NYC Meat Up with Juliet and Erika

If you had the good fortune of celebrating Labor Day in the States yesterday, Happy Labor Day.  Regardless, here’s a belated ‘Happy Monday’ to everyone; I hope you’re week is off to a strong start. I’m looking forward to a week full of hard work, smart training, lots of learning, and sharing some great advice.

Let’s start the week off with a little recap of my Sunday Fun Day.  After lots of e-mails and planning, I was able to spend the day in New York City with two of my fellow fitness bloggers. Juliet Gotthardt runs things over at Hey Joob, and Erika Hurst is the boss at Sweat and Dirt.  If you don’t already follow their work, I’d suggest you add it to your must-read sites on the interwebz.  I’ll get you started here:

In THIS post, Juliet discusses Muscle Hypertrophy in Women.

In THIS post, Erika discusses the kettlebell swing: Let Me See Your Hips Swing.

They both make Tracy Anderson jokes, which makes them uber-awesome in my book.  In general, we’re all fans of picking up heavy shit, eating copious amounts of meat, and being generally being great at life.

Juliet and I both took trains into Penn, while Erika and crew arrived at Grand Central.  We met in front of THE library, and Erika and Juliet performed a beautiful slow motion run and hug sequence while I got to say hi to Erika’s boyfriend Steve and friend Nick.  Then Erika knocked my coffee on the ground.  The nerve.

Steve and Nick headed off towards the Intrepid, and we found a little coffee shop to sit down in and talk shop about our favorite yoga poses, which shoes give us the most support, and how to get more whole grains in your diet.  Alright, that’s not true.

We did get to talk some serious shop, including our respective nerdiness and scholarly endeavors, how we’re currently training and what we’re training for, and what we like to do in our spare time.  Erika is taking exercise physiology this semester, while training folks and prepping for her first powerlifting meet.  Juliet is just beginning her PhD, and she’s doing research and TA’ing  as well, with training slipped in when she can.  I definitely got a wee bit jealous as I focus on training, studying for the CSCS, and looking for a local powerlifting meet.  It was awesome to hear about what they’re doing outside of the The Matrix, and it will be nice to hear about their progress as we fall into autumn.

After our coffee klatsch, we proceeded to grab the subway down towards South Street Seaport, heading towards BODIES The Exhibition.  Before eating though, we stopped at Bare Burger in the East Village to load up on some organic vegetables and grass-fed meats.

Here’s a before and after picture that Erika took:

We each got the same thing:  A house salad and three sliders (medium) with maple bacon and avocado.  The only difference was the meat:  Juliet got Ostrich, Erika got Elk, and I got Wild Boar.  Once our foot arrived, we each swapped two burgers, so we had one of each.  It literally split the entire meal.

After starting with the salads, we moved on to our meat-comparison, which didn’t work out as well as planned; we forgot which burger was which, and got confused, but we seemed to agree that Ostrich was the greatest of the three.  (I’ve had wild boar and elk before, and the Ostrich was new to me.)  It was a beautiful combination of meatyness and poultryness, and while I have no clue how you’d define it, I do know that it’s absolutely awesome.  New favorite meat?  I think so.

I stole Juliet’s picture of us post-meat consumption:

Walking off that meal wasn’t feasible, so we took the Subway down to South Street Seaport and made our way to BODIES.  If you’ve never been there, let me strongly suggest that you go, regardless of your levels of career or personal interest.  It was fascinating, both as a science geek, but also as an owner of the same system.  The whole time, I thought, “Wow, that’s the inside of me!”

It’s empowering to learn about how your body works, and sprinkled throughout the exhibit were tidbits of information about the deleterious effects of soda consumption, physical inactivity, or poor diet.  I took this picture in front of the display about smoking related illnesses;  A cancerous lung might make you think twice:

After we finished at BODIES, we climbed to the top of the Seaport to take some photos, then headed over towards Ground Zero to teach up with Steve and Nick.  After people watching and checking out the Freedom Tower, it was off to find a bar to refuel, and Steve spotted a tiny establishment that was being renovated upstairs, but quiet and comfy downstairs.  Juliet judged us for not being big football fans (Sorry, Joob!) and I learned that since Erika has a quad and goes off-roading in her Jeep, she’s more bad ass than me.

We took the 1 line back up to Penn Station; Erika, Steve, and Nick headed up to Central Park, Juliet headed back to Jersey, and I headed to the Upper East Side to check out my brother’s new apartment.  Walking half way there wasn’t my best idea, and I finally decided to find a subway.  Those shoes got the best of me.

I was in NYC from 9:37am until 9:39pm.  I finally got to meet and hang out with two awesome people who I typically interact with on the blogosphere, and it was awesome; I’m certainly looking forward to doing it again.  Thank you Juliet, Erika, Steve, Nick, Will, and Jackie, for an awesome day.

(Even if it all sucked, I was able to read half a book on the way in and out, and listened to an hour long podcast as well.  That’s a solid day in my book.)