Wednesday workout in the park

You really don't need a gym membership in DC during the summer. In addition to all of the free running and cycling groups that go year round there are opportunities for free outdoor yoga and I recently found free bootcamp style classes. For August and September every Wednesday at 5:30 Downtown DC Business Improvement District is hosting a workout in Franklin Park. 

Trainers from Crunch Fitness lead the classes while City Sports and Freshii provide free give aways, fruit, and water.

Last week's was canceled due to bad weather, but the first two classes I attended were intense. Constant movements from burpees to pushups to bear crawls to jump lunges... After the second class I was sore for three days.

If you work downtown and can make it to the park by 5:30 I highly recommend checking these classes out. Oh and if you don't like rolling in the dirt, I highly recommend bringing a mat.  Check out the website for more information. The only downside (upside?) is apparently they livestreamed last weeks workout and you might just end up on their website looking like a badass.

Movies under the stars

For a few months every summer there are free outdoor movies all over the city. There is the screen on the green on the National Mall and countless other locations in DC, VA, and MD. I always think it sounds like a great idea, but then its usually a movie I've seen or don't care to see and its always a week night and it gets dark so darn late in the summer. Well this summer I finally made it to a showing in NOMA. I biked over and found some friends who already had a blanket and dinner spread laid out. Soon it was dark enough and Ferris Bueller took to the screen. The grass area was packed with blankets with most eyes glued to the screen and when Ferris took over the mic to twist and shout in downtown Chicago a quarter of the crowd stood up to join him in dance.

I biked home glad that I had gone to the movie, glad that I had taken Ferris' advice "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in awhile, you could miss it."

English Ivy

Did you know English Ivy is invasive? A few weeks ago a friend of mine dragged me out of bed early to go "save the trees" by cutting and sawing English Ivy off of some trees in DC Parks. We ended up spending the entire 2 hrs on one tree and hopefully saved it. The supervisor said we picked a tree with some of the most mature ivy he'd seen in awhile. By cutting/clipping/sawing the ivy at ground level hopefully the vines that have grown up the tree will die.

Not only did we help save the trees, but we met a few nice people, and seeing a tree go from covered in ivy to cleaned off was very rewarding. Sawing and clipping definitely got out some aggression. If you live in the DC area, check out the Rock Creek Conservancy volunteer opportunities!