If you travel with someone who’s training for a marathon, you can’t really escape doing some exercise on your holiday. And not being able to do my regular classes, I thought I’d join for a few running sessions. Whereas my boyfriend ran in each city we visited, including Athens at 43 degrees Celsius, I only joined 4 times. I guess I didn’t want to miss out on the beauty we would see along the way. Here’s an overview.
Symi – 3,5km mini run
Of course I loved my run on Symi. I went solo for this one since my boyfriend had to do hills training. Now, I like a run, but I’m not crazy. So together we walked down the hill from our accommodation towards the Pedi bay as a warm up. Do you really need a warm up when it’s 33 degrees? At the bottom he went uphill and continued on along the bay. I’d seen a trail on the map that leads to St. Nicholas Bay and I was so curious, I just had to see it. I ran down the trail, which was paved for parts of it, the sea on my left and hillside on my right.
A goat got startled and ran down to the water to escape from the approaching danger: me. The path wasn’t even that long, but it was so pleasant. The sun was setting and I saw an almost empty, beautiful beach. I took some photos and turned around, running back along the little trail, past the restaurants in the bay, nodding to a lone fisherman and then reached the hill back to the accommodation. I decided to go for it and was very impressed with myself when I suddenly recognized the street our apartment was on. I made it!
Kos town – 9km coastal run
On Kos we ran together from the town to the North Eastern tip past Psalidi beach. It was late afternoon and many people were still enjoying the beach or just walking back to their hotels. The sidewalk wasn’t very big, but big enough to provide some safety, so we didn’t have to share the road with the cars. This one felt terribly hot. I really didn’t have the energy, but kept pushing on because I wanted to see that beach! Once we were there we split ways as I turned around, picked up the pace and head back to town. After all, I wasn’t training for a marathon and 9km was enough for me!
Kardamena – 15km coastal interval training
Kardamena brought on a challenge for me. The training plan had a long run on it: a slower pace, but for over 2 hours. Luckily part of that was 8 times 1 km with a 3 minute break in between. We had planned to do this during the evening, but our evenings were so full that we ended up starting around 11AM, when it is very, very hot. I had planned to join for the 8 x 1km, but again I just wanted to explore and see what was beyond. We’d started heading South down the coast where some fancy resort and the waterpark are. We passed one resort that looked like a whole village. The place was gigantic!
I love what we got to see because of running. Whereas the town had some crowded beached full of beds, we now discovered empty stretches without many people, some of them with beautiful sand. As the road ended we had to turn back and run north of Kardamena. This side also had some beautiful, quiet stretches of beach with trees to provide shade. We also passed the occasional beach bar. In the end I ended up staying for the entire run. “How much do you think we’ve done today?” asked my boyfriend. It turns out I ran 15km, with breaks in between, but it’s an achievement nonetheless.
Rhodes town – 8km coastal run
My favorite run of them all was on Rhodes. We left in the early evening so it wouldn’t be too hot. Our direction was Kritika and we would see how far we’d get. Prepared with a bottle of water we started running along the coast. The first part was busy, since it was close to town, but then the path turned into a gravel path that twisted through the rocky coast. It was so incredibly beautiful that I had to keep myself from stopping and taking photos. After a while we came out the other side on a paved walkway along the Kritika beach. Our way back went the same way, right as the sun was starting to set. The colors in the sky changed slowly and cast the most beautiful light on the road ahead. I think why I loved it so much was because this short section through the rocks was just so unexpected and so surprisingy beautiful. I even forgave it for going up and downhill. Add the sunset to it and it makes magic happen!
