Last week I was in Spain with a group of 33 8th graders. We got tours of Madrid, Segovia, and Barcelona.  I took two pairs of running shorts and hoped to workout at least that many times.

I got one run in while staying in Madrid – a short 3 or so miler.  And two runs while in Barcelona.  It took a long time for my Garmin to sync so I started the runs without it completely ready to go – so the distances were 100% accurate.

Madrid is fairly hilly and it was humid at 6:30 when I went out.  The streets were pretty much empty except the sidewalk cleaners and a few dog walkers.  I headed in the direction of a park that I’d seen on Google Maps.  Their parks mostly have crushed stone paths so that was nice. I didn’t have a lot of time nor did I want to get lost so I followed some side roads back towards the main road to the hotel.  It was easy to find the hotel because it stood above most of the surrounding buildings!

The first run in Barcelona almost didn’t have a good ending.  I ran with one of the high school students that came with, our plan was to go to the beach and see the sunrise.  We accomplished that part and walked along the water and enjoyed the beautiful sunrise.  We walked a bit down the beach and got to where we’d had dinner the night before and started heading back up the streets.  We were walking for awhile and realized we weren’t were we should be.  We walked a little bit and tried using my Garmin to get us back (remember the whole not starting right away thing) but it took us in a circle.  We stopped and asked a Policia (en Espanol) where our hotel was – we only knew the name so he couldn’t help us.  We walked a bit and then the student remembered that we had taken the subway the night before and we looked at a map to see if we could find the subway station we got out at.  The map was useless, but we realized we were just a few blocks from the station from the night before (and I had brought some Euro).  We got to the station and I started buying our passes.  We only needed 2.90 Euros and I thought I’d brought 4 so we were in luck.  Until I looked at the coins and realized I only brought 2.50, ugh.  We started looking around and a nice woman approached us, so in our broken Spanish we told her what we needed and she gave us the 0.40 that we needed!! We rode the two stops and walked back to our hotel! What an adventure!!

The next day I went for a 5 mile run on the boardwalk that was completely uneventful.  I made sure to look at the cross-streets, just in case!  It was a nice way to get out and enjoy being near the beach.  The Mediterranean was calm and I was looking forward to enjoying our beach day later! I thought that 5 miles might have been a little too far, but I felt good for the rest of the day.

I finished the week out with a 7 mile run on Sunday at home.  I left the house and ran towards the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, took a shortcut, ending by the Walker Art Center, ran through Loring Park, and then down Hennepin. I crossed the Mississippi and down to the Stone Arch back towards home.  It was a pretty random route and I wasn’t sure how far it’d end up being! It felt pretty good though.

I’ll post some pics and maybe some stories from Spain! I also owe a Goal Update from April!

Your Training for 05/02/2011 – 05/08/2011