trying to stay in shape on vacation!

Lucky for me when I go home to visit my family, I travel west to the mountains. I have been looking forward to this vacation for months! A trip home to Portland, Oregon! Vacations for most mean indulging in treats, staying up past bedtimes, sleeping in without an alarm clock, playing, having fun and spending the day on all kinds of adventures, napping and sitting around doing nothing. A vacation like this for us in the summer is a challenge. It is race season, not just for Adam and I, but all of the clients we coach. However, we have managed to plan a great week out in Oregon with a little something for everyone  My goal on this trip is to relax some, train some, and have the time to take off on adventures and not stress about fitting in a ton of workouts. I didn’t even bring my bike. I questioned it several times knowing how awesome the riding would be, but opted to go without. I did pack my running and swimming gear though.

The running has been great, cooler temps perfect for running and hills. Lots of them. Long ones, steep ones, rolling ones. Hills with awesome views when you get to the top making it all worth it, hills through trees with rushing streams off to the side, and hills with fresh air that smells like pine and evergreen. I did find a pool for some lap swimming. From the website it sounded great as a few club teams swim out of there. Adam and I showed up in the morning to swim and it was mostly “old timers” and the pool was nice but for some reason everyone was “open water” swim training because they didn’t have the lane lines in. They must also be training for Midwestern races with water temps of 77.5 and wetsuit legal. Nice warm water that feels good going in but ½ way through your set can feel your head sweating under your swim cap. I’ll be ready for the next “hot” swim on my schedule 

When on vacation and back in this part of the country you always want to try out the good stuff you can’t get at home. There are awesome coffee shops (the local kind!) with incredible baked goods, awesome restaurants and local micro-brews Oregon is famous for. Restaurants with outside seating and amazing views. We ate last night at the Stone Cliff…..famous now for being filmed in “TWIGLIGHT”

The adventures have already been amazing. We spent one day at Cannon Beach during the Sand Castle weekend.





Now here is a competition for you. Spending your day building the most creative and amazing sand castle. We tested the waters. Typically ocean water here is very cold. On this day it wasn’t so bad. If my legs had actually been trashed or sore, it would have made for an excellent ice bath…Pacific Style! We also headed into downtown Portland 1 day taking our kids with their cousins to an amusement park. Chasing after them in a place like this is a workout. They “ran” from ride to ride. By the end I felt like I had done a huge brick!

Today we head over the mountains to Bend. On the weekend are the Pacific Crest races. There is a race of every distance and type throughout the weekend. Because its vacation I opted to just run the ½ marathon. Adam is racing the ½ and Olympic distances triathlons. We rented a house, the whole family is coming and we are going to fill the day’s fun. Hopefully I can manage to keep some fitness together with all the fun.