Life In The ATX
I know it’s been a while since I have posted anything. I guess I have been a little too busy and may have lacked some motivation to write about anything. Oh well. I’m back.
We have been out here in Austin for about 4 months now and are feeling pretty acclimated to the area. We even have some friends now! Thank goodness for crossfit! I am not sure what we would do with ourselves out here if we didn’t meet an awesome group of people at the gym.. it has really made all the difference!
I mean how do you go about meeting people in a new area? My sister asked me the other day, “how come the only friends you have out there are crossfitters?” Annoyed that she would think that I am excluding making friends with non-crossfitters, I responded with “when is the last time you made a new friend, Bec? It’s not like I am working at a 500 person company anymore. I am in an office with about 12 people who are all pretty much married and have families to go home to at night. It’s not as easy as you think”. With the exception of randomly meeting a really awesome couple from NY who had just moved out here as well, we haven’t met anyone else and I am perfectly fine with that!
Well, anyway.. the weather out here has finally broken! I was so sure that the temp would read 90 degrees for the next 3 months, but it has actually dipped down into the 70s this week and it really does feel cold, believe it or not! My body does not remember what colder weather feels like, that’s for sure! I can’t even imagine going through a northeast winter this year – it would be really painful to say the least!
To switch gears a little bit, Chris and I have been checking out some cool things out here. One of the best things we have done in the past couple of weeks is see a movie at The Alamo Drafthouse. I’m sure you are wondering what is so great about that, you can see a movie anywhere? Well, it’s a movie theater where you can order actual meals and alcohol. Talk about taking pre-gaming to a whole new level! We saw Moneyball, great movie by the way, and were able to enjoy it with a couple beers for him and wine for me! On more of a fitness level, we have been going to Town Lake every Sunday morning to run the 3 mile loop around the lake. For someone who is not a huge fan of running, this actually is turning out to be one of my favorite weekend activies!
I have a feeling that November is going to be a really great month! In 2 weeks, we are going to have our very first visitor, CC! I am really excited to be able to show her the gorgeous city we live in and also to tailgate the UT/Texas Tech Game! Over the course of the month, we will be having some of our family come and see us as well. My cousin is coming out the week after CC leaves and then Chris’s mom will be here the week after that for 10 days! It’s going to be really great to spend Thanksgiving with her. I am not sure if she knows how excited I am about having her come to Austin for the holiday. It’s the first Thanksgiving that I will not be able to spend with my family, and having her here with us will definitely make it a lot easier to get through!
I was really surprised at how difficult it has been to be so far away from my family, even though I just saw them about 6 weeks ago at my sister’s wedding! My mom called me last Sunday to tell me she was at my Aunt Dorothy’s 60th birthday party and I couldn’t help from feeling sad that I wasn’t able to be there for it. It made me realize just how much I miss seeing them. Luckily for us, we are able to make it home for Christmas this year. You better believe I am counting down the days until then!
That’s all I got for now, but I am planning to update this a lot more frequently now, so stayed tuned for some more stories on what it’s like to live in ATX!
Late Night Wods, Barton Springs, & Shiner Beer
We have been here for only about 3 weeks now and we already are starting to feel comfortable in the area. Yesterday, I asked Chris what he thought so far and based on what we have seen here in our short time, does he see Austin as being more than just a short term living arrangement? I’m sure you are wondering what he said, so I won’t keep you in suspense. He said he definitely could see this being our permanent home. I have to say that I feel the same way. Do we miss home? Yea of course. Well, to be fair, we miss our friends and family. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that we miss Philly, at least not yet. Right now, it feels like we are on vacation out here because everything is so new to us and checking out different areas of the city and meeting new people is so much fun. I guess we are just too busy taking everything in out here to really have time to dwell on what we are missing back home, you know, like the beach! Might be the one thing I do actually miss.
Enough about how I feel about living in Austin, I’m sure you are getting sick of hearing how much we like it out here and I’m getting tired of saying it. Let’s switch topics to something more fun, like working out at 11PM on a Friday night! Isn’t this how everyone spends their Friday nights? No? Alright, well it was a first for me actually too, but it was a lot of fun! Chris and I were going to meet one of our friends from gym at around 9PM to do some deadlifting, pullups, and heavy kettlebell work, but 9PM wound up turning into 10:30. I was already pretty set on wanting to do this workout, so I convinced Chris to stay up and go with me. Let’s be honest though, I would have probably gone without him! To spare all the details of the WOD, I’ll just say that I PR’d the deadlift by 5lbs and did 45 unassisted pullups! So of course we had to go grab some drinks after since we were all wide awake. My first night out downtown and I was wearing sweaty gym clothes and high socks.. good thing the bar we hit up didn’t have a dress code!
Saturday, Chris and I met up with Mandy and India (my friends from work) and their kids at Barton Springs. Barton Springs is a natural creek that has basically been turned into a pool. The really awesome thing about this is that the water stays 65 degrees all year round! It has been really hard to find any water around here that actually offers relief from this heat, so we were really excited about checking this out. I have to admit that it was really hard to get in the water the first time. It definitely felt colder than the Jersey Shore in June. After about 10 minutes of slowing inching my way in, I finally just did it and it felt awesome! Check out the pic below.
Let’s talk about beer for a minute here. They pretty much sell it anywhere. At first it was pretty hard to get used to. You mean beer and wine have their own aisle in Target? What??! I can go to Walgreens, buy tylenol and a bottle of wine to wash it all down with? For a PA/NJ girl, this is craziness, but at the same time awesomely convenient! So Chris and I were at HEB last night (for all my east coast readers who have no idea what this store is, it’s pretty much the biggest grocery store chain out here) and were perusing the beer section just because we could and we grabbed a sixer of Shiner Ruby Redbird, which is a grapefruit infused summer ale. Shiner is pretty much Texas’s answer to Yuengling. My crossfit buddy, Kayla, told me the other night that I definitely have to give it a try and at $7 for a six pack, we were sold. Chris and I just might now be hooked on this beer. It’s got my vote over Bud Lite Lime and is probably going to be our drink of choice for the rest of the summer.
Overall, pretty good weekend filled with crossfit, cooler water, and new beer choices!
WOD:
5-3-2-1-1
Deadlift
185-205-225-295-305PR
21-15-9
pullups
Unbroken KB Swings (55lbs)
If you break the set, complete a 10 burpee penalty
I broke the set once b/c the kb went over my head
Time: 12:15
4th of July Weekend: Hero Wods, New Friends, and No Fireworks
This past weekend marked our first 4th Of July in Austin and our first full weekend here that didn’t involve unpacking. We were pretty excited about finally being able to check out our new city and enjoy the holiday weekend! The only downside about 4th of July out here this year was no fireworks. It hasn’t rained here since October, so needless to say Austin is in a severe drought. It’s so bad that they have enacted a burn ban throughout the whole city which of course involves fireworks. We had been looking forward to seeing Lake Travis all lit up, but I guess we’ll have to wait until next year.
Now that we got that out of the way, let’s talk about the great points of the weekend. I guess we’ll start with Friday. Since it was a holiday weekend, work closed at 1PM which meant lunch time happy hour with some coworkers at a mexican joint called Maudie’s. New favorite drink: Skinny Margarita which consists of tequila, club soda, agave syrup, and lime juice. On the rocks with salt of course! The rest of the night was pretty low key because we wanted to hit up the gym the next morning for a 9AM WOD (Workout of The Day).
It’s a good thing we got to bed early because the workout on Saturday was brutal! For all you crossfitters reading this, you know the words “Hero WOD” means long and painful! And of course with it being 4th of July Weekend and all, I knew this was definitely going to be in the cards. All I kept thinking was, “please don’t be Hansen“. If you don’t feel like clicking the link, the workout is: 5 rounds for time of 30KB Swings, 30 Burpees, and 30 sit-ups. And If you haven’t already guessed, this was the one that was written up on the whiteboard! I had done this one at KOP last October so I knew it was going to be an intense mental fight to get through especially with it being about 100 degrees out! It sucked, but I made it through and actually PR’d the workout by 5 minutes!
We spent the rest of the afternoon waiting on Time Warner to come out and hook us up with internet and cable so that we could go to a bbq at my friend Mandy from work’s house. After waiting 5 hours, we were finally connected! It was a painful experience to say the least! Now on to the party! Let’s just say that it was such a good time, that we wound up spending the night.
Ever since we have moved here, we keep hearing that we need to check out Oasis, which is a bar/restaurant that overlooks Lake Travis with breathtaking views of the lake. Mandy and Mark took us out there for some dinner/drinks on Sunday night and it was just as amazing as we had heard! Sunset is supposed to be the best time to come here – Austin sunsets are like none you could ever imagine. We will definitely be back sometime soon to see it!
Check out the photo Chris took:
Monday was a day full of running errands, relaxing, and lounging out by the pool. One thing I have to note here is that people here don’t head out to enjoy the sun until about 3PM because it is so hot out! We headed out around 4PM to lay poolside, which at this time back at home, would be about the time that we would be leaving the pool or beach!
Overall, great weekend full of crossfit, new friends, and awesome lake views!
WOD:
5 rounds for time:
30 kb swings (35lbs)
30 burpees
30 sit-ups
time: 34:09
Crossfit in Austin: Do You Guys Have AC??
So last night, Chris told me that my writing style is a bit on the boring side. (Real nice, right?) But I will take his advice on being more conversational. Here’s my first attempt at not sounding professional in a blog post. Here goes..
Now that we have gotten settled into our place, the first thing on my mind last Sunday night was definitely not about starting work the next day, it was crossfit (shocker). If you couldn’t tell by the title of my blog, I love lifting and all things crossfit. So as can be expected, I was getting really excited about going to my first official class in Austin the next day.
Here’s the backstory on how we wound up choosing Westlake Crossfit as our new gym.
When Chris and I visited Austin back in January, we checked out a couple crossfit gyms. We had worked out at two different ones and had completely different reactions at both places. I was really excited about checking out the first one because I had heard great things about it, and long story short it turned out to be an extreme letdown. Maybe not extreme, but you get the idea. They seemed to be more interested in running a business, to put it nicely. After that experience, I was feeling really disappointed and sad about moving away from my home gym, Crossfit KOP because I love the people and coaches there. But Chris quickly knocked me back to reality by reminding me that there were about 15 other crossfits in Austin and that we were bound to find one that we would feel comfortable at. The next day, we checked out Westlake, which also happens to be 5 minutes from where I will be working, and it was awesome! The people we met that Saturday were really friendly and welcoming. I knew that once we made the move out here, this would be the gym that would fill the void that we would undoubtedly have from KOP. My only concern was the summer and the unbearable TX heat. What do they do when it gets to triple digit degrees? Is there AC? I figured there wasn’t, but you know I just had to ask. Turns out they “get by just fine with a few ceiling fans and one oscillating one.” Well that settles that.
Fast forward now to this past Monday night. It was about 98 degrees out at 6:30PM and I was about to take on my first WOD at Westlake. I had checked the website for the workout earlier in the day and knew it was going to be a long, grueling, metcon. GREAT. Note the sarcasm. It was a chipper loaded with deadlifts, burpees, running, pullups, more running, kb swings, and db cleans. There was nothing fun about that workout except maybe the deadlifts and of course the end when I yelled time. Plus, did I mention that it was about 100 degrees?! Overall, it was a great class, great coaching, and great people to endure it all with. I can’t wait to go back for more! The only negative side about the gym is that most days the earliest night class they offer that I can get to in time is 6:30PM which means I don’t end my day until around 8. It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make to get some crossfit in. They do offer 6am classes too so I am definitely going to try and get to some of those a couple of times a week.
On another note, 4th of July weekend is here and we are looking forward to checking out Barton Springs, which is a natural spring that was turned into a pool. The temperature stays a cool 68 degrees even in the blazing heat! We are definitely excited about that because the water in the pool at our complex doesn’t offer any relief from the sweltering heat!
(6/27) Monday’s WOD:
27 deads (120lbs)
400M run
27 burpees
200M run
27 pullups
400M run
27 DB cleans (full squat 15lbs)
200M run
27 kb swings (35lbs)
Not sure what the time was when I finished. I think it was around 21 minutes.
Welcome To Austin, TX!
For those of you reading that don’t know, my boyfriend, Chris and I made the move from Philadelphia to Austin, TX. You probably are thinking that we had our stuff shipped out here and then jumped on a plane and flew to Austin, right? Well, actually we decided to drive out here and yes it was a ridiculously long and painful drive! I thought I would start my first blog post off by recounting most of the trip.
At about 1AM Thursday morning (6/23), we departed from PA. I, of course, took the first shift of sleeping! Chris took the first shift and my dad (who we dragged along with us) kept him company while he drove through the rest of the night. We had stopped at a truck stop in VA and I took over driving. Two more driving stops and 9 hours later, we had made it to Nashville, TN! We had planned to stop here for the night and take in some country music on Broadway.
There is not much to say about Nashville except AMAZING!! We arrived feeling super tired and miserable from a long 14 hour drive. When we finally ventured out onto Broadway for some dinner and drinks it was after 5PM. I was so exhausted and ready to end the night at around 7PM, but as we were walking towards the car I heard an awesome band playing country music at this bar: Whiskey Bent Saloon. We ventured in and wound up having an amazing time listening to Alecia Arnall sing everything from country to rock and roll. Chris, dad, and I were having such a great time that we didn’t want to leave! Here are some pics of us enjoying the night!
Friday was a long day of driving starting at 5AM. There was about 14 hours left to go. We were in AR for about half that time and spent the second half driving through TX! We finally made it into Austin limits at around 7PM and got right to unloading our POD which was already there waiting for us. My friend India from the office came over and helped us move everything inside. My dad and Chris did get most of the heavy stuff in themselves. I focused on the smaller stuff. At one point, I really thought I was going to get sick from the heat – It was sooo HOT out even at 8PM! I am not sure if my body will ever adapt to this strong TX heat – here’s hoping though!
The first night here, we actually met a few of our neighbors! The complex we are in seems to have a lot of young professionals living here which is awesome. Our neighbors below us seem really cool and the guy that lives next door, Mike is real nice too. Chris and I are super excited about starting a new life here in Austin and making friends!
To end the crazy weekend and for our first Saturday night in Austin, Chris and I took my dad out for some mexican of course. We went to Chuy’s, an Austin favorite for Tex Mex.
My favorite picture of the whole weekend! After a long weekend of driving and moving in, we are having our first drink in Austin and relaxing for the rest of the night!
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