Tybee Vacation

This spring for the kids track-out we planned a family vacation. It started with Kelley's mom taking them down to the lake for a weekend, then my mom picked them up on Monday to head for the coast. Kelley and I are always grateful for a few kid-free days! Tybee Island is outside of Savannah GA, and our story begins on Wednesday.

Funny Faces

Giant German Beer

and cookies & Innis & Gunn for St Patricks day

Ok, fine, we spent the kid free days enjoying ourselves a bit.

It's about a 6 hour drive from Raleigh down to Tybee. I took off W/T/F from work, so we headed down wednesday morning and got there in time for dinner at AJ's seafood. It was amazing as always, they really do have the best shrimp on Tybee.

The path from our house to the beach

Kids were happy to be at AJ's as well

After dinner we made it down to the beach for a bit before sunset. We saw some kind of strange sea ducks floating around, but it never flew away. Also I got a really cool picture of us with the Tybee lighthouse in the background.

Evil Genius loves those magnet earrings because she refuses to get her ears pierced

Thursday was a bit cold, so we opted to go to a nearby park instead of going to the beach first thing. Then we quickly realized that our kids are now too old to typically enjoy going to a park. ha! Didn't see that one coming. Every other kid there was half their size.

Ella's as long as the slide!

She still fits on the swings

This super-creepy tree was full of birds

Later we went into downtown Savannah. Sav is an incredibly beautiful city that's always a lot of fun. We did some shopping on Rivers street, played in the squares, and enjoyed the spanish moss in the huge oak trees. Amazing.

Ella stopping that ship from reaching the harbor

Savannah's waving girl statue

Those trees! This is downtown in a big city?

Playing in the historic squares

Ella loves all things pirate, and mom's birthday is coming up so we decided to take everyone to dinner at the Pirate's House. This is one of the oldest historic homes in Georgia. Supposedly there was a tunnel that Blackbeard the Pirate used to get from the water into the house where he kept some treasure. It was also heavily featured in Robert Louis Stevenson's book Treasure Island! So the atmosphere was unique and the food was amazing. We all had a blast in there. Ella was in her natural habitat.

she's too funny

a fireplace full of skulls! argh!

Friday was quite a bit warmer, so we ended up going down to the beach for a bit in the morning. The kids got in the water but it was a bit too cold for me. Still good to just walk around and get some time in the sun listening to the waves and talking to this beauty

and that was the last picture I took! Strange that I didn't get a single picture of my parents. Dad got a wild hair and came down on Friday afternoon. We went to his favorite place on the island for dinner, they pass out free shots to salute the sunset every day! We ate a bit early for that, but still got to enjoy a few cold beers with my old man, then watched the NCAA tournament games at the house afterwards with a few more. Dad's parkinsons disease is really starting to limit his mobility, it really makes me treasure the time we get to spend together just sitting around drinking beer and talking shit about sports.

My plan for Saturday was supposed to start with my running the Skidaway Island Marathon, but unfortunately my foot is still too busted so that didn't happen. It was also supposed to end with another massive platter of fried seafood, and that didn't happen either. The kids started back to school on monday, so we decided to head back to Raleigh on Saturday to save Sunday to recover from the road trip. The drive back was uneventful. Not being able to run the marathon thanks to an injury was really depressing. I want to be healthy and out there doing what I love to do! But overall missing the race did not put a damper on the overall vacation.

Turns out the wife of one of my fraternity brothers ran Skidaway, and I had no idea they were in town until we were almost back on the road home.  My friend Charlotte ran the Wrightsville Beach marathon, her 100th overall. There was a big party that we missed, but I'm super proud for both of them. Shanti had a nice PR in the skidaway half and Charlotte had a killer party with lots of running friends there.

Another fun trip to Tybee is in the books! We all had a blast. The kids didn't want to leave. Mom and Dad stuck around another night to get everything cleaned then headed back to Greenville. This is why I really enjoy the year-round school schedule. We get to do this kind of thing in the spring when it's actually pleasant to be there. Actually it could have been a bit warmer but everything else was really perfect.

Myrtle Beach Half Marathon 2017

Ah the Myrtle Beach Marathon. The best and really only good reason to visit MB. This time it was made better because we left the kids with Kelley's mom so we got a weekend all planned out for ourselves!

Road trip!

Couple of hitches, however. Ella has been sick off and on for about 3 weeks. Poor thing has been blowing it out of both ends, bless her heart. Sometimes at the same time (gross!) so it hasn't been pretty. Also my foot prevented any running at all since Jan 12, so I was going in totally cold. Not just untrained, but untrained and still in a fair amount of pain. I've been swimming, so hopefully a combination of arthritis medication and lung capacity could muscle me through something. I decided to drop back from the full and just run the half.

Packet pickup was smooth, but had the longest line ever seen for the swag. Great swag though, nice tech shirt and socks, even a new pair of orange sunglasses. And I ran into my friend Ocean there - hadn't seen her in a while.

Race day started really smooth. Got up before the alarm, dressed, medicated, ate breakfast, walked out to the start in plenty of time. Only problem was this asinine security line to nowhere. They had fenced off the sidewalk to be sure only the runners got into the starting corral, but it just turned into a bottleneck. I told people specifically that I would be hanging out around the 4 hour pace group and to find me there because I would be looking for them.

Have to turn right at that stop light to get to the starting corral

Literally, I made my way to the back of the massive pack of runners (about 4000 people total?) and heard 3 - 2 - 1- GO! No chance of finding my friends.

Still got a starting line picture

Then it was time to run. Took a couple of minutes to get over the starting line but eventually I took my first steps in over 7 weeks and it felt amazing. Muscle memory is a funny thing. As soon as my legs started turning over my foot began hurting worse, but I expected that. Mostly I tried to just appreciate the moment of finally running again. Since I started at the very back it was easy to pass lots of people in the first few miles.

I hit the 10k mark in 1:02, so that's not bad at all. In those first few miles I saw my friend Charlotte, running her 99th marathon and we talked for a while. I also ran some with Relentless Forward Commotion - always great to see Heather out there.

Charlotte always runs in costume - she was 99 bottles of beer today

Eventually I also caught up with the 4:15 pace group, but then had to poop and never saw them again. Really miles 6 - 10 were pretty uneventful, thank goodness. I didn't wear the garmin (that 1:02 split came from the official results), but it started at 6:32 am and I took this pic at the 10 mile marker at 8:20 am, so we'll call that around 1:48. Pretty sluggish by my standards, but again I was just happy to be out there.

Still almost smiling

At the mile 11 marker the wheels fell off. My arthritis really kicked in on my hands, I couldn't come anywhere close to making a fist anymore. My legs were killing me, the injured foot felt like it was going to fall off. I decided to just walk it in from there. It had gone from "not fun" into "completely miserable" territory. I would jog a little bit here and there when I wanted to get away from someone annoying, but for the most part I just kept my head down and kept moving forward.

Evil Genius decided to call me in mile 11. Fortunately I wasn't even out of breath and could easily talk to her, although I did feel like kind of a douche for taking the call in the middle of a race. She said mommy wasn't answering which meant Kelley was still asleep and she needed to relay some instructions. Ella had barfed again that morning, a couple of times and wanted us to come home. Actually, EG gave specific instructions. 1. Finish the race 2. take a shower and eat something 3. take Mommy for a long walk on the beach where you can hold hands, then 4. drive back to Raleigh. Isn't that sweet.

Got my medal!

I hit the finish line in 2:27:38, which is a far cry from the 1:47 I put up the last time I ran the half here. But you can only be so upset about finishing a half marathon with absolutely no training. I didn't really stick around for the post race festivities this time, but they are fantastic. I really wanted that beer, but first priority was finding a bathroom. Those were on the way out of the park anyway, so I just headed back to the hotel.

After a quick shower we still hit the breakfast at the hotel. Our little secret is that we always stay at the La Quinta at Broadway at the Beach. It's nice, clean, cheap, and you can walk to the start/finish line. We also managed to walk some of the stores at Broadway, and did hold hands for a bit. But then headed back to Raleigh pretty soon. Stopped in the small town of Calabash NC for some lunch and shopping, and still made it back to Raleigh before dinner. Ella was feeling better the next day. And my first race of 2017 is in the books.

The Secondary

The joint pain feels pretty good. We've had some amazing weather here in NC. I haven't started physical therapy yet just because I've been unable to get an appointment. Saturday is the Myrtle Beach half marathon, I'm looking forward to running for the first time since January. Monday is my follow up appointment with the orthopedist, then Tuesday is the first physical therapy appointment. It should be an appropriate recovery from attempting to run my first 13.1 miles since mid-January.

Swim: 16,400 yards, 6 swims
Bike: 28.4 miles, 3 rides
Run: 0
Strength: 4 times
Yoga: 1 time

February started off pretty decent, but before too long the total body inflammation kicked in. that was really rough. Remember like 3 years ago when I could workout 14 times a week? yeah, now I got in 14 workouts on the month. I'm getting used to this much rest, and can understand why fatties are such a fan of being lazy. I think I got my nutrition under control too, I've been vegan for a couple of weeks now but it's not having the same benefits that it did a few years ago.

I've been hanging upside down some and I think it's really helping. Literally, I picked up some gravity boots from Amazon and have been hanging from the iron gym. It's awesome. Really helps my back and knees feel better.

Other Fun Family Stuff
After last month's drone experiment the kids loved playing with my old radio controlled car. We're having a blast. We also got in some fun date nights, and Evil Genius had a science fair project due.

Ella left me a sweet note asking to go play with the car

I like to repeat the joke

On a Habitat for Humanities project with the team from work!

My whole team joined up for a day of Build a Block. It was great fun and really built some comraderie. So nice that our company gives us two days a year to volunteer!

Hope you had a great February too! The second(ary) month of the year is always short, sometimes leaves me sick, but this year also had some fun.