Fitness with Friends

It probably isn’t much of a shock that there are lots of active people in Colorado.  The weather and mountains simply draw these kinds of people.  This weekend was a good example of how active friends got my butt moving.

I’ve been reading Lauren’s blog for a while since she is a DC-area blogger.  So when she posted on Facebook that she was doing the Underwearness 5K while visiting Colorado, I decided to sign up.  I haven’t been running much at all lately.  As in, one 3 mile run per week.

The race was on Friday evening, starting at 6:30 pm.  It was small, with a winding course through City Park.  Even though I made sure to have my last snack by 2 pm, my stomach still gave me trouble.  Also, it turns out when you haven’t run much in two months, it is hard to run fast.  Shocking, I know.

I’m glad I did the race because I got to see some blog friends, meet some new ones and have a renewed motivation to bring running back into my routine.

Saturday morning there was a free fitness day at Red Rocks called Fitness on the Rocks.  I had signed up last month with my friend Ashley, but she ended up being out of town for the weekend.  I woke up and did my Insanity workout and thought of backing out.  But I knew a few bloggers who would be there so I decided it would be worth checking out.

The pros of this event:

• Free.
• Beautiful scenery.
• A great workout (I did the boot camp session and my butt was sore the next day).
• Different trainers doing different routines throughout the session.
• Plenty of vendors (although I did not really spend time checking those out).
• Working out with 4,000 people.
• Hanging out with bloggers.
• They had volunteers spraying us with water.

The cons of this event:

• Doing push-ups and burpees really hurt my hands because the ground was so hot and a hard surface.  They were red all day after!  Next time I will be smart like Lena and wear gloves.
• It was really hot out.  It might be better to do an event like this in the fall.
• The water available was warm.
• The session I signed up started late and ran long.
• I heard the promised food trucks were no where to be found (I didn’t look personally because I had to leave).
• Sponsored by Complete Nutrition – we picked up our packets here, and it was a store that was lined with different types of diet pills.  Completely not my scene.

Neil and I also saw two movies this weekend.  The Aurora shootings hit really close to home for me.  I’ve gone to many midnight showings over the years for big movies like Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter.  For the Dark Knight (the last movie), we saw it opening night at the Uptown in DC.  A few days before the shootings, we checked out midnight show times, but decided we’re officially too old to stay up that late on a weekday.

I love going to the movies.  For me, and I’m sure for many others, movies give me an escape from life stresses, provide the best entertainment and can make me to feel excited, scared, happy and sad.

I am horrified that anyone, deranged lunatic or not, could do something like this to so many innocent people.  Like everyone else, I’m left asking why he would do this and wondering how these families will be able move on in light of such tragedy.

But I am a strong believer that I can’t live my life in fear, which is part of the reason I wanted to go back to the movies immediately.  One of the theaters we went to was even in Aurora.  I refuse to let this maniac do more damage than he already has – he should not have the power to destroy an American past time that so many of us love.