back home

I'm back and just registered for a 16 mile 'fun run' in October. Its the John Holmes memorial run - not the John Holmes that immediately comes to mind, but with a name like that who can resist the run? The shirt will be great. Anyway, good news: I didn't do any serious damage while on vacation in France and got a ton of exercise in Dublin so all in all I can move seamlessly back into running/training here.

I loved France and the food was amazing but got no exercise at all. It felt wonderfully indulgent to eat with out caring about nutrition and not exercise at all but at the end of the week I was really craving some exercise. In contrast the food in Ireland was slightly less appealing, although I now have a strange appreciation for guiness, so I did quite a bit of drinking while I was there and everyone knows the more you drink the better the food is:) I did eat a ton, especially pub food, but got so much exercise that it really didn't matter at all. One kind of funny thing is that at lunch I would get the vegetarian option and apparently mushrooms are considered a vegetable at many places. One great thing was that I found a bunch of places to run, by the bay, a park downtown and a trail by my house so I did a long run every day but one. The weather was great (which was apparently unusual) and it also stays light until 11 so I had no problem fitting it in. The other cool thing I did was hiking in the mountains which was great exercise (I absolutely couldn't run after this). When I hike I tend to walk/jog as fast as possible so I got a really amazing workout that day since the trail was about 10KM. I'll post some pics at some point, it was very cool.

Side note: everyone else may already know this but guiness is actually a pretty low cal beer to drink even though it doesn't seem that way.