Alive and Back!

Just a quick post to indicate that against my better judgment, I have returned from vacation.  Hubby gained NINE pounds!!  He was saying in Venice one night toward the end of his trip that he felt too fat to untie his shoes.  I told him I was too fat to help from a standing position, but maybe if I laid on my stomach on the bed, I could reach them. 

While I didn't really gain weight (maybe a few pounds, but certainly less than five; kind of hard to tell since my weight always gets jacked up before a marathon), I definitely lost fitness.

It seems hard to go on a vacation that includes running a marathon (a PR and re-Q no less) and actually lose fitness, but trust me, it's possible.  We were away for just over 2 weeks after the marathon was over, and that entire time felt like Thanksgiving.  Eating and drinking non-stop.

Sure, we walked a lot in some of the cities.  My walking was limited in Munich because of that whole post-race soreness thing that took several days to resolve.  And my walking was limited in Nicastro, Italy where my husband's extended family lives because we don't go sight-seeing there. 

But hours and hours of leisurely walking are not going to maintain fitness for a person who a few weeks earlier was logging 40-50ish miles of running per week, as well as at least a couple boot camp classes per week.  Actually, if I'd been eating like a sane person, maybe it would have been fine. 

But instead, I went crazy with beer at Oktoberfest, and then we are essentially force-fed the entire time we're with hubby's family. 

I can't really blame Oktoberfest and his family though. 

When we finally left Lamezia and flew to Venice, we were talking on the plane about what we wanted to eat that day in Venice.  We both said that the only thing that sounded good were great big salads.  So what did we do when we got to Venice?  Found a restaurant that looked good, and each ordered an antipasto course, a pasta course, and a second course.  And THEN we walked around to find a gelateria that looked like it had good choices and there we had dessert.  And let me tell you, I've never ordered a single pallone of gelato in Italy and I certainly wasn't going to start now!  Ugh...

My clothes are so tight they leave marks on me.  My work in-box is out of control with over 100 messages needing attention.  There is a huge stack of mail to go through.  The house is all dusty and hot.  I am out of breath after a single flight of stairs.  My personal email inbox has lots of messages awaiting responses.  I don't think I could run 5 miles at marathon pace right now, and I'm not entirely sure about my ability to run 5 miles at an easy pace either.  I'm so jet-lagged that we were in bed at 5:30 last night (and correspondingly, I was up at 12:30, went back to sleep, and was then awake at 2 a.m. for good today!).  We have massive piles of laundry to do. 

But I wouldn't trade it for the world!  I love being gone so long we can't remember the alarm code for the house or any of the passwords to log-in to computers! 

Right now, it's 2:00.  My goal for the afternoon is to work on 3 cases (2 new ones, 1 old), and to try to stay awake until at least 7:00 tonight.