Another Summer, Another Awesome Vacation

We just got home from another fantastic vacation week in the Hamptons with Jill and Andy.

We left really early last Saturday morning and arrived in Bridgehampton at lunchtime. Their kids had a big welcome sign on the front door with a note that said "You will have the party of your lifetime!" Big promises, big expectation - and big delivery!

The weather was absolutely stunning the entire week - probably the clearest and hottest week we've ever had, other than Friday when hurricane Earl blew off the coast and made it rain all day.

The first night, some friends Roger, Judianne and Steve came over for drinks and dinner. We scare them so they were drinking a lot of water in the name of self protection. As usual, Jill and I had marinated a batch of fruit in alcohol the second we arrived so we could have our favorite Blackbirds! Yum!

We had our usual great meals, this time including filet mignon on blue cheese toast points, crab cakes, and shrimp with two sauces. We also went out to dinner at Nick and Toni's one night and shared a variety of appetizers and pasta dishes. My favorite was an eggplant pasta.

Andy had been telling his kids he was going to book surfing lessons all summer, and with our arrival he came through. He took the four older kids out one morning and bought them short wet suits and then took them to a private lesson that afternoon. They practiced briefly on the beach and then they hit the water and hit the waves! They all did really well, especially Taz. They surfed one more day in a group lesson but then with Earl looming, the waves got too crazy. They could barely stand in the waves on the beach without getting knocked down!

My training stayed reasonably on track, I guess. On Sunday I ran a 10 mile loop to meet everyone at the beach. My right hamstring started bothering me as soon as I started running. It felt better once I got warmed up but then hurt a bit for the rest of the week.

Scouter took his bike so I wouldn't have to ride alone, so on Monday, we rode 16 miles together and then I added some to total 22. Tuesday, I decided to skip my run to give my hammie some rest and just swam for 45 minutes in their pool. Jill had tunes cranking which made it much more fun. Wednesday, Scouter and I biked again. This time I took him out on some main roads and we biked to Sag Harbor and back. He ditched me for some quieter streets and I kept going to total 21 miles.

Thursday, I ran five miles and swam for another 45 minutes. Friday - thank goodness, a rest day. But the rest day made me lazy! I really didn't want to do my workout on Sat. I procrastinated until almost 1:00 and then finally went out for a solo bike ride. The first part of the loop I made up was pretty cool, but then I had a 10 mile stretch on a busy road into an evil head wind. I was very frustrated and wondering if I have similar conditions on race day, would I be able to keep going? Then I missed my turn and just as I was thinking this was one of the worst bike rides of my life, I ran over glass. Thank goodness I didn't have a flat, but I was totally expecting it. I finally stopped, checked my map and GPS, and got back on my planned route. I was supposed to ride 26 miles and ended up riding 34.

After my horrible bike ride, I went out for an equally heinous, hilly run. My training plan called for 16 miles which I had no intention to do, but I did plan to do 8. However, after having really bad nutrition that day and an even worse mental state, I ended up walk running 6 miles and then stopping. I'm blaming a week of martinis and limited sleep!

The last night, we celebrated Rainbow's 9th birthday! She picked the menu of filet mignon, corn, strawberries, and chocolate ice cream cake. The kids had plain filet; the adults had ours with fig sauce and grilled figs. Delicious!

Rainbow opened some presents last night and then the rest this morning, and then the poor baby spent most of the day in the car driving home. She was a trooper. We celebrated her actual birthday with Arby's and another ice cream cake when we finally got home at 7 p.m.

Now we're partially unpacked, and I'm hoping for a better bike ride tomorrow morning after 36 hours of drying out. We'll see how it goes...
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