This weekend, we made sure our eating was balanced with exercise.
By Hannah Wallace
Ugh, my pants feel tight.
So yeah, Thanksgiving dealt us its usual caloric blow, but we didn’t go down without a fight. Experiment A: There’s a new YouFit gym that’s arisen near our house in a shopping center that was recently deserted by Marshall’s—if that says anything about the neighborhood. Wednesday, despite the best efforts of the infomercial-worthy salesman to drive us screaming from the building, we signed up for $10-a-month memberships, then returned that night to spend some time with their army of cardio machines (each one equipped with its own cable-enabled TV screen). We showered there and walked over to Chili’s for dinner. It was cold and rainy, my legs were rubber, and it felt great.
But wait, there’s more: Thanksgiving morning we were up at 7:30 a.m. to truck all the way south to a special holiday boot camp class at Uppercut Boxing. The hour-and-a-half ass-kicking—which included sprints and lunges, 15 minutes straight on the heavy bags, push-ups, sit-ups, squats and other tortures—prompted CCB to ask of proprietor Aaron Jaco, “Why do you hate Thanksgiving?!”
In between gasps, I finally got around to introducing myself to fellow Uppercut devotee John Cannon. I was already scheduled to interview him for the new “Peak Performance” department in the January issue of Biz941, so it would’ve been weird to tell him over the phone that I’d recommended him for the article because I’d seen him at the boxing classes, and then be all, “Oh, but I haven’t ever talked to you, no. I’m just stalking.” (Add him to the list of powerful people who are drawn in by my Power Magnetism.)
Anyway, the class was beautifully brutal, and went a long way toward erasing the guilt of a holiday smorgasbord.
Not much to say about Thanksgiving dinner, except that a) it was delicious; b) we didn’t burn the house down; and c) we were in bed with a full-on food coma at 11 p.m.
Ma handles the turkey/
We awoke 10 hours later and spent the next two hours preparing a big breakfast and watching “College Gameday” in our pajamas. Take that, Black Friday.
Actually, our curiosity, combined with a need to loosen up our abused muscles, prompted a bike ride down the road to DeSoto Square Mall. We’d just planned on taking in the madness, but sadly, that poor old mall wasn’t all that much crazier than usual. And in the end, we couldn’t resist some of the Black Friday sales. So if you saw the weirdos riding their bikes down First Street balancing a home pizza-making kit and a Conair foot spa, yeah, that was us.
Saturday, CCB—who is quite the shopper, I must say—located some sporty deals for pre-Christmas presents to ourselves. We returned from a short trip out with biking shorts, a football, a 100 lb. heavy bag (on sale for $50) and a Christmas tree. Now we’re going to start shopping for other people, we promise.
Gorgous weather, gorgeous setting: the Venetian Waterway trail.
For our Sunday coups d’gras, CCB and I joined Big J and Krazy Kevin for a bicycle ride down the VABI’s Venetian trail. What a way to end a weekend: We biked along the Intracoastal down to Venice Ave., then down through downtown Venice and over to Sharky’s for lunch. From there, we rode through Caspersen to meet up with the trail again, then backtracked to Circus Bridge (only because the alternative would’ve been swimming the Intracoastal), to finally get back to our cars at Shamrock Park. It was like being a kid again, that feeling being in a pack and riding your bike wherever you want to go.
And with that, we called the weekend a success.
This week’s big exciting event? The Wednesday night tag-team between the Banyan Theater Company and G.WIZ. The science museum is hosting what is, for me, a perfect theatrical storm—so much so that I even paid for CCB’s ticket. Between parents and press privileges, this is the very first time I have ever paid for a local performance. (I’m happy to see now that they’re sold out, too.)
More on that later this week. For now, suffice it to say, I am excited.
