A long drive, a nice visit, lots of seaweed and a way overpriced meal

It took us a total of 10 hours to make it to the beach, but we stopped along the way to visit Grandmother. She looked terrific, got to hold Henry, and the kids really enjoyed seeing her again. We hope to take her to Hooters for lunch on Thursday (her favorite).

Our unit is about 200 feet from the beach. We spent an hour or so at the beach before heading to dinner at the beach bar. What a mistake that was! It was way overpriced, didn't have the grilled shrimp Michael wanted (though they did bring out grilled, shelled shrimp for Beth...I'm baffled by that one), but it was beach front and we got to watch the sunset while we waited.

I'm not sure what's on the plate for tomorrow (not a decision I am permitted to make), but I'm fairly certain we'll be at the beach at some point. Henry has to eat some more sand since he only ate 1/2 the beach today. I want to do some fishing with the kids too.

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Balmoral: The Queen's Summer Home

Balmoral, in Royal Deeside, Aberdeenshire, is the Scottish home to the Royal family; I prefer calling it Liz's summer home because, well, she's super adorable and she has a serious crib for her summer home. We paid a visit here on our drive from Fort William to Ballater, our stay for the next three nights. The castle is only open from April to July, so we got lucky to get here on the last day it was open. Was Queen Elizabeth there??

As for Royal homes, I've been to Tower of London, Kensington Palace, and Hampton Court Palace. If I had to rank Balmoral, I'd put it behind Hampton Court Palace. There are quite a few similarities between the two, mostly due to the extensive gardens, which doesn't exist in near the scale at Tower of London nor Kensington Palace.

We had a couple of hours to spend here, so being the tourists we are, we went with the audio tour, always a favorite of mine so that I can listen and look without needing to read to much. I find I enjoy this way…

Fort William Marathon: The Best Kept Secret in Racing

Earlier this year I had been training hard for the Limassol Marathon, through ice and sleet and snow, only to have what I considered a disappointing race. I struggled to recover mentally, but I knew I had another race on the horizon...the Fort William Marathon. This event was my first marathon back in July 2015, shortly after the family made the move to London. The main difference this time, though, was that we're three kids lighter with Michael and the twins all back in the US for some time with their friends.

I hadn't thought much about running this race again until Chris, the race organizer, reached out to me to offer me a complimentary spot. This was incredibly generous and given how much I liked the race the first time, there was no way I was going to refuse. Granted, Chris made this offer well before the race in Cyprus.

The posts-Limassol blues stuck around for much longer than I'd expected. I was really down on myself, questioning why I put in the effort and the tr…

You call this a taper?

My 6th marathon is coming up and all of the training plans I've followed previously have included a pretty drastic decline in mileage the last two weeks. For this marathon, I decided to follow the Hanson's Marathon Method after reading their book.

The plan includes 6 runs per week, whereas I was running 4 days per week previously. For some context, the highest mileage week on Hanson's is 57.5 miles and my first "taper" week was still at 49.5 miles. I've been feeling great following their plan so I'll trust they know what they're doing.
Monday - 7mi easy I've been loving the easy runs. I actually get to enjoy running rather than slogging through every workout being tough. I love running through Hyde Park, so my route went from Hammersmith Station through Hyde Park then to work. I wrote a more extensive post about this particular run here.

Tuesday - 6x1mi @ marathon pace - 10 sec + 1.5mi warm up/cool down I tested out some super light race shoes Tu…

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