Have Sneakers, Will Travel

We are on vacation!  Yay!  We drove down to Florida from New York with the four children!  Boo!   Actually, it wasn't as painful as our drive down last April.  The two littlest girls are older and Pete and I got wiser (not really).  We left Wednesday night at 10pm and stopped in Fredericksburg, Virginia at 3:30am.  The next morning we had an overpriced not-so-good breakfast at the Battlefield Restaurant, and then walked across the street to the Fredericksburg National Cemetery.  It was a glorious morning, 75 and sunny.  The grounds of the cemetery were hilly.  The kids had a blast stretching their legs on the dirt paths.

Steep steps leading up to the cemetery.  

Great glute and quadricep workout!

I loved this sign.

This happens to also be my first week of training for the Boston Marathon!  I'm using the Pfitzinger 18/55 training schedule again, the same one I used for my last marathon.  This is an 18 week schedule that starts with a 35 mile week and peaks at 55 miles per week.  This is a lot of mileage for me, but I preferred the speed work over the Hal Higdon marathon plans I used in the past.  Pfitzinger's plan is also touted as one of the best on the Runner's World marathon training forums.  

If you recall, I said Week One is supposed to be a 35 mile week.  Well, today is Day Five and I've completed 18 miles so far, but only because I've been streaking.  Monday and Tuesday I ran 1.12 miles each because I was lazy and the road conditions back in New York were icy.  Wednesday I was going to make up the 8 miles I should have run on Tuesday, but came up short with 5.3.  Considering this was the day we left for our vacation, I'm pretty shocked I even got 5 in.  

Thursday we drove 12 hours to Savannah, Georgia.  We arrived at the hotel at 9pm.  Instead of running my scheduled 9 miles, I ran a whopping one mile on the hotel dreadmill.  Easy, right?  Unless you're running in Converse Chuck Taylors.  I was rushed to get this run in before going out for a late dinner because the kids were starving.  I figured I should just run as is, rather than get changed into my running gear.  Here is my quick review of Converse Chuck Taylors as running shoes.  They suck as running shoes.  There is absolutely no support anywhere.  And if you think your usual double knot will hold for more than 5 minutes, you're mistaken.  If your shoelace happens to untie itself while running on a dreadmill, I highly recommend you immediately stop to fix the problem, rather than run with a loose shoe.  Not safe.  Speaking from experience.  

Today we arrived at our final destination, Vero Beach, Florida at 1pm.  I was hungry so I decided to have lunch before doing my 9 mile makeup run (which I ended up doing on the dreadmill while listening to the new awesome app I'm going to review in my next post!).

In conclusion, although it might require some restructuring, it is possible to follow a training plan while on a road trip with children.  You just have to be flexible and creative.  Now I must pass out from utter exhaustion.