The past week I was down in New York City fulfilling one of my duties as a blogger on CrushingTheCourse.com. CTC is a website run by Gatorade,
Women’s Health and Men’s Health to promote the Urbanathlon series. I took the train down Tuesday night for a day of testing to begin on Wednesday at Peak Performance with Joe Dowdell.
I am not a huge fan of NYC. I love to visit but living there is not on my list of to-dos. I woke up early on Wednesday for a run. I decided to run up to Central park and hopefully run around a little. Holy dodgeball! Running up 6th or 7th ave during rush hour was the worst mistake I could have ever made. Not to mention by the time I got to central park I was already 20 minutes in and decided to turn back. I wasn’t sure what they had in store for me at Peak so I didn’t want to tire out my legs too much.
On my way home, I stopped at Fresh & Co for a cup of oatmeal with fresh blueberries and strawberries. I discovered this mini-chain when I was in NYC back in May. This place is amazing to me because Boston lacks anything like it.
I arrived at Peak Performance at 11:30 am. We started with a few fun tests. Basically, this is standard personal training protocol. They were looking for imbalances in my body, weaknesses, pain, anything that basically would indicate my susceptibility to injury during my training for the rugged 10-12 mile obstacle course.
Some of the tests I knew what they were looking for, like the overhead squat. This movement shows if I have tight hip flexors, lower back issues, rounded shoulders. Since Peak is one of the premier places for training in the city, they of course took it up a notch and had me do many tests I was not used to and had never done like placing my heels up on a higher surface (I don’t know what they were looking for in this).
In addition to the movement tests, they also took my body fat with a super cool machine and my VO2 max test to determine my cardio levels. You will have to wait and see the results on Monday over at CrushingTheCourse.com. I was nervous for the results myself, would I live up to my website name, “Sarah Fit”???
After the test, I went to Just Salad and grabbed lunch. It was delicious. Again, this is probably something the people of NYC take for granted but it seems like quick restaurants like this are on every corner. There is maybe 1 place in Boston that does this. The bread was gross but everything else was great. I don’t remember what I got but it had pumpkin seeds, butternut squash, grilled chicken, beets and a horseradish dressing. I love how they chop it all up for you too!
I didn’t have any plans until later that evening so I decided to go down and visit the site of the World Trade Center. It was unexpectedly emotional for me since I hadn’t been there since the attacks. I found my way to Century 21 where I bought myself a beach hat to protect myself from the sun this summer! I walked up to soho and shopped around. I found this place called Cupcakes By Melissa and I think I died and went to heaven. This place makes mini cupcakes in ideal flavors like Cookie Dough, S’mores, Mint Chocolate Chip, Rice Krispie Treat and more. I had to buy a sampler pack of 6 because a) you have to buy at least 3 and b) I couldn’t choose which flavors to try. 
The S’mores was probably my favorite with Rice Krispie treat and Cookie Dough coming close. The only one I wasn’t crazy about to be honest was the Mint Chocolate Chip. These may be my favorite cupcake in NYC. They are so small and flavorful that you hardly feel like you are indulging. It just feels right 🙂
Story of my life: Wake up for a run, healthy breakfast and lunch, finish it off with a couple cupcakes.
Have you ever had your fitness levels tested?
