Well hello there.

The weekend is winding down, so I thought I’d sit and push through a post via my iPad. Since the last time I checked in, my Boston gym friends Athena and Ashley drive out to stay with me for the weekend. I had so much fun. And I think they did too. I seriously just really loved having a healthy dose of girl time- filled with good food, drinks, a workout, and fitness talk (my secret favorite indulgence).

Once they arrived Friday afternoon, we headed over to Davidson’s for some food and drinks. We split nachos and I had a bison burger (I keep wanting to ‘moo’ when I say Burger, but since it’s a bison..I’m a little lost as to what noise to make. Ok wait, I just googled it- YUP I’m making this noise and this face every time I say Bison. From now on.)

Saturday, we went to the gym. Obviously! I didn’t take any pictures, so…..sorry. But Athena did and she will probably post them on her blog soon! We chose to do 2 ROUNDS of the deck of cards workout. For the first round, we designated the following:

Diamonds: push-ups
Clubs: burpees
Spades: reverse crunches
Hearts: weighted squats

I shuffled the deck, then got to flipping. For each card, we would do that number of reps for the designated suit. 10 reps for Jacks, Queens, and Kings; 11 reps for Aces. (If you do the math, that’s 94 total reps for EACH move.) 52 cards later- we were only halfway through our workout.

After a quick break, we broke into round 2. For that, we switched the exercises:

Diamonds: tricep dips
Hearts: kettle bell swings
Clubs: jump pliés
Spades: V-ups

We were sweaty. We were shaking. We were tired. we were happy to be done. Phew!

Sidenote: just the day before- Friday, before the girls came- I had done Workout C for this phase of Best Body Bootcamp. It was an endurance strength workout which had us doing super sets of exercises repeatedly until we reached 100 reps for each- then we would move onto the next superset. It included weighted squats, lunges and push-ups (among several other exercises), so I was already feeling the burn by the time we did our two deck of card workouts!

Late lunch was at Rock Hill Bakehouse. One of my favorite lunch places to hit up when I am back home. Vegetarian black bean chili and a spinach salad.

Last night, we had my parents drive us down to Saratoga. (Responsible adults, since we knew we would be drinking!!) We stopped into Cantina. There were a few rounds if Pomegranate margaritas first…..then dinner. and another round.

And the only photo I got of the three of us:

We managed to stay there for a bit, but did go to another bar were I had two of the best beers ever.

After the girls left today, I managed to have a nice salad plate topped with eggs, some melon, AND-although being incredibly sore from yesterday’s workout- I used my ‘off’ day from workouts as an active rest day and walked 4.5 miles on the treadmill.

That’s all I have for now! I wrote this entire post with the towel still on my head, so on top of nearly my entire body being sore, my neck is as well!

I hope you all had a great weekend!

Question: have you ever done the deck of cards workout? If so, what exercises did you do?