I Love the Shore

I feel like that is my constant theme this summer, and we've only been down twice. The shore is simply one of my favorite (if not my favorite!) place on earth. I've always been a beach person and for some reason I've fallen in love with this beach in particular.

The only real working out I do while I'm down here is running (just following my training plan) and walking miles and miles along the shoreline. I swear I could walk forever with my toes in the ocean. Although I have to admit, I'm starting to think it's kind of hard on my calf muscles, all of the barefoot walking, because they do tend to bother me when we're down here. I might have to start doing some walking on the beach in my tennis shoes, which will obviously make me look really cool. Ha.

Running down here is miserable though. Or at least it has been so far. Granted, I've made the mistake of not getting up early to run so I'm hoping that's a big part of my problem. I've been running anywhere from 9:45am to noon and each one has been as bad as the next. It kind of kills my confidence for running 13.1 miles down here at the end of August. If I'm barely making it through 3 miles, how the heck will I make it through 10.1 more miles???

I'm trying not to let it get me down, and hoping that 7 more weeks of training will get me ready. I'm also hoping that since the race starts at 8am (or 7am) that it'll be a bit cooler and more manageable than my runs down here have been so far. Hopefully. Otherwise I'm in for a world of hurt come August 28th.

In other news, I'm in my 6th week of being off and feeling the urge to ramp it up in terms of what I'm accomplishing with that time. I need to really focus on the goals I wrote about a few days ago and figure out how to go about accomplishing them with my time off. Of course I'll keep a nice balance of being lazy and reading and hanging out with Pete to make sure I don't overdo it :-)

Back to the Beach we Go!

Have I mentioned I love the beach? (or rather, the shore as it's affectionately called in Jersey) One of the things I looked forward to most in taking these three months off is the ability to get down to the shore as much as possible. Jeff's parents have a house down there and they graciously let us stay down there with them. Talk about lucky!

I'm looking forward to another weekend full of walks along the beach, playing fetch with Petey and just relaxing. Life doesn't get any better than that I don't think.

But, while I'm down there I do plan to focus on some of the goals I mentioned in a previous post. I'm taking down the book Joyful Wisdom so I can read it while I'm on the beach. I'll of course do one or two training runs while I'm down there just depending on how long we are there for. I'm vowing right here on the interwebs that I will also spend time strength training (planks/pushups/squats/etc.) and doing some serious stretching. So in between all that relaxing I plan on making some progress towards those goals of mine.

In exciting goal related news I DID make it to the gym today even though I really really really did not want to go. So that's 4 trips so far this summer. Only 26 more to go. Yikes. I'm going to have to start going a lot more often if I want to make that goal even a possibility.

My cross training workout today was as follows:

2 miles on the elliptical - resistance between 6-10, average of 8

3 sets of 10 on the abductor machine with 60 pounds (trying to work on my hip/glute strength)

3 planks for 30 seconds

3 sets of one legged balancing on the bosu ball, 30 seconds on each leg

Ok, so maybe not the most hard core workout out there, but it was something. And I plan to take a long walk on the beach tonight when we get there and spend some quality time playing fetch with the little guy - so not an all together shabby day workout wise. Tomorrow I've got a 3 mile run on tap, and I'm just hoping it's a bit easier than my runs were last time I was down the shore...

To the beach we go!

Running on the Beach is Hard

The beach is my favorite place on earth. Always has been. There is nothing I love more than walking along the shoreline, letting the waves hit my feet, feeling the sand between my toes and looking out at the ocean. I feel completely at peace when I'm at the beach, no matter what is going on in my life.

We made our first trip down to the shore this past weekend to celebrate the fourth of July. It was amazing. The weather was perfect, the company was great and little Petey loved the shore just as much as I do...

Obviously I had a bit of marathon training to do while we were down the shore. Luckily I did my longest run before we left. But I still had a few runs to do while we were there. Let me just say, they were BRUTAL. Honestly, probably some of the worst runs I've had while I've been training. Despite the beautiful weather and scenery the runs were awful which was honestly really frustrating.

I did one run on the sidewalk and one on the beach and they were both hard. There is really no way to describe them other than that. Just hard. I don't know if my legs are still tired from the long run I did, or if they are tired from all of the walking I did on the beach, or it if is some combination of the two, but my training this past weekend was anything but easy.

I'm taking today off from anything other than walking and am planning to do a short run and an hour long yoga class tomorrow in hopes of helping my tired muscles. I'm also thinking about trying to schedule a sports massage to see if that might help. It's a little discouraging to be having trouble with 3 mile runs at this point in my training, but I'm sure its just one of many obstacles I'll face along the way.