I’m a Capitol Man

I love to go new places.  I even love going places I’ve been before to hopefully find something new. Recently I have especially loved to travel and workout (or Run). It seems like I’m talking in circles, but it’s because I’m so excited whenever I get to do it. I’ve Run in Portugal, Ireland and the Dominican, Cycled in France and done ‘gym’ things in a bunch of other places.  I’ve Run in four provinces in the same week (which was super cool) and I’ve even written about how to pack for exercise on vacation. This week with a work trip to Canada’s capitol I get to add another city to my list… here’s what I got up to.

Around the Hill

We arrived on Sunday (late) and we had meetings bright and early. Since we would be sitting for most of the day, I knew I had to get going early and when the alarm did go off, I regretted it immediately. Still I had laid out my clothes the night before so there wasn’t any excuse. With the temperature in the low teens I headed down to Wellington St. which would lead me right past Capitol Hill and the Centennial Flame. Once I got there, I had multiple route options and distances to choose from. After a couple of #Selfies I got just passed the East Block and found a set of stairs that lead down to the Rideau Canal. I finished the Run in 28m05s covering 3.64KMs. Garmin says that I burned 497 calories and climbed 138 ft of elevation.

The Run was so much fun that when we got back from the sessions, @JessicaRoy1978 went out for another one.  She has been rehabbing an injury so I was trying to keep our pace nice and gentle, but she had other ideas… We covered 1.73KMs in 10m39s (which is really quick) and then we had to stop to prevent aggravating anything.  I was stiff from the morning Run and we had a good walk back to the hotel to cool down. We were both good to go on Wednesday and we re-ran a variation of my first Run.  This ended up being 3.70KMs in 30m14s, about 30 seconds slower than my normal pace.  I was struggling to get air in and it turns out I was coming down with whatever plague that had hit my Manager two days prior…

#BigBrnzChallenge

In between all the Running around the Centennial Flame, I managed to squeeze one gym workout in as well. The goal? To try and stay on target with the #BigBrnzChallenge. The Burpees haven’t killed me yet, but they were definitely trying to. I warmed up with 500m on the Treadmill and followed it up with 50 Burpees. In between sets I worked some Biceps Curls and some machine Chest Press. The weights weren’t heavy for the Chest Press because the machine setup was bugging my shoulder, but I was working with 25lb dumbbells.  It was a nice break between the Running sandwich.

With the onset of the aforementioned plague, any plans I had to Run Thursday went out the window. Still I’m hoping to get seven Runs in before Sunday to get a new Nike Run Club Badge. There might even be a return to Ottawa in the next few weeks for some more meetings and maybe a Run across the bridge to Quebec.

Beez