Running Down the Dream: My, oh my, what a wonderful day: Vacation Days 5 & 6

Before I dive into another vacation post, if any of you are interested in trying nuun, use the code hydratefriends2017 through June 23 to order through their website at 25% off! nuun energy is my favorite, because it contains caffeine. I drink it before races and after I sweat a lot (e.g., after pretty much every run all summer), and I had a tab every morning on this vacation! I am also beyond excited that nuun is going to be provided on the course at CIM!

June 11 - Animal Kingdom

Run:
A 4 miler at 7:33 average pace, and with a Strava course record on the segment I tried to get but ran on the wrong side of the road for on June 9. My legs were dead when I started this run (8:18 first mile), and the only reason my average pace was pretty normal was because I ran the mile with the segment in 6:31 (it was a 0.6 segment but I was unclear on exactly where it started and ended, as per always). I then did what every intelligent person with theme park-inflicted dead legs would do and completed 20 minutes of leg strength training before another park!

Activities:
Day 4/Park 4 was Animal Kingdom! We took the 8:30 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. shuttles, so it was another 12 hour day. We spent most of the morning waiting in long lines for the new Avatar rides in the World of Pandora area that had just opened, but both rides were pretty amazing (one you flew on a banshee in virtual reality, and the other you floated down a river). The whole Avatar area was really phenomenal and it was clear that A LOT of work went into designing and constructing it. It would be ideal to FastPass those rides, but since Jon didn't want to plan which days we were doing which park in advance (because of the weather), they were all taken before we booked ours.

We did FastPasses for a River Rapids ride (everyone got pretty wet), the Expedition Everest roller coaster (Albani and Jon went to a bird show instead), and a ride called Dinosaur. We did a Safari ride, the Lion King show, A Bug's Life show, the Dinoworld kids area, and really everything in the park. We got rained on some, but timed being in the Lion King show for the worst of it. Albani loved getting wet in the rain, but I hated it because while it was fine being wet outside, when we went inside into the air conditioning it was uncomfortably freezing.

Animal Kingdom entrance

In the World of Pandora

The Avatar river ride

Expedition Everest in the background

Some of my best work

Dinoworld

Near A Bug's Life in the center island of the park

Legs up the wall part 4 -- my daily Disney tradition!

June 12 - Kennedy Space Center (NASA)

Run:
This was my scheduled day off running, but I did a short one since our hotel fitness center left a lot to be desired; 3.2 miles at 7:14 average. I pulled off two Strava segment records; one that I found due to my wrong turn on June 10, and another that I saw on another Strava athlete's run route when checking the side of the road for the one I accidentally found. One can find segments in more efficient ways on the desktop Strava site, but I was using the app and also didn't really spend any time on it (probably a good thing). I then did 20 minutes of arm and core work. My goal for strength training was to get in one full body workout while on vacation, and I accomplished that but split it up over two days.

Activities:
We went to Kennedy Space Center after doing the four Disney parks in four days. It was about a 75 minute drive from our hotel, and we drove our rental van. Jon and I visited this space center on our honeymoon, and I was worried it would be boring since we'd already seen it all, but they'd changed quite a bit so it was worth doing again; plus Albani learned a lot about space exploration, touched a moon rock, and bought a cool solar souvenir. The Atlantis shuttle was the best new addition.

We were hoping to go to Cocoa Beach afterward, but the weather had other plans. It also rained much of the day at NASA, and I was again uncomfortably cold when indoors. The kids were pretty disappointed about missing the beach, but it just wasn't worth driving over an hour out of our way to go to the beach during a torrential downpour.