Field Notes · Travel & Performance

My performance in Istanbul started at the trade show, not at the start line.

In the week before the race, I moved between a trade show in Hamburg, meetings in Munich, and client visits in Ankara. Late nights, early trains, full days on my feet, meals improvised between sessions. The kind of week that looks productive on a calendar and feels like something else entirely in your legs.

I often underestimate how disruptive that accumulation is. Sleep becomes erratic. Meals become negotiable. Stress hormones climb quietly in the background. None of it is dramatic. All of it counts.

By the time I reached Istanbul, my heart rate was spiking sooner than usual on easy efforts. My legs felt heavier than the training log suggested they should. That gap between what the data said and what my body felt was the real signal. Not a warning to stop — a prompt to adjust.

The race began long before the starting line.

Rather than pushing through the feeling and hoping it would lift, I recalibrated. I slowed my early pace. I prioritised hydration. That evening, I used the hotel sauna, which had become one of the more reliable tools in my travel-and-recovery rhythm over the past year.

It was not about giving up on the race. It was about acknowledging the full cost of the week that preceded it. The trade show was valuable. The meetings mattered. But they were not free. They had a price, and that price showed up at the start line.

For busy professionals who also train seriously, this is one of the most underdiscussed realities of performance. The race, the marathon, the event — whatever the target — does not exist in isolation. It sits at the end of a week, or a month, that was already full of everything else. Recognising that cost is not an excuse. It is just accurate.