"Quick Request" turns into April in London

This week, I got a calendar invite from the VP of my group labeled "quick request." This was definitely unusual, but I thought it was just going to be for some sort of analysis she needed put together. I got to her office, and she started out asking me how I felt about the scheduled 2 week trip to our London and Glasgow offices at the end of May, with our business process team. I am excited about that trip for various reasons and told her so. Then she said "how would you like to go sooner (for a separate project)?"

I was a little thrown, and asked her how soon. The way our office works, you can come in on Monday and be sent to London or another foreign location by Friday. Luckily, I had a little extra time but they wanted me to go April 9th. I will be in Austin, TX on vacation that Monday and Tuesday and I was planning on flying back home Wednesday. Now, I will be flying straight from Austin to London at 10am, landing at 6:35am London time (12:35am Austin time) and heading straight to the office. I will be in London until April 27th. I am staying at an awesome in central london (the beauty of working for a hotel company). I was also be going with my old boss from Deloitte (who also works for my new company in a different group) and my other old boss currently lives in London so I am excited for the mini-reunion. She'll be running the London Marathon while I am there!

I will be heading back to Glasgow/London for the originally planned two week trip May 13th or so. Unfortunately, my parents will be traveling May 1-14th so I will only see them one weekend in the next 7 weeks, which considering I see them one to two times a week, is really weird. I am going to try to get them Skype tonight, but I am not hopeful about the success of that.

Of course, while I am excited about this trip, I am very nervous about the impact to my training. Ironman Training officially started this past week, and I have rides of 50-80 miles scheduled for while I am away. Luckily, through the magic of Google, I managed to find a couple of local triathlon teams and bike rental shops in the locations I'll be. I am hoping to meet up with them for weekend rides & they have been very helpful in giving me advice/suggestions. Mostly, I am also hoping this as a tool to meet people over there so that I get out of the hotel room and get to see non-tourist parts of London. If I miss a ride or two, it won't kill my training, but I just don't want to miss a full month of them.

I am most excited for biking in Austin, among all the other great things to do there. I have been dying to go to Austin for 4 years or so, mainly because I have heard such great things about the Austin biking, running, and music scene. The bike shop I e-mailed sent me a link to the Austin Cycling Events calendar and there were at least 15 rides to choose from that Sunday. I think that I am going to try to do a "ladies ride" from Lance Armstrong's bike shop (Mellow Johnny's). We'll also be staying right next to Town Lake (aka Lady Bird Lake) which is an awesome running path. And we're located very close to the downtown/bar area for some awesome music. It is going to be a great trip!

I will try to take tons of pictures while I am there. No promises on the success of that!