Fitness Magazine Meet & Tweet

The other day, I spent some time with some of my favorite blog buddies, some great speakers and Fitness magazine.

They were hosting their second annual Meet & Tweet. (Last year recap.)

I had to take a very important call on the bananaphone immediately upon arrival.

They had several panels, but my favorite was with Dr. Jennifer Ashton. She’s a gyno in northern NJ, and her talk focused on women’s health, and the emphasis of holistic and preventative health for women. Since most women use their gyno as their primary care doctor, she said, it was important to feel comfortable bringing up anything with your gyno.

Random q for the ladies (which is probably all of you) – do you have both a primary care doctor and a gyno or just one? I have separate docs because my mom always did.

One of my favorite lines from the doc was “A great doctor will treat your spirit as well as your body.” You could tell how much she truly cares for her patients, and that she sees health as more than just a patient’s test results. BRB, looking up if she takes my insurance or not.

She started talking about nutrition (she’s also going back to school to get an R.D. degree) and the 5/2 principle – eating really healthily five days a week and relaxing your eating a bit more on the weekends. She talked about how she always used to look forward until Saturday morning for her bagels, but eventually those cravings disappeared after eating well the rest of the week.

Leticia and I were sitting next to each other and couldn’t help but look at each other and laugh, as we both crave a bagel like crazy after a Saturday morning long run. That once-a-week bagel brings me way more happiness than a giant piece of bread should, but hey.

Brett Hoebel, a trainer from the Biggest Loser Season 11, spoke about extreme workouts — and social media’s effect on extreme workouts since so many people do these workouts for the bragging rights.

His best line? “If you go into any hardcore fitness class, people are running from something or running to something.” I think the same can be said for running, too. So many of us started to either run from a problem or to run to some sort of better life.

The event was at the Mercedes Club, a fancy gym on the West side that is actually cheaper than Equinox?

Lunch was from the club’s refrigerator cases. This was a delicious Asian salad, and I also had half a wrap and hard-boiled eggs.

And time to take silly pictures with Jen.

After lunch, it was workout time. I’d originally signed up for yoga because Tara Stiles was teaching and I have a wee girl crush on her…

But Dorothy was leading the run, so I decided to head out on the run instead.

At this point, I’ve met almost all of the bloggers behind the blogs I read, but I still hadn’t met Dorothy! She was even sweeter in person. She radiates sunshine, happiness and sub-7:00 miles.

We again got a sweet swag bag:

[pic via Toni]

The bag included a pair of Reebok Sub-Lites, Saucony Kinvaras, Blow Hair Spray (seriously, I still swear by the Blow dry shampoo we got last year) and some other stuff…including cellulite cream and a system of detox supplements? To be honest, I was disappointed to see those last two items in the bag, since they seemed to be the antithesis of the positive health messages from the rest of the day.

Still, thanks to Fitness for putting this together! It was a fun day, and it’s always great to bring together all the people who tweet at each other. Thanks also to Reebok, Saucony, Athleta and others for sponsoring! (And Sparkly Soul for a new sparkly headband that I wore for yesterday’s race.)

Have you met people from the Internet in real life? Were they totally creepy?

In all seriousness, because I started my blog just after I moved here, I’ve met so many amazing people through this silly little site, so thanks to all of you for reading.