Miles and Miles

Our SoCal Road Trip

Whenever we go to Southern California, we drive so, so much.  We have many friends, family and work obligations in the area and we want to fit in as many as possible whenever we're down there.  This is, of course, suboptimal, since driving in Southern California always comes with tons of traffic.  For example, the estimated 7 hours that Google thinks this trip should have taken, in reality had us in our trusty rental car for at least 11 hours (split over many days).

It was a great week.  I'm continuing to scale my practice down, and working at about 50% capacity while traveling is *so* much better than working full time.

While we were in the area, in addition to work meetings for both of us during the week, we were social animals of the first degree: 1 weekend birthday celebration, 1 baby shower, 2 nights with one friend (including an authentic imported products Italian dinner cooked by me to say thank you), 1 dinner out at Republique with a college roommate and her husband, 2 nights with another set of friends, a drive through Irvine to Carlsbad to stay at the lovely Park Hyatt Aviara (booked on points *and* got upgraded to a suite... I LOVE HYATT), a wonderful wedding on the beach in Carlsbad, and a visit to see two of my cousins and my new baby 1st cousin once removed.

The running wasn't too bad.  I fit in the slow 10 on Monday, followed by a super-slow hilly 2.8 mile loop on Tuesday.  Wednesday I made up 3 Tabata workouts and then headed to the gym treadmill for an agressive strength workout of 1600, 1000, 800, 800 at decreasing paces with walking recovery, all at 1% incline -- this was definitely the best workout of the week and I was sore for 2+ days afterward.  Thursday, I ran from our friends' place down to Marina Del Rey to check out the Endeavor Tank for an easy 3 miler plus some walking mileage.  Friday was a write off due to some bizarre stomach issues -- 1.25 jogging and 0.05 walk.  Saturday still had some residual stomach issues, but I managed 2.81 jogging with 2.89 walking back.  Sunday I ran 3.2 miles from our hotel to get the car that we'd left at the wedding reception and discovered a wonderful trail paralleling the train tracks -- I love it when I discover somewhere new by running whatever route is defined for me by the Internet.

Total mileage for the week: 32.67.  Not bad, although, as predicted, the long run didn't happen over the weekend, so I'll have to fit it in early this week.

Yup.  That's a big tank.