As I mentioned earlier this week in my weekly training recap, we are on vacation at the beach! Myrtle Beach, to be exact. My family takes a trip here every year, and has done so since before I was born.

This year Barry and I are down here with my dad, his friend, my little sister and her boyfriend, and my aunt and uncle. We always stay in a campground, which means Hank and Scout are here with us, too.

For the past few years, I have always been in training for a fall race while we are on vacation. So I typically don’t take any time off of running. I like starting most of my days with a run, though, despite the heat and humidity. On Monday, our first day here, I kicked off my vacation with an easy 4 mile run. My legs were really tired, but the weather wasn’t too bad.

On Tuesday I had my second track workout of training. I was a bit worried on how this would work out while being on vacation, but my dad had the idea to look up the local high school. Turns out it’s only about 8 miles from our campground, so he drove me over there that morning and walked/cheered me on while I ran. The Hansons had 8 x 600m on tap for me, for a total of 7 miles, and once again things went pretty well. I need to stop doubting myself so much.

Wednesday was my one glorious rest day, and Thursday had me doing my second tempo run of training. I had 5 miles at marathon pace on the schedule. That shouldn’t be too challenging, since I intend to run 26.2 miles at that pace, but it always causes me some anxiety. What if I can’t hit the pace on a much shorter distance? But I did and I averaged 10:13/mile, about 5 seconds per mile under my goal. It was really hot and humid on Thursday morning, too.

Yesterday morning I had an easy 4 mile run. It was relatively cool out for beach standards, albeit still humid of course. My legs felt pretty good and I had a hard time sticking to the easy pace prescribed by the Hansons. But it’s important to take the easy days easy so that I’m still able to hit the required paces on track and tempo days.

This morning I am headed out for an easy 6 miler and tomorrow I have a 10 mile long run planned. Outside of running, it’s been a nice vacation so far. We had some rain on Monday and Tuesday, but the weather has been favorable since then. We’ve done the typical beach stuff: hang out on the beach and read, play in the ocean, go out to eat, and hang out together at our campsites. We also had some excitement yesterday when five hammerhead sharks came through the area. A big crowd of people was walking up and down the beach watching them and the lifeguards put up ‘no swimming’ signs for awhile.

Other than the sharks things have been pretty relaxing. Just what I needed 🙂

Do you stick to your usual workout routine when you’re on vacation?
Does your family take an annual vacation to the same spot each year?
What do you like to do at the beach?