Over the weekend, I was in upstate New York for my friend Sam's wedding.


Sam and I met back when we were freshmen in college living on the same dorm room floor, and we've pretty much been friends ever since.


Sam's wedding was the first Jewish wedding I've ever been to, and I have to say I was so impressed with how personalized the whole wedding ceremony was. Sam's sister-in-law is a rabbi and performed the ceremony and she wove in some really sweet and touching stories about Sam and her now-husband Steve.


After seeing a million Catholic weddings that are all pretty much the same (you only get so much wiggle room with what you can do in a Catholic ceremony), it was really refreshing to see such a personalized and unique ceremony.

After the ceremony, it was time to party. We all got to enjoy a cocktail hour while everything was set up for dinner. I don't think I've ever been to a wedding where there was so much food. We definitely ate well.

And then we danced. Lots of dancing.


Sam and Steve got picked up on chairs.


We danced some more and we closed the night out with some Journey, a throw back to one of our favorite bar songs from college.

All in all it was a fantastic time, and a great chance for all my college friends to get together to celebrate!

Just a friendly public service announcement: When you are biking, wear a helmet.

Over the weekend I got hit by a car while I was riding. I am fine, please don't panic! But it was definitely a terrifying experience.

The car came from behind me, and I guess the driver thought I was taking the road that veered off to the right, instead of going straight because he definitely turned right into me.

I must have seen him coming out of the corner of my eye because I was somehow able to stop enough that I didn't get hit by the front of his car but rather got hit by the passenger side.

I awkwardly used the car to break my fall, which prevented me from crashing into the street. I whacked my head and jaw pretty good on the car, but I had my helmet on so there was no serious damage to me.

I was extremely lucky to walk away with nothing more than frazzled nerves and some bent handlebars, which coach thinks are fixable. Thinking about how much worse it could have been freaks me out, so I try to avoid that train of thought completely.

So this is just a friendly reminder, you never know what could happen when you are out riding, and even if you take every precaution in the world, sometimes bad stuff still happens. So wear a helmet when you ride.

It's right at this point in my training cycles when I start to get antsy to try something new on the fitness front.

Training for my Olympic distance tri is still happening. With about three weeks until race day, I'm getting in most of my workouts and for the most part sticking to the plan.

But I'm also starting to look ahead and wonder what I'll do be doing fitness-wise between the end of tri training and the start of marathon training.

Here's just a few things I'm considering.

1. CrossFit - Though this completely and totally terrifies me, I think it would be a really fun challenge and would force me to push myself in new ways.

2. Bootcamp classes - I guess this would be similar to CrossFit, but it would take advantage of the chance to be outside and play around like a kid again while getting my butt kicked.

3. Working out with friends more - My workout schedule will obviously relax a lot when I'm not training, so I'd love to take advantage of the down time to fit in my workouts with friends.

4. Interval training - HIIT (high intensity interval training) is all the rage these days, but I've never really jumped on the bandwagon. The hot summer days seem like a good time to embrace shorter, more intense workouts.

5. Long bike rides - Even though tri training will be over, I've started to enjoy biking and I'd like to take some time on the weekends to get out on some long rides with friends where I'm not super concerned about pace, distance or even time.

What do you do to stay active when you're not in the middle of an intense training plan? I'm open to suggestions for other things to experiment with this summer.