Winter Vacation 2015: I'm on a boat MotherF#%$

If you’ve ever been on a cruise, then you’ll already know that they mean tons of eating, frozen drinks, and for most people, weight gain.  When we set off on the JOCO cruise, I didn’t want to set myself back by over eating, drinking too much, and not working out.  My plan was to drink only red wine, as frozen tropical drinks pack tons of calories.  And red wine has definite health benefits (although I'll admit that I may occasionally over state them).  I also planned to try to have salads as much as possible, and to remain active.

I was mostly successful, although I did indulge in one frozen mudslide.  

My trainer, Julia, gave me a routine of squats, planks, and pushups to do daily.  This routine took me less than 15 minutes, and was a good compliment to whatever the main activity of the day was. 

When we were at sea, the main activity was typically running on the ship’s track.  On the track it took 4.5 laps to run one mile.  The longest track run I did was 6 miles or 27 laps around the track.  While the ship was moving the wind was blowing at about 45mph.  The wind tripped me (blowing my feet around while running), blew my shirt up, and when running directly into it I felt like I was running in place.  A group of sunbathing women next to the track cheered me on as I passed them during every lap of the 6 mile run.  I was pretty happy for the entertainment.

Independence of the seas, you can see her track toward the top, right edge of the ship.

Despite the wind, I was pretty happy to be running outside, especially since winter in New York has be pretty unpleasant.

The ship’s gym was quite large with a lot of equipment, so on days when I just wanted to take a short run without the wind I would use the treadmill.

Both the gym and the track afforded some beautiful views of the open ocean, which was pretty neat and different from the scenery at home!

The view as we left Haiti.  Kayaking that day was easy, so Alek and I also did a 5k on the ship.

Port days were a different story, we did some kayaking in St. Kitts and Labadee, Haiti.  In San Juan we walked for much of the day roaming around San Cristobal and playing with all of the cats that love to hang out in Old San Juan.  At St. Maarten, we swam with a dolphin.  These were all really fun activities.  Since a picture is worth 1000 words, I’ll leave you to enjoy these photos rather than providing further descriptions.  We haven't yet taken the photos of kayaking off of the GoPro, so I'll share them some other time.

A lighthouse at El Morro.

The lawn at El Morro.

Caaaats!

How did it all work out?  I came back one pound heavier than I left.  It was a setback, but not nearly as bad as it would have been if I had indulged in all of the frozen drinks that the ship had to offer.

Winter Vacation 2015: Running in Ft Lauderdale

From January 31 through February 8,  Alek and I, along with Tammy, Chris, Nate, and Matt went on the JOCO Cruise Crazy, an 8 night Caribbean cruise with some amazing entertainers including Jonathan Coulton, Paul & Storm, Pat Rothfuss, John Scalzi, Matthew Inman, The Both, and many others.  If you're curious about this cruise, I don't think I can summarize better than John Scalzi, so please head over to Whatever and take a look at his post.

I have a few things to say about trying to get workouts in on vacation, so I'll share them over the course of a few posts.

We flew into Ft Lauderdale on January 30 just to avoid any stress with airport to ship transfers.  We stayed at The Hilton Ft Lauderdale Marina.  Alek and I decided to get up and get a run in before meeting the group for brunch, or for me and Alek, elevensies, since we’d already eaten breakfast prior to the run.

Finding a running route in an unfamiliar city can be tricky.  We wanted to run in a pretty area, and avoid being next to traffic as much as possible.  As we were heading out, Nate was on his way back in from his morning run (he seemed to have skipped first breakfast).  Naturally we asked him for a good running route.  After Nate described his route to us and walked away, a helpful hotel employee came by and gave us a Hilton Branded pocket map with a few different running routes.  

We went outside to use the map.  This thing had clearly not been proofread by anyone  before printing.  It contradicted itself everywhere.  We set off on what was maybe the 4 mile blue route, but could easily have been the 6 mile blue route or the 6 mile red route.  After two miles of not arriving at the cross street we were planning to turn left on to, we crossed the street and turned back.  On the other side of the street there was a better activity path and it was closer to the beach.  The views were pretty.  The run itself was fairly easy, with a the only hill being right outside the hotel as we had to cross a bridge to get over some water.

Nice beach front view - check out the kite surfer.

Hotel running maps are awesome things to have, but would be much better without all of the confusion!