ashleyd /

Spring Has Arrived and Yoga Deals the Groupon Way!

WANT FREE FRUIT NOT FAT GALAXY GRANOLA? Click here to enter before Friday at 2pm!

Thanks to last night’s awesome workout and this morning’s gorgeous weather I am in the best mood today! It is supposed to reach 70 degrees in NYC today and the sun is already beckoning us to come out and play. In honor of Spring, I enjoyed another yogurt mess this morning featuring some wonderful Spring berry flavors.

This delicious yet unphotogenic mess is the following:
1 Dannon Light n Fit Blueberry Yogurt
5 strawberries quartered
1/3 c Nature’s Path All Bran Buds alternative
1/2 c Special K Protein cereal
1 Tbsp ground flax
This breakfast is flavorful, filling, and filled with healthy protein and fiber. It’s lighter on my stomach than oatmeal and screams SPRING! Better yet, it keeps me full for at least four hours and is easy to prepare at the office.
In other news, today’s NYC Groupon offer had me quite excited! If you aren’t a member yet, click here to join for free! I definitely purchased it immediately and would love for others to join if interested. The offer is TWO WEEKS OF UNLIMITED YOGA AT YOGA WORKS FOR $15.

The first master yogis bent themselves like twist-ties around their enemies, smothering them with relaxing vibes. Today’s Groupon offers a similar chance to defeat work-related stress with two weeks of unlimited yoga classes at YogaWorks. For $15, you can gumbify yourself in over a dozen varieties of bendiscipline at any of six YogaWorks New York locations (a $30 value), for either new students or those who’ve not attended a YogaWorks class in at least a year.

Classes vary from location to location, but together you’ll have your pick from more than 100 sessions a week, some starting as early as 6 a.m. and others as late as 8 p.m. YogaWorks’ impassioned and experienced instructors remix pliable poses from well-known traditions such as Ashtanga and Vinyasa with samples from lesser-known paths to lithe enlightenment like Iyengar, known in secret circles as the “way of the swift-handed dancing snake.” There are also specially crafted classes for pre- and post-natal women, kids, and seniors, and hybrid classes such as BarWorks and SculptWorks.

Different poses unblock dammed channels of energy, and deep breathing suffuses the fatigued spirit with renewed vigor, just like blowing into a Nintendo cartridge. Finally become flexible enough to eat your food with your feet and touch your earlobes together. Yoga veterans malleable as warm wax and neophytes unable to touch their hands are equally welcome, with different classes attuned to different levels of ability and a perpetual emphasis on increasing satisfaction and skill

So far, Jesse of  Jesse Runs NYC and I have bought this deal and plan to grab a few yoga classes together. EDITED TO ADD: Just now, when I returned to the site to buy a pass for a friend’s birthday gift, I found this great review on today’s Groupon portion:

The class was a combination of strength, dance and ballet. I really enjoyed it, it was restorative, but never once boring. We moved through arms, legs, butt and abs, and back through, never performing more than one set of each exercise, which is fabulous. – Melissa, Fitness NYC

I love that they featured Melissa’s review! If Melissa enjoyed it then i’m sure I’ll love it! Please let me know if you join the trend and we can have a few group yoga sessions!! I’ve heard great things about Yoga Works!



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Joining the Wolf Pack

Who remembers that great scene in The Hangover when Alan preaches to the other guys about the power of the Wolf Pack and becoming a part of a group.


“You guys might not know this, but I consider myself a bit of a loner. I tend to think of myself as a one-man wolf pack. But when my sister brought Doug home, I knew he was one of my own. And my wolf pack… it grew by one. So there… there were two of us in the wolf pack… I was alone first in the pack, and then Doug joined in later. And six months ago, when Doug introduced me to you guys, I thought, “Wait a second, could it be?” And now I know for sure, I just added two more guys to my wolf pack. Four of us wolves, running around the desert together, in Las Vegas, looking for strippers and cocaine. So tonight, I make a toast! “

Tonight, Bo and I had the great opportunity to feel like we were part of the running wolf pack. We’ve never been part of a weekly running club together due to two barriers: time prioritization and intimidation.

After my experience with the Bryn Mawr running club i’ve been hesitant to join anything more than the NYRR. While the people at the BMRC were all very nice, they didn’t have formal workouts or pace groups. Therefore, I was often running alone as most of their regulars were seasoned runners training for races such as Boston or New York and keeping a pace of less than 8 minute miles. This left me feeling intimidated and dissapointed in my running ability as I would always compare myself to those around me.


Once we moved to NYC, a running club was never a priority for us because we didn’t realize the power of the pack. We figured that it’d just be an inefficient way of getting our workout in and end up wasting our time. But, running with a group is EXACTLY the opposite as we both found out tonight. The East Side Lululemon (66th and 3rd) and West Side (Lincoln Center) stores sponsor a weekly Wednesday night running group Spring through the Fall in Central Park. Some of the benefits we discovered were as follows:


-A coached run with leaders for each pace group (7-8, 8-9, 9-10, and 10 plus minute miles) ensures that you’re running with people of your caliber and won’t feel out of place.
-Running with other people who are sometimes faster helps you to push yourself and realize your true potential. Tonight I kept a 9:30 pace for the first mile and Bo found himself keeping a 7:15 at one point!
-A coached run provides an established workout plan so you are forced to focus on intervals, speed work, or other often avoided forms of training. Tonight’s workout was 2-3 laps of the lower loop in the park. The first lap we were focusing on speed and power as we went up the hills and then recovered during the downhill portions. The second lap we focused on speed during the flat and changing our stride on the hills while using them for a recovery. Including hill workouts and speed fartleks in my weekly training should really help me improve my half marathon time!
-Everyone was so friendly and high off the positive endorphins! The people are inspiring as many of them are passionate about the sport of running whether they are Iron Women, Iron Men, triathaletes, or a beginner runner who is enjoying their first endorphine high post run. I even ran into an old friend from UGA who I hadn’t seen in 3 years and a fellow blogger- Jesse from Jesse Runs the City!!
-The run leaders ensured that everyone had finished and returned before they headed back to the stores. They wanted to make sure no one was left behind in the dark.



So, as you can see from the above, Bo and I absolutely loved our experience tonight and would recommend a local Lululemon running club to everyone! You can go to your local Lululemon store site to find out more about their community events. Most stores offer a running group once a week and a yoga class once a week free of charge.


**DON’T FORGET TO ENTER MY GALAXY GRANOLA GIVEAWAY HERE!

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