Happy Friday!
Last night, I had the pleasure of attending a fun DC Fitness Blogger meet up at Revolve, a spin studio in Clarendon, VA.
In January, the Washingtonian online blog, Well+Being, wrote an article entitled 9 DC Fitness Bloggers to Read Now. I was honored to find myself on the list, and those of us on it all quickly started chatting via Twitter and following each other, too. What was originally a conversation via Twitter about how we’ve been wanting to try Revolve turned into a big blogger meet up with lots of other fitness bloggers in the area, too!
I used to spin occasionally in college and right after when I belonged to a gym that offered it, but until last night I hadn’t been to a spin class in years. It was fun to do it again!
Revolve has a small but cute studio with a back room full of spinning bikes. The bikes require clip-in shoes; you can bring your own or rent a pair of theirs for $2 (that’s what I did). I’ve never worn bike shoes before – fancy!
Once we got our bike shoes on, we headed in for the workout!
To my left was Meaghan of DC Fit Crasher (loving her blog lately!):
Meaghan says I should add “skilled self-portrait taker” to my resume – I think she’s right.
And to my right was miss Ashley of Coffee Cake and Cardio! We’ve met before at a few conferences and most recently saw each other in November up at Reebok headquarters, so it was great to see her again. 🙂
Workout time! Here’s our fearless (actually, apparently she was really nervous since she knew we’d all be writing about the workout!) leader, Francina! She was super cute and high energy – I loved that she sung along to the music. 🙂
Our workout was a 45 minute session called “Body Ride,” which is a normal spinning session plus some free weight arm work at the end of the ride, which was a fun addition. Loud, upbeat music, low lighting, and lots of popping up and down on the bike almost made you feel like you were at the club instead of in a spin studio. 😉
As I mentioned, we did some arm work at the end of the ride – the bikes all have two of these 3 lb. sandbags attached to them, one on each side of the front wheel! Sneaky, huh?
After the ride, we all mingled a little and enjoyed some snacks from Goûter, a raw/vegan snack and tonic company here in DC.
The drinks were all really good, but my favorite was this Mexican “Hot” Chocolate! The cashews made it creamy and it tasted kind of like a spicy chocolate milk. Yum!
We also tried some of their snacks, which reminded me of my Chocolate Coconut Almond Balls, Peanut Cinnamon Date Balls, and Cinnamon Raisin Almond Balls (click on the titles for the recipes). Yum!
I chatted with Sana while we snacked. It was great to see her again, too!
Thanks for having us out for the fun ride, Revolve! It was great to meet/see so many of my fellow DC fit bloggers!
Are you a spinning fan?
And now – before I go and while we’re on the topic of fitness, here are two cool sites I found recently and wanted to share. Enjoy!
- Taz Running – running a race soon with a specific pace goal? On this site, you can make a customizable pace goal chart detailing the mile by mile splits and total times you should be hitting to reach your goal. You can print it out, make a wrist band out of it, or even order it in a temporary tattoo for your arm! Genius, right? You actually create your pace goals based on the specific race (if it’s a large enough/popular enough race to be in the system), and they have Google maps that show the exact course for your race. The map and pace chart are populated with default settings like goal time, elevation adjustments, etc., and you can send the page to friends/family that want to track you during a race so they know exactly where you will be and when! So cool.
- Go Recess – looking for a workout near you? This webpage allows you to select what workout you’re in the mood for (e.g. yoga, cardio, pilates/barre, boot camp, dance, etc.), which zip code you’re looking to work out in, what time/date you’re looking for a class, and voila! Out pops your options, including the time, the studio/gym offering the class, the location, and even the price. SO awesome.
