Disclaimer: I did not pay for this product. This has everything to do with who I sleep with and nothing to do with this blog. I was not in anyway requested, obligated, coerced or otherwise manipulated into writing this. I did so of my own free will and all opinions are my own!

Recovering well from a hard workout is always important for an athlete, but I’ve recently realized that it’s 100 times more important for the traveling athlete. To be totally honest, training and travel don’t always merge very well. Travel requires you to be constantly “on,” constantly thinking about where your next meal is coming from, where you’re going to spend the night, what you’re going to see tomorrow, etc. It’s this “on”-ness that makes travel so great. You never fall into a routine, so you never check out and stop noticing the world around you and how amazing it is.

But therein lies the problem — Good training is all about routine, and good travel is all about destroying routine. Ah, impasse? Perhaps, not entirely. I think training and travel CAN complement one another–if, AND THIS IS A BIG FAT CAPITAL LETTER IF, you allow yourself proper recovery.

Two years ago I would have said that the key to recovery was sleep and standing in cold water. This was back when Macky would force feed me recovery protein shakes. I hated them. They were syrupy and disgusting and landed in my stomach like a block of cement. I developed a tendency to whine my way out of them whenever possible. Then last year he switched sponsors (hallelujah!) and started to work with Osmo Nutrition. Osmo’s recovery drink, Acute Recovery, is a lot lighter and the recommended recipe involves almond milk and cinnamon and tastes like horchata. This was just yuppie enough to get me back on the recovery drink train. I even occasionally mixed myself one without being coaxed by Macky. However, to be honest, I never noticed that much of a difference in my recovery (let’s be honest, I’m not super perceptive, but still). It was delicious, but usually I was too lazy and tired post-ride to bother.

Osmo Nutrition Acute Recovery for Women Honey & Spice

Then this year, Osmo introduced a women’s specific line, under the tagline “women are not small men.” (As an almost six-foot-tall female, I feel like a better tagline would have been “women are not weirdly proportioned men” but nobody asked me.) Anyway, I was initially a little “meh” on the idea. I feel like there is a lot of buzz over women’s specific stuff in the cycling industry and a lot of it’s just that, buzz. (I don’t really need women’s specific brake levers, do I?) Then I collapsed into the car after a hard ride, chugged a bottle of Acute Recovery for Women and five minutes later I was up bouncing around, picking daisies. Of course, I didn’t put two and two together right away, but by the third time it happened, I was like, oh shit, this is what a recovery drink is supposed to do and it’s awesome.

This made me realize two very important things:

1 I may fit into men’s clothes and ride men’s bikes, but MY BODY DOESN’T WORK LIKE A MAN’S. You’re probably thinking, duh, but seriously, this was a revelation and my guess is that there are a lot of female athletes out there who haven’t given female-specific nutrition a second thought. Here’s my pitch: if you’re a female athlete, you should be drinking Osmo, a) because it’s made by a totally badass, brilliant woman who is doing things that no one else has done and b)it frikkin works, and this is coming from the world’s biggest nutrition drink skeptic.

2 A good recovery drink should be part of every traveler’s repertoire. Even if you’re not a serious athlete–if you plan on hiking or surfing or, hell, walking around museums all day, it’s not a bad thing to have on hand. There is nothing (literally, nothing) worse than getting to the end of an awesome day of traveling and realizing that your whole body hurts and you don’t know where you’re spending the night and there is at least an hour between you and dinner. I know this feeling well and I know it seems like nothing can make it better, but a couple hundred of the right calories at the right time actually will. (Jumping in ice-cold water and napping on the beach won’t hurt either…)

Do you combine training and traveling? What do you do to recover from a hard day of travel? Share your thoughts below!