Something New + A Beach Trip

Hello! A lot has happened since we last talked, and it’s only been a few days. I love post-tax season life!

For starters, I have decided to attend an RRCA coaching certification course so that I can “officially” coach runners. I realize that I could do this without a certification, but I truly want to learn more about the sport that I love and make sure that I am giving people solid, sound training advice. I have turned a few people down in the past, solely because I didn’t feel “qualified” to help them. It’s time to change that!

I don’t know exactly what it will look like, but I have several days a week to devote to coaching over the summer and I knew that I wanted to get started ASAP. As it turns out, ASAP is this weekend. Ashley and I are headed to South Carolina to attend the class together. I’m so excited about the class and that Ashley is going with me! It would’ve been quite a long road trip to make by myself.

I’m also thinking about getting certified to teach tennis lessons as well. I feel like coaching will make the perfect fill in for my off days in the summer and winter months, when my accounting job is less busy and it will (hopefully) allow me to do something that I truly love!

Secondly, it’s Workout Wednesday! I haven’t done a workout in a few weeks and it really felt good to get back to it. I kind of let my workouts fall by the way-side the last few weeks of tax season, but that’s okay. My mind and body needed a break from the mental and physical stress of juggling work and strenuous workouts.

I headed to the treadmill when we got home from our trip (details to follow). I had a 6 mile tempo run to do and I got that done with a 2 mile warm up, followed by 6 tempo miles at 6:40, 6:40, 6:30, 6:30, 6:40, 6:35 and a 1 mile cool down.

I listened to our Ragnar Tennessee playlist on Spotify and I now I am even more excited for that trip, which is coming up in a few weeks!

Mom and I had a wonderful mini-vacation to Watercolor! We did pretty much this exact same trip last year after tax season and had so much fun that we decided to make it an annual thing. Last year, we went Sunday and came back Tuesday, but this year we went Monday and came back Wednesday. The rates are a little bit better if you go during the week.

Brooks wasn’t thrilled to see us go Monday. I’m pretty sure he is saying, “Not cool, Mom. Not cool.”

After a quick pic, we were ready to hit the road!

I’ll go ahead and apologize, but this post will have lots of pics, mainly of mom and me. We are great travel buddies and just buddies in general, so we always have fun no matter what we are doing.

We got in and did a little shopping before we were able to check in to the hotel. Our room (the same one we stayed in last year) and the view were incredible!

We walked on the beach for a little while once we got settled and headed to Bud & Alley’s for dinner. We ended up getting our dinner to go and walking back down the beach to sit on our balcony and watch the sunset. It was a nice, relaxing evening.

After a good night’s rest, we were up and at ’em pretty early (vacation early at least) and ready to go! I got a good run in and met mom on the beach on my way back and we walked back together. I absolutely love running and walking on the beach. It’s one of my most favorite things to do. There is just something about being out there, especially early in the morning when not many other people are out and about yet, that is so peaceful and serene.

I saw a sign while I was out running that really made me think. It simply said, “Be Healthy.” The more I thought about that, the more I realized how different that could look for different people. For some people “healthy” may mean getting off the couch and getting active and for some people that may mean taking a rest day. For some it may mean cutting back on sugar and for some it may mean indulging in a delicious dessert.

I started to think about what “healthy” means to me. I think I would have definitely defined this differently over the years, but right now I would start with saying that it refers to your spiritual, mental and physical state, with spiritual being at the top. I was debating (with myself) whether mental or physical would come next, and I decided that they are so inter-related that it doesn’t really matter which one is more important. To me they go together. I think this little graphic describes it well.

Being healthy means being able to do the things you enjoy and enjoy the things you do! I was thankful to be healthy, happy and running in one of my favorite places! It was a sunny day and the water was so clear and beautiful! We couldn’t have asked for better weather.

I had been wanting to paddleboard in the Gulf for a long time and I was determined to make that happen this trip. When we got back from our run/walk, I was ready to get out there. The gulf was a little choppy, but not too bad (in my opinion). They suggested I use the “YOLO Yak” instead of the standard paddleboard. Despite the name (I think YOLO might be one of my least favorite acronyms ever), I was fine with that, as it was more stable and better suited to handle the waves. It was actually much easier to paddle in the gulf than it is in the bay sometimes.

I loved it! I am hoping to paddle more this summer. I’m definitely counting that as a core workout.

After a pretty busy morning, we decided to relax a little bit, read and catch a quick nap before dinner that evening. I got super invested in the book I took to read. I read an entire book (Emily Giffin’s The One & Only) while we were gone. I wanted an easy, fun read and this book fit that criteria perfectly.

We walked over to The Great Southern Cafe for dinner that night. I’m pretty sure we go there every trip. It’s so good though! I got the salmon (per usual) and (also per usual) it was delicious!

We got dinner and made it back to our room to watch the sunset again. We enjoyed another chill, relaxing evening. I guess that’s just how we roll! Play hard, rest hard, and repeat.

I got another good run in the next morning. I actually carried my phone and got some pics of the scenery. It’s just so pretty, I couldn’t resist. I love how diverse the scenery is. You go from this …

To this …

To this … All in one run!

Mom came out to meet me and we were going to walk for a little bit, but we got caught in a huge downpour! There was only a 20% chance of scattered showers, but they found us. I normally wouldn’t care at all, but since I was carrying my phone, I had to seek shelter from the rain rather quickly. Thankfully my phone survived. We survived as well, we just had that drowned rat look going at the end.

We decided that we like piña coladas better than getting caught in the rain
and we’re not (all that) into yoga, but we possibly have half a brain (between the two of us as least).

That is a pretty quick overview of our vacation. We got home this afternoon and it’s back to the real world (whatever that really means) tomorrow.

One last pic, because clearly I need one more pic of the two of us in this post … Just look that that water though. So pretty!

That’s all she wrote! See you soon!