August is my birthday month. It’s both amazing and exhausting, honestly. I happily share this month with many of my closest friends and family members… which means I want to celebrate with ALL of them. Which means every weekend in August has some event for me to participate in…. Because I’m a Leo. So I need people to give me a lot of attention, but also I’m a fiercely loyal friend and want to spend time with the people who are important to me.

To kick my birthday month off I scheduled a rendezvous with my BFF, Ricky, in the Charlottesville area. Ricky and I have been friends since the 7th grade and we’ve been through a lot of ups and downs, fights and makeups, and now a long distance friendship as he lives in Baltimore. We were able to hit a handful of wineries and enjoyed each other’s company. Mostly. I mean he spent a good amount of time watching his dogs on his creepy nanny cam, but he gave me an acceptable amount of attention. Which is a lot. Because I’m a Leo.

We spent the afternoon tasting wines and ciders and then we spent our evening lounging on the couches of our Airbnb watching Bob’s Burgers and 48 Hours and drinking White Claws as any two white girls would do. It was perfect and a nice break from the weekly grind.

All this to say, it doesn’t always have to be some big event to show that you care about someone. Sometimes it’s just being together. Make time for your loved ones.

He said it himself and he even wrote it on the board with our workout today, so I’m allowed to say it. Initially I told him I was going to start a blog just to mess with him, but then I thought it might actually be fun. And maybe it will give me a place to complain without bugging my friends who don’t really care, they can just keep on scrolling past this link.

I’m not sure if anyone other than Sunshine will even read this, but just in case someone does I feel like I should start at the beginning.

A little over two years ago I was scrolling through Facebook and having a pretty average day. I happened to see a post from a friend from elementary, middle school, and high school about her workout that day. I don’t remember the specifics, but she burned A LOT of calories in like 45 minutes and I was intrigued. I was fresh out of a boot camp run by Roanoke City Parks and Rec and feeling pretty good about myself and looking for something else to ride out this wave of motivation. So I asked her for some more information on this gym PlayFitStayFit and she told me I should schedule a consultation with the owner/trainer, Jason… huh ok, sure. I remember that I setup this consultation immediately after work one day and wore my scrubs so he wouldn’t try to trick me into exercising while I was there. Danskos are not gym shoes.

So his first question was “what are your fitness goals?” Uhhhh to do fitness…? I don’t know, no one has ever asked me that before. Next question… “what kind of exercise do you like?” Uhhhh none of them… He proceeded to tell me exactly what HIIT workouts were and I figured I could handle short intervals of intense exercises, sign me up.

I showed up the following Monday (because you only start a new workout routine or a new diet on Monday, obviously) about 15 minutes early and saw the end of the 4pm workout and immediately thought wtf have I gotten myself into? This is not for me, those are NOT my people. These people were flipping 200 pound tires. They were bear crawling up and down the mat with ease. They were jumping on boxes and slamming heavy ropes on the ground. Nope. I’ll probably survive about 15 minutes. Luckily I’d already spotted the closest AED outside of the gym. Brittany showed up to be my partner for my first workout and by some miracle she pushed me through it constantly reminding me that “those people” had all been doing this for over a year and I should not compare myself to them on my first day.

So now fast forward 2.5 years and they ARE my people. Somedays I really hate them for talking me into showing up. Somedays I wonder if I did something terrible to Brittany in school to make her drag me into this. Most days though, I’m happy to see them when I walk through the doors.

Somedays, Jason Gordon makes 9/15 exercises upper body exercises on the day after upper body day.