Last week, Brooke and I went to Florida for a long sunny weekend. Her parents stay at an RV resort near Fort Meyers in the winter and we went to stay with them and enjoy some good times with a bunch of people 20-40 years older than us.
We had a lot of fun playing in their Olympic Games tournament. We played ladder ball, shuffle board, cornhole and drumroll… Bingo. The kind of bingo these people play is serious business… $10.00 buy in with the chance to win $50.00 if you get a bingo and $80.00 if you win the coverall. I knew all the bingo language because after all I do work at a senior center. However, my seniors only play with one bingo card, not 9, they have a $0.50 buy in, not $10.00, and they play for toilet paper, stationary, nutty bars, lotion… and you get the point. Needless to say, this bingo was quite the experience.
Rocky and I both won a round of bingo that night.
Anyway, the nice thing about going on a vacation with Brooke is that I know I won’t have to run alone. I was supposed to do 16 on Saturday and she was supposed to do 20. We are both training for the Virginia Beach Marathon in March, but our training schedules are a bit different. Brooke has been struggling with an Achilles problem, and has tried to run less miles, but wanted to get her long run in. I was just happy to have someone to run with and glad that I had done my 20 the week before.
We decided we were going to run on Saturday morning, but first we had to go to the Saturday morning pancake breakfast at the club house. This was clearly important to Brooke’s mom Denise and we were there to visit her parents so of course we wanted to go. The pancake breakfast consisted of pretty much everyone who stays at the RV resort getting together for a breakfast that their fellow “residents” prepare. These guys are called “The Breakfast Boys”, ranging in age from 55-85 if I had to guess. They wear aprons and flip the pancakes and LOVE every minute of it. It was all quite the scene and you would honestly have to be there to understand how hysterically AWESOME it was. So, Brooke and I pigged out on about 3,000 calories for breakfast knowing all too well that would not sit lightly on a 16 mile run.(we were too lazy to get up and run before breakfast… we knew what we were getting ourselves into.) Obviously we did not have to indulge so heavily in this breakfast, but how could we let the Breakfast Boys down and only eat one pancake?
So about an hour and a half later we laced up and got running. We started out doing a few laps in the RV resort, but realized quickly we couldn’t possibly do that for 16 miles. It would be far too boring! So we headed out to the highway and ran down that until we found a side road to get some miles in. (the highway was not cutting it either… kind of dangerous, road kill every 15 steps, and just ugly)
A couple of things that we did wrong on this run:
1. We ate a 3,000 calorie breakfast that was not super runner friendly..
2. We didn’t bring water
2. We didn’t wear sunscreen
Our excuses for these wrong choices:
1. We HAD to go to the breakfast to make Denise Happy!
2. We could not possibly let the Breakfast Boys down, by not pigging out on their delicious food they worked so hard to prepare.
3. Our PLAN was to do a couple laps around the resort and stop for water every few miles… it just didn’t work out that way.
4. When we couldn’t stand staying on the resort, we PLANNED to only go out a mile or so and come back for water stops… but then once we got going, we kept wanting to go out farther to knock more of the run off. So we had good intentions.
5. It was pretty early, and we didn’t think it was supposed to be all that sunny.
6. We were acting like we were 17 and didn’t know you could get a sunburn early, when it’s not supposed to be all that sunny… and we were ok with a burn if that meant a tan later. Oh boy, do we ever grow up?
Needless to say, we ended up only running 13 or 14, very slow, thirsty, chaffing, feet hurting, Achilles hurting, sunburning, sweaty, shirtless miles. And when I say shirtless, let me just say that neither Brooke or I feel that we look all that fit right now and under normal circumstances with this beautiful extra winter weight(i.e. running through my neighborhood, at the gym, whatever anywhere anyone could see me, would I be caught running in my sports bra right now), but it was freaking hot and that’s how it had to be…. plus we apparently wanted to work on our burns.
Check out our sweet ipod tanlines, or burns.
At least we ran off most of those 3,000 breakfast boy calories. So Sunday we took the day off from running and went to each lunch with Brooke’s 79 year old client who lives down in Fort Meyers for the winter. We enjoyed another nice, high calorie delicious meal and enjoyed every minute of topping it off with a mocha chocolate torte thing that was heavenly. Although running doesn’t excuse gluttony, it certainly makes it much more doable. Without running, those 3,000 calorie meals could never happen, let alone happen and be enjoyable.
Thank you Brooke for:
1. Inviting me to go to FL even though you know I hate to fly.
2. Being my 2nd Favorite running partner (I have to give #1 to Glenn of course)
3. Being a really good eating friend.
4. Also being a really good workout friend. (If you are going to be a good eating friend, you really need to be a good workout friend too… otherwise you are just encouraging bad habits right?)
To finish off this Florida trip, I ran 11 on Monday, and put in a quite a few of those ugly road kill high way miles as I did not feel it was safe to run down side roads by myself. Let’s just say it wasn’t the most scenic and the only two times I almost got hit by a car where by old people, who saw me and accidentally swerved toward me rather than away from me. After the run, we had a beautiful, sunny day laying out by the pool, listening to music, reading and loving life.
Thank you so much Rocky and Denise for taking care of us while we spent time with you guys!!! We had such a nice, relaxing, enjoyable vacation and had a lot of fun hanging out with you guys.
How can you not love a place where guys like this are riding around on golf carts all day? 