I have a two week vacation planned that's taking place eight weeks before my next tri and I've been worried about the same thing. And this is defintely NOT an active vacation--driving tour of Ireland followed by visiting family in Oslo. I know myself well enough to know two contradictory things a) if I take two weeks off from training, I'll lose a lot of what I gained before the vacation and b)I'm never inclined to exercise when I'm out of my normal routine.

And to complicate things, the baggage weight limits on one leg of our flights is only 33 pounds, so I can't pack much.

I'm planning to bring my running shoes and will force myself to go for a short run at least five times during the two weeks. I *think* that should be enough to maintain my level of fitness, which is all I really care about. I can do that with just one running outfit, too, and then wash it by hand and air dry it. I love the idea of bringing pilates exercises written out on index cards--that would add almost nothing to my baggage and could be something I could do early in the morning before setting out each day. I don't know if it'll actually happen (sleeping in being so much more appealing!) but I know that without them I wouldn't do it, so I'll add those to my packing list.

If it were further out from the race date, I probably would just blow it off and work extra hard when I get back, but I lost so much ground over my Christmas break and it took me 6 or 8 weeks to get back up to that level. I don't want that to happen again.

Sarah