What I ate:
My parents and I returned to Rock Hill Bakehouse for a late lunch. I guess since its my last full day in New York I can tolerate both lunch and dinner with them today (oh and I can’t wait to tell you about dinner, even though we haven’t even had it yet!!) Anyways, this Bakehouse always has such delicious daily specials

I opted for the salad special- with a cup of the vegan split pea soup. Bother we’re so delicious and I am now incredibly full and burping raw onions.

Wedding:
Chose the hotels for our wedding. One of them wanted us to block 30 rooms! I was all ‘helllllls no.’ I talked to the curator of the property where we are having the ceremony/reception and she recommended 2 particular hotels that offer a free shuttle and great discounted rates since they often get wedding guests from their particular property. Doesn’t hurt that both are within about a mile of the location as well!

I was wandering the house as I was speaking to various hotels on the phone and I came across this little gem:

That would be me when I was about 3 years old. The daughter of friends of my parents was getting married in Beverly Hills and I just so happened to be an adorable blonde-haired little girl that they knew! Lucky me. My resources mom tells me the guy she married (who I was totally afraid of because he was so muscle-y) owns a ton of Gold’s Gyms throughout Southern California now. Had I not recently moved to Canada, I would so be on the phone with him inquiring about personal training jobs. Could you imagine? Training rich, tan people in California? Ugh. I can’t think of it because its making me mad jealous.

Workout:
Oh yes, this is a great workout. I don’t know why, knock on wood, but lately I have been in love with my workouts. This is partly because of Best Body Bootcamp, part because of the new home equipment I have acquired over the past few months, and part because of my mentality towards each workout.

For the strength portion of today’s workout, I slightly modified some moves from BBB. The idea for the circuit was to run the clock for 15 minutes and get as many rounds of 3 exercises in as you can. I don’t want to give away the moves (it wouldn’t be fair to all the hard work Tina does with the program. If you’re interested though, click the link above to find out when you can sign up for the next round!) but the 3 exercises in each round focused on lower body and chest/shoulders. After completing the first round, I danced around to loosen up for a few minutes, the got right into round 2 for another 15 minutes of 3 different exercises.

The schedule also planned for some cardio intervals. I haven’t really been loving the gym here for my cardio workouts, and I have exhausted the option of using my parent’s treadmill everyday, so I changed this to my own AWESOME cardio bit:

You see that? I did Tabatas! (Tabatas are 20 seconds of work followed by 10 seconds of rest repeated 8 times for a total of 4 minutes.) In the above picture, I alternated between two moves for each tabata. I also hopped on the treadmill for a quick 1/4 mile run before getting into the next tabata. All these, combined with the strength circuits really kicked my tush. And I loved it.

Edited to note: I actually subbed the 1/4 mi sprints with 10 stair runs between each tabata set. More sweat, more work! That’s what happens when you post about your workout before you actually do it! Never again, Jen. Never again.

And now, I leave you with Weird:

Stuffed rhino head

My 4th grade self.

Question: What exercises do you currently have on heavy rotation in your workouts?