Bangalore mornings

The hotel pool at 5:00 AM

I recently went on a business trip to Bangalore India and in my small carry-on case that I brought for the week I allocated enough space for my running gear.  Last time I was here I made it a point to get to the gym and run a few mornings but that hotel gym had much better A/C.  In this one I started sweating the moment I stepped on the treadmill.  But a run is a run, so I came down at 5:00 AM on Tuesday and Thursday for my morning session, accompanied by my MP3 player and Indian music videos on the TV.

I was fighting jet lag for most of the week so getting up at 5:00 wasn't a big problem.  The run seemed to anchor the day, getting me off on the right foot (pardon the pun) and helping me adjust.  The only problem was that the steady diet of authentic Indian food was giving me a slightly upset stomach that made running slightly uncomfortable but wasn't enough to stop me.

Another kind of running

The first day I had a bit of trouble translating from metric to English units and set the treadmill at a breakneck speed that nearly killed me before I figured out what I had done.  On the second day I ran I was preoccupied with Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals which started at 5:30 AM Bangalore time.  I wanted to rush back to my room and check online to see how things were progressing because none of the approximately 40 24-hour news and sports stations had ever heard of ice hockey.  I guess it turned out OK. :)

I'd love to find a way to run outside on future trips to Bangalore but I'm just not sure that's going to be possible. Running on the roads would be insanely risky, plus the air pollution from the traffic would make it difficult to have a good run.  Maybe I'll take some trips out of town next time and explore some areas where an outside run would be feasible.  But for now, it's the hotel gym and Bollywood movies.