Monday 11 November 2013

Scottish adventures and an early Xmas party

It's been a busy old week for this city girl, but mostly it's been fitness-associated fun!

At the weekend I headed back to Scotland with the boy to visit the parents, which meant fitting in some fitness around home-cooked meals and wine in front of the fire (it's a hard life, eh?!). I headed out for a run in the sun on the Saturday on a nice 5 mile loop from the house through Uddingston and Bothwell. It was a lovely crisp day, and the autumn colours were beautiful.

On the Sunday we went for a walk around Chatelherault country park which has some beautiful ancient oaks and fantastic trails. I've earmarked these for my training runs over the Christmas holidays. It also means that I need some trail shoes, so went for some retail therapy in Glasgow and got some new shoes :)

 

The legs were feeling a bit tight and tired after an 8 hour drive back down from Scotland so on Monday night I decided to do a bit of yoga. It was a cold and wet evening, so didn't fancy heading out, but I remembered that I'd signed up for yogadownload.com. I selected a 20-minute free yoga for runners class, downloaded the audio and pose guide and off I went! The perfect solution for tight hip flexors and calves.

On Tuesday I decided to try out the Nike Training Club at Covent Garden. This class, unlike Nike Town, involved outdoor training rather than on the shop floor! The instructor, Kezia, was really friendly and the class was pretty fun. We jogged from the store down on to the riverside and along to Westminster where we encountered the a mass protest in front of the houses of parliament with hundreds of people wearing the V for vendetta Guy Fawkes masks. Running through that was quite an experience, but we stuck together and found a spot further down the river to do our class. We had six exercises recommended by athletes, ranging from one-legged lunge-hops to squat jumps and modified burpees, each to do hard-out for 1 minute. Then we jogged back to store for some stretches. I really enjoyed this class, particularly taking in the sights of London and seeing the fireworks over the Thames while we worked out. I'm planning to head back on the 19th when my blogger friend Elle will be taking the class - fancy joining? Sign up here.

On Thursday I was invited along to the launch party for Zero Calorie Advent Calendar, a great initiative to have a fat-free Christmas, which is being run by bloggers Mollie, Becca and Christine.


The party was held at Lululemon in Covent Garden, but in true fit-blog fashion we had to earn our prosecco first by taking part in Good Gym. The idea behind Good Gym is that you incorporate doing something good for the community - from helping with a local project to visiting isolated older people - into your fitness session. On the night we ran from the store to Somerset House where we worked as a team to dismantle radiator covers and move some wood for Makerversity.



Afterwards we had a 3km race along the Thames towards Tate Modern before heading back for some well-earned prosecco and cake! The chosen charity for Zero Calorie Advent Calendar is A Mile In Her Shoes - a great charity that supports women in crisis by helping them to get fit and stay healthy. If you have any old trainers or sports clothes then get in touch with these guys and they'd be happy to take them off your hands!



It was great to see some friendly faces down at the launch party, as well as meeting some people in real life for the first time such as #sub50project runner Sian. Mollie, Becs and Christine have done such a great job to pull the event and calendar together and I can't wait until December to begin the countdown to Christmas! It'll be helped along all the more with the lovely goodies and free classes in our goody bags - looking forward to trying out Good Vibes studio in particular.

Marathon training took a back seat this week - was great to do some fun things other than just run. Next week I start to build up the miles again though!

How is your marathon training going? Have you started yet or still in the planning stages?

Katy | City Girl Fit

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