My wife and I were blessed to spend this past week just outside of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. We decided in advance that we would spend a lot of time in the sun and we would workout almost everyday. What a great treat it was to accomplish both of these simple goals.
Having been to PV in the past, I was looking for an adventure workout of some kind if possible. It took a while to find the right one and there was absolutely no guarantee we would be able to do what we wanted, but we booked the trip and took the chance.
The only real workout excursion I could find was an "Off Road Bicycle Adventure"in the Sierra Madre Mountains. Since biking isn't our thing, the idea was that we would show up with our running gear and see if we could run up the mountain. Simple plan right?
Yes, simple plan and it worked like a charm. We show up and tell them what we want to do and we found the most incredibly accommodating guides you can imagine. And even more incredible, out of a bus full of people, only three of us wanted a workout. The rest were there to ride ATVs. Ah hello, can you say boring!
So, the third person is in the picture above. This young college graduate from New York, New York named Paul Patterson, turned out to be a fine young man and terrific companion on our adventure. He even started out running with us and hung in there for the first mile or so. Corina and I ran 6.5 miles uphill. Believe me when I tell you it was steeply and relentlessly and I might even say gloriously uphill. This is the type of things memories are made of. We joined Paul and biked the final 6.5 miles down the mountain together.
Paul is planning on becoming a police officer and aspires to work for the FBI someday. Thank God good young men are making decisions to serve us as officers of the law. Corina and I really enjoyed the chance to meet Paul and spend a few fun hours working out with him. We wish him great success and we are confident that he will be a success at whatever the future brings for him.
Just to give you a bit of a picture regarding this trip, the guides gave us three options. Basically the options were first easy, described as mostly flat. Second medium, described as rolling hills. Or third very difficult, described as steeply uphill. Paul agreed to do whatever we wanted to do. As you can imagine, without hesitation we picked very difficult. So, the three of us began to jog.
We had three guides with us (you gotta love Mexico). One biked ahead of us, one biked behind us, and one drove a van with our bikes and the water. As we left the little village, Paul mentioned he was from New York and I said, "Oh, cool. Corina and I hope to run the New York Marathon some day". He quickly responded, "That is devastatingly bad news for me". Paul later described the trip as a "black diamond" difficulty level on a bike. He sure knows how to make an old guy feel good!
What a great day in Mexico. Here we are alive and well. At this point we had run 6.5, biked 6.5, and done three shots of tequila.
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