Tuesday, May 6, 2008

North Carolina and Tri Baselines


Long time, no post.

Hubby and I took a mini vacation and went to North Carolina. He found some information about a golf community where, if we sat for a sales pitch, we could stay for $20.oo night and golf for $40.00 per round. We cashed in some frequent flyer miles and went to NC for a fast, fun trip.


Our winter was so L O N G and spring has been cold and wet so we were very excited about the proposition of feeling the sun on our skin, being outside without a coat, seeing the beach and golfing.

We flew in to Raleigh and then drove down to Calabash, where the resort is located.


Calabash is part of Brunswick county, which is home to a lot of golf communities -- and not much more. There were some restaurants (mostly fish places), one coffee house and a couple of very nice beaches.

The golf resort was lovely -- lovely homes, well kept, nice golf courses. We had a blast playing golf. I had some trouble with a couple holes, but had one par and putted pretty well throughout both rounds. Hubby did really well golfing. This was a good warm up for him for his upcoming tournament season.

We had thought that there would be an actual "town" or "square" or something close by with a little zip, but.... no.

The closest to "zip" we found was about 8 miles away: Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

Myrtle Beach was not really our cup of tea....

It reminded us of the Wisconsin Dells on steroids. Hotels, motels, cheesy "resorts", souvenir shop after souvenir shop after souvenir shop.

On our last day, we drove in to Wilmington -- a very charming city that we both really liked -- and took a side trip to Carolina Beach.

Carolina Beach was the opposite of Myrtle Beach. Really great beach houses all painted in vibrant pastel colors, cute restaurants, really great beach.

We took a walk on the beach and down one a long fishing pier so we could take in the sites. A row of pelicans dotted the railing of the pier. We were able to get very close to them. They are really incredible birds.

---
Got back to Minneapolis and the weather is just starting to warm up. Thank heavens! Tri season is just around the corner. My first event is on June 7th -- about 1 month away.

I know that I'll finish Fargo 1/2 -- may not be pretty (or a PR), but I'll get through it and am looking forward to the event. Some of my running buddies are also running Fargo, and I'm looking forward to spending some time with them.

I'm looking at Fargo as part of my tri "benchmarking" -- seeing where I am before I get in to heavy training. (Sounds good, at least, yes?)

I also benchmarked a 400 yard swim (9 minutes 14 seconds) Okay, say it with me in your best Amy Winehouse voice: "Slow.. slow... slow";
a one-hour ride (15.60 miles ) Sing it Amy: "Slow, slow...slow";
and a 2 mile run (21.10.... but the first mile was 9:45...) Bring it home, Amy "Slow, slow, slow!"

I have a lot of work ahead of me to get me in to 1/2 Iron distance shape...

Let the fun begin!

2 comments:

Meg said...

hey I may be in your neck of the woods the weekend of June 14th. Do you know of any area events happening that weekend I could sign up for?

Sunshine said...

Wishing all you friends a fun time in Fargo!!

Details of your trip= quite interesting.