What came first – the holiday or the run?

Summer is upon us. This means it’s holiday season. An opportunity to train like a pro? Or the time to cram some sessions in in the morning before your travel compatriots wake up and demand that you “take a break”?

Recently I had the pleasure of being invited out to Les 2 Alpes in southern France (http://ete.les2alpes.com ) as part of a press team. The full article will be published in Men’s Running Mag in their next issue. The trip was put on to help showcase the wide array of Summer activities there are going on in Alpine resorts such as Les 2 Alpes. A whole host of options lay at our feet, ranging from paragliding to Summer skiing to paragliding and that most glorious of things; trail running. With so many options, it was hard to resist the other indulgences that we were offered, but the loyal runner within me held out and I opted to get as much trail time in as possible. This meant a vertical 1.5km race Saturday morning, following another trail race on Sunday, before then hitting the trail again myself, before fitting in a sneaky paraglide before racing back to the airport for my flight home.

The decision to get as much trail time in as possible was proven very quickly to be a good one. The trail out there was bliss – more on the event itself in the article (Men’s Running Mag). It was a runner’s dream and every second out there felt all the more like a true holiday. Some people may opt for time spent on the beach, but I’ll take some intense physical activity against the backdrop of Nature’s finest any day of the week. The time out running gave me a true opportunity to explore both the immediate surrounding area but also to gain a perspective on some other areas on the periphery of the resort. If I had more time I would have been able to run yet further and possibly even explore whole new valleys. All on my own two feet.

Although this trip was very much centred around running and was always going to- it was a press trip after all – the same decision to classify both the running and the ‘relaxing holiday’ type elements of the trip could apply to any holiday in any destination; be it in the city, mountains or by the beach. The decision is a no-brainer really. We, as runners, love to run. Going on holiday should only help to further our love of running, not make us feel like we have to slack off for a week or more to achieve that elusive state of ‘relaxation’. Relaxation comes in many forms and for me, like I am sure it does for many other runners out there, my relaxation, my ‘me’ time, comes when out running. If this happens to be in a new, possibly foreign, place, then all the better; exploring makes it all the more fun.

This weekend I am going up to Glasgow for the Commonwealth Games. I can’t wait to get some morning runs in to explore the city.

Runners appearing through the clouds as they make their way up to Les 2 Alpes from Venosc