Training Recap: August Week 1

I wasn't sure how successful my training would be while in Florida for the week, visiting family. It's a struggle to get my runs accomplished because time with family and friends always takes priority. We TRY to visit Florida family (an 8hr drive away) every other month, so we have to make the most of each visit. Our last trip was for Memorial weekend (2mo ago) and our next visit isn't planned until Christmas (yikes!). We will be in Florida for runDisney's Wine and Dine Half Marathon in early November, but currently we're not sure if we'll be able to tack on a couple days before or after the race weekend. As always the week flew by way too fast and I didn't get to see everyone I had hoped, which makes my long drive home full of guilt.

Monday

Abigail and I started our morning with a little FaceTime chat with Matt, since he stayed home in GA. Abigail ends up being silly (not looking) at the iPad, while her daddy continues the silly giving us an extra close view of his eye ball. My mom picked up my nephew, William, and we got to play with him for most the day.

We took a trip to Target and Abigail was thrilled to have someone ride in the big cart with her. Unfortunately, she did not like it when he continuously pinched her or kept dropping a shirt and wanting her to pick it up. My mom and I found it a bit amusing though, especially when she scolded him "If you drop it one more time, I'm going to leave it down there!". Yes, #AbsMakesMeLaugh.

After my Sunday evening run turned into a walk (I ate too much dinner and it was horribly humid), I decided my training miles would have to be done at the gym this week. Luckily I'm able to visit other gym locations in the franchise when we travel, free of charge. I wanted to run 8 miles, but wore the wrong sports bra and downsized my miles to 3 for the day.

Tuesday
I headed straight to the gym in the morning for an 8 miler while my mom and grandmother let Abigail tag-a-long to their nail appointments. My grandmother, I call her Abuela, is 88! Abigail loved having pancakes with Wellie, what she calls her great-grandmother; she was super sweet wanting to sit next to her and hold her hand to "help her walk".

Abigail and I headed to St Petersburg to visit with my "old" high school friend, Janet. Was it December when we last saw each other? Yikes! Janet's little boy just turned two and we got to meet the newest family addition, a beautiful daughter who is already 3mo old. And like almost every rare visit, I never remember to get a picture when we're together! We need to remember this!

Odessa Sunset

Wednesday
After breakfast with my grandparents, Abigail and I visited another "old" friend to get our hair cut. Abigail's bangs and partial self-made layers are still growing out from her own doing back in February. While Abigail's bangs look better, there are a couple still short spots that still will need months of regrowth. ::sigh::

We ended up spending the entire day away from the house, a huge communication fail between my mother and me. When I found Brewer, he had managed to scoot his crate, 8' across the room. I wish that could have been the end of that...but no. Brewer managed to pull my INKnBURN shorts off a closet doorknob (where they had been drying after being washed). There's a small 3" rip in the panty liner of the shorts, but no material is missing. My mother has said she should be able to repair this mishap. I'm sad my Leaf'em shorts will be MIA (missing in action) for a while, but at least they weren't completely ruined! Also because of the communication fail, I didn't get any training in...not even a walk. When we got home the skies were a bit stormy and didn't clear until it was too dark to take Brewer for a walk.

Thursday
First thing in the morning, I took Brewer out for a nice walk through the orange groves. The weather was way too humid for us to attempt a good pace for a run, I'm just not used to Florida summer heat. I took my miles to the treadmill again, getting 5 miles done in 52 minutes. It's surprising how difficult it is now to run on the treadmill. Last year, almost all my runs were on the treadmill (minus the couple races I did in the fall). I did most of my winter miles on the treadmill (no winter running clothes) and spring miles (pollen allergies), but since I've been running more with Brewer (gaining more confidence and a better pace) I seem to enjoy the outdoor miles so much more now.

We had another fun afternoon with my nephew William and my grandparents stopped by to visit too. In the evening we met up with family to celebrate my youngest cousin's birthday a day early since Abs and I would be heading back to Georgia on his real birthday. I cannot believe Stephen is 25! Wasn't he adorable as  baby? My mom was going through some old photos and found this shot and I couldn't resist taking a photo of it myself. I'm super excited that Stephen will also be joining me for Wine and Dine AND WDW Marathon! -- I left dinner a bit early to meet up with Meghan and Genna for dessert; they are two Tampa Bay bloggers I started following earlier as I started running and it's been fun to get to know them over the last year. Meghan is training for a Half Ironman (I am so excited for her!) and Genna is training for the New York City Marathon (this is a lottery race, and she got in!), so I enjoy reading their training and race recap...and learn a lot from these ladies! It was nice to sit and chat and eat some frozen yogurt, yum.

Friday

I took Brewer for a 30min walk to wear him out a bit before I spent the rest of the morning packing up. Abigail started her "are we there yet?" style questioning before we even made it to the interstate. Brewer was such a better passenger on the way back to Atlanta (in comparison to our trip out of town), and this made everything seem better. Instead of heading home we drove to my in-laws, to meet up with my mother-in-law's side of the family for a mini-family reunion of sorts.

Saturday
In the morning we returned to The Pittman House for breakfast. It was nice seeing this side of our extended family as it's unfortunately once a year, or less, that we see them. Some family lives further away than others, so it was a smaller crowd than Friday night and it wasn't long until most started heading back out of town. Abigail really had lots of fun playing with the cousins of her generation.

Since Matt didn't get to join us in Tampa for the week, we decided to let Abigail have some Nana & Papa time while we went on a date. It wasn't anything extravagant but it was nice having dinner together and then we popped into a few local stores before splurging on some frozen yogurt for dessert.


Sunday

We headed back home first thing in the morning, dropped Brewer off at the house before heading to Abigail's friend's birthday party. It was nice getting to socialize with friends as the summer is coming to a close and especially after being gone for a week! In the midst of unpacking and getting back to a normal home life, I was able to take Brewer out for a walk through the neighborhood and we managed 1.41mi in 30 minutes.

QUESTION:
-How do you handle your training when out of town?