This Week’s Fitness in Review

Hi friends! A bunch of you said you liked seeing a comprehensive week of workouts from me, so here’s what I was up to this week!

Monday

You already know about Monday’s workout – trying SUP Yoga! If you missed that post, check it out for a full recap. What a blast!

Tuesday

I was up very bright and early to meet my friend Chelsea for a new-to-me gym on ClassPass – CrossFit Key Bridge!

I’ve been seeing a lot of CrossFit places pop up on ClassPass recently, which is awesome – even though my fave class at Urban Athletic Club incorporates a lot of CrossFit moves, I wouldn’t mind having the option to mix in true CrossFit classes here and there, too. I kind of fell off the CrossFit wagon when I joined ClassPass last fall and have only done it sporadically since – I miss it!

CrossFit Key Bridge is, unsurprisingly, located almost exactly under Key Bridge, right near the Key Bridge Boathouse. (Sidenote – why are all the fun workouts in Georgetown?!)

Since this class was on ClassPass, I wasn’t sure if it would be a true CrossFit class or something more modified for beginners; well, it was a real class! Awesome.

We started with a group warm up, which was 8 minutes of the following:

• 200 meter run
• 10 goblet squats
• 5 burpees
• rinse & repeat

One cool thing about this gym is that there is a back door that lets you right out onto the beautiful C&O Canal! Our running portions of the morning’s workout were out there. It was hot inside so it felt good to get out into the fresh air!

After the warm up, we moved on to mobility work, which I could always use more of – we used bands to stretch out our shoulders and hips.

Then it was time for the WOD (workout of the day)! It was a hard one:

Tuesday Morning WOD – CrossFit Key Bridge

5 rounds for time

• 8 front squats (I used 55# – recommended for women was 105# – ummm yeah, not happening)
• 200m run
• 12 burpees
• rest 2 minutes

I finished, very sweaty, in about 21 minutes. Whew! Awesome workout! I was definitely sore the next day from all those squats.

I really enjoyed the workout and will definitely be back at CrossFit Key Bridge in the future for more. :) Looking forward to trying a few of the other CrossFit places on ClassPass, too, now that I’m not focused on half marathon training! Also, sidenote: even though this class doesn’t specify a need to have tried CrossFit before going to a class, I’d probably recommend you have a basic foundation in/are comfortable with strength moves using a barbell before going. The coach did check to make sure we knew what we were doing/watched us to make sure our form was okay, but I think if you came into this with zero CrossFit experience it would be kind of intimidating. Just FYI!

Wednesday

My friend Heather is in town visiting right now (yay!! from California), so we met up for a morning run! It was CRAZY hot earlier in the week but some epic storms on Tuesday left us with a gorgeous, cool morning on Wednesday. Perfect timing! This was my first real run since the Seattle Rock ‘n’ Roll Half Marathon. After a nice week and a half off from running, it felt good to get back out there!

We had a nice and chatty out and back jaunt on the Custis and W&OD trails.

Yep, we totally asked a stranger to take this picture of us. No shame.

Actually, he offered when he ran by and saw we were awkwardly attempting (and failing) to do a self-timer action shot. Here are the outtakes, because they are hilarious:

Lol. This one was cute though. :)

It was so good to see Heather – last time I saw her was her wedding in March! Heather and her husband Mike are going to move back here at the end of the year and we can’t wait to have them back on the east coast. <3 Thanks for the miles, my friend! DC misses you!

Thursday

Another morning run date: this time with my friend Karen! We had another really nice weather morning and wanted to take advantage, so we met up near her place in Woodley Park for a neighborhood jaunt. It’s always so beautiful running around that area!

Karen and I hadn’t run together in ages since she was injured for awhile and then my during the week schedule was dominated by track workouts for awhile there for the half. It will be nice to do more runs together this summer. :) I missed running with her!

Karen is a professor at Georgetown, and she was telling me one of the cool things that she is going to have her students do this year as part of an assignment is to create a GeoCaching project (with an academic focus, of course). Have you guys heard of GeoCaching before? I hadn’t! It’s basically a sort of outdoor scavenger hunt, in which participants use GPS on their phone to hide and seek containers, called “geocaches”, around the world. There’s a GeoCaching app you can download (which I’m totally going to download now!) to discover which locations near you have geocaches hidden. Once you’re in the correct location, you’ll have clues to decipher in order to find the actual geocache. A typical geocache is a small waterproof container containing a little logbook so those who find it can enter the date they found it and their name (or code name). After they sign the log, they put it back exactly where they found it for the next person. Cool, right? Karen had previously found a geocache near her place, so we ended our run with that – she brought us to the location, gave me the clues that were in the app, and look – I found it!! How COOL!

Karen is going to create a sample academic-themed geocache scavenger hunt for her students to kick off the assignment and I’m going to help her set it up this summer. So fun! I was thinking it might be fun to create one for you guys that live in the area, too – perhaps the geocaches could be placed in a loop that represents my favorite running route in DC? Would those of you that are local go find them if I did that? :)

Anyway! 4.3 miles, done! Apparently my average pace this week is quite consistent! Keepin’ it casual. :)

I will leave you with my favorite breakfast this week – I’ve been really into kiwis lately. Plus either cottage cheese or plain Greek yogurt and various nuts/seeds/granola! Delish.

Meanwhile… Zara keeps watch. She alternates between staring awkwardly/intensely at me and/or my food, and staring out the window. And yes, we’ve accepted the fact that our diet is at least 5% cat hair at this point given that she is always on our table. Also… I just noticed there are a ton of crumbs on my placemat. Yikes. Just keepin’ it real for you guys over here… ;)

Have a great weekend! Matt and I were supposed to go on a cool canoe camping trip up in Pennsylvania with some friends, but the forecast was calling for weather in the 50’s and pouring rain, so we bagged it. For some reason sitting in a canoe while freezing and soaked suddenly didn’t sound fun anymore. ;) Thankfully Matt agreed! It will actually be nice to be in town though since we’ll be out of town almost every other weekend this summer.

We were both planning to take today off for the trip, but figure since we’re in town we might as well get some work done this morning. I think we might still take the afternoon off and go biking, though, if the weather holds! ALSO – we booked an Escape Room adventure on Saturday night with some of the people that were supposed to be on the canoe trip with us. I’ve been wanting to try Escape Room ever since I heard people talking about it on the radio awhile ago – sounds SO cool! Have you guys heard of it? You are basically locked in a room with your friends and then have a set amount of time to figure out how to get out using the clues/puzzles in the room. Neat! They have them all over the country, and the DC one has gotten great reviews. I’ll report back!

And now, I’ll leave you guys with some reminders and weekend reading. Enjoy!

• You have until tonight (Friday) at midnight to enter my Prep Dish Gluten Free/Paleo Meal Planning Service giveaway! Do it. :)
• My Nutrition for Runners program co-author, running coach Jason Fitzgerald, posted a great success story from a blog reader of his who tried out our program. Check it out: Michael’s Back to Back Marathons – With No Bonk, Stress, or Diet Guilt
• This is completely amazing, from BuzzFeed: Things Cats Do That Would Be Creepy If You Did Them. I was cracking up watching this – so spot on! My fave is the “meeting new people” one – and knocking over the glass. Lol!
• Check out my interview over on the Mediakix (an influencer agency I work with) blog: I share details about how I got into blogging, how I keep up with social media, whether I’ve written anything that’s gone viral… and more! Blogger Spotlight: Anne Mauney of fANNEtastic food.