The best part about bringing your training shoes on vacation is that seeing a foreign city through the eyes of a training run is a perspective unlike anything you can fathom.
I don’t know what it is, but some of my most enduring vacation memories are when I laced up, usually early in morning, left the family in the hotel and went out to tour the local city on foot.
I’ve explored foggy monuments in London and rural Scotland.
I’ve run laps through the humid Florida swampland that is Disney World.
I’ve paused for selfies in front of the Louvre on a hot Parisian morning.
I’ve winked at Pixar Studios as I ran by the gates of the famed animation studio in urban Oakland.
I’ve run the various seaside waterfront trails of cities like Reykjavik, Victoria, Tokyo, Kihei and Nice.
Oh, of course, I’ve done travel racing too, and that’s a whole other experience worthy of each their own post, but vacation running—training runs, exploratory jogs, jaunts out into the strange places beyond the front door of a random hotel is raw adventure plunked into the middle of a normal vacation?
The world looks different through running eyes.
And a strange city on vacation is strangely unique as one runs by and through and across it in the mindset of a runner.
Pack your kit. Set your alarm. Warm up your GPS watch. Find a trail. And go out and holiday run. You will not regret it.
