Yesterday, was my kind of Sunday. Fun and productive.

It all started with Self Magazine’s Up and Out expo. The event, which highlights fun and/or cutting edge workouts throughout the country, had 11 different NYC-based boutique studios featured — from Barry’s to Flywheel to PureBarre to PlyoJam.

They featured six different class times (3 morning and 3 afternoon sessions) on both Saturday and Sunday; and participants could sign up for one class for $30 or two classes for $50 (for each day). Thanks to my homegirl Kate, who’s company was managing the event, I got a snazzy promotional code to attend for free. YAY!

With so much variety, I wanted to try something different and decided to give CityRow a try. (I love rowing and have done it as a part of other workouts but have yet to attend a pure rowing class). Thankfully, my two friends Lisa and Melanie joined me.

First we started out with some warm-ups and then Alex, our petite instructor with a rocking bod, provided some baseline instructions on proper form and techniques. Side note: She was a stickler about form preferring us to row slower if that meant we could “row pretty”. Additionally, I was impressed at the CityRow staff walking around the room checking on our form.

After practicing how to row, we began an interval workout. First, we set the rower for 50m and had to work as hard and fast as we could to reach 50m. Then, we worked on trying to beat our time through a set of 3 intervals. [My first two times were 11 secs and my last time was 10 – 1 second improvement is improvement!]

After that, we were told to take our time from 50m, multiply it by 2 and then set our rowers to 100m to complete a few intervals. I came in at 20 seconds all three times which is on par with my 50m row.

In between intervals, we were getting off the rower and doing low-impact body weight exercises (push-ups, squats, planks, etc) on the mat directly to the left of our machine.

Towards the end of the workout, we combined our rower and mat moves for four circuits of: 100m row, 10 push-ups, 10 squats, 10 tricep dips and a 30 second plank.

Because the music was blasting and we were constantly moving, the time flew by and before I knew it, the class was over. We did some deep stretching and then I left to meet up with some of my friends who had taken other classes. The verdict? I loved it. It was challenging, yet low-impact enough that my foot didn’t bother me at all. Additionally, it was a super efficient workout. I’d definitely do it again.

After class we walked around the expo a bit, where we got a bunch of freebies and took some pictures before we head to brunch. On the way out, we grabbed a free tote bag FILLED with full size samples of health and fitness products and coupons for free or extremely discounted classes of the sponsoring studios. Seriously, the tote deserves it on post. Haha.

Next, I had brunch at The Grey Dog where I got a yummy breakfast, a hot cup of coffee and a great catch-up session with some of my fav NYC gals. I had to dip out a few mins early for a much needed hair appt, but I got to read my book on the subway (which I’m thoroughly enjoying) and thankfully by the time my hair was done, the rain, that had been lingering all week long had stopped and the clouds had lifted. Hooray!

When I got home, I did a few loads of laundry (including towels and sheets), and organized and walked down all the recycling before finally showering and settling in for the night with the roomie and Booker (my cousin’s dog who I’m pet sitting).

After ordering in dinner, we caught up on last week’s episode of True Detective and then watched the latest episode before I took Booker out for a walk and called it a night.

Such a great Sunday!

What was the highlight of your weekend?