Heart & Sole Is Back

Posted on November 10, 2014 by Colleen Lerro

Despite my best efforts and my last few promises of being back, the summer just got too busy and keeping up with the blog started to feel like a chore. Since I do this blog for fun, I knew that meant it was a time to take a break for awhile.

Running took a backseat to a lot of travel plans and a busy work schedule, so I never ended up registering for a fall half marathon. I did get to do a handful of shorter races though, and while not my speediest by any means, they reminded me why I love this sport so much and have me chomping at the bit to get back into serious training.

The last few months have been an amazing ride and some of the best times of my life so far. The highlight of the summer was my brother’s wedding. Him and his wife got married in Ithaca, New York and the wedding weekend was an absolute blast! The rehearsal dinner was at a restaurant called the Carriage House that served one of the best meals I’ve ever had. The wedding and reception were held in Six Mile Creek Winery. They had a pig roast, great music and fun games – even giant Jenga! It was awesome. Also, Adrienne – my new sister – looked absolutely beautiful.

Ian and I traveled for two more weddings for some good friends over the next few weeks. The first was a blast with the beautiful Cazenovia Lake as a backdrop followed by another great time in Minneapolis at a wedding that featured an after-party on a boat with a mac and cheese bar and soft pretzels…be still my beating my heart. (Those may just be two of my favorite things!)

Oh while all this was going on, we were planning our own wedding and amazing honeymoon adventure. On October 18, I got to marry the love of my life! The day was everything I hoped it would be and more. I’ll share recaps on the wedding in posts to come so I don’t turn this one into a novel. Spoiler Alert: Otto the Orange crashed my Syracuse-themed reception! (If you’re not from the ‘Cuse that might not make much sense now, but more details and pictures to come soon.)

We started planning our honeymoon more than a year in advance. We saved up money and vacation days all year for it and it was worth every sacrifice. We were also fortunate enough to have a lot of friends and family gift us amazing experiences along the trip through our honeymoon registry.

We started the trip in Dublin then made our way to Rome before setting sail on a Mediterranean cruise that would take us from Italy to France and Spain. It was the trip of a lifetime and the most surreal experience. I had so much fun! I’ll have more detailed recaps coming soon for this too, but here are some of the highlights of our two-week adventure if you prefer the Cliff’s notes version:

• Became certified whiskey taste testers at the Jameson Distillery

• Closed down a bar in Ireland

• Battled the wind to see the Cliffs of Moher

• Climbed to the top of St. Peter’s Dome at the Vatican

• Saw the Sistine Chapel and the Colosseum

• Snapped pics of us holding up and pushing over the leaning tower of Pisa

• Took selfies in front of the statue of David in Florence

• Walked the beachfront in Nice

• Won money at the Casino Royale in Monte Carlo

• Saw Napoleon’s birthplace in Corsica

• Drank wine on our private balcony as we watched the sunset over the Blood Islands

• Spent an entire day at sea

• Toured a castle in Palma de Mallorca

• Walked in a bull fighting ring in Valencia before boating in Europe’s largest underground navigable river at the Caves of St. Joseph

• Let the waves of the Mediterranean wash over our feet in Barcelona

And now it’s back to reality with the best memories and a chance to make many more over the coming years!

Footprints: Monday Recap

Posted on September 9, 2013 by Colleen Lerro

Last week was unfortunately not a great week of training. With travel, unexpected extra work at the office and the snooze button defeating me a couple mornings, I didn’t get as much in as I wanted. My long run is on tap for tomorrow though, so I’m not completely giving up on it!

Here’s the day by day breakdown of my less than stellar week:

Monday: 3 miles easy in the AM followed by a great track workout. I ran 6X800s with a 3-minute jog recovery in between each repeat. My splits came in at 3:24, 3:19, 3:21, 3:19, 3:19, 3:18. Thanks to the Labor Day holiday I also got a mid-morning Body Ride in at Revolve.

Tuesday: Rest Day

Wednesday: 5.3 mile progressively faster, hilly run.

Thursday: Rest Day

I’ve been wearing my new Oiselle Flyte tank for way too many of my workouts! Thank goodness for in-unit laundry finally!

Friday: Rest/Travel Day

Saturday: 6.6 mile slow, sluggish run in the heat and humidity in Minnesota. Of course the weekend it finally cools down in D.C., it’s hot and humid in the midwest.

Sunday: 4 miles hard and fast around a lake in Minnesota with 4 striders at the end.

Finally…A FitBloggin’13 Recap! Part 1

Posted on August 23, 2013 by Colleen Lerro

I’ve been promising this recap since getting back from my first FitBloggin conference in late June/early July and it’s finally here. I’ve been so busy lately and I wanted to make sure I really did this post justice since I not only had a blast at FitBloggin’13, but thought it was an incredible learning experience too!

First up, The Workouts:

What would a conference for a bunch of fitness-fanatic bloggers be without awesome workouts? Roni Noone, the creator of FitBloggin, and team did not disappoint.

On day one I was up before the sun for an early bird bootcamp workout in Pioneer Square, known as Portland’s living room, just outside our hotel. Being a former boot camp instructor I love taking these classes. Erin Kreitz Shirey was our instructor and she did a fantastic job keeping the energy level high and the workout intense for the huge turnout. I was impressed by how many people made it up for the workout. We ran stairs, did burpees, push-ups, frog jumps, planks and more. It was a fun, challenging workout that was a perfect way to kick things off. As an added bonus, a local TV station films their morning show in the square and after coming out to see what we were up to invited us all in for a tour of the studio after our workout. So cool!

After a short tempo run I was back to try out a Reebok Cardio Dance class. I rarely take dance type classes. I’ve always been a pretty coordinated athlete, but when it comes to dance that goes out the window. I stationed myself in the back of the room and hoped it would’t be too awful. I ended up really enjoying things. Patricia Moreno, our instructor, led us through all sorts of moves that had my heart pumping and left me all kinds of sweaty. She also had us repeating positive mantras throughout the class. This sounds super corny, but it actually was pretty cool and left both my mind and body feeling stronger at the end of class.

Getting ready for Reebok Cardio Dance!

Day two began with another early bird workout for me. On tap for today was SweatPink yoga led by Fit Approach co-founder Jamie. As a SweatPink ambassador I was thrilled to get to see the awesome ladies who started it. I’m the first to admit I don’t do enough yoga and there are a lot of classes I don’t like. This class was my favorite kind of yoga class though. It was fast-paced, challenging and felt like a good workout. A lot of people who have also done pilates classes said it was more similar to those kinds of classes. I loved it.

After squeezing in a 5-miler around Portland I hustled back for my next group workout of day 2. It was the one I’d been really looking forward to: Fitness Trampoline class! Yes, you read that right. This class was so intense as we got our heart rates up bouncing on the mini trampolines while performing all sorts of cardio moves alternating with some really tough strength moves on the floor or leaning on the trampoline like push-ups into planks. It was a really tough workout yet I couldn’t stop smiling the whole class!

There was a group run on the last day, but I somehow managed to get myself up super early and was just wrapping up my 2-hour long run as they were getting started so I unfortunately missed out on that. I did beat the heat though since I went and brought the D.C. heat and humidity with me and took in some beautiful scenery running along the water and over some or Portland’s bridges.

More to come in Part 2 on the great discussions and workshops that I learned so much from!

Warp Speed

Posted on June 25, 2013 by Colleen Lerro

Ever since Memorial Day Weekend, I feel like I’ve been living in warp speed. There’s been a lot going on to say the least, but all good things, so I’m okay with that! Ian and I started apartment hunting that weekend and ended up loving the first place we looked at. We went back there shortly after our tour to put a hold on the unit we wanted and filled out some paper work to put things in motion to sign a lease. We move in tomorrow night and I cannot wait! I’ll have more on the new place in a later post.

The following week we had an open house at our current junior one-bedroom condo, which I own, in hopes to find a renter. Everything seemed to fall into place as we had a lease signed shortly after. Then our crazy month of travel started. First we drove up north to his brother’s wedding in the Thousand Islands, which was a great weekend. We made that trek in a ZipVan so we could bring a whole bunch of furniture back down to bring to our new place since we’re renting the current place out furnished. Needless to say, it’s been a little cramped since then.

Less than a week later I headed off to Montreal for five days for a work trip, came home for two days and just like that we were back on the road to Hoboken. My brother and his fiance live there so it’s always fun to visit. We also made it into Manhattan for a 30th birthday celebration for one of my good friends from grad school. They rented out a back bar at Bourbon Street Bar & Grille in Manhattan and we had a blast. She’s a big Harry Potter fan, and while I have to admit I’ve never read the books or seen the movies, this cake was still pretty amazing!

Harry Potter Cake

I’m about six weeks in to working with a running coach and am really feeling good about the progress I’m making. I’m running a local 5k tonight and hoping the 90+ degree temps don’t thwart my attempt at a PR. I feel like I have a great base built to lead into Marine Corps Marathon training – hard to believe it’s that time already!

During all of this craziness I also got an exciting job offer and I start my new gig on July 8. Learning about all things biotech for the last year and a half has been a great learning experience, but I’m really excited about this new opportunity. More to come on that!

After the big move tomorrow night (it’s hard to say big move and not giggle – we’re moving less than a mile from our current place!), we head to Portland, Oregon. I’m spending the first couple days at FitBloggin’13 – sooo excited! – and then we’re going to stay and check out the city for a couple days. It should be a great trip! It’s already been quite a month…maybe in July I’ll have a minute to rest!

Montreal

Posted on June 20, 2013 by Colleen Lerro

On Saturday I headed off to Montreal for a work trip and my second trip of the month. Two more to go, but both of the next two are fun ones, so I’m very excited for them! I was a little leery when we had to walk outside of the airport to board our plane – a very small one at that. There were 13 rows of seats and it made for a bit of a crowded and noisy ride. We arrived to beautiful weather in Montreal though and I managed to fall asleep for half of what was a pretty short flight.

After checking into my hotel I hustled over to the Convention Center for lunch a few hours of bag stuffing and other pre-conference prep. Then I got to explore the city in one of my favorite ways – on a long run. I set out from my hotel in search of the river enjoying the perfect temperature and low humidity. About 90 minutes later I still hadn’t found the river, but I had gotten to tour a good portion of the city. My Garmin battery died on me around mile 8 so I’m not sure exactly how far I ran, but it felt great to just run. I conveniently ended my run right next to a pizza/pasta place. Once I got past the menu being in French and thankfully realized the waiters did speak English too, I ordered a delicious pepperoni pizza. It was the best meal I’d have all week.

The conference went well and I was also happy that I was able to still find time for my workouts. It dramatically increases my mood when I’m on the road and still able to get my runs and workouts in. I did find the river on a later run. Turns out I just had to turn right instead of left! I also hit up the hotel gym one night for some time on the elliptical and strength training. It was a pretty decent hotel gym – especially for an older hotel. There were even individual TVs on all the cardio machines so I was able to watch some of the NBA finals while I got my cardio fix in.

The food left a little to be desired for me on this trip. Granted I am a pretty picky eater and my food reviews should probably be taken with a grain of salt. I stayed in to eat at the hotel bar one night and was surprised to learn it’s a federal law in Canada that you can only be served hamburgers cooked well done. Does anyone know why this is the case? I decided to go with pizza again instead. Bad choice. It was thin crust, which I normally like, but this crust was cracker thin, burnt and crunchy. It kind of tasted like they’d made the pizza on a bunch of saltines. Oh well, the beer that I washed it down with tasted just fine!

Next came the fancy dinner night. Not being the most adventurous eater, I tend to not really enjoy these kinds of places and oftentimes try to avoid them. Still I understand that most people do like them and sometimes I do need to get out of my comfort zone and try new things. This one was a bit too far out of my comfort zone though. A French speaker translated the menu for us and there was not a single thing that I liked. There was one pasta dish and although it included seafood, I figured I could just eat around what I didn’t like. To my surprise, the pasta dish came out and was completely black. Apparently the sauce was squid ink and it came loaded with every kind of seafood imaginable. I tried to eat as much as I could, but it was a bit hard to stomach. Thank goodness we ordered dessert or I would have gone home very hungry. The restaurant itself looked very cool. It was in what looked like an old, converted church.

Overall, it was a good trip, and while it’s a very cool city, Montreal is definitely not my favorite Canadian city.

Are you an adventurous eater while traveling or do you like to stick with what you know?

Footprints: Monday Morning Recap

Posted on June 17, 2013 by Colleen Lerro

Life has been a bit crazy busy lately to say the least, but I still felt really good about last week’s workouts. My track workout felt great and I got to explore a new city on my long run!

Here’s the day by day breakdown…

Monday: Rest Day

Tuesday: 7 mile run plus 4 striders around the Mall and Hains Point.

Wednesday: I got in a quick strength workout focusing on upper body and core.

Thursday: Back to my usual track night this week, I had a tough time motivating myself to get to the track since the time has moved back half an hour later and I now have to go home first instead of going straight from work. Once I got there I felt great though. The skies opened up briefly and poured on us for a couple laps, but then it dried up again resulting in much more comfortable running temps. My workout was 6X1000 meters and I hit my splits in 4:33, 4:35, 4:33, 4:35, 4:33, 4:33.

Friday: Unplanned Rest Day – hate when this happens and spent the whole day wishing I hadn’t hit snooze one too many times in the morning as the day slipped away without another chance to get a workout in.

Saturday: I got my long run in on the streets of Montreal. The weather was perfect and it’s always fun exploring a new city! My watch died around mile 8, so I’m not entirely sure how far I ran. I went another 20 minutes or so after that.

Sunday: After eating too much convention center food all day I got in a solid workout at the hotel gym spending 40 minutes on the elliptical and doing a lower body/core-focused strength workout.

Weekend Fun In Alex Bay

Posted on June 11, 2013 by Colleen Lerro

Ian and I headed north last weekend to celebrate his brother’s wedding in Alexandria Bay. It’s about 90 miles north of Syracuse and just south of Canada. His family has a camp nearby so I’ve been there a few times over the past couple years and it’s an incredibly beautiful area.

View from Ian’s Camp

The fun kicked off Friday night with a cocktail hour and delicious dinner at the Clipper Inn in Clayton for the bridal party and out of town guests. Colin, the groom and Ian’s younger brother, is a naval architect and a reserve officer in the U.S. Navy so the weekend was themed in a nautical fashion. I particularly loved the place-cards for our seats at dinner that night.

Name cards at our seats for the rehearsal dinner – yellow flags indicated the meal we chose and I thought the life savers were a great touch!

The party continued back at the Riveredge Resort with another cocktail reception for the rest of the wedding guests that had gotten into town already. This was pretty convenient since we were also staying there. It was a nice hotel right on the water. The cocktail reception was a blast. The wedding ceremony took place at Boldt Castle and was a beautiful ceremony!

Brittany, the bride, walked down a tower out of a fairy tale and the ceremony was underway.

When asking Ian for the rings – his one official best man duty – the officiant jokingly asked him if he’d remembered the rings. I had to hold in a laugh because this could have turned out very differently. Shortly after Ian left the hotel to board the ferry over to the island for the ceremony, I stumbled upon two blue ring boxes still in our hotel room. These can’t possibly still have the rings in them I thought, but yes, there they were. I called Ian in a panic but didn’t catch him before he’d left. Fortunately I was able to get there well ahead of the start of the ceremony to hand the rings off to Ian! Assist to me! As Ian keeps saying – they weren’t lost, they were in an unexpected location.

The reception at the Opera House back in Clayton was another great night of dinner, drinks and dancing. It was such a great weekend and so much fun to get to spend time with both of our families throughout the weekend!

Taper & Travel

Posted on April 26, 2013 by Colleen Lerro

The Nike Women’s Half Marathon is this weekend! How did that happen?! The taper time is always an anxious time for runners. This race and my last big race – the Niagara Marathon – both had one thing in common for my taper period: each race happened directly after my company’s annual convention and at least a week on the road. Last year was worse as I flew out for a weekend of fun at a friend’s wedding in St. Louis, flew directly from there to a week in Boston for the convention and flew from there to Buffalo where my boyfriend picked me up and drove me to Canada for the marathon. This year I flew to Chicago for convention, but was home late Thursday night and being a local race, didn’t have to get myself anywhere else.

Traveling while on taper has some pros and cons. Being such a busy week, it would be hard to fit my regular duration and intensity of training runs in. On the negative side, one of the most difficult things about the taper for me is realizing you don’t need to eat as much as you did during your normal training weeks since you’re not burning nearly as many calories, and eating healthy on the road – especially during busy work trips – is not something I’m great at.

My meals usually consist of more beers than usual, comfort foods like the picture below from a diner that claimed to serve Chicago’s best mac ‘n cheese (it wasn’t) and one too many desserts.

Giant Miller Lite!

Decent Mac ‘n Cheese – but not the greatest as they claimed!

Delicious Strawberry Cheesecake

A big postitive for this trip though was the hotel gym at the Chicago Hilton. I’ve stayed at some hotels with really nice gyms lately, but this might be the best one yet. It even had an indoor track! Despite the fact that it took 18 trips around, I happily did my 3 miler on it instead of the treadmill on day one.

Indoor Track!

Every cardio machine also had its own individual TV built in, which I love. I took advantage of this for my interval workout.

Always love the indivdual TV screens on treadmills.

So many treadmills!

As soon as I saw the pool area I was really bummed I hadn’t brough my suit. It had a great lap pool and two hot tubs!

lap pool

two hot tubs!

It was really an impressive hotel gym. It made it a lot easier to get my workouts in this week since it was freezing here in Chicago. Still, I hope I’m not on the road for my next big race. It takes a lot out of you and I’m glad I’ll have a couple days off before the run on Sunday to hopefully recover from the week! I can’t wait! I’ll be volunteering at the expo from 3-7 on Friday, so stop by and say hi if you’re picking up your packet then.

I’ll leave you with a few more pics of the gym…

Weight Area

Tons of cardio machines for a hotel gym!

Pretty awesome view of the Chicago skyline through the floor-to-celing windows!

Marathon Tours Photo Contest

Posted on January 11, 2013 by Colleen Lerro

For today’s post, a shameless plug: please go vote for me in the Marathon Tours photo contest. Marathon Tours & Travel provide travel services for runners combining running and travel into an experience you’ll always remember. I traveled with them to Ireland in 2009 and Greece in 2010, and both trips were truly amazing.

Ireland was and still is my all-time favorite travel destination. I loved everything about it from the history to the beautiful views of endless green up in the mountains – and of course, the pubs were pretty great too. I didn’t exactly train well for the Dublin Marathon, so I lined up at the start line really unprepared. I paid for that in pain, but my days in Dubiln and Galway were worth every second of hurt.

Kylemore Abbey – my photo contest entry

Greece was the race experience of a lifetime. I ran the 2,500th anniversary of the original marathon trekking from Marathon to Athens. I never thought there would be a way to top the rush and excitement of crossing the finish line in my first marathon, but this was absolutely a finish experience like no other. It wasn’t the prettiest course, but taking in all the history along the way was unbelievable and incredibly humbling.

The end of the race took us into the original Olympic Stadium with the final 100 yards playing out on the track. Tens of thousands of people filled the stadium cheering. My eyes filled with tears and I pumped my fists in the air with excitement as I ran to the finish.

I traveled to both of these races on my own and never would have done so without the organization and camaraderie that came with participating through Marathon Tours. As I’m sure you can imagine, I would love to do another destination race with them sometime, and winning this contest could help me get there a lot quicker!

Entries have to be pictures from one of their trips and monthly winners for their photo contest receive money toward a trip. The end of the year prizes are what I’m after though, especially that trip to the London Marathon. The rest of the year end prizes aren’t too shabby either!

Thanks for taking the time to vote for me!

24 Hours in Cali

Posted on November 30, 2012 by Colleen Lerro

This week I took a whirlwind business trip to San Diego to attend a board meeting. I flew out of DCA around 9 a.m. Wednesday morning arriving in California just after noon pacific coast time knowing that my departure flight back home would take off in just 24 hours. If I was going to fly more than 10 hours in two days, I was definitely going to make the most of my time on the west coast.

I stayed at the beautiful Hilton Bayfront Hotel right on the water. My room had a comfy king-size bed, a nice flat screen TV and a beautiful view. I’d scoped out a Mexican restaurant on Yelp near my hotel before making the trip, and made that my first stop after dropping my bags in my room. Lolita’s began as a mom and pop shop in the 80s and now has about 5 locations in California including the one I went to right next to Petco Park. After just a couple minute walk from my hotel I was enjoying a delicious chicken burrito and an enormous plate of chips and guac.

: Walk by the Water

: Fitness Center

: Outdoor Seating at the Hotel

: Pool

: Pool

: Lolita’s Mexican Food

: Petco Park

I still had a few hours before my meeting and would have loved to take advantage of the sunny, 60-degree weather to go for a run along the water, but seeing as running is still off limits I hit the fitness center to use the elliptical instead. The fitness center was great – very well equipped with plenty of cardio machines that all had individual TVs and a view of the pool and the bay if you preferred that instead.

After the board meeting I flew out to attend wrapped up at 7 p.m., I was running on fumes since I’d been awake since 3 a.m. local time. My supervisor and I swung by a reception for a quick drink and some hors d’ouerves before heading to one of the hotel restaurants for some burgers.

I took advantage of waking up super early Thursday morning by lounging around, enjoying a Starbucks breakfast and going for a quick walk along the water. It was a gray and rainy day, but I was in California with just a few more hours to spare so I was going swimming. I did laps in the hotel pool overlooking the bay and soaked in the hot tub before hustling back to my room to shower, pack and head home. And just like that I was back to D.C., 40-degree temps and a regular Friday.

heart & sole

Tag Archives: travel