I’m visiting my family this holiday weekend and I have a regular route when I am home. It’s not very long; only about 4 miles, but it gets the job done and keeps me running. Right now, I feel like it’s more about running regularly than necessarily running long distances ( although I have built that into the plan regardless).

My runs at home are usually not very fast because for some reason I eat huge amounts of food and lots of sweets when I am there! So, the runs usually reflect how my body feels and today was no different. There’s something about being home that is comforting and I just feel comfortable and, well, who cares if you have dessert? So, usually, there are movies to see, popcorn to eat, dessert to have, barbeques, italian food.. the list goes on and on. There’s a popular Boston chef, Jasper White, and his motto is ” Food is love.” It’s not the only kind of love, but certainly cooking and eating together is an expression of love in my family– but in a healthy way, mind you.

The other thing I discovered when I was home yesterday was the joy of doing nothing. I watched men’s quarterfinals of Wimbledon, sat by the pool, went in the pool, did some yoga outside, read my books and magazines and it was just delicious. I felt a little guilty at first, but then quickly gave up that feeling. The other thing I discovered was a foot bath. Yes, my blisters I’ve developed are concerning me, and my dad had one of those bubbling foot baths you can buy at Bed Bath and Beyond. We put a epsom salt based foot soak powder in it and three times yesterday I soaked my feet and afterwards, put special blister band-aids on the sore spots. It worked miracles. I have never had blisters before, am running in new shoes ( but they appeared before I started using the new shoes) and am using body glide on them and have great socks. So it’s a mystery why I have developed them but I am hell bent on getting rid of them. So, lesson learned- invest in a foot bath, even if you don’t have blisters. It just feels heavenly.

I am back to Boston tomorrow and looking forward to the Men’s finals of Wimbledon and a long run.

Be well.