The cure for jetlag?

My least favorite part about travelling for work is jet lag. It seems that it's different for everyone, but for me, it usually involves being exhausted all day, then waking up at 3am wide awake only to be exhausted for another full day. This goes on for about 4 days before I finally adjust. During this adjustment period, I'm typically in a fog, not asleep, but not fully awake either.

I have heard various remedies from co-workers such as - sleep as soon as you get where you're going; don't sleep and try to stay awake; drink caffeine; drink alcohol; exercise; eat at the local meal time regardless of whether you're hungry...I've tried all of these with limited success. For me, the return trip always seems to affect me more than the trip to Europe. This is another point that people don't always agree on.

I don't want to jynx anything, but I may have finally cracked this mysterious code. I was in Poland last week for work and was there just long enough to adjust to the timezone before coming home.

My typcial M.O., when I come home from an overseas trip is to try to do an easy 2 hour workout the day after I get home. I don't typically push it because I'm always worried that my immune system is low and doing anything nutty might lead towards getting sick. However, the last four weeks (since my crash in the FMV Grand Prix), my training has been a little sporadic. Between the crash, wedding, honeymoon and a business trip to Europe, time was a limiting factor. That's not to say I didn't do any training, but it was difficult to get any serious volume in the past couple weeks due to time constraints. Given that I landed Friday night with a holiday weekend coming up, I was eager to get in some long workouts to prep for some races I have coming up later this summer. So, I decided to throw my typical easy workout plan out the window and jump right into a mini 4th of July weekend training camp.

Saturday morning Jason, Rick and Adam from my bike team we're planning on a 5+ hour ride in Canandaigua, Bristol and Naples with some long climbs, so I decided to tag along. I woke up at 3am wide awake (like usual), so it wasn't an issue making it to Honeoye Falls in time for the 8am start. We ended up getting in about 80 miles with almost 9000 feet of climbing. When we got back to Rick's place, I was totally cooked, as I think all of us were. I got home, stayed awake until about 830pm, and slept straight for 10 hours (a first for a return trip from Europe) and felt pretty good the next day. I woke up on Sunday and did a rollerski/bike combo in Mendon (4 hours total) and once again fell asleep around 9 and slept straight through the night. Monday morning went back to the hills for another long ride with Jason and felt 100% normal.

So, while I'm not ready quite yet to declare victory on jet-lag, I might be on to something - excessive exercise the morning I return. If it works following my next trip, it'll become part of the routine.

On a separate note, I'm headed to NYC this weekend for one of my college teammate's (Ski) wedding in Long Island. The wedding is on Sunday, so some of the other RIT baseball guys are going to hit up the Mets game on Saturday afternoon, should be a great weekend!