Morning, everyone! Just a reminder to continue to bid and spread the word about my Hurricane Sandy Relief Auction. Thank you! It ends tomorrow (Thursday) at 6 p.m. EST.
Quite the exciting night last night with all the election coverage! Matt and I got in line at the polls in northern Virginia around 6 p.m.; the doors closed at 7 and everyone already in line was still able to vote. We finally got our chance around 7:30! The polls around here were so crazy busy all day – gotta love living in the very populated area of a swing state!
We spent the night watching the coverage with some friends downtown. It was really fun to be in DC on election night – when Matt and I left our friend’s party we found the streets filled with people cheering and celebrating. Cars were honking support and everyone was going nuts. We drove down by the White House and it was crazy down there, too! What fun. I’m happy that we’ll have another 4 years of funding for preventative health/wellness and that Michelle’s great national nutrition and fitness efforts will continue as well. 🙂
During the last election, I was actually living in Prague, Czech Republic teaching English, so I voted absentee and then watched the coverage at a bar in Prague with other American expats. It was really cool to be overseas during an election – interesting to see what those overseas thought about it all!
Anyway! I was pretty tired this morning after our late night but I dragged myself out of bed bright and early to meet my new friend and blog reader Karen for another run! We first met on Friday for a run down on the National mall and I was glad we were able to find another time to meet so soon!
Karen came over to meet me near my place and we debated two options:
1) A simple, flat run that was easy but didn’t have much nice scenery, or
2) A really hilly run, but that would reward us with lovely views of the water and the monuments.
We decided we were game for option 2, and off we went! We went down a very steep hill and emerged onto my favorite trail in the area – the Mt. Vernon Trail. We were rewarded with this lovely view. Good morning, Washington!
Loving these brighter mornings again, although dark evenings make me sad. It was cool and cloudy this morning and we practically had the trail and this view all to ourselves – what a treat!
We had a great run, chatting away the whole time. We were both so distracted by talking that we totally dominated the mile long hill of death back up to where we started! Booyah. 5 miles, done and done. Awesome way to start the day! I started my watch but stopped it at a light and forgot to restart it, so I took a picture of Karen’s watch at the end instead. Total time: 43:51. Pretty darn good considering the massive hills!
Matt and I also got in a great workout earlier this week on Monday night at Crossfit Dupont!
It was really hard to get motivated to go out in the cold and dark (it made it feel so much later!), but as always, we were really glad once we got there and started moving.
Our strength workout was to practice squats and pull ups (since I can’t do any for real mine involved jumping up, holding as long as I could, and slowly lowering – and man I was sore the next day from just that!), and then we did a fun fast paced workout involving the following:
Complete 3 Rounds (rest one minute between rounds):
1 Minute Max Reps of Dumbbell Hang Clean to Push Press
1 Minute Max Reps of 10 Yard Bear Crawls (bear crawls are so deceptively hard, especially because we had to do backwards ones too!)
1 Minute Max Reps of 1 Ninja Roll to Lunge + 2 Split Jumps
The “ninja rolls” involved rolling back and then propelling yourself forward into a standing position, then doing two jumping lunges. Whew!
I love this photo – apparently I’m such an awesome ninja that the camera couldn’t keep up with me. 😉
Fun workout! And speaking of Crossfit, next Monday all classes at my gym will be participating in a Wade’s Wings’ workout to raise money for charity. Wade’s Wings is a foundation that works to increase awareness of Neuroblastoma (a childhood cancer), provide support for families going through treatment, and raise money for research. The workout will be held on 11-12-12, one year after 2 year old Wade DeBruin passed away from the disease. I’ll definitely be attending one of the classes that day and donating to the cause – if you’re interested in donating, our gym’s fundraising page can be found here. Thank you!
Have you fit in any great workouts yet this week? Feel free to brag – you earned it! 🙂
