Wednesday, December 25, 2013

Willkommen in Deutschland

It is our last two nights in Florida and we have moved to the Disney Vero Beach Vacation Club resort.  The weather took a turn for the worse today, it was raining and very windy.  By the time I got my act together at 1:30pm, I decided to do my 8 miles in the hotel gym.  Yes, I made this decision mostly for fear of having to use the bathroom (which, of course, I did) than for the weather.  Yesterday morning I ran on Indian River Boulevard for my almost 12 miler (11.7 miles) and by 3 miles I was on Potty Alert.  Luckily, there was a park with a clean restroom on my route.  Because I waited today's run out, I knew for sure it would be interrupted.

There are two treadmills in the Disney gym.  One is the basic LifeFitness where you look at a screen with a red dot traveling an oval shape for every quarter mile.  The other treadmill is the Cadillac of all treadmills, the Lifescape.  I chose the Caddy.  I set my pace at 8:27 per mile and then sped up to a 7:03 pace for my 8x100 strides.  There is a video screen on this treadmill with a button reading "Courses".  I pressed this and was presented with multiple locations:  Yosemite National Park, Kings Canyon, Germany, Auckland & Wellington,   and the Trinity Mountains were just a few.  I tried Auckland & Wellington.  This virtual course started on the city streets along the marina.  I wasn't too impressed, so I switched to Germany.  I loved it.  The course begins on a dirt path in a national forest, it then switched to historic city streets in Munich.  The scenery was so interesting and beautiful with fantastic details.  The time flew by.  I had to cut my run short to 7 miles because we had Christmas Eve dinner plans.  I'm looking forward to finishing my German tour tomorrow.


5 comments:

  1. Did you just say that you enjoyed running on virtual trails? This is a new twist. If you have an iPad you can replicate that experience on any treadmill using an app called Virtual Active (http://www.vafitness.com/). I bought the US Northwestern run (mostly Seattle city and trails) and tried it a couple of times but I ended up nauseous with a splitting headache.

    That Indian River Blvd run sounds like a very long road. How were the views? No boring ocean I hope!

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    1. The Indian River Boulevard was three miles on a busy road lined with gated communities, then a bridge to AIA, a couple of miles in a residential area and the back over the bridge. Nothing too exciting. Not like a European vacay, danke shoen.

      Were you nauseated by the iPad lighting or the hilly Seattle streets?

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    2. It was a combination of the position of the iPad relative to my height (too low), and the fact that the video was statically positioned but my view rose and fell with every step. I also thought Virtual Active cheaped out by reusing the same segments of video for the 45 minute run. I did like the city running scenes more than the park scenes.

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  2. Hey! Whahappened to my post? I guess I didn't hit 'publish'. If I can only remember what I said..

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