Home Sweet Home

Ahhhh...Home Sweet Home! I must confess though, as good as it is to be back home, I am going to miss 'vacation mode'. The best part of family vacations is the opportunity to re-connect with everyone as a family unit without the distractions of day to day comings and goings. It's a great time to tune in to each kid and really 'listen' to them and be reminded of how unique and fun and wonderful they each really are! Family Time is the best part of vacation!

We headed to southwest Missouri to visit my parents - they were both born and raised in Missouri, and after living in several different cities for my dad's job, they went back to retire. They have a nice home on a beautiful lake and near a state park. It is a quiet life and a much slower pace that I have come to appreciate and crave as I get older. I have always been a 'city mouse', but everyone needs a dose of 'country mouse' here and there! Here is the view from my parents deck just to give you an idea of the 'peace'.

Of course on the way down, and back, we had other little mini adventures with a stop in St. Louis on the way down, and Louisville on the way back! All told, we traveled 1,137 miles! It was truly an excellent adventure.

I did manage to get in a couple of good workouts. Before we left, I decided to repeat Week Two of C25K while on vacation instead of moving on to Week Three. I had a couple of reasons for this. I was a little unsure that I was ready for the three minute intervals in Week Three. I didn't think that vacation was the time to find out! I thought it best to repeat Week Two, in effect, practice or maintain what I already knew I could do. My car book for vacation was The Complete Book of Running for Women, by Claire Kowalchik. This is a MUST HAVE for women who are brand new to running! I soaked up all 400+ pages and have notes and markings and folded pages etc. (Have I mentioned that I am obsessed with this new venture?) Anyway, using good information I learned from this book, I was also able to repeat Week Two to practice my form, and improve breathing techniques. I also 'tweaked' the Week Two workouts as well, so I really didn't feel like I was repeating anything as it turned out.

For example, on Monday I did the workout on hills and through the woods. I never got to take a picture of the Big Hill, but suffice it to say, it kicked my butt - literally! For the rest of the week I became acquainted with muscles in my rear that I never knew existed! On Wednesday I stayed away from The Hill and did an 'out and back' run along the 'highway' (maybe three cars drove by ha ha). Also, I did throw in one 3 minute running interval on both workouts which was very cool - I did that interval at the very end of each workout when I was fatigued, just to push myself and also just to see if I could! I still have a Day Three workout to do today, and I feel good about moving on to Week Three on Monday. In between the 'official' workouts, there was some walking and hiking, but also a lot of sitting around visiting with my parents and of course, oh let's see....about 30 hours riding in the van down and back!

The eating factor was not too bad - pretty easy while at my parents house. My mom and dad eat very healthy from their wonderful garden. So I had some excellent healthy meals! And some good homemade wine that my dad makes (AKA 'Joe's Juice'). Eating on the road was a different story, but I still managed to do ok. Cracker Barrel, Applebees...I managed to do ok there. On the way home though, we stopped off at Lamberts Cafe (Home of the Throwed Rolls), which was really a fun unique experience, but if you check out the menu, you will see that my options for healthy eats were somewhat limited! All I can say is, the warm rolls they were LITERALLY throwing at us were just to DIE for.

I decided to skip Wednesday's weigh-in, not because I was overly concerned, but I also had my 'friend' and that alone would produce a not so cheery number and I felt just fine knowing that I still completed my scheduled workouts despite PMS and vacation etc. So I hope to have at least maintained and I have not even peeked yet because the last 2 days traveling home were the days that my food choices were not so ideal, and Thursday was my last workout. So I want to give myself a few days to flush out the sodium and have a true 'official' weight on Wednesday! I feel good that even though I did not always have the best options, I did not over-indulge...I ate one piece of pizza, or, only 3/4 of a hamburger, never finished the fries etc. I did not snack, I never had seconds (except for the wine ha ha), and I passed on dessert. And I still exercised - so all in all, I feel pretty good! I do not feel as if I just totally went off the wagon just because it was vacation, I feel pretty good about my effort to keep my lifestyle going, which is what this is all about when it comes down to it!

It's back to school time next week, so I am thinking about my workout schedule and I wonder if I will have to move my workouts to the early morning (ugh).....or at least one or two of them. With homework, activities etc. it will be much harder to get out to the track in the evenings. So I'm still working that in my head.....I am also going to start some strength training, there is a nice 20 minute routine in the Running for Women book I mentioned.

It's good to be back and I'm looking forward to catching up on my favorite blogs and see how everyone else is doing! I thought I'd close this post with a picture of my three amigos - we just so enjoyed each other over the last week and it was a perfect vacation!