Trip Training

Happy 70th Birthday Dad

Recently I had the opportunity to go to the Oregon Coast and surprise my Dad for his 70th Birthday. It was such a blessing to see the joy on his face!

I flew into Bend where my sister Patti lives to see her brand new house and to get some yummy hugs from my niece Hailey, catch up with my brother in-law Jeff and then the plan was to take a "sister" trip to Florence to surprise Dad!


I had a heavy week of training and was able to rearrange my schedule to get my 3 hour bike ride in before I left so that I didn't have to take my bike. My sister was amazing support in spending time before I arrived to research a pool that would allow me to swim without being a member and measuring out a challenging 1/2 Marathon run course for me to run.

I was trying to get all my training done in Bend so when we got to Florence we would have all our time to spend with Dad. My sister's new house has a workout room equipped with a Spin bike, because my brother in-law is a cyclist. It was raining, so the first day my sister got on her treadmill and I got on the Spin bike and we had an awesome 1 hour work out accompanied with some great conversation. Who needs music!

We got up the 2nd day and it was still pouring rain so Patti and I headed to the new Parks & Recreation facility where she had found a pool for me to swim. Patti got on one of their treadmills and I went to swim. I wish I had a picture of my face when we walked into the Aquatics Center of this new facility! Oh my gosh, they had an amazing 4 pools. They had a childrens play pool, a family swim pool, a deep pool for platform diving and a 10 lane Olympic sized pool! The Olympic pool was divided that morning into two sections and they had one side for lap swimmers like me and the other side was buzzing with 95 members of their local 212 member Masters Swim Team that were training for an upcoming meet! Wow, what a sight to see, they had 10 swimmers in each lane and they were all swimming a speed workout.

It was still pouring down rain in Bend the next day, I hadn't packed my rain gear so I decided to save my run for the Coast. Wow am I glad I did!

Patti and I had an awesome drive to the coast actually ran into snow on the pass but when we got to the coast the weather was beautiful.

I did my 13 mile run from my dads house to the beach, ran down the beach for a few miles and then turned around and ran back. It was a paradise run, the sun was out, perfect temperature, mild breeze, ocean air, yummy negative ions and a Bald Eagle to top it all off.

The change of scenery and venue was a HUGE INSPIRATION to my Frontal Right Brain. Training while on vacation proved to be a great experience for me.