I'm back from another great weekend at the BlogHer conference in NYC.

One of the things I love about this conference (besides all the great blog stuff I learn) is that the conference organizers and sponsors have started providing a million different opportunities for attendees to try fun new workouts before and after the sessions each day.

This weekend, I got to try three different workouts.

First up was a bootcamp taught by two Army drill sergeants. They ran into the room blowing their whistles and sounding off Army style  before leading us through a series of exercises used in basic training.

Roni and I waiting for class to start

Our trainers for the class

The Army uses a four-count for almost all of their moves. So if for example you're doing a basic crunch, curling up would be the one-count, laying down would be two, curling up again is three and down again is four. That is one rep.

In our class we did about five reps of each move.

Swimming it out with Roni

I have to say some of the moves were a little bit tricky because the count goes so fast, and there were definitely times I was struggling to maintain good form.

A lovely picture of my butt courtesy of the Army photogs

I wasn't the only one though, our group didn't do the best job staying on the count. I'm sure it's quite impressive to watch an Army platoon all do the workout in sync. Also, I imagine the drill sergeants probably aren't quite as nice to the troops as they were to us. Just a hunch.

(All pictures courtesy of Go Army's Flickr account!)

The second workout I got to try was courtesy of BowFlex, another one of the conference sponsors.

We worked out with trainer Jen Galardi on the CoreBody Reformer.

The CoreBody Reformer is a cylinder that's a few inches wide, with resistance cords attached to the end. It forces you to engage your core at all times to balance while doing the individual exercises.



I'll admit I was a little skeptical that it was possible to get a decent workout with it. It seemed just a bit gimmicky, but Jen proved me wrong. After an hour of the class, my heart was pounding and I could definitely feel my muscles working.

And last, but most certainly, not least, was my favorite workout of the whole conference. Ashley organized a small private class for a group of fitness bloggers at Physique 57 led by co-founder Tanya Becker.

Physique 57 is a barre class that will completely and totally kick your butt.



It was my first time ever doing a class like that and I'm pretty sure I worked out muscles I didn't even know I had.

Hands down I think this was the hardest workout I've ever done in my life. At times, it required a lot of coordination, which apparently I'm not great at, and the sets were long and intense and at the end my arms and legs felt like jello.



Also, apparently I failed at dressing myself for this class. Definitely put on my capris backwards. See that little UA logo on the back of my left leg? It should definitely be on the front of my right leg, like in the pictures from Army bootcamp. ::Hangs head in shame::

Thanks a million times over to Ashley, Physique 57 and Well+Good NYC for putting the event together.

Our group

We celebrated our workout success with some delicious Chobani yogurt concoctions from their new yogurt bar in NYC.



Dear Chobani, please open one of these in DC!

(Photos courtesy of Physique 57 and Well+Good NYC!)

Have you ever tried a barre-style workout class? What did you think of it?

Well my base building phase is officially over, and on Monday, I dove into Marine Corps Marathon training marathon training full force.

I spent the week I was on vacation reviewing a ton of different training plans, looking at my calendar for the next several months and crafting a plan that would work in my schedule.

Training for fall marathons is always a little bit tricky for me because long runs tend to conflict with either football tailgate days or my flag football league.



So this year, to prevent too much schedule clashing, I built a plan that has a ton of flexibility for long runs. Depending on the week, I will be tackling my long runs on either Friday, Saturday, Sunday or in more rare cases, Monday.

Going with the theme of flexibility, there are several days where I have shorter easier, runs scheduled. I plan to do the majority of those runs, but if there's a time I'm starting to feel some burn out or can just tell that my legs need a break, those workouts will be swapped for cross-training -- either biking or hitting the pool.



If you're curious, you can take a closer look at my training plan.

I'm only a few days into training, but it's been going well so far. Or at least it was until I ran into a minor blister issue.



I'm not sure where this bad boy came from, but I think I got some dirt in my shoe at softball on Monday that rubbed the wrong way. I tried to run yesterday morning, but even putting my foot in my sneaker hurt because my toes were squeezed together.

I've got some blister pads on it now that I'm hoping will take care of the problem. I'm heading to a bootcamp class this morning led by Army soldiers and I'm hoping I can get through the class without too many issues.

It should be a fun training cycle, and I'm so looking forward to finally running MCM!

 

Guys I'm pretty excited to show off my little blog's brand new look and feel today. (Yes that means if you're reading me in your reader, you need to click over and see the site!)

After 6+ years of using Blogger as my platform, I finally finallllllly made the jump to WordPress and decided to give the blog a bit of a refresh in the process.

A huge thank you goes to Rita from Blog Genie who spent the time transferring six years of archives, photos and comments (well we're still working on the comments) to the new site. I can't thank her enough for all the work she did to make my blog look so awesome.

If you're considering making the move to WordPress and have massive archives to transfer (or if you just don't want to mess with the back end yourself), I can't recommend Rita enough. She's wonderful and is great about answering any questions you have.

If all goes well, the transition should be seamless for you. You shouldn't have to make any changes to your RSS feed or anything. The old feed should still work just fine, but if for some reason it's not, please let me know!

I'm still poking around in the WordPress back end to learn all the different things that I can do. I'm sure it will take me a bit to get everything figured out, but I'm excited to play around.

So all you fantastic WordPress users out there, please feel free to share your tips and tricks in the comments!