Last week, we went to Jamaica for an all-inclusive vacation at Royalton Negril. It was the first time we had been to Jamaica and the first time we were at a Royalton resort.

I was pretty determined to run while I was there but I was concerned that I’d have to do my runs on the dreadmill because the beach at the resort is quite small and everyone was telling us that it is not safe to go outside the resort.

The first morning, I woke up at 6am and headed out to explore. It was still dark outside as I made my way to the beach. Fortunately, our beach was connected to other beach-front resorts so I ended up running a 5km out and back route on the beach and felt relatively safe. I had to do 17km that first day so I ran the route 3 times and a bit.

My plan was to run early in the morning to beat the heat. I’m so glad I did because I ended up getting beautiful sunrise photos and even saw a rainbow one morning.

The 2nd day, I did a 10km Tempo run. The 3rd day, I did a 5 km recovery run and also swam 45-minutes in the swim-up bar pool. I swam so long that an older gentleman came up to me after and asked me how many laps I did! 😂

By the 4th day, I was ready to do something different so I decided to take a break from running and went to a morning yoga class followed by a bootcamp class. I ended up really enjoying the classes and did another bootcamp class that day and another yoga class in the afternoon. Even Jeremy did the yoga classes!

There are 4 fitness instructors who offer 9 classes per day so there were many options to choose from. The yoga was really great – I haven’t done a yoga class for years – but the bootcamp at the beach was the most fun.

I basically ended up doing classes for the rest of the week except for on day 6 where I made myself do a 20km run (4 loops on the beach) instead of going to sunrise yoga and bootcamp because I didn’t want to have to do my long run in the cold when I went back to Toronto.

I was surprised at how many classes I ended up doing. They were so much fun, especially the bootcamp on the beach when we actually went into the water.

All the classes were great for cross training and the yoga was great for relaxation, stretching, and core strengthening. I’m glad Jeremy enjoyed the yoga too!

Now I’m back in the deep freeze, ready to start Week 4 of my marathon training!