Vacation Fitness

I just got back from almost a week visiting family and friends in my hometown of Seattle. It was a glorious trip, full of family adventure, delicious comfort food and gorgeous weather. It was also exactly 4 weeks before my half marathon race day and I needed to keep up with my training.

My childhood home sits atop a monster hill, too steep to run up and worse going down. The rest of the neighborhood is more manageable: still hilly, but not impossible.  Three times that trip I walked down the monster hill and started running once the ground leveled off. The other hills slowed my average speed from about 9 minute miles to 10.5, but I still did them. I was supposed to do an 8 mile training run, but the hills were too much for me to do that distance so I stopped after 6 and am hoping I didn’t screw my race time too badly. I planned to run four days, but missed one so I compensated by doing the 7 minute workout three times in a row: 21 minutes of circuit training work without any equipment required!

My point is that I was still able to (mostly) keep up with my fitness goals while still enjoying my vacation. I prefer to run first thing in the morning, so I didn’t really lose any fun family time as I’d return to find my kid still in her jammies. I ate ice cream and cookies, plus wedding cake (of course). The wine was flowing. We ate out a ton. But I still got my veggies in and made sure to get as much sleep as possible.

Vacation is essential to our well-being. It’s important to go off The Plan every once in a while. But if you want this whole healthy living thing to be a part of your lifestyle, plan how you’re going to take care of yourself no matter what life throws.  I had a plan B and C for each day if I didn’t get my run in and if I hadn’t eaten well by mid-day. I planned to keep making time for myself and did it, painlessly. Well, almost painlessly. Those hills are killer!

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