Working out on the go..

I had a quick 3 day/ 2 night trip to Calgary for work. It was a lot of fun. I won't even pretend I ate healthy. I did however have the most delicious steak.. YUM!! I had the "petit filet" with shrimp and it was not petit at all- 8 oz. I won't even tell you about the 24oz Tbone Ana had.. haha. Anyway the food was amazing.

YOLO, so gotta make the best of it.

I did however, manage to fit in some workouts.

The first night I was out till 1am..which is 3am Ottawa time, so I thought it'd be dead the next morning, but because of the jet-lag I managed to wake up and forced myself to get to the gym. I did 5km on the treadmill, a few small laps in the pool, and a couple minutes in the hot tub..oh right that part isn't exercise. Still nice for sore muscles.

I definitely want to start doing more running on the treadmill. The treadmill gets a lot of flack, but I don't mind it, and it allows you to get the workout done quickly. I definitely need more cardio in my routine.

I had the pool all to myself so that was nice.

The conference was business casual so I brought two outfits with. Day 1 more business, and day 2 more casual. It's really hard to know what to where. Guys have it a lot easier and most of them just wore suits.

Day 1:

Day 2:

Excuse the dim hotel lighting. The reason my hair is different is because in between, I went to a blow dry bar. It was fun! they have a menu of hair styles you can choose from! I chose "pillow talk" but then said I didn't want it too wavy actually. The night before it was more voluminous..

Yep there's Mark! He was we were scared because we were standing on glass at the top of the Calgary Tower. It was really cool. Also, take a look at this vending machine

See. Lara bars and coconut water. I felt like I was in BC.

Anyway the second morning I woke up at 5 am and decided to venture off to Goodlife for a 6am body shred class. It was about 1.5 km away and I could have gotten nearly all the way without going outside, as there is a cool sky walk! But instead I took the fresh air as it wasn't too cold. There was a Goodlife opening right near the Hotel but it won't open for another few weeks.

It was fun seeing the gym.

We were just 4 people at body shred and it was so nice to actually have room to spread out and move. There was a hot tub there, where everyone can look in on you..it seemed a bit strange.

Afterward I finally had a healthy breakfast of  steel cut oatmeal at this cafe called Good Earth . I could pick 3 toppings so I had banana, coconut and seeds. It was delicious.

Yesterday I took a rest day and today I did body pump and have soccer tonight. A director at work just brought in 100 tim bits .. cause 50 wouldn't have been enough? It's ok I only ate about 10 of them or so (hahaha I am not kidding- terrible). oh well.

Anybody doing any black Friday shopping?

Have a great weekend!

Just a bit more to go..

Just like every Monday I started my week off by going to boxing, it was terrible my teacher came to me at the end of class and asked if everything was alright because I was so bad apparently at boxing... 

That was a great way to start the week! Yesterday after work I wanted to go to the gym but decided on eating falafel with hummus instead :) I mean how could I say no to that ?

Today I did my long run at the gym, 11km again just that this time I died a lot.. No idea what was wrong with me but I was just counting down the meters to finally get to 11.. I'm accusing the 0,5m height I added to the treadmill as oppose to the usual flat running I do.. Anyway my treadmill results were 1:10:00 11.5km and 800 calories. :D 

My Nike app results were:

 

As you can tell not that great..

Just like last time I took a photo of my workout shirt which was soaked in sweat btw! I have to say I was wearing my ultimate roots cardigan :D

 

Yummy yummy! 

Tomorrow I start my Russian classes again and then it's off to pole dancing on Saturday :) yaaaay

Focusing on the small victories

Last week, I slacked a bit on my goals...I didn't get to a spin class nor did I swim. I managed to run a couple of times though, including running in the freezing rain on Saturday.

At volleyball, I managed to keep the ball in play 80 percent of the time and at curling I managed to throw a couple of rocks from the hack on Saturday (although they didn't really make it down the ice).

I had some great rides on Cedric last week. On Friday, I had an amazing lesson where we had a bit of a breakthrough. I won't bore you with the details but it made my weekend. :)

This morning I decided to start the week off by going for a swim. I managed to swim 1000 m in 35 min. Not super fast, but I'm already noticing an improvement.

In related news, last Wednesday was my final physio appointment. I'd been going to physio twice a week since mid-2012 in an effort to recover from the nerve damage I'd suffered as a a result of my back surgery. I've worked really hard to get where I am and I can't really articulate how wonderful it is to have finally "graduated".

Dance all night

So the other day i was trying to find a gym class to go to. Lately I am only in the mood to do classes and not to do my own cardio on the machines. There wasn't anything good at the clubs I usually go to, so i checked out St-Laurent and came across this:

Say what? This can't be right.. zumba at 1:30am and 3:am. I did a double take. This must be a mistake? nobody except for JULIET would want to do this- haha. But it's true, they do offer it. They recently added in a video system at my usual location and explained that it's so they can offer these night time classes. If you show up at 2 am and want to do a class they will pop in a video and you will do a virtual class in the studio.

Pretty neat.

I am off to Calgary for a couple days for a conference. There is a gym and pool at my hotel, so hopefully I have time to put them to use.

About time! (better late than never was already taken...)

First of all I want to thank all of you for all of your inspiring posts! It makes it that much easier to keep going and to push myself a little each day to know that so many people are doing the same thing.

Also, I want to thank Katy for the 30 day calisthenics challenge and planting the seed to get back into the challenge mode; and El for re-kick starting the blog and getting so many more people to join!

As for the 30 day challenge, it has not always been easy but it's definitely been a positive aspect of a pretty heavy month. My main goal was to do the calisthenics, and not only have I been doing it, I'm actually enjoying it! I think I'm kinda hooked on the adrenaline of it...and I want to keep doing some variation of it after the 30 days. 

The best part is that I've gotten my students into it too! Ideally I try to do the majority of the exercises first thing in the morning, but on days when I spin or run in the AM or am just short on time; we've been doing the exercises in gym class. I've turned it into a challenge in which my students try to beat their own records and then they get to challenge me to beat the best score (burpies/ minute etc.) in the class. Little do they know they're helping me in my 30 day challenge journey :).

Another goal I sort of decided on the fly is to not straighten my hair in the month of November...so far, so good and I'm learning to like how my hair looks without the straightener.

I havent' managed to keep the gratitude journal daily but am doing it more often...

And I already have some ideas for December goals! (We are planing to do this again right??) :)

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Danièle

Crushing My November Challenges

Now I don't want to get ahead of myself here... there are 8 days left... However, I am loving this month and feel great for the challenges and accomplishments!

What has me in such a great mood you may ask? Last night, after a water-logged hour of struggling (and being rolled back up by my friend Emily), I managed to roll a kayak. I then was able to do it a few more times before deciding to stop while I was ahead. I feel like I have a litre of pool water in my sinuses but I am super happy and can't wait to officially join the kayak club in the New Year.

Amazingly, the calisthenics are getting easier too. I'm sure there will still be days when a 3+ minute wallsit is pure hell, but my legs, core and endurance are so much stronger and my recovery time between sets is dropping daily.


Yesterday, I also submitted a job app for which I feel quite confident. Regardless of the outcome I now have a better idea of how to re-work my resume for any upcoming postings.

As for re-connecting with me, I started keeping a gratitude journal (thanks for the suggestion Daniele), got myself a Y-pass, have been swimming more and spending great quality time with friends. Overall, I feel fantastic about the momentum I'm building in my world.

I hope you're all having as fabulous a Saturday as I am! :)

Pole dance Saturday

Last week I started pole dancing and I LOVE IT! We're six people in the class and I do it with a work colleague of mine who's just great! 

First of all it's crazy fun, its great workout and its hot hot HOT! 

Today we learnt a forward spin and a backwards spin as well as some crazy floor moves.

I can highly recommend the place I do pole dancing at for anyone who lives in vienna its poledancevienna.at :)

So you have a bit of an idea what it looks like I've decided to post a photo of the studio :)

I tried looking for a video to show you what I learnt but that's not gonna happen.. So for anyone that's looking for a fun workout try pole dance!!