Planning Travel for Training & Races

Stick around the endurance sports world long enough, and you’ll probably get the bug to sign up for a race that requires travel or you’ll travel somewhere where you’ll want to train.  Thoughtfully considering travel plans and where you’re going is a really important component to successful destination training and racing.

Sources:

Roar: How to Match Your Food and Fitness to Your Female Physiology for Optimum Performance, Great Health, and a Strong, Lean Body for Life by Dr. Stacy Sims with Selene Yeager

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Disclaimer: The information shared in this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or health goals. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you heard on this podcast. Reliance on any information provided is solely at your own risk.

Chapters

• 0:00 Opening
• 0:16 Thoughtfully Planning Travel Matters
• 2:25 The Most Common Racing Destination Complications
• 2:44 Traveling to a Hot Destination
• 8:37 Traveling to a Cold Destination
• 11:09 Traveling to High Altitude
• 13:06 Traveling Across Several Time Zones
• 16:51 When to Arrive
• 23:10 When to Depart
• 26:04 The Bottom Line: Go Have an Adventure!
• 26:48 Closing

Transcript

(0:04 - 6:04)
Hello and welcome to the Full Circle Podcast, your source for insights into the science and art of endurance sports training and racing. I'm your host, Coach Laura Henry. If you stick around the endurance sports world long enough, it is very probable that you will eventually sign up for a race that requires you to sleep in a bed that is not your own. 

In other words, you'll likely sign up for a destination race or a race that you need to travel to in order to participate in. Even if you don't sign up for a destination race, you will likely be traveling at some point, and it's entirely possible, if not probable, that you'll want to do at least some workouts when you are traveling. I've participated in more than 100 races over my years as an endurance athlete. 

While several of those races were local to me, many were not. I've raced on multiple continents and, as of the time of my recording this podcast episode, in 29 states in the United States. I've also traveled extensively outside of my travel that was for races. 

I'm really fortunate that my job affords me a lot of opportunities to work in different locations, and my entire family lives in different states than me. While I'm traveling, I'm generally always seeking to get workouts in. So, after all these years, I've learned some important things about training and racing while traveling, and it's these lessons that I'm going to be sharing today. 

When it comes to traveling for races specifically, I often see athletes timing their travel so that they are in town for the race for the least amount of time possible. I do understand the reasons for planning this way and for this way of thinking. There's budget and cost considerations, time away from work to be thinking about, etc. 

But that being said, it's important to be realistic and honest about what certain travel timeframes mean for racing and race performance. Arriving at the improper time can have a profound effect on your race day performance. This is a very frustrating situation to find yourself in, especially if you have spent a long time, months or years, and a lot of money preparing for a race. 

You don't want a lack of forethought or planning about your travel to be the thing that sinks your race day performance after you've invested so much emotions, time, and money into preparing for the race. Unfortunately, this is something that people typically don't learn until they do it and they get it wrong. So, it's my hope that you'll listen to this and take this advice before you find yourself in that situation. 

There are so many potential complications that can arise from travel that it's utterly impossible to cover all of them in this podcast. That being said, there are some common complications that can arise from traveling to a hot destination, traveling to a cold destination, traveling to high altitude, and traveling across several time zones. Traveling to a hot destination. 

Traveling to a hot destination can be for anyone, but it is especially problematic for athletes who reside in training cooler environments than that of their destination. There are several strategies to help you feel and perform the best you can in a hot environment, and most of them start during your training before you actually travel. I know this firsthand because my marathon personal best time happened at the Walt Disney World Marathon as part of the Walt Disney World Dopey Challenge. 

I live near Syracuse, in upstate New York, and this race takes place in Orlando, Florida in January. The year that I ran the Walt Disney World Marathon, it was eight degrees when I left Syracuse. Race day at the Walt Disney World Marathon that year was 70 degrees Fahrenheit and 100% humidity. 

So, for those keeping track, that was a 62 degree temperature change and a substantial humidity change. My preparation before I got to Florida is what gave me the opportunity to have such a good performance and to set that personal best time. One of the best things that you can do to help yourself perform well in hot conditions is to develop a solid hydration and fueling plan. 

You need to do this before you get to the hot place and you need to do it often because you need to know what works for you in normal, quote unquote, conditions, aka temperate conditions or more mild conditions before you can ever hope to make modifications for conditions that are not normal for you. Having this baseline to start from gives you at least a shot at being properly fueled and properly hydrated when you are in a hot destination. You cannot, and I mean cannot, wing hydration and nutrition. 

This is not something that is just going to fall into place for you. You need to develop a plan and you need to practice it until it becomes automatic and second nature for you. Once you know what works for you, you can then adjust your plan when you get to your destination and you see what the conditions actually are. 

The next thing that you can do to help yourself when you get to a hot environment is to acclimatize to the heat. The more extreme the transition between your home and training environment and the environment in which you'll be traveling to or racing in, the more essential acclimating to the heat is. Heat acclimation enables your body to tolerate physical activity and exertion in high temperatures. 

When you acclimate to the heat, the following changes happen. Your total blood volume increases. This happens via increases in your blood plasma volume and blood plasma is the liquid part of your blood. 

Then blood flow to the skin and your muscles is therefore improved and your heart rate and your skin and body temperatures are lower at any given exertion level. You then start sweating earlier and you start sweating more. This allows you to better cool yourself. 

The composition of your sweat also changes. You lose fewer electrolytes, up to 50% fewer if you can believe that, once your composition of your sweat changes as a result of acclimating to the heat. If possible, if you will be racing in a hot environment, you want to arrive at your destination 14 to 21 days ahead of time. 

I know, I know, I know it is completely impractical for most people, but I share this because if it is possible for you, say you have family there or you can work remotely, it is the best strategy because this timeframe is when the majority of heat acclimation occurs. The more practical option for most people and especially age group athletes is going to be to mimic race day conditions at home or in your normal training environments. One way to do this is to wear more layers.

(6:04 - 7:17)
Trapping heat near your body is useful, but don't go overboard and give yourself heat illness. Another way to do this is to train indoors. Training indoors does compromise some specificity in terms of terrain and real world scenarios such as equipment storage, weather conditions, wind, et cetera. 

So don't use this as a bless off on training indoors all the time and don't think that it validates your choice to train inside all the time. I'm not saying that training indoors all the time is what's best. What I am saying is that one advantage of indoor training is that it can be useful in terms of heat acclimation. 

Another thing you can do is to go into a hot sauna. This advice has been handed out a lot in recent years and a lot of people have misinterpreted it. So it's really important to follow the proper protocols when we're talking about saunas. 

We want to go into a hot sauna after our workout. We are already somewhat dehydrated and then we don't want to rehydrate once we get out of the sauna. This can cause adaptations in our body that are useful for being in hot environments. 

Going into a sauna post workout needs to be done daily for at least five days in a row to be effective. Doing this once a week is not going to do anything. It's not going to be sufficient. 

It's not going to help you. It's not going to make the physiological adaptations that you need in your body. Rehydration after you get out of the sauna needs to occur slowly over the course of three to four hours.

(7:17 - 9:48)
Rehydrating too quickly will negate the adaptations that the body is trying to facilitate as a result of being in the sauna. So this means that once you get out, you can't just start chugging water. You need to remain in a pretty dehydrated state for three to four hours after your workout and after you get out of the sauna. 

And again, we need to do this for at least five days in a row. Finally, we can impose permissive or planned dehydration in order to acclimate to a hot environment. Drinking to thirst is one of the most effective ways of creating permissive dehydration or planned dehydration. 

Thirst is not an accurate indication of hydration because it lags behind our actual hydration status. This means that we don't actually feel thirsty until our body is already dehydrated. So to leverage permissive or planned dehydration, we want to create this. 

We want to impose dehydration for five days or so, about seven to 10 days before you want to be reaping the benefits. The benefits from this permissive or planned dehydration window disappear after about two weeks. So getting the timing right is key on this. 

And I know this sounds crazy because I'm constantly preaching that you should be properly hydrated. But when planned, leveraged, and tracked effectively and used at a very specific time, this can be a way that you can help your body acclimate to the heat. Traveling to a cold destination. 

Traveling to a cold destination for training or a race doesn't present quite as many issues as traveling to a hot destination does for people, but there are still several important things for athletes to consider about racing or training in cold environments. The risk of hypothermia is real. Athletes from warmer environments will not tolerate the cold as well as athletes from cold environments will. 

They're just not as used to it. So we want to wear moisture wicking gear because staying dry is critical when it's cold. If you get wet, you will feel the cold more acutely. 

So wearing tech fabrics or non-cotton fabrics is going to bring your sweat and your moisture away from your body, and it's going to help keep you drier. You also want to protect your head, your hands, and your feet. There's a myth out there that you lose 50% of your heat through your head. 

That's not true. You do lose heat through any space or any surface area on your body that isn't covered. So if everything else on you is covered and your head is the only thing that's not, you are going to be losing more heat through your head than through other parts of your body, but you're not losing 50%. 

You want to make sure you protect your extremities, such as your hands and your feet, because they are thinner. And while they're very vascular, because they're thinner, they're not going to be able to stay as warm. So we really want to make sure that we're protecting those.

(9:49 - 13:47)
When we get to a cold environment, we want to make sure that we're eating and drinking. And this is another example of having a hydration and fueling plan that is, you know, second nature automatic for you is so important. And knowing what works for you in normal conditions is so important. 

I've observed countless athletes completely, completely blow their nutrition during their winter workouts and races because they didn't feel like eating and drinking, and then they didn't do so. If you remember nothing else that I say in this episode, remember this. Thirst is not an effective way to gauge hydration status. 

It is not. Drinking to thirst is not a good practice. It's not a good habit. 

If you are training, this is because it lags behind your actual hydration status. By the time you feel thirsty, you are already dehydrated, and it's not possible to recover or fix that within a single workout or race. So if you're already in the middle of a workout and you start to feel thirsty, you're already dehydrated and you can't become sufficiently hydrated within that same workout. 

You can't recover it. You're already past the point of no return. So don't let yourself get to this point in your workouts or in your very important races. 

You also will still need calories when it's cold, as it takes a lot of energy for your body to keep itself warm. So you want to think of yourself as a furnace. Without fuel, you will not be able to create heat. 

So make sure that you stay eating during your cold weather workouts and races. Traveling to high altitude. True adaptation to high altitudes takes weeks, and honestly, it really even takes months. 

To adapt to high altitude, the body creates more red blood cells. Red blood cells carry oxygen throughout our bodies, and these red blood cells become more efficient at carrying oxygen to the body's tissues when we stay at high altitudes for a longer period of time. Another adaptation that happens at high altitude is that the body creates more mitochondria within our cells. 

The mitochondria in our cells are basically like little power plants. They produce energy. Having more mitochondria helps the body's cells be able to take in as much oxygen as possible. 

For every 1,000 feet you climb above 5,000 feet above sea level, VO2 max drops by 2%. VO2 max is the maximum rate of oxygen that your body is able to use during exercise. This means that your body has to work harder to exercise or to be physically active when you're at higher altitudes. 

A lot of the same strategies for heat acclimation that I discussed earlier apply for altitude acclimation because high altitude air is very dry and it's very dehydrating. Once you get to high altitude, you want to pump the fluids and stay on top of your hydration. You will need to hydrate more than normal. 

You want to also eat slightly more carbohydrates than you normally do. Consuming carbohydrates produces carbon dioxide in the body, which increases our breathing response. This actually can help to prevent altitude sickness. 

And finally, we want to avoid alcohol. Alcohol depresses the body's normal breathing response to high altitude. This is because alcohol is a dehydrating diuretic. 

This is true all of the time about alcohol, but it must be especially taken into consideration at high altitude because consuming alcohol increases the risk of altitude sickness. Don't make the mistake of thinking that this doesn't apply to you just because you don't want it to be true and just because you want to enjoy that glass of wine or that local pub beer. Alcohol is going to have a significant effect on your body if you're at altitude. 

Traveling across several time zones. No matter what type of environment you acclimate yourself to in your training, it will all be for naught if you are suffering from jet lag. Jet lag differs from travel fatigue. 

Travel fatigue is when you're tired from traveling. It can usually be solved by a good meal, rehydration, and a good night's sleep. Quickly traveling, aka air travel, through several time zones is very stressful on the body. 

Jet lag is a temporary disruption of normal circadian rhythm caused by a high speed travel across several time zones. It results in fatigue, disorientation, and disturbed sleep patterns. A circadian rhythm is a natural oscillation that repeats in organisms roughly every 24 hours.

(13:48 - 18:26)
Circadian rhythms are the physical, mental, and behavioral changes that an organism experiences over the course of a 24-hour cycle. Light and dark have the biggest influence on circadian rhythms, but food intake, stress, physical activity, social environment, and temperature also affect them. Fatigue, disorientation, and disturbed sleep patterns as a result of high speed travel across several time zones can wreak havoc on the body's core temperature, hormone production, melatonin levels, and performance. 

Jet lag can have a significant negative impact on how athletes train and perform. It takes longer to reset your circadian clock after an eastward flight than it does after a westward flight. The human clock is slightly longer than 24 hours, so we actually have a natural tendency to drift later in the day, and that's why it's harder to reset our circadian clock after an eastward flight. 

So when we're flying east, in the four days before you go on your trip, go to bed and wake up one hour earlier each day. So if you normally go to bed at 9 p.m. and wake up at 5 a.m., go to bed at 8 and wake up at 4. Once you wake up, make sure you expose yourself to bright light. If you're flying west in the four days before your trip, go to bed and wake up one hour later each day. 

So if you normally go to bed at 9 and wake up at 5, go to bed at 10 and wake up at 6. Expose yourself to bright light as soon as you wake up, again, because light and dark have the biggest impact on our circadian rhythm. So exposing ourselves to bright light helps retrain and signal to our brain that the circadian clock needs to change in our bodies. Shifting your sleep pre-flight like this, even for just two to four days, can help reduce jet lag. 

There's also some travel strategies for the day of travel that can help reduce jet lag. Planes are lower in oxygen and drier than the normal oxygen we breathe, and this makes planes dehydrating. So while we're traveling, we want to avoid alcohol for all the reasons we listed earlier. 

It's a dehydrating diuretic. While you're on the plane, drink 16 ounces of fluid, ideally fluid with electrolytes, every two to three hours. After you drink, get up and walk up and down the aisle. 

Drink a sodium-rich beverage or soup once you land. Wear compression socks while you're on the plane. If you land during the day, go outside without sunglasses to reset your body clock. 

Remember, exposing yourself to light will help tell your body what time it is and where it needs to be. And then in terms of movement, go for an easy walk, a gentle bike ride, or an easy swim to bring your heart rate up and help to relieve swelling from travel. Do not run. 

Running is the absolute worst post-flight activity you can do. The absolute worst. Running is already an incredibly corrosive activity on the human body, but running is really damaging to the body after a flight because of the high and sudden impact of the muscles after they've been sitting in a compressed space for so long. 

Wait until the second day after you've arrived or after you've flown. So this means after you've had a chance to rehydrate, walk around, put your body through gentle ranges of motion before you go on a run. So when should you arrive, especially if you have a destination race? Well, your arrival date and time is pretty important when it comes to racing well at a destination race. 

The ideal time to arrive depends on a lot of factors. In my experience, some of the most common ones that influence this decision are what the rules are for the race in terms of check-in. So do you have a mandatory check-in period? This really comes into play for big town marathons or Ironman branded events. 

So it's not uncommon for races like that to say that you must check in in person prior to race day. And it's not uncommon for them to say that you only have a limited number of hours on those days to check in. So do not plan to fly in on the same day that you must check in. 

This is asking for trouble. If there's even one problem, you're not going to be able to check in. And if you can't check in, you can't race. 

And this is all for naught. What mode of travel you're taking really influences when you should be arriving. So are you driving? Are you flying? Are you taking a ferry? Are you taking a train? How long is it going to take you to travel? That's a big factor as well. 

And a lot of this boils down to how much of your travel is under your control. And while I would make the argument that nothing is ever in our control, there's always unexpected things that can happen. We're certainly a little bit more in control when we're driving than versus when we're flying. 

And we're subject to the time schedules that are set by the airlines, for instance. Like I said, how long that travel time is also really important. And this includes the total transit time door-to- door from when you leave your house to when you'll be arriving at your lodging.

(18:26 - 23:10)
So plan for buffer zones on this time frame, no matter which mode of transportation you're using. Because again, there's always something unexpected that could happen. There could be traffic. 

There could be a construction zone. There could be a delayed flight. There could be a flight log that isn't signed off correctly and then delays your departure. 

You could miss your connecting flight. You could have to wait for a really long time for an Uber, or maybe they don't have a rental car available. I mean, literally, the number of things that could go wrong is endless. 

So plan for buffer zones. If you don't need them, wonderful. Now you have more time to do other fun things. 

But plan for buffer zones just in case so that you can help reduce your overall mental stress about traveling. How many time zones you're jumping and what direction you're traveling, east or west, forward or backward in time, really also will impact when is best to arrive at a race. How many things do you need to be traveling with? If you're a triathlete, you have to bring a lot more stuff than if you're a runner or if you're a swimmer or if you're just a cyclist. 

So do you need to be traveling with a bike? Do you need to be bringing big equipment? Those sorts of things are going to impact when it's best to arrive. If you're traveling with a bike, especially, you really want to add on a little bit of extra time just in case something goes wrong during the transit or the travel with that equipment. You want to have time to be able to go to the bike shop or get a mechanic involved if something happens to your bike in transit. 

What altitude you're traveling to and what altitude is where you live is also really important. For instance, if you're traveling to and racing at a place that is more than 5,000 feet higher than where you live, this would be a major consideration for travel dates. And then finally, how you personally handle travel mentally and physiologically. 

Be careful here. I'm talking about how you actually physiologically handle travel, not how you hope or you wish or you think you handle travel. Remembering that travel is really stressful on the body. 

This is not something that we can manifest as different, that we can think differently about and that it won't be true. So we really want to be honest. How do we travel? Is it stressful on us mentally? How do we feel when we travel physiologically? If the race you are traveling to is an A race and you are flying or driving more than five hours to get there, I strongly recommend that you plan to arrive no closer than three days before your goal race. 

So this means that if your A race is on a Sunday, Thursday should be the last day you plan to arrive. If your A race is on a Saturday, arriving no later than Wednesday is a really good idea. If you are jumping more than three time zones, it is probably better if you add an extra day or two to these time windows. 

If you're going higher in altitude, you either need to arrive three weeks, 21 days earlier than race day to acclimatize to it, or you need to race within 72 hours of your arrival within three days. For higher altitude races, arriving in the middle of that 72 hours and 21 days window has a high probability of having a negative impact on how you feel and perform due to the fact that your body will not be acclimated to the altitude. In a worst case scenario, you could actually get altitude sickness. 

While these time windows that I'm recommending may seem excessive. I know saying that you need to arrive three days before your race seems like a lot. I've learned that having several days to spare quote unquote, before your race will allow you to have a higher probability of being able to handle any unforeseen complications such as traffic, delayed or canceled flights, mechanical issues, gear issues, et cetera. 

I've also learned that it really is beneficial to give your body a chance to recover from the travel. Even if you think you're handling it well, giving yourself these extra days will make you realize that you're not feeling as good as you think you are in the first day or two after you travel. It's also beneficial to help you settle into a good sleep routine. 

Since travel can disrupt and does disrupt circadian rhythms, reestablishing a good sleep routine is really helpful in terms of trying to drive the best race performance possible. And all of this really is in your best interest because what we are seeking when we do a race, especially an A-race, an A-race being the most important thing, the top thing on our schedule, we want to have the best chance possible at feeling fresh and we want to have the best chance possible at feeling ready on race day. So it makes sense to plan for these time windows accordingly. 

Remember, you're not going to be able to make use of your full fitness and training if you compromise your body in the days before your goal race by not handling this correctly. If you spend a long time and a lot of money on training for something, do not blow it in the final couple of days before your race because you didn't plan well or you didn't put a lot of thought into what actually would benefit you most during race week. This is just a really sad situation for me to see athletes getting into that they'll train for a year sometimes or more for a particular event and then their performance is blown because they didn't plan travel well.

(23:11 - 26:38)
When should you depart after you race? In my experience, departure dates and times are not as important as the arrival days and times are for racing, but they are still important. The same factors that influence the decision about when to arrive also impact the decision about when to leave. I can tell you that I have traveled home on the same day as an A race and it was a horrible idea. 

It was a horrible, no good, very bad idea. And so please for the love of all things frosted and sprinkled, please let my experience be sufficient for you and do not learn this lesson yourself by traveling back home on the same day as your A race. Sitting in cramped quarters, whether they be in a plane or a car is horrendous for post-race recovery. 

And I learned this lesson the hard way. Traveling the day after a goal race is a less terrible idea than traveling the day of a goal race, but traveling at least two days after a goal race is in my experience, the best idea. So two or more days after a goal race, this allows you to focus on recovery post-race without the stress of managing travel details and logistics. 

Your body will handle the stress of the travel much better this way. I promise. Stress is stress. 

The body cannot decipher whether the stress that is imposed on it comes from a workout or other factors such as poor or inadequate sleep, anxiety about traveling, cramped body positions and limited ranges of motion from traveling, et cetera. Traveling is stressful. End of sentence, period. 

You cannot think your way out of this or manifest a different truth. You are already stressing your body by racing. So do not stress it more by traveling immediately after your race. 

No matter what mode of travel you take, it is at least somewhat stressful on the body. Although there are certainly some travel modes and choices that make travel less stressful. So traveling very soon after a race imposes more stress on the body. 

All of this can impair and delay recovery. And this is not ideal, especially after an A goal race. Traveling so soon after a race can also impair the immune system, which leaves you even more susceptible to illness. 

A races and especially long course A races such as marathons and Ironmans already impair the immune system simply by the amount of stress that they impose on the body. And then traveling at a less than ideal time puts more stress on the body and on the immune system, thereby increasing your probability of getting sick. Finally, and this might actually be the most important thing. 

If you are visiting an interesting place, staying for a few days after your race allows you to experience where you are. If the race is an A race, and if you're preparing properly, you are likely resting and staying off of your feet prior to race day so that you can give yourself the best chance possible at feeling good and having a good performance in your race. After the race is a wonderful time to sightsee, walk around and go on adventures. 

Planning your trip home so that you travel a few days or more after your race enables you to embrace the full experience of the race and the place where it happens. I want all of you to go have an adventure because my experience has shown me that traveling to races or training while I'm traveling and or when I'm not in my home environment can truly be such a wonderful thing. I have visited places that I might not otherwise have gone to because an interesting race was taking place there. 

And that that became the catalyst for me to take that trip. I've been able to explore different places as I got in workouts when I was traveling or visiting family or visiting friends. So I truly hope that you get to experience the joy of training and racing in a fun destination so that you can experience more slices of this wonderful world.

(26:38 - 27:15)
When you do get to have this experience of being able to race or train somewhere fun, be sure to thoughtfully consider your travel plans and your timelines to give yourself the best chance at having both a positive race and a fun trip. That was another episode of the Full Circle Podcast. Subscribe to the Full Circle Podcast wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. 

If you like what you listen to, please be sure to leave us a rating and review as this goes a long way in helping us reach others. The thoughts and opinions expressed on the Full Circle Podcast are those of the individual. As always, we'd love to hear from you and we value your feedback.

(27:16 - 27:36)
Please send us an email at podcast at fullcircleendurance.com or visit us at fullcircleendurance.com backslash podcast. To find training plans, see what other coaching services we offer, or to join our community, please visit fullcircleendurance.com. I'm Coach Laura Henry. Thanks for listening.