In all of my unhappy ruminating about my job and how it can make it hard to build relationships, I didn’t mention one of the perks I like best: that I usually get a three day weekend of sorts. From Monday to Thursday, I work at my client site (lately that’s in Texas and Virginia, for my client’s two locations). I work my butt off Monday through Thursday, putting in fairly long hours in part because there are no distractions. At the end of the night, I’m just going back to my hotel to work out and watch TV, so what does it matter if I work until 10pm? (Some of you may think “that totally sucks”, but wait till you hear this next part):
On Fridays, I still work – but it’s usually from home. It’s also expected that since you’re out of town four days a week, you need to catch up on personal appointments and the like on Fridays. As a result, it’s not a big deal for me to squeeze in an afternoon gym class, or a morning breakfast/coffee with a friend. Depending upon the project, I might have some deadlines on Friday before I go home, but on a lot of my projects, we go over the expectations on Thursday before I leave, and my work isn’t due until Monday morning – giving me the flexibility to interchange Sunday afternoon for Friday afternoon, or something similar. While I usually do put in at least 9 hours of work from Friday through Sunday, the extra flexibility makes it feel like a three day weekend every week. Works perfectly with my work hard/play hard mentality!
So this “weekend” for me kicked off with a bang: Ali’s fundraising party at Jackrabbit Sports. For those of you not in the NYC-healthy-living-blogging loop, Ali is raising money for the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation as part of her participation in the Hamptons Marathon this fall, and she hosted a party at Jackrabbit Sports on the UES in order to raise money. There was tasty food, plenty of wine, raffles, trivia, and a whole bunch of NYC healthy living bloggers to finally meet in person! I had a fantastic time at the event, and also grabbed Ali’s favorite froyo afterwards with Celia at Sixteen Handles.
In addition to giving me an incredibly fun start to the weekend, the event also put me in a fitness mindset that continued throughout the rest of the weekend. On Friday morning, I headed to my new gym (thank you, Groupon, for the cheap one month membership) to check out a “spin and pump” class. Despite the fact that any class with “pump” in the title always makes me giggle as I think of breastfeeding, it turned out to be pretty intense and not something to laugh about! Here’s a hint: when you pick up your weights and the instructor says, “wow, you’re ambitious!”, that is when you ought to put down those dumbbells and pick up another set that’s half the poundage. When you couple the burning in my arms with the fact that my crotch was on fire since I haven’t done a spin class in a few years… it was definitely a killer way to wake up for the day.
After a full day’s work, a quiet night in, and a good night’s sleep on Saturday, I woke up somewhat sore but still motivated to keep up the fitness routine. Since I was planning on doing a Kangoo run on Sunday that I knew was going to really work my legs, and my arms were sore from the day before, I decided that straight up cardio was the way to go. Perusing the group fitness schedule at Club H, I found a “rebounding” class, where you jump on trampolines. I had heard about this phenomenon and always wanted to try it, and it seemed like the perfect “cardio only” class, so off I went.
Upon arriving and introducing myself to the instructor, she gave me a quick tutorial in proper form (who knew I was doing it wrong all those times as a kid?). As it turns out, you don’t just jump around – you have to keep your legs in a certain alignment, and instead of just using the bounce of the trampoline to halfheartedly hop, you press down with your quads and then use your stomach muscles to pull your knees up still in a bent position – kind of like doing mini Insanity power jumps for a full hour! I was spent just from the two minute demo before the class started, and wondering how I’d make it through. “Oh, and by the way…” the instructor added, “you also need a set of beanbags from the corner.” Yup, we grabbed 2 pound beanbags and were constantly doing arm exercises the whole class. If you think that 2 pound weights can’t hurt you, you have never used them for a full hour with no breaks! When class ended, I stumbled to my apartment, calling one of my best friends along the way and asking him to talk me through the walk home so I could collapse into a dead sleep at my apartment instead of on the sidewalk 🙂
Despite my bone weary exhaustion, I did make it out for a fun Saturday night, and Sunday found me up again and ready to roll with some fitness classes. I toyed with the idea of going to yoga at 9:45am (though I found it hilarious that my gym called that start time “Sunrise Yoga”… clearly, Club H is aimed at partiers and night owls!), but bailed when I saw that it was a 75 minute class – too long for me. Instead, I just went to my Kangoo class at 2pm, rounding out the weekend of bouncing exercise. Good thing I recently got some supportive sports bras! Haha.
I had such a blast making this weekend such an active one, though – I forgot how much I enjoy group fitness classes! So in that vein, I wanted to let you all know of a cool and free class next Saturday at 2pm at Equinox Columbus Circle. It’s called 30/60/90, and it’s basically an interval class with strength training drills that sounds super fun and intense! I heard about it from Fitness Class Fanatic, who always has the roundup on free/cheap fitness classes in DC. She’s even taken the class before and highly recommended it. Woo hoo! So who’s in with me for a blogger fit class on Saturday??