That's always a tough one. I'm a stay-at-home mom, so not much traveling is required with my job now. In my previous career, I worked for Arthur Andersen, which required a fair amount of traveling. I must say: I didn't work out much at all on those trips. Mostly I over ate at restaurants and got little or no exercise. Probably what most people do on business trips.
These days when I travel, I am usually training for some race. That helps motivate me to get up in the morning and get my run in before the day's activities get going. I find that morning runs are the best when traveling. If I put it off, something is bound to come up and I'll get involved with visiting with people, or meetings, or I just get tired from the trip and make an excuse to work out tomorrow instead.
The thing that helps me get out of bed before everyone else is knowing what my workout plan is and having a long-term goal I'm determined to reach. If I can visualize how this particular workout fits into reaching my goal I am much more likely to get the workout in and get my lazy bones out of bed.
This past weekend was a great example: I am training for a 1/2 marathon with a goal time of sub-2:00:00. That's basically a 9 minute mile for a 1/2 marathon. Being in the middle of the pack is fun and sociable. I'm not a fast runner, and with asthma I don't expect to win any races. Right now I'm content with slow and steady improvement that keeps me injury free.
To help me reach my goal, I signed up with Nike's website coaching for a 1/2 marathon. The training program is 12 weeks. It suggested that for Saturday (while I was traveling) I run a 10 mile run: 2 miles easy warm up, 10K race pace, 2 miles easy cool down. Well, I worked out a loop on my travels that was 9.3 miles (not quite 10 but that's ok). I checked my 10K PR before I left and it was an 8:58 per mile pace, so ok that's sounds perfect.
The weather turned out to be super-cold (26 degrees!) which would have encouraged me to snuggle under the covers. However the goal, and the online coach got me motivated. I averaged a 9:20 pace for the whole 9.3 miles, just to keep warm and get back home faster! It ended up I had positive splits because I was running a sub-9:00 for the first few miles to warm up. Either way, while it wasn't the perfect match to the training plan, the training plan ensured I got the mileage in while traveling.
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