Body Remix

Lately my posts have been inconsistent and sparse. For this, I do apologize, but as for my excuse, I am in the process of moving. The move started in October, and between hotels and temporary housing, my husband and I are still not in our permanent home. Hopefully I'll be back up and running with some decent blog posts consistently by the new year!

In the meantime, I have not forgotten about exercise. Actually, I've been pretty consistent about that. One of the first things I did when we got to our new city was scope out the gym. Although the layout was a bit unusual (cardio machines facing each other…what's up with that?) it looked like it had a decent amount of equipment, so I shed my sweatshirt and decided to hop on a StairMaster for a little while. Well, not even 30 seconds into firing up my iPod, I was approached by a staff member telling me that I could not work out wearing the tank top I had on. What? Am I really being excused from the gym because of my workout top which I wear all of the time and have never even thought someone would deem it inappropriate attire for the gym? Yes. It happened. Apparently I'd missed the sign at the door indicating that no one may wear anything sleeveless in the building.

The top I was wearing looked similar to this one, from Target:

So with my tail between my legs, I scurried out of the building while nervously pulling my sweatshirt back on. That was so unusual! I mean, could they not have just let me wear my sleeveless, racer-back style workout top that completely covers my midsection just that one time, because it was my first time? I guess not.

Anyway, I decided to go do my own workout instead, in a place where sleeveless tops are permitted: the great outdoors.

Outdoor track, all ready for an athlete!

I did a Nike Training Club workout. If you missed the post where I raved about this app, here's the rundown: it is awesome; you can virtually customize your workout; you will get a great workout every time; the app is free.

I did the one titled "Body Remix," however, I did not have any equipment (not even a mat!), so I really had to improvise with some of the moves. I'll give the rundown of what I actually did here.

Open the app.
   > Click "Get Toned"
      > Click "Advanced"
         > Click "Body Remix" (the first workout on the list)
And get started! Now if you have equipment and want to do the workout as it is all laid out, be my guest. You will get a fantastic workout. If not, follow along here:

Feeling excited to work out. Let's do it!

• 1 minute: Back pedal and jog forward
• 2 minutes: Slide and glide (left and right)
• 2 minutes: Light jog
• 1 minute: Recover
• 1 minute: Burpees
• 1 minute: Push-ups
• 1 minute: Plank
• 1 minute: Ski jumps (sometimes I call these "speed skater jumps")
• 2 minutes: Walking lunges
• 2 minutes: Bunny hops (get low into a squat position, take tiny jumps forward on the balls of your feet)
• 1 minute: Bicycle crunches
• 1 minute: Toe touches
• 1 minute: Kick-downs (laying on your back with legs straight up, lower legs to the ground without actually touching the ground, then sweet them back up to the starting position)
• 1 minute: Push-up to frogger (do a push up, hop feet forward and to outside of hands like you're doing a burped with a wide jump, hop them back so you land in push-up position, repeat)
• 2 minutes: Squats
• 1 minute: Triceps push-ups
• 1 minute: Walking lunges
• 30 seconds: Mountain climbers
• 30 seconds: Knee tucks (start in a push-up position, hop feet in and bring knees towards chest, then hop back to starting position, repeat)
• 2 minutes: Standing hamstring stretch
• 1 minute: Pretzel stretch (glute stretch)
• 2 minutes: Standing quad stretch

And you're done!

This is how I felt when I finished that workout:

But I lived to tell you about it!

I included a few instructions above, but if you get the app you can see full instructions as well as short video clips of how to do each exercise. Any modifications that I made were not so complicated that you can't figure out what they are. And if you think so anyway, just leave a little ol' comment here!

Farewell, My Fair South (Pizza)!

The first time I told someone in California that I am from "down south," they thought I was referring to southern California. Let it be known, I am from the southeastern part of the United States. Namely, I have lived in Georgia, Florida, and Mississippi. (Whether Florida is "the south" is arguable, but I'm going with it for the sake of the region I'm in currently.) Although I've traveled in many of the upper 48 as well as Hawaii and abroad, I have really only ever really known heat, humidity and the two seasons of the south. Needless to say, coming to California has been more of a climate shock than a culture shock.

Maybe I'm missing the south already, just a little bit? Maybe I didn't say my goodbyes thoroughly enough to the hot, damp air and southern hospitality I'm so used to? We'll see how I feel about the air come summertime, but for now, I'd like to pay a tribute to one last pizza; the last pizza I ate in the south before my departure, and a truly remarkable one at that.

Ladies and boys, I present to you, Antico Pizza.

Thought by some as one of "those" places that you have to eat at while in Atlanta, I'll admit, they serve up a great za worth trying.

Located on Hemphill near downtown, also known as one of the shadier areas of the city, and boasting a menu that at least half of which is written in Italian, be prepared for a cultural experience upon entering the vicinity of Antico.

Having never been there before, my husband and some friends and I took the advice of the employee working the cash register when it came to ordering some za. She seemed more fluent in Italian than English herself, so I'm not really sure what we ended up ordering. But I can say this - it smelled divine and tasted amazing.

I'm pretty positive that the pizza in the foreground of the above photo is the Margherita, and there's a good chance that the one in back is the San Gennaro. Both were excellent. I kept eating a slice from one then a slice from the other until I was just so stuffed that no more would fit into my pizza-loving belly.

You can tell by eating this za that the ingredients are truly remarkable. They are a far cry from your standard pizza place's cheese and crust. Just a simple bit of mozzarella is all that's needed to top a pizza and Antico really hit the nail on the head with that one. Not to mention the crust! Oh what mastery they've achieved in crust making. It's crispy but not cracker like. It's chewy but not doughy. It is baked to perfection and topped with ingredients that compliment it perfectly without overpowering it. If I could be a fly on the wall to observe the craft of dough making and crust baking, I would probably get swatted down and murdered, because that's what you do to flies. But I would like to know what foreign secrets are imposed on this dough!

Let's just say, the pizza bar has really been raised for me. Although I am 1/8 Italian, I don't expect that I can pull off an Antico-level pizza. However, I will certainly try to acquire fancier (yet budget-friendly) ingredients for pizzas that I make in the future (yep, I'm still not a millionaire). At the very least, I'm going to go for better mozzarella and fresher spices. And who knows…in two to five years I might even be making the sauce from scratch!

Oh what a joy. I want to get started already!

New Girl

This southern lady has been officially displaced! And my, what a journey. Seven days, 3 time zones, and over 2000 miles later, my husband and I are officially in California. 

I would have loved to make this a post about all the delightful pizzas I ate and exciting workouts I did along the way, but that simply did not happen. Between being on the road, visiting friends along the way, seeing the sights in cool cities, eating the other good foods those cities had to offer, and having to crash in hotels after hours of driving only to pick back up and do it again the next day, I was lucky to work out at all during the journey. 

I mean, let's be real here; the first stop was in New Orleans. For mealtime I was more in the mood for seafood than pizza; for cardio I was willing to count the couple of hours spent wandering around the French Quarter that evening as my workout. Sure, it's a little unconventional, but life on the road is not a typical thing for me, so as long as I promised myself to hit it hard in the gym once we got to the destination I knew that everything would be just fine. Without regular workouts I just don't feel like me.

So we've arrived and it's time to begin!

But first, I thought I'd just share with you a little of what I did manage to do while on the road. That's right - no gyms, no equipment, and at the mercy of mother nature. Spoiler alert: I did a whole lot of running.

New Orleans: I think we've covered that one thoroughly enough already.

Houston: 30 minute run around a golf course near a friend's apartment. What drew me to that run was a combination of things. First, the friend we stayed with is a real runner and hardcore athlete. Yes, she's one of those athletes that has medals hanging on her wall from all the races she's completed, most of them being half marathons, duatholons, or some other crazy long distance. Second, the trail around the golf course was a closed loop. Translation: I will not get lost! That's pretty key when going out for a run in a strange new place. It was hot and humid there, but nothing I haven't experienced in the south before. 

El Paso: 30 minute run around Fort Bliss. Unlike in Houston, I did not have a tour guide telling me where the best place was to go run. However, since this was an Army Post, I felt pretty sure that I would not run to the "bad part" of town by accident, and also, that I would be able to find my way back to the hotel afterwards. Success and success. It was a chilly morning run (got out before the sun came up!) and the climate was rather dry, but it felt refreshing to do that before hitting the road.

Las Vegas: 30 minute run around a friend's neighborhood. What's up with all these 30 minute runs? I don't know. But in this case, our friends lived in a small gated neighborhood in which the longest route was a loop that took me 6 and a half minutes to run. I ran the hell out of that loop until I reached 30 minutes and nearly complete boredom from literally running in circles. Afterwards I did about 10 minutes of core work inside (just some crunches, planks, and push-ups), and about 10 minutes of stretching. More cool, dry weather and it is drying out my sinuses and making me so thirsty for water! Adapting to the dryness is definitely the most noticeable adjustment I'll have to make being out west.

Alas, we have arrived in the high desert of California and perhaps more interesting than my first run were the gorgeous sights I witnessed while out on foot. Behold…

…and not a single filter was used on those photos! I don't need a hashtag to tell you that, and besides, filtering those natural sky blues would do them no justice!

Now let's be clear about these mountains. They are real mountains. Compared to my well-known rolling hills (which I'll admit, are by no means easy), when running in this area you're either going up a long hill for a long time or down a long hill for a long time. There is no in-between. Oh, and did I mention I am now at an elevation of nearly 2500 feet? It's no mile-high city, but I'll definitely need to acclimate. 

So run number one of many more to come went a little like this…

• I had no idea where I was going. I just followed the sidewalk and main roads.
• My it's windy here! Thank God I didn't get caught in a dust storm.
• 42 minutes total (longer than I originally thought I'd be running), and about a 9:11 pace (slower than I thought too, but hey, whatever).
• Totally exhausted and thirsty when I was done. The combination of a higher elevation and drier climate caught up with me later that night, but I slept like a log. That was lovely. Tomorrow: another mountain!