Vacation - Exercise

We knew that Bill would get his exercise in during vacation since it involved 10 days of bike racing!  Kayleigh was missing the first week of Cross Country practice for our vacation, though, so I had all these ideas about how we would get our running in.  We would get up early and go running near the hotel.  We would drive to the lake in the town where we were staying and run there.  We would run at some of Bill's races.  So many ideas!

Although Kayleigh is sitting here, we actually did a lot of running around the various courses to get tons of pictures and videos of Bill.

Well it didn't turn out quite like I thought!  First of all, Thursday was spent driving so that day was out.  Something I didn't mention in the last post was that when we finally rolled up to our hotel (which I had booked months in advance) late Thursday, we were told that they overbooked and we were being sent down the road for the night.  So that meant Friday morning we had to head to the first race with our 10-days of stuff in the truck with us.  By the time the race was over and we got moved into our actual hotel, we were in no mood to go run.  Saturday is the day that we stayed later than expected at the race and then stopped at the vegetarian restaurant on the way back.  One more day lost!  The worst part about all this is the weather was really cold for the summer so it would have been perfect weather for me.

Bill and Kayleigh in the great room of our hotel watching the World Cup while waiting for our food to cook on the outdoor grill and our laundry in the next room.  We could have been working out, but we weren't.

Sunday I was determined to get out and do some real exercise.  Kayleigh and I got up early and went out for a run by the hotel.  It is located on a big circular road that looks like it will eventually be developed but for now is pretty empty.  We figured out how far we had to go for each mile.  I had been really slacking with my running so I was pretty happy when I ran for 25 minutes straight.  We think I got about 2.5 miles.  I then walked until Kayleigh got in the rest of her run.  

We found the water in Wisconsin to be completely disgusting.  We brought our Brita thinking just filtering the water would be fine but we were wrong.  Once we had to start buying bottled water, we soon realized how much water we actually go through.  It was crazy.

At one point when Kayleigh and I were still together, we came upon two cranes or herons (we aren't sure which) running in front of us.  It was so funny because they kept turning around and honking at us.  They may have thought we were chasing them! I felt really good after the run but then at Bill's race I developed a terrible headache which we think was caused by dehydration.  I made sure to drink a lot more after that but it made me nervous about running in the morning.

Riverwalk

So, you know where this is going!  I barely ran the rest of the vacation!  Day 5 was at Schlitz Park in Milwaukee very close to the Riverwalk so Kayleigh and I wore our running clothes and went for a short run before the race.  Kayleigh went out for 2 or 3 more runs from the hotel in the evenings.  I think she did pretty good considering we had a chunk of our time already scheduled each day.

Kayleigh taking more pictures. See how high up we are?  Our truck is parked down there.  Which means...

We had to walk up and down all these stairs several times.  Not sure if you can tell in the picture but there were cool quotes on the steps.  Didn't make the climb any easier though!

The hotel had a decent gym and it was next to the laundry room so we could have easily gone in there while doing laundry - but we didn't.

It was absolutely freezing the day we were here but we still got a lot of exercise.  First Kayleigh and I went the wrong way trying to get to an overpass and walked about 4 times further than we planned.

Then Bill asked us to walk down this huge hill looking for bottles he threw at the end of the race.  We got all the way down there only to find out someone had already got them so we turned around and went back up.  

My suggestion for getting exercise in while on vacation is simple.  Plan an active vacation.  Even though we didn't get the runs in that we wanted, Kayleigh and I figured out that we walked over 70 miles across the 10 days.  Most of the bike race courses were about a mile around.  We always walked the whole course at least once or twice before Bill's race, several times during it, and often another time after the race.  And there were some decent hills thrown in there.  Plus we had to walk back and forth to the car and sometimes down the road for lunch.  To add to that, we also walked around downtown Oconomowoc (where we stayed), the mall, and a museum.  All that walking along with the few days of running kept Kayleigh fit enough to slip right back into practice with her team when we got home.

So it wasn't what we planned but we all came home feeling fit and healthy.

One of the many pretty lakes in Wisconsin that we walked along.  This one is in Fond Du Lac.