunch for work and this is what I do. It requires some investment, but I enjoy it.
First off, I bought a set of power meter pedals. I purchased the Garmin Vector 3’s, but from what I gather all the pedals are pretty darn close in regards to quality.
DC Rainmaker Power Meter Overview
Second, I purchased the Feedback Sports Omnium Portable Resistance Trainer. If you buy this, be sure to buy the “resistance” trainer. Without it, there is no variable resistance and you’ll have a wattage peak that may not suffice for a TR workout (depending on gearing). Another item of note on this. If you’re in a hotel room, you have to have a slick for a back tire. If you use anything with knobs, it will be WAY too loud and you’ll have unhappy neighbors. Another benefit to this trainer is its awesome for pre-race warmup. The TR guys talk about this multiple times on podcasts. I also have a Kickr but opted to purchase the Omnium as well because lugging around the Kickr was miserable up and down hotel steps/elevators.
Thrid, I bought a good fan. I purchased a small-size Vornado fan. Small enough to travel, but does a decent job of cooling. If you don’t mind lugging around something bigger, go bigger.
Now, here is my order of operations depending on the type of travel:
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If I can drive, I bring my road bike, trainer and fan. I set this up in my hotel room and knock out a workout when I can. This is optimal as it keeps as many of the variables consistent with your home workout.
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If I fly, I bring my pedals and a pedal wrench/allen keys. @Nate_Pearson discusses this on one of the podcasts as well. You can use the pedals on most stationary bikes by swapping out the pedals. This is kind of a pain, but worth it if you’re really serious about getting the workout in.
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Another investment needed here, but I travel to SC once a month for a week. Since the weather is usually pretty decent year round, I bought a cheap used road bike ($600) and I leave it at my office there. Bring the pedals and I can do outdoor rides, which is awesome. This investment was totally worth it for me as it gives me a reason not to just hang out in a hotel bar after work.
Hope this helps.
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This is super helpful. I hadn’t even thought of switching out the pedals. Funny how you can sometimes overlook the obvious.
Do you drive or fly? I almost exclusively fly with carry-on only, so some of the good ideas above don’t work for me.
My first stop was to find hotels that have Peloton or similar bikes that have more of a bike geometry (relative – at leas they don’t have couch cushion seats and are adjustable!) and wattage/connectivity. I can’t do HIIT workouts or others with fast changes in intensity, but great for steady sweet spot, endurance, recovery rides. Peloton links to strava as well so you get it easily into TR. There are more hotels that carry these – I stay at Marriott/SPGs and I found them at Ws, Westins, and Autograph properties (but not all of those brands carry).
I allow travel with a few resistance bands and look for hotel gyms with certain features (leg presses, free weights, swiss balls, etc.).
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I fly 95% of my trips and am away 40% of the year on week trips. If I bite the bullet and invest in the pedals that might work but I’ll definarely have to shop around on the best gym setups available. Unfortunately a lot of places I go are smaller and limited on options (Fairfield’s instead of Marriotts or Ws). Thanks for the tips! I’ll take all the help I can get.
Pedals have been a game changer for me, I also did my fair share of travelling for business and it’s just amazing how much structured training one can cram in when planning things ahead of time. I’ve not had a situation yet where I wouldn’t be allowed to swap the pedals by a hotel, the only issue I’ve come across a few times was a pedal just stuck solid in the crank - there was this one time I needed to find the nearest bike shop and buy a new pedal wrench, as I managed to break the one I brought with me :).
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