It's all about the SUP

[Dragging this through the parking lot and over the dunes = extra credit workout]

For my last week I decided to jam in a few last minute activities that I've been meaning to do --- namely, take my SUP in the ocean. Unfortunately in order to do that we had to rearrange other scheduled events and I had to miss beach yoga.  Kinda bummed about that, but was psyched to SUP.

Running
We were scheduled to complete a 20 minute warm-up, four 1-mile repeats and a 10 minute jog. Since we planned to ocean SUP at 7:30 am-ish we pushed the run to 5:30 am and met at the Park. Seriously --- we are INSANE. The sun wasn't even up when we started our warm-up, but it was beautiful to see the sunrise over the Bay.

The good news is that my splits were very good (for me) again this time --- all in the low 8 min zone with the first one being sub-8!!! That is seriously wicked since I am known for being slow as molasses! My left knee was feeling "a little weird" but I was able to push on through.  I worry that that's gonna be a problem later.

SUP-ing
Lori and I have been talking about christening our boards in the Atlantic and more importantly surfing them.

I talked to Michelle over at Sommers Surf about setting up a private lesson for our first ocean adventure. Unfortunately, due to the bad surf break Michelle doesn't offer surf lessons right now in Fenwick.  Instead she offers lessons at Assateague Island.  After much hemming and hawing, we decided to launch on our own for our first ocean adventure and save our money for a SUP surf lesson later in the summer.

[Here we are getting the leashes attached to the SUPs]

Since in all of the state of Delaware's wisdom they decided August 1st was the perfect date to start tearing up the beach and dredging, we had to launch from Dagsboro vs James Street.  Bonus that the beach was a bit of a mess this morning as a result of the dredging and we arrived to a river of slippy clay that we had to navigate through before getting to the other side of the beach.

In summary, ocean SUP-ing was just awesome. After we got our boards and gear over the dune and through the river of dredged slime we pushed our SUPs into the surf, over the breakers and were up and standing in no time.

[Me & Lori getting ready to launch into the Atlantic for the first time! Notice the river of slime we had to cross before reaching the ocean.]

It is an incredible feeling to be standing on top of the ocean, riding over the baby waves and cruising down the coast.  There were some swells and it was still challenging to keep your balance as the waves pushed toward shore.

[Cruising down the coast toward the Maryland state line]

As we turned to shore we were a bit apprehensive given the bad shore break in Fenwick. The good news was that Lori had some good advice from her ocean kayaking experience.  I paddled toward shore, let the baby waves push me in and then easily dismounted in waist deep water in order to protect our fins/boards from the shore break.

We already are itching to schedule our SUP surf lesson.  I have a message into Michelle to determine if there is any way she can do a lesson before I leave.  I think it's doubtful give her schedule and that the beaches have limited times for surf/SUP, but we are crossing our fingers!

All in all...a successful adventure...and one I plan to repeat many, many times in the future.