Hey guys! In case you missed it, check out yesterday’s post about Where to Eat in Columbus first. 🙂 And now, for where to work out in Columbus!
As you know, I was in Columbus with my best friend Jenny via an opportunity from Life in Cbus. And no trip with me would be complete without some fitness adventures!
I love checking out local yoga studios when I’m traveling and lucky for me Jenny is also a yoga fan. After some online research, I discovered that Columbus has ClassPass and that there was a really well-reviewed yoga studio called Thank Yoga on there only about a mile walk from our hotel (the lovely Le Meridien Columbus, The Joseph). Perfect! We loved how walkable Columbus was – and especially Short North, the area we stayed in. We signed up for a 10 a.m. power yoga class on Saturday morning and had a nice stroll to get there.
We both loved all the murals on buildings in Short North! This area of the city reminded me a lot of Philadelphia – very hipster and artsy with lots of great local boutiques (where we did some serious damage to our wallets on Friday). Highly recommend staying in this area if you visit!
Anyway! As for Thank Yoga, the class was great! It was a really powerful, challenging 75 minute class that left both of us sweating like crazy. The studio was small and had a nice welcoming vibe, too. Two thumbs up!
Since the weather forecast for the weekend was nice, for our second fitness adventure I had booked us kayaks via Olentangy Paddle for Saturday afternoon. We opted for the downtown route option – I figured it would be a fun and unique way to see the city, and I was right! We picked up the kayaks just south of downtown along the Lower Scioto Greenway and then headed north towards the city.
We headed out at 2:30 and didn’t have to have the boats back until 5:30 – awesome! We had a blast, paddling for awhile, then connecting our boats and floating for awhile, chatting away the whole time.
Check out this fun art installation on one of the bridges by downtown – we were so confused until we got close enough to see what it was! 🙂 After some research later on I found out that the name of the river “Scioto” is actually a Native American word which is derived from the name for “deer.” Plus, the Ohio state animal is a deer. Cool!
After about two hours of paddling we started making our way back and things got quite exciting; the weather forecast had called for sunny skies all day so we were surprised when we turned and saw some dark clouds looming. Uh, oh! Suddenly, a short flash thunderstorm rolled through – there was all sorts of rain, wind, and some lightning too – yikes! Luckily we made it back to land safely – we definitely had to stop paddling lightly and really work to make it back as quickly as possible, though!
For our final fitness adventure in Columbus, we got in a run on Sunday morning! I heard from some of you guys on Instagram that the Scioto Mile was the place to hit for a run – and luckily it was only about a mile and a half from our hotel so we could easily run there.
The Scioto Mile connects downtown to the Scioto River through an integrated system of parks, boulevards, bikeways and pedestrian paths – it was super green and gorgeous! No shortage of trails to explore.
We decided to run across the bridge where our deer friend from the day before was so we could see him up close!
Deer selfie, obviously. 😉
We ended our run a little ways south (close to where we left for kayaking) via the Scioto Mile so we could check out the country’s largest free outdoor climbing wall – cool!!
We were super impressed with all the free parks and outdoor activities in Columbus! I gave the climbing wall a quick try. 🙂
Jenny was laughing taking that photo because I looked high up and hardcore – and then she zoomed out for the real view – I was about a foot off the ground. 😉 Lol!
We ended up covering nearly 5 miles – such a great run on beautiful trails! I can see why everyone recommended getting in a run while I was in Columbus. 🙂
Have you ever been to Columbus? Did you get into any fitness fun?
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This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Life in Cbus. I was compensated for this post and given a stipend to cover most of our flight and hotel expenses. We paid for food and fitness on our own. The opinions and text are all mine. Check out Life in Cbus on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
