Good morning. It is 8:30 am on Monday 3/25. An almost balmy 26 degrees now! It is sunny and the weather app says it will pass 55 today. But, wary of black ice, I ran indoors today. I’ve exercised every day since returning from PR except for the one day I worked last week. I had some motivational issues about one day per week during the dead of winter. Despite using a “daylight” lamp and Lexapro the seasonal affective disorder is hard on me. But seeing all the people battling the blazing heat at IM PR 70.3 motivated me quite a lot. Especially 70-year-old Mark finishing at 8:32 on an 86-degree, humid, sunny day. This morning I did just a hard hour on the treadmill with intervals each mile. I did a Gatorade Sweat Test with a patch I got on sale during the winter from some online triathlon site.
Adequate salt intake was discussed a lot down in PR. I had nothing to eat or drink before this early morning run and drank just one bottle of water during the workout. I have one more of the tests and will try it again after having a pre-exercise gel and using some electrolyte/carb beverage instead of just the water. I don’t want to leave any stone unturned as planning on Florida Ironman at age 60. Maintaining my body through the long summer season of racing and training through November will require me to train SMART and not just hard. I get a massage every other week and on alternate weeks go to StretchLab for an assisted stretch session. Ideally, I would go to Yoga once per week but that is the thing that most easily falls off my schedule. I signed up for my first class in a month for today so I can write until 10 am and then will go. I do “easy” flow Yoga, not hot, not fast. I enjoy the hour of resting my mind as much as trying to correct all the stiffness in my overused running and biking muscles. My balance is not so great either but at least Yoga will keep it from getting worse as I age.
Day 4 was Monday, the post-race day for the racers and a relaxation day planned for me. I have been trying when I travel to schedule one day into the trip without any planned museums, hikes, etc. Of course, I’ll always do an early morning workout but then just a day relaxing by a pool, getting a massage, reading my Kindle in a park, a day to recover from my usually overscheduled days. I had planned to do a 13.1-mile run, the whole race course, but as I had noted it was already super hot and humid before dawn I decided 10 miles would be more reasonable. I had a tourist map of Olde Town and took it with me (I had a phone of course but easier to just peek at the map if needed).
I waited until it was almost sunrise and ran to the overlook by the transition area to get a photo.
I made a Relive 2-minute video of the run. Link below.
https://www.relive.cc/web/view/vRO7e45AGKq
I ended up only doing 8 miles. I had brought one water bottle with me (I had noted ZERO water fountains in the city, awful for the poorer citizens) but the heat and humidity were bad and my water was gone after 30 minutes. I also stopped to take over 50 photos so the run was longer time-wise than I had planned. I also wanted to get in a short swim and look for Manatees before breakfast. So… 8 miles was plenty. Here are some of the best photos if you couldn’t view the video.
It was a wonderful run. I always try to do an orientation run on my first morning in a new city and if I had just one more day in PR I would have loved to have returned and toured the insides of the fortresses and some of the art galleries and shops in the cute neighborhoods full of pastel buildings. I plan a return to PR in any case and will set aside a full day for Old Town (and bring cat treats!). There was a huge amount of security in the area I realized later was the Governor’s mansion. That night at dinner it was mentioned that the racers saw a huge motorcade during the race and it was …. Jill!
80 at 8 am! My new Garmin announced after I saved my run that after almost 4 days in PR I was only 26% adapted to the heat! If I plan to race next year I need to either spend almost a week there before the race or spend a few days at my mom’s in Boca Raton before or do a lot of training in my basement wearing sweats and without the fans. I didn’t even know it did that but the 965 is sometimes too smart! It is always suggesting rest days or that my workouts have been unproductive. When I was in high school we had to do jumping jacks in the sauna with sweats on to drop water weight for wrestling, I don’t think that would be considered “smart” at my age.
I had asked Mark if he wanted to do an easy open water swim to see fish but he wanted a full rest day, he did take a photo of me heading over towards Condado Beach from his balcony.
I walked across the bridge and although the Snorkel Tour tent wasn’t set up yet I saw Koa leashed next to a bowl (I took a selfie with him on the GoPro but none of those photos have been downloaded yet, look for them in the iMovie next week). I found Sal unloading supplies from his pickup truck and said hi and thanked him again for finding the Manatee.
I only snorkeled for an easy 30 minutes. I got some good videos of the fish along the north side of the bridge and the ones in the artificial reefs on the south side. It was much calmer and sunnier than on my previous snorkel here. I didn’t see any Manatees and didn’t have the energy to do any prolonged swimming into the lagoon to look for them. If I had seen any SUPs or Snorkelers grouped somewhere I would have joined them but no one was out.
I am back! It is 2 pm and although I usually avoid pre-season baseball I saw that Yankees-Mets is on so will multi-task for a few hours. It was an excellent Yoga class today, especially after a hard run.
After rinsing the salt water off myself and my gear I was starving and rushed down for breakfast. Of course that meant there was a very long line for the breakfast restaurant, I guess all the triathletes didn’t leave yet. I settled for Starbucks instead. The relay racer I had met the day before had asked if I would go with them today to the turtle sanctuary as they weren’t comfortable doing an open water swim alone. She preferred to use just her swim goggles (although the Hilton had a nice dive shop at their beach) but I wore my snorkel and fins (my legs needed a break). In just 3 or 4 feet of water right off the Hilton beach were plenty of beautiful fish.
I wish I had a better photo of the fish on the left. At first, I thought it was a plant but when I swam closer I saw it was a ? lionfish variety but BLUE. If lucky I might have some video of it but it was right along a breakwater wall in the dark shade. These are the only videos I downloaded already, of the area between the Hilton cove and Turtle area.
After climbing of Hilton cove and into the Turtle area we saw a few groups of snorkelers in the deeper water. The first group was clustered in one area but there was no turtle. I asked and was told by the guide that we should try a different group and when we got there…
She was very graceful and peaceful and unbothered by the dozen people looking down at her. After a little more fish viewing it was back to the Hilton beach and my well deserved lounge chair rest time. The Caribe Hilton’s beach was super family friendly, the water clear and calm, colorful fish in knee deep water, and a variety of play options for the kids. We had lunch at the outdoor restaurant next to the swim up bar area. I had left my phone in my room safe so no photos of the 2 cute cats hanging out and hoping for scraps. And no “food selfie” of my very nice Grilled Chicken Sandwich and (finally) my Caribe Hilton Pina Colada.
Jaime’s 50th birthday was last week so his parents had us over for a nice meal and party. His parent’s live in a nice gated area about a 20 minute drive from the Hilton. It reminded me of any typical Californian neighborhood.
I was so excited to spend time with Macca (he belonged to Jaime’s sister and her husband Danny). Macca is 13 and going deaf but very nice. He was like Fifa in that he spent all his time near the kitchen counter hoping for something to fall.
I asked Jaime what the Spanish word for “bat” was. Murcielago! They had a pool and we ate outdoors but the bats did a good job on insect control.
Jaime’s parents both turn 80 this year, his dad in December, based on all the effort for this small party I imagine it will be quite the event.
