Hi everyone and happy Good Friday!

Work got really stressful towards the end of the week so I’m grateful to have today off. I don’t have a ton planned this weekend so it’ll be a good chance to relax and unwind, especially since next weekend is going to suck (we have a big work event coming up, hence the stressful week). Here’s a review of the past week…

I started the week a little worse for wear after celebrating my best friend’s birthday on Saturday night.

My usual approach to lack of sleep and a mild hangover is to wake up at a reasonable hour, power through the day, then go to bed a little earlier than usual. If I sleep in really late or sleep through the day, I just feel groggy and my internal clock gets all screwy, so I woke up early on Sunday and kept pretty busy; I did some chores and met up with a friend for a lunch and shopping date.

In the evening, I finally made it out to a karma class at Power Yoga Canada. I’d been meaning to do go for weeks but something always seemed to interfere (usually lack of sleep and a mild hangover… why do all of the karma classes have to be on the weekend?). Even though I wasn’t feeling my best, I decided to suck it up and go since my next couple of Sundays will be busy.

I knew going in that it would either be one of those workouts that makes you feel amazing or one of those workouts that, within the first 10 minutes, you realize you’ve made a huge mistake in going. Luckily, it turned out to be a wonderful, totally energizing workout. I hadn’t done power yoga in ages and this class reminded me how much I love it.

Since it was a karma class, the teacher was newly certified and this was her first time teaching. She looked about 17 and the class was packed with a bunch of her teenage friends, obviously there to support her since it was clear none of them had ever done a yoga class before (“fuck it’s hot in here” and “oh my god, I’m scared” are just a few of the comments I heard when they noisily piled in to the room).

My initial reaction was, “aww hell no, teenagers?!?” Then I realized that one of the first signs of getting old is bemoaning the presence of young people so I decided to chill out and accept that this is one of the consequences of being too cheap to pay full price for a yoga class.

Thankfully, once classes started, they were perfectly fine and respectful save for the odd embarrassed giggle when they couldn’t do a pose. The teacher was really good too; if she hadn’t said anything, I would never had known it was her first time teaching. I did pretty well considering I wasn’t at 100% and even managed to do crow pose. I can’t wait to go back but it will probably be a few weeks before I’m able to.

My other workouts this week were BodyPump on Monday and Wednesday. I took a rest day on Tuesday and made a huge pot of chili. Meals for the week were leftover chili, leftover bacon and cabbage strata that I cooked on the weekend and a chicken, spinach and avocado salad with couscous (one of my go-to “I don’t feel like cooking but can’t stomach any more of these god damned leftovers but still want to eat healthy” meals)

Last night, I finished up my Groupon at Body Discipline with a spin/boot camp class followed by yoga (my Groupon expires April 2nd and the studio is closed this weekend, so I was scrambling to use up as many classes as possible).

I managed to do 9 out of the 10 classes, which isn’t too bad considering I don’t exactly love this studio. The classes fill up weeks in advance, which doesn’t work for me because who the hell plans their workouts over a week in advance?

I also hate their yoga classes (which is unfortunate since the main reason I bought the Groupon was to do yoga there). The so-called “hot yoga” is literally just a room where they’ve cranked up the thermostat so you barely break a sweat and the heat just feels gross. Both heated and non-heated yoga classes are often scheduled during or immediately after another class in the main studio, so you can hear the music from the other class blaring during yoga – far from relaxing.

The weight training classes use Keiser machines, which any fitness nerd will tell you are not effective for building strength or muscle. I liked some of the cardio classes but, again, it was too hard to reserve a spot in the classes I did like. So, yeah, I’m kind of relieved that my Groupon has expired.

Today, the plan is to go rock climbing with Josh when he wakes up and that will be my last workout for this week. In other news, I’m currently in the process of re-writing all of the static pages on my blog, since I haven’t touched them in a long time (according to my “About” page, I’m still 24… HA!). I’ll let you know when that’s done.

In the meantime, Happy Easter!