Mike's Marathon Blog

My birthday is in a few weeks, so Jack decided to give me a little weekend getaway as an early present. And the location she decided………….the Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe, Vermont. Trust me, it came as much of a shock to me as it did to you. I’m not exactly sure why she chose this place of all places. I’ve never seen the Sound of Music, I don’t know who the Von Trapps are, I don’t eat wienerschnitzel, it’s too late in the season to ski and plus, I just came back from Montreal 4 days ago. I thought the worst going in, but it actually turned out to be a nice weekend. Stowe is a nice little town and the views of the mountains are second to none. The Trapp Family Lodge is actually one of the Small Luxury Hotels of the World.

It unfortunately rained all day on Saturday, so we did not get a chance to do what we had planned on doing, which was renting mountain bikes. Luckily the Ben & Jerry’s factory was right down the street. After the tour, we got to sample the newest flavor Milk & Cookies. I would call your local supermarket ASAP, ask if they have this flavor in stock and fill the entire shopping cart with as many pints as you can. Do it. Later that night, we went to a very nice restaurant called Solstice, which was at the Stowe Mountain Lodge. Lobster risotto always makes up for a cold, rainy day (and a few beers). We went to bed, after Sweet Home Alabama of course, hoping for better weather on Sunday. Not so much.

We woke up the next morning to 30 degrees and 3 inches of snow on the ground. And it kept snowing all day! So, we did what any normal couple does on a nice romantic weekend in Vermont…….we went to the gym for 3 hours. It may have been my perfect day. We did 6 different circuit exercises for about 2 hours, Jack went and got a massage, I ran 4 miles on the treadmill and then we alternated between the outdoor hot tub and the sauna for the next hour. Talk about a nice, relaxing day. I’m actually kind of happy it snowed.

I just started working out again last Tuesday, so it was nice to get a long workout in on the weekend. Especially since we were away. The summer is a tough season to stick to an exercise schedule and I’m already feeling the pressure to skip the gym and hit the ice cream stand. I’ll talk about my summer exercise schedule in a future blog.

My next scheduled event is the Run to Rmember, which is a half marathon in Boston on May 30th. I typically do not have time goals in races, but I would like to try to break 2 hours, which would be my fastest half marathon time, by far. It will surely be a better day than last year since I ran the ’09 Run to Remember with a double ear infection, bronchitis, a throat infection and conjunctivitis. And it was my birthday. Seriously.