Physical preparation for your trip

Making sure your body is ready for two weeks in China should involve more than merely getting shots at the travel clinic. (But by all means, go to your travel clinic! Great article about it in this weekend's Denver Post here.) You’re not running a marathon, but there are times when your strength will be tested:

• Sixteen hours in an airplane each way - not in business class
• Standing for possibly hours in line, often holding your toddler, for passport checks, security screenings, baggage, and at the consulate
• Climbing the Great Wall - while you’ll go to the “tourist area,” that doesn’t mean it’s flat or easy
• Walking all the way through Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City
• Thick smog, extreme heat, tropical humidity, intense sun
• Extended periods without access to modern toilet facilities
• Getting sick from - something - whether food poisoning or the flu
• Lifting and carrying your new 20-pound child, especially if she is your first child...

The conditioning you’ll want to do depends on your current fitness level, of course, and talk with your physician about your goals and any special considerations you may have.

Some activities that worked well for us, and other travelers, included:

• Hiking at the park for 40 minutes every night
• Wearing a backpack or kelpie to get used to the feeling, then adding a small amount of weight every day or two (such as a paperback novel) to build endurance
• Stair-climbing or crossing rugged terrain
• Losing weight, but keeping well-hydrated
• Stretching and exercises to promote flexibility (very useful for keeping comfortable in the airplane)
• Plenty of sleep in general. China’s time zone is too far out of sync with North America to try re-setting your internal clock ahead of the trip, however.

We wish we could say that doing these things allowed us to scale the Great Wall for miles without losing our breath, or to trek through the alleyways of Guangzhou without noticing the heat, but that wouldn’t be true. But the conditioning did help - we wouldn’t have gotten as far as we did, or enjoyed the trip nearly as much, if we hadn’t prepared.

With the current worries about the H1N1 "swine flu", these activities are also beneficial to helping your body ward off the virus, or help you recover should you be infected.

Another benefit of the physical training was that it helped us pass the time between referral and travel more quickly. We felt like we were accomplishing measurable progress toward our goal with each step, and taking control of something when so much was out of our hands.

The time we spent together gave us the chance, too, to talk about our hopes, expectations, fears, and plans.

Finally, the conditioning we did before the trip was the last real extended run we’ve had of proper exercise - our lives with a toddler since then just haven’t given us that kind of flexibility!