Camping in Maricao

A few months ago (sorry for the delayed post!), we went camping with the Adrenaline Junkies in Maricao State Forest. It was our first camping trip here on the island. 

Our adventure began on a Saturday morning - most of the group arrived Friday night, but due to work constraints, we decided to leave early Saturday morning. We met our friends at Playa Sucia, one of my favorite beaches here on the main island. It is located in the southwest corner, so it is a long drive from San Juan by island standards - about 2.5 hours. But in my opinion, it is definitely worth the drive! 

If you don't get there early enough, you have to park far away and walk to the beach!

Playa Sucia actually means dirty beach in Spanish. But this place is far from dirty. It is also known as La Playuela. There's several different things to explore in this area: Cabo Rojo Lighthouse and some hiking trails on both sides of the beach, one of which leads up to the lighthouse. We definitely needed our water when hiking along these trails because the sun was beating down on us! 

La Playuela AKA Playa Sucia. Definitely NOT a dirty beach!

Cabo Rojo Lighthouse overlooking the beach

Amazing views off the cliffs surrounding the lighthouse and the beach

After spending the day at the beach, we made our way to the campsite. The drive was quite an adventure, as Google Maps gave us crazy directions that put us on someone's private property after driving through crazy winding roads on steep cliffs. But we FINALLY made it to the campsite before dark!

Ethan set up our tent and we all started cooking some food on the fire. There were several of us Adrenaline Junkies there and we ended up having PLENTY of food and drink for everyone. Check out these photos!

The tents all set up on the campsite

Getting fired up! :)

Plenty of food for everyone!

All in all, we had a great time. After a great night of cooking out, relaxing, and great conversation, we explored the camping area a bit in the morning and found a great overlook nearby, where we took this photo:

The Adrenaline Junkies at the overlook in Maricao State Forest

We can't wait to go back! Our next trip is planned for December! Hasta Luego! :)

Trail Race in Salinas, PR

It feels so good to have some free time to catch up on this blog... Work had taken over my life but now I've been able to come up for some air. And I have some great news too -  I just submitted a manuscript with my PhD advisor last week for publication of a research article in the Journal of Neuroscience. I'm soooo glad to have it done! Seemed like it would never end.

And now to catch you all up on our adventures... We ran a trail race a few weeks ago in Salinas, about 45 minutes south of San Juan. It was a tough race, but the views were amazing and I felt so accomplished afterwards. About halfway through, there was a super steep hill that seemed to go on forever, but once I reached the top, the view was just breathtaking, and not just because I was huffing and puffing to get up the hill! Then the fun part began - the whole rest of the race was all downhill. Most of the participants were cautious and walking slowly down the hills, but not me. This was my chance to catch up after all that slow walking up the steep hill! This was a great route - it was on a mountain biking trail that had all these fun ramps and jumps, for the crazy mountain bikers, like Ethan. We'll definitely have to come back and ride our bikes here. I ended up finishing in 64:49, getting 8th place female and 76th overall - not too shabby for next to no training for this race. But I was just happy to be running in the woods, away from the city and enjoying all the nature that surrounded me. Ethan also had a strong finish at 60:33 and 45th male and 48th overall. Here are some photos. Unfortunately, the photographers didn't post any photos us...

More posts coming up on our recent camping trip in Maricao, and a post about our amazing trip to Guatemala!

2014 Running Recap and Exercise Goals

How many miles have you run so far in January? Are you keeping up with your goals and New Year's Resolutions?

If you are like me, and training for an upcoming race (a half marathon on the 23rd!), you have been gradually getting back into the swing of things and possibly slipping on your targets for training. Although the last race I ran was in mid-January, I feel like it has been quite some time since I have trained diligently and prepared for a race. As a way to keep myself in check, and hopefully to keep some of you out there motivated, I will post my mileage every couple of months or so...

So some challenges I have faced this year to keep my 2014 resolutions:

Getting back in the habit of early morning runs
 I really love running in the morning here in Puerto Rico - not only is it cooler outside, but quieter, and it is nice to start the day with some fresh air and to see the sunrise while looking out at the ocean. But I have to say, ever since I moved here, it has been quite difficult to wake up so early in the morning! Not sure exactly what it is, but maybe a mixture of staying late in the lab (often until 7pm), eating late-ish dinners frequently (after 7:30pm), the heat and humidity making me sleepy, and people just generally doing things later on this island than I am used to. But I am definitely going to have to get over this! I was checking the schedule for the Puerto Rico Half Marathon and the start time is promptly at 5am! 5AM! What are these people thinking?! This means I will have to wake up by 4 or 4:15AM at the latest, so I can wake up and get energized for this race. But I am prepared to do it (I already registered anyway!) :-P

Making a running/exercise schedule and sticking to it
I have been using the Adrenaline Junkies Meetup group as a big form of motivation for me and as a way for others to hold me accountable. Scheduling a weekly run and posting it to the meetup group is a great motivator to stick to my training plans. Running with others is also a great way to be encouraged and encourage others, not to mention a good way to take a break from the never ending lab work. My schedule typically includes a long run on Sunday mornings, a speed workout on Tuesday nights, an easy run on the beach Wednesday mornings, a 4-5 mile run on Thursday nights, and sometimes a trail run on Saturday mornings.

My longest run in January was 9.35 miles running to El Morro in Old San Juan - it was a great run! It was a cool morning, with a nice breeze coming from the ocean, and a little drizzly rain, which made for some nice rainbows in the sky. But the best part was seeing a flock of wild parakeets flying around El Morro and Plaza del Quinto Centenario! Luckily, one of my fellow running buddies had her phone with her and I asked her to snap a photo of them:

I am still working on trying to make a schedule for strength training, as I am not a member of a gym and don't take bootcamp classes on the beach anymore. I've been doing some workouts at home with an app called Skimble - it has lots of different workouts you play from your phone and has instructions with an automated trainer (the free version uses a robot voice - if you pay, you get a real voice) that leads you through each exercise. It is really easy but it's very hard to motivate myself to do these on my own...I did just order a set of dumbbells, so hopefully, that will get me excited again about exercising at home!

A friend of mine also gave me a copy of the Insanity workouts, and I've slowly started getting into those, so I hope to stick with them. I tried the test the other night and it was tough! I think I will get more into it after the half marathon when I'm not running as much.

Eating wisely
For the most part, I'd say I eat pretty balanced. I stick to real, non-processed foods as much as possible, I avoid going out for meals, and I usually only drink a few glasses of wine a week. Sometimes I have trouble with portion control or snacking when I'm not hungry, but I've been doing less of this by not having many snacks around at home or work. I also tend to stay pretty busy at work moving around the lab and not sitting very much. I'm mostly away from my computer these days, so there is less opportunity to sit around and snack!

Total mileage for January: 50.69 miles
Total mileage for February: 32.73 miles (I fell behind on my training this month!) :-/
Total mileage for 2014 (including one run this month so far): 88.18

Shake it up!

What an adventure we had just last night: our first earthquake in Puerto Rico!

It wasn't anything life-threatening, but it did wake us up while we were sleeping. The tremor occurred just after midnight today approximately 35 miles north of Hatillo, Puerto Rico (this city is 58 miles west of San Juan). At this location, the Richter Scale measured 6.4, but at the center of San Juan, the reading was about 3.0.

Map with tectonic plates outlined and the epicenter location (star)

Closer image of epicenter location. San Juan is at the far right white dot.

 Ethan and I had just fallen asleep before it happened. Then, I felt the bed wiggling, as if Ethan was moving his legs around. I said, "Ethan, stop moving the bed so much!" to which he replied, "That wasn't me! I thought it was you!" The tremor last over 20 seconds, so we intensely began to wonder why the bed was moving by itself and how this could be happening.

Let me take a step back and tell you all about some recent goings-on at the Faryna household. Recently, we have had some feline visitors over at our house. There has been a friendly stray cat that we have named Ghost who visits our patio about every other day. Whenever I see him, I go outside, pet his head and say hello. He usually sticks around for a while, smelling all of our plants, lounging on the patio, and trying to get into our apartment. I sternly tell him "No" when he tries to enter. Well one day, while we were both in the back of the apartment, he snuck into the kitchen. I wandered into the kitchen and who knows how long he had been there, but I caught him darting back out the door. To my knowledge, he has not come back into the house.

This is the only picture I have of him on our patio. Ghost is so quick to run away, I couldn't get another shot!

Over the holidays, we were taking care of our neighbor's cat, Gigi. Over the course of ten days, I would visit him twice a day, feed him, clean his litter box, brush his hair, and play with him. It really made me want a pet! :) On Christmas day, we let him come into our living room to check the place out. He loved it! Lately, he has been welcoming himself to our house whenever our neighbor lets him out to get some fresh air. It is quite cute - he has been exploring more and more of our rooms as we keep forgetting to shut the doors so he doesn't sneak in there! But he is a good kitty, he hasn't chewed anything up or relieved himself anywhere, so I love it when he comes over to say hello.

Gigi

OK, back to the main story. Taking these two pieces of information about the cats into account, and understanding that I was half asleep when we felt the tremors, I immediately thought that one of the cats had found their way into our bedroom and were shaking the bed! I then exclaimed, "Ethan! Is it one of the cats?! Check under the bed!" Ethan jumped to his feet and turned on the light. He peeked under the bed. Nothing. As he was standing there, he stopped feeling the movement and thought maybe something was wrong with the bed. Haha! At this point, the tremors had stopped, and we finally came to our senses. Was it an earthquake? We quickly checked facebook to see if anyone had posted anything. Sure enough, several of our Puerto Rican friends had posts reading: "Temblor fuerte en San Juan," and "Se sintió el temblor acá en mi edificio," meaning, "Strong earthquake in San Juan," and "The earthquake was felt here in my building." Were we relieved! We weren't crazy after all! We continued checking for updates and some of our American friends here also felt the earthquake: "Just went through my first earthquake! Everything in house was wiggling! Very cool!" which we totally agree with. Another couple did the exact same thing we did: she thought her hubby was shaking the bed and he said it wasn't him! Haha!

We were very glad that we weren't injured and nothing was damaged and also relieved that there was no tsunami warning afterwards! That would have really freaked me out!

Have you ever experienced an earthquake? What happened?