Thoughts on Business Travel: My Top 10 Tips

I am just back from a whirlwind 34 hours on the ground in Hong Kong.  It’s kind of crazy that we spent 24 hours and two overnighters on planes to spend a grand total of 34 hours in a country, but there you go…

I’m often asked how I manage the travel that I do for my job, how I deal with jetlag, how I fit training in.  Here’s a list of my top ten ways to cope – things I have learned over the years.  Some may be familiar from an older entry I did on training and travel.  But I have tried to distill the many thoughts I have on travel survival tips into one “top ten” list.  I have been travelling like a crazy person since 1999 for work—so here you have more than a decade of my experience distilled into the things I do to make it all bearable (and dare I say, fun?!)

1. Always bring workout clothes…

I am always prepared – with running shoes, bike shorts, and usually a swimsuit and goggles.  I never quite know what I will physically feel up to after a long flight – but I know this: doing something to get moving after a flight ALWAYS makes me feel better.  This past trip I did an hour bike ride as soon as I got to my hotel and before dinner – it woke me up and made my blood get moving again after about 12 hours of lying around on a plane.  Total lifesaver.

2. …But be flexible with your training plans…

I had hoped to get two workouts in on Thursday – one morning sessions before my meetings (again, to get the endorphins going and the blood flowing – working out always makes me feel a bit more awake by the time I am done) and one in the afternoon before the long flight home.  I was totally exhausted by the time lunch was over, so skipped the afternoon session.  And the morning?  My heart rate was all over the place so I modified my run to take regular breaks to lower my heart rate.  You have got to be flexible, or else it is a recipe for frustration. The impact of long haul travel on training plans is not just mental from feeling tired or out of sorts from jetlag – it is physical.  If you are not flexible and willing to adjust to how you feel, you can lead you to feel like you have failed – which is just not the case.  Just do the best that you can in the circumstance.

3.  Try to get outside as much as possible.

We didn’t have much free time in our 34 hours in Hong Kong.  But we were lucky in that we needed to make our way from Kowloon across the harbour to Hong Kong Island for all of our meetings.  The default is to just take a taxi – but thankfully I was with colleagues who don’t just default into the easy thing.  Everyone wanted to walk and take the ferry, meaning we had about an hour of outdoor time from our commuting each day.  Get creative and find ways to be outside – walk to restaurants, to the office, do your morning run outdoors.  The fresh air (unless you are travelling to Beijing at the moment – avoid THAT air!) and sunshine work miracles when adjusting to time zone differences too.


I took this photo from the sun deck outside of my hotel gym – like I said, get outside anytime you can!

4.  Try to eat like you do at home.

This trip to Hong Kong was kind of a failure on the eating front for me – it is very tough to manage gluten free eating on the road and at business lunches and dinners in China. I eat gluten free by choice and because DH does for health reasons (he gets totally sick from wheat) – I do not have terrible reactions from wheat so decided not to make a fuss (I mean, soy sauce is not gluten free so asking for gluten free can be a big issue in Asia) so I figured that I could just roll with things. I looked at the bowl of noodles we were served and thought “why not?” since I can and do eat the odd sandwich without consequence – but my body didn’t react well to the jetlag plus different way of eating.  Lesson learned:  try to eat like you do at home even when you are travelling. I don’t mean the same foods – I mean, if you are in China eat Chinese food which you might not have every day at home – but for example if you eat vegetables at every meal, then don’t give up doing that.  It is important to keep to routines even when you are on the road.

5.  Caffeine…

I stick with the same rules for drinking caffeine that I do at home: I stop all caffeine after lunchtime.  Jetlag is hard enough to manage without having extra stimulants racing around my system when I am trying to fall asleep…

6.  Hydration…

One of the things I have learned about myself it that when I am thirsty it can cause me to feel tired or hungry.  So rather than reaching for the coffee or grabbing a snack, I now make sure that I have a bottle of water with me all the time when I am travelling.  I grab one from my hotel mini-bar in the morning so I am never without at meetings, and I often stop at the nearest convenience store during the day to keep my water topped up.

7.  Sleep…

I try to make myself sleep at the same times as I would at home – even on short trips.  I lie down in bed at a “normal time” (after business dinners) and then turn off the television and aim for a dark calm environment to get some sleep.  I am usually pretty lucky, getting about 4 hours before my body automatically wakes up – sometimes I can fall asleep again, most of the time not. For the first hour after I wake up in the middle of the night I DO NOT touch my phone.  I DO NOT check emails or Facebook or Twitter – I try to keep a dark calm room to try to fall asleep again.  It doesn’t always work – and after an hour of trying I allow myself to “give up” and to read the newspaper, emails, a book – but I won’t go to the gym until a more “normal time” of 6am or after, to try to keep with a schedule like I would have at home.

8. Naps…

Although I try to stick to “normal” sleep times I also try to grab catnaps if I am feeling really exhausted.  But my rule – and this is VITAL in my experience – is that a nap must be A NAP.  You have to be disciplined here.  A 30 minute catnap before dinner MUST BE only 30 minutes, or you can totally throw your body into shock.  Set an alarm or three.  Force yourself to keep to the nap time and GET UP.  Even if it means that you are still asleep and put your feet on the ground – DO IT.  This is how I force myself to get up after naps when I am jetlagged – I put my feet on the ground and sit in bed until I am awake – it works everytime.

If you give into temptation and extend the nap into a two or three hour sleep, expect that you will not sleep that night and that you will have an awful next day.  So be vigilant if you take a nap make sure it is really a NAP.

9. Compression Gear…

Have you ever opened a bottle of water mid-flight, drank about half, and then grabbed the bottle to take it with you post-flight?  Have you seen what happened to the bottle?  It crumpled once the plane started descending.  Why?  Because cabin flight pressure is just ever so slightly less than ground air pressure.  Translation: things like water bottles expand due to the lack of pressure in flight.  Hypothesis: the same happens to our cells in flight, leading to the potential for swollen ankles.

My solution?  I wear compression gear when I fly.  It makes my legs feel SO MUCH BETTER.  I am a 2XU Brand Ambassador and one of the reasons why I became a 2XU ambassador was because of my devotion to their compression tights – I have worn these since 2009 in my travels and I LOVE THEM.  I am convinced that the tights make my legs feel so much better once I am back on the ground. I wrap my legs in compression – both tights and socks. Can I say it again?  This will give you happy legs once you are off a long flight.

10. And most important: enjoy yourself!

I am the first person to say that although all the work travel looks exciting and glamourous (and it is – SOMETIMES) that it can also put a huge strain on life. I feel the effects on my health as I stagger around like a zombie, and also I feel it in my personal life. What can I say – being away from home and from the people you love CAN SUCK and it requires that much more effort to make sure that your loved ones do not feel NEGLECTED when you go away all the time for work.

So putting aside the negative, it is really important while on business to make sure to enjoy where you are.  I am lucky in that I work with cool people.  We always try to make sure that we enjoy ourselves while away for work – from booking good restaurants, to planning quick cultural trips (spare two hours? off we go to a play!). For quick work trips we also try to stay in nice hotels with good fitness centers too, as that makes the jetlag that much more bearable.

Enjoyment doesn’t have to involve money – sometimes it just requires checking in and noticing your surroundings.  I am a huge believer in taking the time to enjoy where I am – wherever I am. And since I always have my phone with me I try to take photos of the small things I notice (as long as it does not cause too much of a distraction or interrupt conversation or cause delays). It’s also a great way to share with family and friends little snippets of life while you are away…


I showed this photo to my colleagues after – we were at this lunchtime spot together, but I was the only one to notice these lanterns!

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