Gym Characters

Hi everyone,

I am SORE! And I can’t figure out which workout this week it’s from. Love that.

Tonight’s Workout

1. Elliptical Session at the Y

Minutes 1 – 3: Light warmup
Minutes 3 – 6: Faster jog
Minutes 6 – 10: Tabata Intervals. I wrote about these in my last bootcamp post. I did a sprint pace for 20 seconds, jog for 10 seconds and repeated that interval 8 times for a total of 4 minutes.
Minutes 10 – 12: Recovery, jog forward
Minutes 12 – 15: Switch to backwards mode. I did 30 seconds fast, 30 seconds light and repeated that interval 3 times for a total of 3 minutes.
Minute 15 – 16: Switch to forward mode, fast jog for 1 minute
Minutes 16 – 20: Repeat the Tabata Intervals from minutes 6 – 10.
Minutes 20 – 22: Recovery, jog forward
Minutes 23 – 25: Repeat the backwards intervals from minutes 12 – 15.
Minutes 25 – 30: 5 minute cooldown / stretching

2. Kix class at CBC. ROCKIN’ playlist tonight. In case you guys have missed it, tonight is the last chance to enter for my free giveaway to win a free Kickboxing class at Corpbasics. If you haven’t entered yet, give it a shot! I am announcing the winner tomorrow morning.

Tonight’s Pet Peeve

When Fitness & Feta first started, one of my first posts was about Gym Characters. You know, those stereotypes you see at the gym all the time? Well tonight I’d like to share another little “gym character” pet peeve. Wanna know what drives me up a wall? Watching people drive around in circles looking for a parking spot right next to the door of the gym instead of just pulling into a spot that is WIDE open but further away from the gym entrance. This actually bothers me regardless of where it happens (the mall, a restaurant, etc.) but HELLO! You are at the gym. The place you are supposedly at to work out… to burn more calories… to stay fit? Will it really kill you to park in a spot that requires you to walk 100 more feet before you get on a machine? I actually try to park further away from the entrance no matter where I am – the extra calories you burn each time do add up eventually! Just a little trick. C’mon people. Stop being so lazy.

Tonight’s Food Post

Since I’m home so late from the gym, I didn’t have time to make an interesting dinner to write about in detail, so I’m opting to write about last night’s instead. Tim and I took advantage of the beauty of leftovers after our respective workouts. Over the weekend we made maple-peach glazed pork tenderloin. We had tried this one over the summer and loved it, so we went with it again. The leftovers were really tasty and we combined it with some homemade applesauce – made by accident when trying to prepare the shredded apple with skin ingredient for the apple streusel muffins I brought to the Cape with me this weekend. For a side, we whipped up a new quinoa recipe that I found in one of my favorite blogs – the pumpkin quinoa recipe can be found at fANNEtastic Food. Thanks Anne for posting this – it certainly made for a great new side dish, and with a pumpkin flavor no less. Anyone else really obsessed with pumpkin flavored EVERYTHING right now?! Seems like the entire blog world is – and that’s a good thing for finding so many new recipes to try!

I used a lot of the ingredients that I stalked up on in my grocery run to Trader Joe’s on Monday.

And then I just followed Anne’s directions! The recipe was super easy, was tasty (although I think next time I’ll add in a little more pumpkin), and now I have a bunch of leftovers. Excellent. I had some of my leftovers tonight alongside my leftover Naked Pizza from the weekend.

Question of the Day: What are your gym pet peeves?!

Time to face-plant! 6am class comes way too soon. Goodnight!

Feels good to be back in Boston!

Today I’m working from home. My company lets employees that have been working for over three years to telecommute one day a week. It really is quite a nice perk. I was able to get a full night’s sleep, I took my lunch break today at 10am so I could go to Cardio Conditioning, and I had enough time to make myself a yummy lunch.

Wheat pita with quinoa, cucumber, yellow pepper, tomato, avocado, and bleu cheese; and a vanilla Chobani yogurt topped with blueberries, strawberries, and vanilla almond granola

I did end up squeezing in a 6am workout before being on site yesterday. I was so happy when I got home that my workout was already done for the day. I was so tired, so it was great to have a free night to relax and spend some time with Tim.

Now I love to people watch at the gym. While at Planet Fitness during my trip, I couldn’t help but laugh to myself at two nearby “gym characters,” as I like to call them. I have a lot of gym character stereotypes that I can’t get enough of, but these two particular men caught my eye this week.

Character 1: The Wanderer. These people amaze me because they sign up for gym memberships, they go to the gym, but they never seem to actually be doing anything there. I noticed this particular wanderer when I was on a mat doing some floor work. He was on one the ab machines behind me, just sitting and watching everyone around him. He did pull out his phone to text a bit. I think during the time it took me to get through my entire ab series (and that’s a lot of planks!) he had done one, MAYBE two, sit ups on the machine. He got up and sauntered around at one point, lurked by one of the cardio machines, and then wandered right on back to the mats and plopped himself on the one next to me. He laid there for awhile, made a phone call, did a crunch, laid back down. What’s the freaking point?!

Character 2: The Show-Off. Everyone knows the show-off! The grunter that is making a point for the whole gym to know how much he is lifting, the girl that is strutting around in a tight fitting workout outfit, or the person doing a move completely WRONG but it must look cool because they are doing it so fast! I literally laughed out loud at this week’s showoff. I was again, on the mat, this time doing my new favorite pushup. Spiderman pushups! Love, love, love.

Anyways, as I was doing a set of these, nice and slow and controlled as you are supposed to do, the show-off was holding a plank next to me. With his hips sagging so far down I was cringing thinking about his lower back! But then he saw me doing my pushups, and he actually changed stopped holding his plank so he could do the exact same move. A little coincidental if you ask me, but that’s fine if my exercises inspired him. I laughed out loud when he did them so fast – what kind of work did that actually do for your muscles, buddy!? Gotta love the show-off.

Side note: Check out one of this week’s deals at BuyWithMe: 25 visits for $25 (that’s $1 a visit, people!) to any greater Boston YMCA locations. And then should you decide to join, your joining fee will be waived. I’m hoping some of my friends take advantage of this so they can come to my classes!