Ahhhh vacation. Breaker of diets and exercise routines. In the past I have let vacation break me EVERY YEAR. I may be doing good on whatever fitness or diet regimen I was doing at the time but when vacation came around I would consume more junk food in a week than one could think humanly possible. I was determined for that not to happen this year.
When we were looking for hotels to stay in on our trip down, I wanted to make sure they had a treadmill so I could get my long run in before we hit the road again for another 5 hours. I woke up early Saturday morning and was the first one down to the fitness center so I snagged the treadmill for 6 very long and painful treadmill miles. (Treadmill miles are far more difficult than road miles in my opinion.) I was lucky enough to get to spend time with my oldest while I got through that painful run. We watched Spongebob Square Pants on the TV while I ran and he tried out the stationary bike and elliptical.
Day 1 was a success!
The next morning I woke up at 5:30 AM to get out and try my first run in the sand. I started off strong with a 10 min pace but I quickly discovered that running in the sand is not quite the same as running on the pavement. I managed to squeeze out 4 painful miles before I decided to call it a day. Slipping my feet into the cool ocean water after that run was an amazing feeling.
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^^^Reward for getting up at 5 AM to run ^^^
Diet wise I did pretty good until about half way through the week. There were chocolate chip cookies involved, that's all I can say. They are my down fall and the bane of my existence. That and Nutella. Nutella is heaven as well. Anyways, I'm getting distracted here! The diet was decent until the cookies. I did go run 4 miles to offset the damage I may have done but things declined after that. There were s'mores and bacon involved. Aside from those momentary lapses in judgement, I did ok. I could have done better but I think I squeaked by with minimal damage to my waste line. I know that I won't be going back to eating that way because I don't like how I feel after eating things I shouldn't.
My last run for the week was on Friday. I woke up before 5 AM so I could fuel up for my long run. I was only going to do 7-8 miles that day but once I got out there, I felt so good so I kept going. I left the music off and it was just me running to the sounds of the ocean, my feet hitting the sand and my water bottle swishing away in my hand. That water bottle actually provided a nice little cadence for me to run to! I talk to myself a lot more when there's no music involved. Mentally.. not out loud! That would be weird. Running with no music can give you some nice time to think about anything that may be on your mind or time to meditate and relax. Let all your stresses go and just focus on your breathing and cadence of your feet hitting the ground. I ended up running 10 miles on Friday and could have probably done more but I got hungry and decided to call it quits at 10. I'm going to credit this awesome run to all the carby goodness that I had ingested over the 2 days prior. I went slow but I enjoyed this run the most. It was peaceful and relaxing.
Overall I think the week was not a complete wash. I did manage to maintain most of my healthy eating with only a few cheats. The running was a major success. I am proud that I didn't turn into a complete sloth during vacation. I managed to log 26 miles in that weeks vacation. I honestly just liked getting out and seeing the area around me. The views in the morning were amazing and I was one of the only people around to see it.
