London Part 2 and a sweet home coming

My second weekend in London was all about the London Marathon. Val was running it on Sunday so Saturday morning I met up with her at 8am. We did a short "shake-out run" to a tube stop further down the line and then went to the marathon expo. It was SO MUCH FUN! I had a great time helping Val pick out her last minute items & chatting with the vendors. My favorite was chatting with someone from Virgin Active (a sports club) with the nametag "Marathon Motivator." The expo was well run & it was great NOT to be running the next day.

After the expo, we went to Portobello Road, an antiques street market in Notting Hill and then did some more last minute race shopping. Around 4 we headed over to Kensington Gardens (where Will & Kate will live) for tea and then Val cooked us spaghetti & meatballs for dinner. At 8pm I left her apartment and headed back to the hotel, grabbed a drink, and went to bed.

Sunday morning I woke up, went for my own long run, and then headed off to meet up with Val's friends to cheer her on. Here are some pics of the marathon - 

 One of the local charity group - basically 2 out of 3 runners seemed to have a charity bib

 CROWDS

 Mile 13/22ish

After missing her around mile 13 (somehow), I finally caught a glimpse of her at mile 23! She apparently looked a lot stronger than she felt. She did awesome! After the race I met up with her and a couple of her other friends & we FOUGHT to get out of the area through a sea of people. She changed in my hotel & then we went to her charity's after party where she got food & a massage, meeting up with even more of her friends. I think at least 10 of her friends who showed up at some point throughout the day to cheer her on. It's great to see that she has a great support group in the UK and all of her friends are fantastic and very welcoming. Finally, we ended our evening with great burgers, fries, and an Oreo sundae. I am impressed Val had enough energy to do anything more than collapse.

The rest of the week was fine, although I was really feeling ready to come home. I do not like living out of a hotel. I like making my eggs/coffee in the morning & then having a couch and DVR to come home to in the evening. I also really missed my gym as the 10 X 10 room in the hotel didn't cut it. I went for a lot of runs, both alone, with Val, and with Brian but I really was started to feel burnt out on the runs. I never thought I would say this, but I missed swimming. I also REALLY missed biking.

My last night there, I had dinner with Val and AK (another old coworker) Thursday night at an amazing Indian restaurant. My flight was delayed on Friday night so when I finally landed it was 10pm ET (3am London Time). My amazing dad picked me up from the airport, and after watching some biggest loser, I went to bed.

Saturday I woke up and eventually went for a 10 mile run. I am excited to get back into the hard workouts, but I won't lie, the run was pretty rough. Luckily, the rest of the day was great with lunch with my family and then meeting up with some of my high school friends & one of their adorable daughters! I felt bad because at  around 6 I practically fell asleep on her couch, but I did bring English chocolate so I figure even trade!

This morning, I woke up early & headed 70 minutes out of town for a 70 mile bike ride. The drive was long but the view was TOTALLY worth it. Here are a couple of pics of the wonderful views (stolen from the Team Z facebook page) - 

These pictures do not do it justice. There was beautiful farmland, lots of animals, a clear blue sky, and very few cars. For the people going 70 miles, we did a 56 mile route & then a 17 mile route from Boyce Elementary school. At the end of the 56 one which I mostly rode alone, I definitely was bonking a bit because I am struggling to eat enough on the bike. After eating, I headed back out with Mary and Mark who knew a shortcut to take 2 miles off the route. I made sure to keep up with them, working hard just to have to bike less. It was definitely worth it. Overall, I averaged just under 15 mph, finishing the ride in 4 hours and 50 minutes. After the ride, we all stopped at the local general store for some great food.

I now have two weeks at home (1 weekend) and then I head back to the UK for 2 more weeks. I have a lot of DVR to catch up on between now and then. After that trip, I should hopefully be home for the rest of the summer. Next weekend is a recovery week for the team (aka short ride) but I think I will try to do a longer one since I will be missing the big one while I am gone. If anyone is interested in joining me, let me know!

Random thoughts about London -

*The tube system is pretty awesome. The longest I ever had to wait for a train was 8 minutes (due to a maintenance worker strike) but in general trains come every 1-4 minutes

*When you enter a London tube station, you still might have a 1/4-1 mile walk to the platform. If you change  lines it's antoher 1/4-1 mile walk to the other platform. There is a LOT of walking and very few people actually drive around.

*If you order a pickle, you will get some weird relish thing. If you want a pickle, order a Gherkin.

*Mac = raincoat

*I was thrilled to be there for the wettest month since the 1970s sometime

*If you like hoppy beer, you are out of luck

*A British propoganda poster during WWII had the motto "Keep Calm and Carry On." There is a lot of play on that nowadays (i.e. "Keep Calm and Drink Beer") but I love that original motto. When I go back, I want to get something that says that.

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London

Today marks my 8^th night in London and this is actually the 2^nd hour I have of “just sit” time since I’ve been here. I hate sitting in an empty hotel room so I have been on the go pretty much all the time, getting only about 5-6 hours of sleep a night. I am finally living the “normal” 25 year old lifestyle and I am EXHAUSTED. But I am happy to be making the most of my time in London. Most of that activity has been thanks to my wonderful friend Valerie who has let me join in on all her various activities. She and I used to work together at Deloitte, along with the other Hilton co-worker I have traveled here with (Brian) which is just kind of funny.

Thursday I arrived at the airport at 6:35am (1:35am ET) after leaving Austin around 11am ET the day before. I only slept about 2 hours on the plane which did not bode well for the day ahead. After making it through customs, I headed to the office for a full day of work. When I got back to the hotel around 7, I had just enough energy to find some food at a grab and go place in Trafalgar square and then proceeded to collapse into bed. Unfortunately, I think the time change & the IV of coffee I consumed completely messed with my system & I woke up at 12:30am and didn’t fall back asleep til around 4:30am. I even did a workout at 2:30am in the hotel gym (I know, I know, crazy). Luckily after that I adjusted to the time change pretty well.

Friday was another day at work then Brian and I met up with Valerie for dinner at a fancy French steak and frites place. The place is a set menu and does two plates of steak and fries. It was delicious and great to catch up.

Saturday Val and I met up with her friend Susan and Susan’s 2 year old son Alex for a run. Val took me past all the big sights near my hotel including Hyde Park, Buckingham Palace, Westminster, Big Ben, the London Eye, and the river. It was a great route. Afterwards, Val ran home while I grabbed lunch, checked out the Monet exhibit in the National Art Gallery, and then stumbled onto a Dutch pride festival in Trafalgar Square. Then it was my only hour of “down time” before heading off to meet Val and her work friends for a pub crawl. At the first pub, we ran into other Deloitte people from the Mclean office doing a global assignment, AK, Bill, and Steve. It was really great to see them. I worked with Bill for 3 weeks of my Deloitte career but they were three of the best weeks. They were talking about all the traveling they have been doing and it definitely made me a bit jealous.

The pub crawl lasted the rest of the evening. I headed home a little after 11 because I was joining Val and some more of her friends for a day trip to the Isle of Wight, an island off the Southern Coast of London. Here are some pictures from that trip. It was BEAUTIFUL. We rented bikes and then proceeded to get really lost, biking up a mountain rather than taking the easy route. It would have been fine except Susan’s husband Scott was hauling Alex in a trailer. Our “peaceful” 12 mile ride turned into a panicky sprint to get back to the bike shop before it closed almost 6 hours after we picked up the bike. All in all, it was a fun, but incredibly long day. We left at around 7:30am and got back at 10:30pm.

 On the ferry to the Isle

 Val discovering a bird just pooped on her face and Susan coming to the rescue with a wet wipe - notice the laughter in the background

 Alex after his dad biked through a puddle

 beautiful scenery

random Buckingham palace shot

 

This week I have gone out to two really nice dinners after work, gone to pub trivia with Val and her co-workers (don’t ask how our team did…), and then last night I went to see Wicked. I had never seen it before but I loved it. I have also fit in a couple of early morning runs around Buckingham palace and Hyde park. The weather has been pretty awful and ever changing - rain, drizzle, rain, peak of sunshine, rain, rain, hail, drizzle, sun, downpour, hail, drizzle, sun and a solid 45-55 degrees.

This weekend I think I am doing dinner tonight, the marathon race expo tomorrow morning, a tea in the afternoon, and then will be cheering on Val as she does the London Marathon Sunday morning. I am also hoping to fit in the Tower of London but we will see.

I am definitely enjoying my time here, but I am looking forward to reuniting with my couch, DVR, and family next weekend for a short 2 weeks. Like Dorothy said, there is no place like home.

Note: my training has not fit into my London lifestyle very well, the hotel gym is AWFUL. I have kept up on running but that's about it...oops.

Austin

Austin, TX

As I’m writing this, I am in the JFK airport waiting for my flight to London (although I won’t be posting it until I get the internet and pictures will come later). The last 5 days have been awesome and I really enjoyed Austin and am sad to leave with so many things left to do.

Saturday

Saturday got off to an early start. Our amazing friend Valerie picked me and Hillary up at 6:30am to take us to the airport. We got there in plenty of time and met up with Christy. The flights were quick and by 12:30, we were in Austin. Unfortunately for me, my phone was not. Somehow between Dallas and Austin I lost my phone. Luckily, I don’t have one of the fancy smartphones so it is not as big of a loss, but I won’t be able to deal with it until I get back at the end of the month.

After getting our rental car, we found the hotel (Embassy Suites Downtown/Town Lake). It was awesome and one of the best hotel experience’s I’ve had. The hotel had a free cook-to-order breakfast with omelettes, pancakes, bacon, sausage, hash browns, oatmeal etc. It also had a free happy hour each evening (yes, free food & alcoholic drinks). The staff was super friendly, especially the bus boy for the morning breakfast who got to know each of us as we came down separately (different morning schedules), giving us suggestions on things to do or asking about my bike ride, and finally putting the three of us together our last day. We had some random requests for the front desk & they made our life much easier. It was awesome getting all that for the employee rate, but I would definitely stay there in the future even if I had to pay full price.

After checking out the hotel, we went exploring and got some lunch at Halcyon, described by Frommer (my new bff) as having an ex-hippie vibe. After that we walked to the State Capital, and then I went to the bike shop to pick up my bike.

Once I got my bike and found out that store was going to be cancelled Sunday for Easter, I called Mellow Johnny’s (Lance Armstrong’s bike shop) to see if the ride I had planned on doing was still happening. It wasn’t. I then called another location for the bike shop I was renting from & asked if their ride was still happening despite the store being closed. It was 5pm and then guy’s response to my question was “whoooooa, I never even thought about that. That’s a good question. I’ve never had to deal with our Sunday ride conflicting with easter before” and then he proceeded to tell me it was doubtful.

So basically what that left me with was a rented bike but no group to ride with. I debated the rest of the evening if I should try to do a ride on my own and tried to figure out a backup plan.

Meanwhile, after enjoying the hotel’s complimentary happy hour (yes, free food & alcoholic drinks), we headed out for the evening, attempted to see a bunch of bats wake up & flee the bridge next to the hotel, and ended up at Chuggy Monkey’s which had live music & ESPN. We had fun chatting with some Australian’s on a tour of Europe and then called it an early night.

Sunday

I had a ton of trouble sleeping Saturday night because I kept trying to decide to ride or not. The final decision came after re-reading the initial e-mail I had received regarding the rides from the bike shops. The roadie (Daniel) had not only given me a link to a map of the stores ride, but he gave me turn by turn directions. After realizing it was really 4 turns, I decided to head out on my own. I was SO GLAD that I did. I went a bit north of downtown & was greeted with some AMAZING views. The route was super hilly, but the hills were long without being too steep. I didn’t have any issue getting up them & I saw about 50 other cyclists along the way so I never felt alone. I love that with the experience of bike and build behind me, I was able to explore a new area on my own & didn’t let fear hold me back. Don’t worry – I grabbed Christy’s phone so I could call them if I had any issues.

The rest of Sunday was spent exploring UT Austin & getting some awesome ice cream at Amy’s – a coldstone like shop with family appeal & cool tricks. We went to Oasis for dinner (out near where I biked) for some drinks & an amazing view of the sunset and then made it an early night.

Monday

Monday I woke up early (a continuing theme on my trip as I could never sleep until my alarm), and went for a run around Town Lake which was right next to the hotel. It was great seeing the early morning sun against the Austin skyline & I really enjoyed the run. My legs were killing me from all the biking/walking/running though.

After the run, we headed to San Antonio to see the Alamo & river walk. While I will always remember the Alamo, I wasn’t too impressed with San Antonio. I was happy to head back to Austin.

That night, we hit up Antone’s, a blue’s joint that is supposed to be the epitome of the Austin music scene. I have to say, I was completely in my happy place and this, plus the bike ride, was the highlight of my trip. It was open-mic night & it was basically a giant jam session. I actually really enjoy blues music & it was great seeing people so obviously passionate about it. I could have stayed there all night. You can tell a place is all about the music when it has been in business for years & only has folding chairs.

Tuesday

Tuesday morning I woke up early (again) & checked out Lance Armstrong’s bike shop/coffee joint. I really liked the vibe of the place, although the coffee was overpriced (shocking, I know). Then Christy & I attempted a hike while Hillary hit up the outlet’s. We got lost going to and on the hike but still enjoyed nature. Then we hit up Barton Springs, a natural pool that is constantly 67 degrees. Hillary and Christy didn’t bring their swimsuits & decided to walk around instead, but I swam for about 10 minutes, and then dipped my sore ankles in the pool while reading.

Tuesday night we hit up Rudy’s, a bbq joint in a gas station, for some Texas bbq. I can’t say I loved the food but we really enjoyed the atmosphere. It was a great way to end our trip. Rather than heading out again due to the early wake up, we got blue-bell ice cream and wine for our room.

Overall Thoughts

Overall, I am sad to leave Austin. I feel like there is so much more to explore there and I definitely want to go back. I can’t say I loved the surrounding area (I hated the drive to San Antonio because it was just ugly & busy), but I definitely got a taste of the athletic & music scenes I have always heard such great things about. Honestly, I’d love to go back for a week & just bike/run/hike in various combinations each day. There were also several other music places we wanted to try.

I realized this trip that my ideal vacation is an active one. I loved getting up early & doing something active. I didn’t go on a bike ride because I felt I HAD to for training, I went because I wanted to and it’s my favorite way to explore a new place. Plus, the active parts of my day allowed me to enjoy the eating/drinking parts even more. The next vacation I plan will be full of adventure and I can’t wait to see what it is.

For now, my next non-vacation adventure will be working in London. Let’s hope I can fit in some biking/running for fun during my stay.

"Quick Request" turns into April in London

This week, I got a calendar invite from the VP of my group labeled "quick request." This was definitely unusual, but I thought it was just going to be for some sort of analysis she needed put together. I got to her office, and she started out asking me how I felt about the scheduled 2 week trip to our London and Glasgow offices at the end of May, with our business process team. I am excited about that trip for various reasons and told her so. Then she said "how would you like to go sooner (for a separate project)?"

I was a little thrown, and asked her how soon. The way our office works, you can come in on Monday and be sent to London or another foreign location by Friday. Luckily, I had a little extra time but they wanted me to go April 9th. I will be in Austin, TX on vacation that Monday and Tuesday and I was planning on flying back home Wednesday. Now, I will be flying straight from Austin to London at 10am, landing at 6:35am London time (12:35am Austin time) and heading straight to the office. I will be in London until April 27th. I am staying at an awesome in central london (the beauty of working for a hotel company). I was also be going with my old boss from Deloitte (who also works for my new company in a different group) and my other old boss currently lives in London so I am excited for the mini-reunion. She'll be running the London Marathon while I am there!

I will be heading back to Glasgow/London for the originally planned two week trip May 13th or so. Unfortunately, my parents will be traveling May 1-14th so I will only see them one weekend in the next 7 weeks, which considering I see them one to two times a week, is really weird. I am going to try to get them Skype tonight, but I am not hopeful about the success of that.

Of course, while I am excited about this trip, I am very nervous about the impact to my training. Ironman Training officially started this past week, and I have rides of 50-80 miles scheduled for while I am away. Luckily, through the magic of Google, I managed to find a couple of local triathlon teams and bike rental shops in the locations I'll be. I am hoping to meet up with them for weekend rides & they have been very helpful in giving me advice/suggestions. Mostly, I am also hoping this as a tool to meet people over there so that I get out of the hotel room and get to see non-tourist parts of London. If I miss a ride or two, it won't kill my training, but I just don't want to miss a full month of them.

I am most excited for biking in Austin, among all the other great things to do there. I have been dying to go to Austin for 4 years or so, mainly because I have heard such great things about the Austin biking, running, and music scene. The bike shop I e-mailed sent me a link to the Austin Cycling Events calendar and there were at least 15 rides to choose from that Sunday. I think that I am going to try to do a "ladies ride" from Lance Armstrong's bike shop (Mellow Johnny's). We'll also be staying right next to Town Lake (aka Lady Bird Lake) which is an awesome running path. And we're located very close to the downtown/bar area for some awesome music. It is going to be a great trip!

I will try to take tons of pictures while I am there. No promises on the success of that!