So we took a vacation in February. It really wasn't my idea. My parents were celebrating their 50th Wedding Anniversary. Quite a momentous occasion, in my opinion. They graciously asked the family to join them on a Caribbean cruise. We were happy to sign up.
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| Our Ship |
My wife and I had been on one cruise before. It was 11 years ago and we did not enjoy it. We really didn't understand the whole "cruise" thing. All our friends had told us how much we would enjoy it, but we just didn't. But I did say that if we ever did do one again, that it would be to the Eastern Caribbean.
So we found ourselves on a boat for seven days going to the Bahamas, St. Thomas, and St. Maarten. As you can quite imagine, this puts quite a hinderance on the training schedule. The one upside was that I was getting some things done on Green Lightning at the bike shop, so that worked out well (future sweet blog post to follow).
This ship (as I would imagine all do) has a running track up on the upper level, and a fitness center. I worked out four days. Basically the day we were in the Bahamas and the three days at sea. The first day I ran up on the deck. It was 7 laps to a mile. The deck was all wet, but was surprisingly not slippery at all. The wind was super strong, however and almost tripped me up a couple of times as I made the turns.
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| The Big Turn |
The fun part was that I turned my Garmin on for my run. It took a while for the satellites to lock, so the first couple of minutes weren't recorded. But when it did start, I was flying! Averaging 2:30 minute miles. I cranked out almost 9.5 miles in 25 minutes. I'm pretty sure that's a world record.
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| Here's where I ran |
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| Kind of wavy through the water |
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| Looks like I ran intervals |
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| Can't beat those splits |
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| Can't beat the weather, either! |
The rest of the week, I decided to run on the treadmill. Yes I was on a dreadmill. Quite honestly, it was just a better workout than running on the deck. I'm pretty sure that I had run a total of four times on the treadmill in my life prior to the boat ride. Seriously. I just can't stand it. I'm an outdoor person, I guess. So that being said, I could only handle 3 miles at a time. I'd just get bored and would have to crank the speed up to make it interesting. The last run I set the speed in the first mile for 6:57, then 6:27 in the second mile, then sub 6 at the beginning of the 3rd mile. I eventually took it down around 5 flat for the last quarter mile, so that was kinda fun.
So then each workout day, I hopped on the stationary bike for an hour. I did this interval workout that was 3 min hard, then 4 min easy. The hour goes by pretty slow. There are only about a dozen channels on the TV in front of you and they are mostly news and shopping. I don't think I had done a stationary bike like that for almost 2 years. I rode over 5K miles last year, but 100% was outside on the roads. I guess much like the dreadmill, I can't stand the drainer. For me, a 3 hour ride outside goes by faster than an hour on the drainer.
Of course they did have exercise equipment, which I also hit twice that week. So I had a piddly 5.5 hours working out. Plus all the food and beer doesn't help either. I was definitely ready to get back to "normalcy" of working out as much as I can. We enjoyed spending time with our family on the cruise. I really enjoyed the snorkeling as well. But, at the end of the day, we're just not cruise people. And I'm OK with that.
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| Beers on the Beach! |
