International Workout Results

So, I'm back in the states after a 12 day holiday in Greece, and I thought I would give a quick update on the kinds of workouts that I was able to undertake while I was out of the country.  First off, there's no way to do much lifting unless you want to do body-based stuff like pushups, pullups and situps.  I did my share of those, but I was also looking for a way to do some running as well.  My intention was to find a nice long beach, get out there early enough to avoid the majority of people and then just run as long as I could.  That concept sounded good in theory, but it was impossible in practicality.  The beaches on Paros and Santorini tend to be relatively short (maybe 100 meters long) and are almost always packed with people.  This left me with the idea of trying to find roads or trails to run along.  I wasn't really looking forward to the idea of running on Greek roads, because the drivers are crazy and the roads tend to wind around blind corners often.  But, it ended up being the only thing that I was able to do.  On Paros, I found a remote road that was about a mile long that went from where I was staying down to a little beach.  I ran four laps on that road for a total of about 8 miles.  Once we moved over to Santorini, I found a 3.5 mile loop road that was pretty deserted.  I only ran one loop along that road, but it ended up being about 6 miles total because I had to backtrack and refind the main route at several instances.  I would have liked to have run another loop, but the traffic was starting to pick up and the heat was really starting to kick in.

What's the upshot?  Well, it can safely be assumed that you can find places to run, but you'll have to check the paths and/or roads out ahead of time to ensure that you know your way.  Additionally, if you're going to run, you almost have to be done before 10 am because the mid-day heat is tremendous.  In my case, I was able to do some water work almost every day, but only got to run the two times while I was there.