Posts Tagged ‘vacation’

As I promised last month, I’m doing a post of 11 things on the 11th of the month. This month is another list of things you may not know about me, and I’ve taken the theme off 11 localities I’ve spent at least one night of my life beyond the obvious of where I’ve lived in my life (Bedford, Lynchburg and Richmond, Va.). Also, while these do have numbers, these are in no order of “favorites.” I don’t want any cities to get jealous out there.

1. Mystic, Connecticut
One of the secrets of the Northeast has to be Mystic. I visited Mystic in the fall of 2006 on a mini-tour of the Northeast, including the Mystic Aquarium (above photo). From the outside it seemed like I was stepping back to the 1980s, but inside was pretty cool. If you go to Mystic, be sure to check out the nearby casinos.

2. Granger, Indiana
Just outside of South Bend is Granger, where two of my cousins grew up. I’ve been there a few times in my life — I think once when I was 6 months or so old and as recently as 2003. The highlight, though, was when I traveled there by myself when I was 18. A 12-hour drive by myself … seems surreal now.

3. Amsterdam
In the summer of 1999, I had an awesome college experience of going to London to study for three weeks then getting to go on a tour of Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam. The highlight was surprisingly Amsterdam. Such a great city for so many reasons. Above is a scanned in photo of one of the canals in Amsterdam. Another city on this trip makes the list below.

4. Cortland, Ohio
It’s where my in-laws live. I sort of have to stay there.

5. Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
I’ve seen a lot of ads for Myrtle Beach this year with a great tagline: Where America comes to play. Pretty good for an ad campaign. I have spent many, many nights in Myrtle Beach, ranging from my early teens to senior beach week in 1996 to visiting my sister when she lived there. I know the area very well, but it’s been quite a few years since I’ve been there.

6. Southern Shores, North Carolina
Keeping with the beach theme … the photo above isn’t precisely Southern Shores, but it’s close enough. A few summers ago a friend of mine got married on the beach in the Outer Banks. If you’ve never been, GO. Southern Shores is nice as it’s kind of in between the popular section of Nags Head and the very cool Duck.

7. Hershey, Pennsylvania
My wife and I made a stop on our honeymoon in 2004 in Hershey and we’ve been back twice for Dave Matthews Band concerts. (For the record, I’ve spent the night in several places for DMB concerts in addition to what’s already been mentioned: Cherry Hill, N.J., for a concert in Philadelphia; Roanoke, Va.; Blacksburg, Va.; Virginia Beach; and Greensboro, N.C.) Anyway, Hershey is a must-see sometime in your life if you like chocolate.

8. Middletown, New York
My first roommate from college lived in Middletown and a few of us went to his house for our first fall break in October 1996. It was truly my first road trip in college.

9. Brooklyn, New York
My roommate mentioned above lived in Brooklyn for a while. In the winter of 2005 my wife and I drove to New York for a couple of Dave Matthews Band concerts at Madison Square Garden. While it was nice to have a free place to stay, I got what I felt was a true Brooklyn experience — staying the night in an apartment above a shoe store, Brooklyn pizza and a local bar with drink five times what I’m used to paying. It was also winter, and it snowed, so I got to experience the city at a very awesome time of the year.

10. Birmingham, Alabama
A couple of summers ago I got to spend some time at a social media seminar in Birmingham. It was much smaller than expected, but I got to experience true southern humidity. Sure it’s bad in Virginia, but this stuff was thick.

11. Edinburgh, Scotland
On my trip mentioned above, I spent a weekend in Scotland. It was amazing. Great weather, great castles, great whiskey … it’s on the top of my list of places I want to visit again. (So yeah, No. 11 is No. 1, but who’s counting?)

I’m visiting my in-laws in Ohio this weekend, so I’m much more disconnected than usual. I pretty much have about 20 minutes per day to get on the computer with the various things we have going on. It’s kind of a nice break actually.

This morning I got in a nice, flat 8-mile run. It’s nice to get in a run when I’m out of my usual routine. It makes me feel like I’m getting more done with running.

And that’s all for now … run along. Not much to see here.

The greatest feeling in the world with running is beating a goal. Today all I wanted to do was run a couple of 8-minute miles and finish around 16 minutes in the 2-mile Turkey Trot in Warren, Ohio. Since I haven’t really done much speed work lately and the fact that I haven’t done all that much running since the Rock ‘n’ Roll Half Marathon, I didn’t know what my body would do beyond a mile if I pushed it. The other night my friend Travis and I ran a 7:33 mile as part of a 5-mile run, but I really wondered if I could sustain that for two miles.

Turns out, I can. Today I finished in 14:54.7, a 7:27 pace. In fact, I was actually about 20 seconds faster than that, but since this was not timed with a chip from the beginning, that little bit of extra effort wasn’t “official.” This race did use chips to record the finishers, but there was not a chip timing mat at the beginning. With 1,200 people, and many people starting at the front that shouldn’t have been, a chip mat at the beginning would have been nice to record the times more accurately. Not that I’m complaining — this was actually a very well organized race and all for a good cause. And the long-sleeved shirt is nice too.

Anyway, this short race felt great. It was a nice, cool, somewhat damp start to the day with temperatures in the low 40s. It was actually raining when I warmed up for a mile, making me want to just go into my car, drive back to my in-laws’ house and go to bed. And after yesterday’s awful car ride, I was just exhausted. But I did it, and I’m so happy with the results. In addition to being happy with my time, I was 127th out of more than 1,200 runners and walkers and finished 6th in my age group out of 34.

The real question I have now is can I sustain a pace like that for next week’s 5k? And can I sustain that pace and improve on it this winter to have good races next year? I certainly hope so.

Make that 10.1 miles. After yesterday’s voyage to my in-laws’ house in Ohio, the last thing I really felt like doing was running today. The trip is usually only a little more than 7 hours, but due to road paving on I-66 and a lot of traffic on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, it took almost 8.5 to get here.

Anyway, I got up this morning, headed to a nearby trail and ran. It was an unusual run - the first 3 miles felt awful, the next few were a little better and the last few felt great. Usually it’s the opposite. It’s like I could’ve kept going. Now that I’m back, I wish I would have gone another mile.

Today’s run marks two weeks in a row of a double digit long run — I don’t even know when the last time that happened.

There are vacations and then there are experiences. Visiting the Outer Banks is an experience. While my trip last week was for a friend’s wedding, and I didn’t even really do that many tourism-type things, the visit was an experience.

If you’ve never had a chance to visit the Outer Banks, it’s a must-see. If you live on the East Coast, it’s reasonably easy to get to. And if you want to do a family trip that’s affordable, the Outer Banks is the place to go. It’s been 16 years since I visited that area, so I appreciated this trip this time around. Our group stayed in the northern section in Southern Shores, which is about four or five miles north of the Wright Brothers Museum. My trip consisted of a visit to the museum, a ride-by of the dunes and trip to Currituck Beach Lighthouse. Two days or so of my time was geared toward wedding-related stuff, which included rehearsal dinner in the awesome little town of Duck. My next trip there — which I hope isn’t in another 16 years — I vow to be more of a tourist.

Workout wise, things didn’t really go as planned, although I never really had a definite plan. I did have a couple of things going against me — the heat was oppressive early in the week and then the North Carolina wildfire smoke settled in for three evenings and the last morning. I did rent a bike, so my friends, my wife and I got some decent rides in. It certainly was much easier to get out and ride in the heat rather than run in it. All told, I biked about 20 miles last week. Also going against me last week was having a blast with my friend and drinking too much, and meeting lots of new people and drinking with them. It’s not easy staying up until 2 or 3 a.m. and then trying to get up and run. I was so tired yesterday that I just took the day off to catch up on my sleep. The important thing is I had a ton of fun on this trip and I can’t wait to go back.

Workouts since last post
June 9: Walk - 0.4; Run - 3.2 (plus a visit to the Wright Bros. Museum)
June 10: Bike - 6
June 11: Run - 1.1; Bike - 6.4
June 12: Bike - 7
June 13: Walk - 0.2; Run - 3.1 (Intervals: 0.25 - 1:44; 0.5 - 3:53; 0.25 - 2:00; 0.25 - 1:54) (plus a visit to the Currituck Beach Lighthouse)
June 16: Walk - 1.1; Run - 3.5
- Of note is Saturday, June 14. I had planned to get up for a bike ride, but it was smoky from the wildfire.

(Photos: Above is a picture on the beach that my wife took; the inset photo is at Currituck Beach Lighthouse; and below is the gorgeous house we got to stay in.)

I’m on a brief trip to visit the in-laws in northeast Ohio, but I managed to get in a decent 4 miles yesterday, which included a quarter mile interval in 1:50. While it was only a quarter mile, it felt good to know I can still run at that pace. It felt pretty good, and I’m really looking forward to getting speedwork in once I begin my “official” training for the half.

That’s all from me for now! Just wanted to get in a quick update.

Running when not at home is always tough, but today I managed a good 11 mile run in the flatness of northeast Ohio. On top of that, I added some speed bursts in between mile 5 and 6 (7:39), between miles 8 and 9 (7:41) and the last quarter mile (1:49/7:15 pace). I’ve been hearing a lot lately how beneficial it is to add speed into longer runs and it really felt great today. Plus the weather was finally cooperative with temperatures in the low 70s and very cloudy. All my other miles were in the 9-minute mile pace. Adding the faster miles really made this workout a lot less boring than other long runs - it helped get my mind off everything that’s being going on in my life.

I’ll probably log a few miles in the morning. Since I have a wedding to go to later in the day, it’ll make me not feel so bad about having some good food and drink later in the day.

So after a 7 mile run in Ohio on the first half of my vacation, the rest of my time off was spent relaxing and not worrying about anything. I managed to run a mile on Tuesday morning while I was in the Poconos (more specially, at Pocono Palace), but my motivation to run just wasn’t there. Simply put, it was hot, I was at a higher altitude and I just needed to relax, both physically and mentally. I managed to do that quite well.

Things returned a little bit more to normal this morning with a 3 mile run. By the time the week ends, I will log just about the same amount of miles as last week. I guess that’s not too bad considering the odd timing of my days away from home.

Today is 07-07-07 … so I went out and ran just over 7 miles … just after 7 a.m. … all while on vacation.

A vacation from work can’t come soon enough, but a vacation right as I am feeling great about where my training is isn’t quite ideal. I’ve gotten in my head that 16 weeks of training for the Richmond Marathon is what I want to do, and that doesn’t actually come until the week of July 16. Right now is all about mentally preparing while creeping my mileage up. These past two weeks have been a great bonus to unofficially begin the training. I want to feel like “officially” training for the marathon is nothing but a smooth transition from what I’m already doing.

People often think that when they’re on vacation, they can’t exercise at all. But I’m already trying to figure out when I’ll get some good runs in, while still relaxing. Saturday and Sunday mornings will be the best, since I’ll simply be visiting in-laws and my wife is off doing things women do when they’re in weddings. And I’ll be in Ohio where it’s a bit cooler and considerably flatter. So I figure that Saturday would be a great day to run an easy 7 miles. It’s been a while since I’ve hit that distance and it would be a great way to end a week that’s been full of speed workouts. And I don’t get a chance to have a run without any hills because quite simply, I hate the track when I’m by myself. Today I let my body rest after that speed workout Tuesday and yesterday’s mile race. Tomorrow I might go for a jog before I hit the road, but I’ll really wait and figure that out in the morning. I’ll be venturing back to Virginia on Wednesday after a couple of days in the Poconos in Pennsylvania, where I hope to get a few miles in.

The hardest part about vacation is nutrition. In the past two weeks, I’ve gotten a lot better with eating the right things and voiding certain foods/drinks altogether. I think this mini-transition period will help tremendously when it’s all-you-can-eat dessert night. When I return from my trip, I will be keeping tabs on my weight and letting you in on my goals. I’ve been through the story of losing weight, but it’s time to hold me accountable again to get to where I want to be by the time the marathon rolls around.