european running

I recently spent about two weeks in Barcelona and Venice on a very cool trip.  I traveled with my university and my colleagues planned so many great things for us to experience.  It would be futile to try to create a single post about the trip and I honestly still have to mentally process much of it.  So today, we take a small bite and cover the most important travel topic...

running.

It should not surprise you to know that when I decided to go on this trip, the first thing I did was think about how I would run each day while staying on the group schedule.  When I received the itinerary, I scanned the dates and times and tried to make sure that I wouldn't get stuck running an airport 5K.  Everything actually looked sort of easy as far as adding a run in front of it.  I made a mental plan, packed my running gear and I was ready to go.

On the first travel day I got up pretty early and ran my home trail.  I ran in the dark for the first time since April.  Then it was off to the airport.

We flew through the afternoon and all night and with the time zone change we ended up in Barcelona at 7:00am.  This was when I planned to run but our entry into the hotel was delayed so we walked about 12 miles around the city before running in the afternoon.

My friend Katherine agreed to run with me on the trip and we used the 3.1 miles to explore.  Luckily I brought a running tank top just in case I felt too weird going shirtless out of the hotel lobby.  I later discovered that there are decency laws and neither men nor women are allowed to be topless in the city.  You can be buck naked on the beach, but cross that sidewalk and you need to put a shirt on it.  

The next morning it was back to the routine early morning run.  We stretched in the lobby and headed out the door.  We ran to the beach again in the hopes of catching the sunrise.

The next morning we ran to the beach again, a slightly different path and we saw the sun just a few minutes later.  

The next morning we shifted our path to go around the port.  

One of those first few days we took a left instead of a right and ran toward the mountains.  We saw a lot of cool public art.

Pretty sure this was the morning we were chased by a crackhead.  On our way back from the halfway point, some deranged dude in a black hoodie and backpack started running beside us.  He was literally foaming at the mouth.  He toyed with us by running closer and closer until he was almost touching my arm.  I gave a firm "go away" and he then tried running close to Katherine.  I moved between them, gave an even more direct verbal command and we altered our route to put some distance between him and us.  He stopped a few minutes later and laughed as he did some fake stretches and then he disappeared.  Very strange.

Wisely, we switched up the route the following morning.  We shifted more towards the industrial side of the port.  There was much less traffic and several more runners.  Not as photogenic, but lots of new things to see.

I believe this was our last run in Barcelona, the morning before we headed to the airport.  

Ahh Venice.  A literal breath of fresh air.  While Barcelona's smells changed drastically every couple of steps, the air in Venice smelled salty and fresh.  We were lucky to have a nice little running path beside the water near our hotel.  A couple of laps and a little exploring each day got us our miles.  

There were no crackheads and every view was like a little postcard.  While the first day had a lot of dead ends and u-turns, day two was a little more smooth.

I could have take a photo anywhere and it would have been gorgeous.  The early morning light was perfection.  Another day, another beautiful run.

By this point were were waking up before our alarms and sometimes both showing up downstairs early to stretch.  As tired as our legs were from walking 10+ miles each day, running was invigorating.  

This was our last run in Venice.  The run to start the travel day.  We knew we'd be cramped in planes for the remainder of the day but we didn't have time to savor the long strides.  We took some last looks at the canals and the beautiful buildings and we said our goodbyes to international running.  

We didn't get lost, we didn't fall into the canals and we didn't miss any runs.  And after our runs were done for the day, we were free to enjoy Barcelona and Venice!