I’m confident that many readers share itineraries similar to this:

Tuesday morning: 7am flight from North Carolina to Phoenix
Tuesday afternoon: Meet all afternoon with clients
Tuesday evening: Dinner with clients
Wednesday: All day client meeting
Wednesday evening: Drive two hours to Tucson
Thursday: All day client meeting
Thursday evening: Drive two hours back to Phoenix
Friday: All day flight back to North Carolina

For even the most dedicated among us, finding time for fitness on a schedule like this is extremely challenging. I, however, convinced myself that I would set and achieve some specific goals despite this itinerary.

With this hectic schedule, I decided to focus on maintenance: making sure that my fitness didn’t decline during the week. For me personally, this equated to: (1) maintaining my cardiovascular fitness, (2) not eating a lot of junk, and (3) staying flexible.

SMART Goals

These are rather vague goals, but the B-school graduates among our readers will remember SMART goal setting: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely. These are great guidelines to apply to your travel fitness, with a special emphasis on attainable and realistic, given the many constraints that we face when traveling.

Applying SMART, I came up with the following goals:

I have to admit that this sounds wimpy. But realistically, 60 minutes is the most time that I will have. I have already blocked out this time, literally entering it into my MS Outlook calendar. If someone asks me to attend a meeting or call, I’ll know whether it is going to conflict with my personal time.

You know how these all day meetings go. They inevitably bring in the cookie tray at 3:00. I know that I will not be able to forgo all of the goodies, so I resolve to eat no more than two.

It drives me crazy to not be eating when others are, so I will pack a bunch of healthy snacks in single serving sizes. I’ll take along peanuts, soy nuts, raisins, protein bars, and dry cereal. I hope that by having healthy snacks on hand, I won’t be as tempted to dive into the cookies.

Chances are, there is something that you need to do on a regular basis to maintain your fitness. For me, it’s stretching. If I don’t stretch for a few days (especially days when I am on airplanes and stuck sitting in meetings), it sets me back several weeks on my regular workouts. Perhaps for you, it’s getting 15 minutes of cardiovascular exercise each day or remembering to do sit-ups.

Achieving Your Goals

Commitments to ourselves are always easy to make and difficult to keep, but I find the more that I document and advertise my commitments, the more likely I am to keep them. I guess my “type A” personality doesn’t react well to public failures. So I decided to write my goals down on paper, which I tucked into the front pocket of my notebook. They’ll be staring up at me every time I open the notebook, which I’ll be carrying to all of my meetings.

You might want to write your goals in your journal, email them to yourself, put them on your PDA, or carry them in your purse, wallet or notebook.

Next month, I’ll let you know whether I achieved my goals or not, and share lessons learned. In the meantime, remember these tips for your goal setting:

Until next month, healthy travels!