I used to end up cranky when I had to travel somewhere for work. Traveling usually meant no riding.
If I wanted to get some kind of a workout, it often meant sitting on a crappy exercise bike in a little hotel-basement “fitness center”.
But since I started running more (going on 5 years now) I’m able to easily get an exercise fix when traveling or time crunched. To me this is the prime beauty of running. You just need shoes and a minimal amount of running clothing, a couple of minutes of prep time, and you’re out the door and on the road. You can almost always find somewhere to run, even if it means doing loops around a shopping mall parking lot (had to do that once in Ann Arbor).
And sometimes you stumble on a truly sublime running experience.
This week I was in Chicago for a couple of days. As it turned out, the hotel was downtown, just a couple of blocks from the lakefront. I was able to run out the door and easily find the path that goes for miles along the lakefront.
Side comment: it is just criminal that you are not able to do this in downtown Cleveland.
The doorman at the hotel looked at me like I was crazy. It was only 13 degrees at 7am. “There is a workout center downstairs”, he said.
But you don’t think about 13 degrees when you are running along Lake Michigan and seeing the sun come up on a perfectly clear morning, running out to the end of Navy Pier and then seeing the city skyline on the way back. And passing a handful other people doing the same thing. Crazy? I don’t think so.
Well done!