Football Epilogue

Iconic Las Vegas,Image by skeeze from Pixabay For me, visiting Las Vegas once every four or five years for a long weekend is enough to pacify my curiosity for gambling, staying up all night, consuming too much food and alcohol, and reminding myself that I'm no longer in my 20's. This year, I found myself in the oasis-ish place twice. Once in February to golf with one of my good friends and once just last week for a conference; and to golf with that same friend. The Rio, from casino.org The conference was during the week and was held at the Rio All Suites Hotel . It was nice, however I'm starting to realize that all casinos are pretty much the same. They have the same gaming options, same types of slot machines and everything is roughly the same price; which gets jacked up during the weekend. It is a little cheaper to play during the week off of the strip, but those differences evaporate fairly quickly when it's busy. Still, the Rio did have some decent...

I am in San Francisco for a conference followed by a couple days in the Sonoma wine country. When I am in a big city I am often amazed at the level of fitness the people seem to have. Now maybe it's a biased eye at work, but I don't think it's entirely that based on the fact that I'm walking...a lot. There's just no other way of getting places in town cheaply and quickly. Taxi's are expensive and often by the time you've waited for a bus or train you could be most of the way there. I think anything over a 1/1.5 miles (1.6/2.4 km) I start looking for a ride, but even then there's so much going on in town that walking is easily distracted. This is in contrast to living in the suburbs. In the 'burbs I drive nearly everywhere. My car is at my beck and call so even the 0.3 miles (0.5 km) to the grocery store is a more convenient drive. Particularly, when there are kids at home who leave my time limited. This may well be an understated reason for the...

This has not been a good week from a healthy living perspective. I've been at a conference and that usually means a lot of walking. I was staying away from the conference center and so I was planning on that being even more the case. I was, however, far enough away to have to take Baltimore's light rail system, which conveniently dropped me off within 100 feet of the conference center. From there, all the talks were close, the restaurants were close. It just didn't add up to high step counts. Add in drinking a ton of coffee and more alcohol than usual and every meal being a "big" meal; I'm now sitting on the plane in dire need of a workout. Getting back into routine then becomes a matter of inertia. My body at rest is now wanting to stay at rest. Hopefully I can get my 10k in today and move upwards from there. One day at a time...

I've been tired, very tired. Oddly, I find myself wide awake around 6 am, but then the tiredness happens when I opt to roll over and go back to sleep leaving my groggy on my second awakening. There's a lot of stressful stuff going on lately though so I shouldn't be too self-deprecating. I know I mentioned I didn't get a morning run in. Fortunately, I hit the gym last night after I got back to town and put in a 5K on the treadmill and did some lifting: pull-ups (4 sets of 7-10reps), bench press (3 sets of 20reps), biceps curls supersetted with overhead press (3 sets of 10reps) and some triceps dips on the bench (3 sets of 10reps.). Feeling good, but potentially sore tonight/tomorrow.

I'm in Chicago. I was wide awake at 6 am. I hopped out of bed to go for a run in the park across the street. I got "runner ready" which for me means teeth brushed, drink some water, splash some more on my face and get dressed. I was all dolled up to put in a 5K and then realized I DIDN'T PACK MY RUNNING SHOES. This is ironic as I've been accused of bringing more shoes on trips than many more style minded (women) do; from dress shoes to sandals to running shoes, most all in the name of functionality. I was hasty in packing light this time. Oh well, it was a 10 minute walk from my hotel to my conference. I guess that will have to do, although I might have to start recognizing training shoes as acceptible dress with slacks and a tie...

It's been a little while since my last post. Life has been busy. I did however get to spend a week in Barcelona in that time. It was an amazing trip where I now joke with my colleagues that my flat rental there starts in October. From a health perspective, big cities typically mean one thing: lots of walking. Barca has the added feature of being very hot, >100F during the day with a noticeable amount of humidity. With so much to see and do it was worth getting sweaty to see the architecture, walk la rambla and visit the beach. With a conference going on as well there was limited time for food. Spanish portions...along with portions most everywhere else in the world are smaller than at home. Alcohol consumption in the evenings made up for it. This was the first time in a long time I found myself notably dehydrated. After a day or two I found carrying a bottle of water to be essential. There is a lot of orange juice consumed there which was especially refreshing when served wi...

I love traveling for work. In some ways it's like a vacation without taking the PTO. This is particularly true of conferences. I'm in Phoenix for the "International Microwave Symposium" (the communications type, not the cooking type). It's sunny and warm for my Minnesotan self. Two things typically suffer when I'm on tavel. My diet and my exercise. Too much beer and hors d' oeuvres are typically consumed as a part of social events and I spend a lot of time sitting in various presentation sessions. Really, I try not to beat myself up too badly, but trips can also have the effect of throwing off my exercise schedule once I'm back home. That said, I have a couple small accomplishments so far this time around: I've taken several walks around downtown, particularly after meals.  I got my HIITs cardio and ab session in last night I've had a salad for dinner each night and managed to avoid most sugary stuff during the day. The goal will ...