Friday: The Difficulty of Maintaining a Workout Routine While Traveling with Child in Another Time Zone

It is very difficult to maintain a workout routine while traveling with a child in a different time zone. Normally on Fridays, I am at swim with Ivan by 8:30AM, I swim a couple of miles (while Ivan plays in the nursery), head home and get in a Gilad workout. Today, at the lake, however, it was different. I lurched out of bed and hopped into my bathing suit with my swim cap and goggles, sprinted down to the dock and jumped into the water and swam for 34 minutes back and forth to the buoys. After 34 minutes, I was sure that Ivan was awake, I pulled myself out of the water and ran dripping up to the house. Ivan was indeed awake and I got him up, and we went about our day. I planned to run later in the evening, but everyone wanted to go out on the boat, then it was time for dinner, then it was Ivan's bedtime and then the run just wasn't an option.

Tomorrow, I am going to attempt to get up earlier, swim a bit longer and then eat fast and give Ivan his bottle in the jog stroller while I run. That should work, maybe. The trouble is, when you are traveling with a child, you just can't count on anything to work out as planned. And, even if you are not a triathlete workout super freak, you can't hold to a relatively regimented workout schedule without irritating everyone. You just can't. As a houseguest, you come across as selfish and rigid just because you might want to jog around a bit. It is hard to understand the position of the line and how not to cross it.

The second and worse part of the traveling situation is that you are traveling with a child, and your support system is removed. There is not a real chance that you will be able to have anyone to watch your child while you participate in any individual activity, so you don't get to participate in any individual activity. Also, it is very difficult to count on nap times and bed times when the time zone is different. The nap never happens when it is expected to happen and how can any day be organized when you child might not nap??

I usually think that I enjoy my relatively streamlined life, but when I go on vacation, I can understand how any sane person would want to tote along a babysitter to help out in any child travel situation. It is all so exhausting that I am forced to renew an earlier commitment I made not to travel with my child until he is seven.