Being a Student-Athlete Abroad in Granada

When picking a study abroad location, one of my deciding factors was how accessible it would be for training. I am a sprinter on the track and field team at Colorado College, and while I didn’t want to miss out on study abroad because of track, I also didn’t want to sacrifice my entire preseason. To maintain a healthy balance between training and immersing myself in study abroad, here are a few rules I followed:

1. Do not miss out on any experiences because of training. I prioritized my desires to travel, hike in Granada, ski the Sierra Nevada, go out on the weekends, attend IES Abroad social events, and spend as much time with friends as possible.
2. Flexibility over a strict routine. Sometimes that meant modifying workouts, swapping workout days, or exchanging a day for hiking or skiing (or dancing at the club, to be transparent). My commute to the track and the gym was 30 minutes each way, so I often had to be flexible with my workout length.
3. Training should be fulfilling, not draining. My goal was to have workouts be an opportunity for alone time and routine after spending the day meeting new people and exploring a new culture. I never wanted it to be a source of stress.

This meant saving the weekends for travel and squeezing in workouts during the weekdays. On a Monday when I both lifted and ran, my schedule looked like this:

9:45 - 10:50 A.M. - class #1
11:00 A.M. - 12:30 P.M. - class #2
1:00 P.M. - 2:30 P.M. - lift at gym
3:00 P.M. - homestay lunch
5:00 - 7:00 P.M. - class #3
7:30 - 9:00 P.M. - track workout

On an easier day, my schedule looked like this:

8:35 - 9:40 A.M. - class #1
9:40 - 11 A.M.- homework
11:00 A.M. - 12:30 P.M. - class #2
1:00 - 2:30 P.M. - track workout
3:00 P.M. - homestay lunch
4:15 - 6:15 P.M. - class #3

I spent 65 euros on my VivaGym membership, which has lots of athletic gym equipment (take advantage of their free trial deals!) and about 30 euros on my track membership (no free entry in Granada, unfortunately).

Was It Worth It?

Yes. However, despite not wanting to miss out, I couldn’t fit everything in that I wanted to do. For example, I never went to the lunches on Tuesdays for Hispanic students, because it was hard to find another time to fit my workout in. But that was also my choice. Making time to train was very important to me, and I don’t regret it. I ended up making a close friend through it, as another girl in the IES Abroad Granada program was also a sprinter at her school.

Overall, being a student-athlete abroad has been incredibly rewarding, and keeping up with training has been an opportunity to check in with myself during a semester full of novelty, discomfort, and all the culture shock/appreciation that comes from living in a strangely laid-back, environmentally conscious, and universal healthcare-loving country.