Category Archives: Fitness

Happy Birthday…to Me!

Hi! It’s my birthday!!

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I’m 4 again. (Maybe just in maturity…)

Just kidding. I’m 29, a number I thought would terrify me, but I’m okay with it. Which is good because I don’t have a choice. In all seriousness, I’m just happy to be in a good place. When I turned 25 four years ago yesterday, I was in the throes of a quarterlife crisis and absolutely miserable with where I was in life. I was single, overweight, unhappy with my career and just kind of over D.C. I went out that night and ended up crying myself to sleep when I got home, but it was the catalyst to start changing my life. I ended up moving out of D.C. about two months later. So while I’m still single, and sure, would rather not be, I’m really happy with where I am in life right now and the life that I’ve made for myself.

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I started the celebrating the other night by going home and going out to dinner with my parents at my favorite restaurant in NJ, Portobello.

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It’s also where I had my Sweet 16…13 years ago. Whoa.

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I ordered one of the specials–blackened scallops with pesto linguine and some random vegetables. Sort of random, but it worked.

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Last night, I met some friends at Ayza, a wine and chocolate bar in the West Village, for Selena’s bachelorette.

Yes, WINE. AND. CHOCOLATE.

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We started with some prosecco for the table.

And then were all really annoying and redeemed a Foursquare special for a free glass of wine.

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And then I moved on to a sparkling wine flight.

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They brought out the dipping food with sparklers for Selena!

Afterwards, we got late-night pizza (err, at like 11pm) and headed to another bar for some more beer. I got home around 1 and miraculously pulled myself out of bed for a birthday long run with Ashley and Bo, which was an amazing way to start off my birthday.

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We met at Columbus Circle and ran a full lap of the park.

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You can’t see it here, but it was snowing!

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Look who we ran into! (Yes, I am wearing a pin that says “another year sexier.” Apparently Ashley and Bo circulate it for people’s birthdays, and Bo passed it on to me this morning.)

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We left the park and ran on the West Side Highway. I ran as far as 42nd and then peeled off for the giant birthday bagel I’ve been thinking of all week.

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It was all I could hope for and more.

I’m off to do absolutely nothing until I go out for dinner and drinks tonight. (2011 birthday; 2010 birthday)

Thanks to all of you for the sweet birthday messages you’ve left!!!

Taking My Own Advice

Usually when I write posts like I wrote yesterday, they’re half kicking my own ass and half hoping you might find some motivation in them, too.

But they usually work—I can’t, with a good conscience, write some post about how I don’t have any excuses to not work out and then…not work out.

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This is what I look like every single time I work out.

As I was finishing up work last night, I got a call from my friend Emily. “Let’s get dinner!” she said.

“But I have to go to the gym!”

“Oh, come on, let’s get dinner!”

I definitely faltered for a second. I hadn’t worked out since Sunday, what was another day? But then I thought of the gym bag I’d lugged to work and the post I’d written in the morning, and I said “what if I work out and then we get dinner?”

“Fine…text me when you’re done,” she said.

So off to the gym I went. I wanted/needed to run, so I hopped on the treadmill. The idea of running at one speed on the treadmill is about as exciting to me as watching paint dry (I take offense with this statement–if you’re painting a room a pretty new color, paint drying can be pretty damn exciting) so I did a sort of pyramid workout.

This took me about 28 minutes and left me happy and sweaty, which is all I can really ask for from a workout. (And when I texted Emily when I was done, she’d already eaten. Lame.)

I’m going out to NJ tonight for a birthday dinner with my parents, so I knew I had to get a workout in this morning. Since abandoning my strength challenge, I’ve been seriously lacking in the strength department, so I knew I wanted to get some strengthening moves in. I tried Tina’s At-Home WOD while I had Today Show on in the background. I googled “home WODs” because I know Crossfit workouts are short and intense (and most of the home ones just include body weight), and that’s exactly what I wanted this morning.

It’s 10 rounds of 10 reps of three moves, and at the beginning, I thought it was so easy. By about 80 push-ups in, my arms were jelly. Perfect.

Hard and fast, or slow and easy?

Workouts. Minds out of the gutter, please.