A couple of weekends I went to FitBloggin. This was my second year going to this conference and I was super excited to see of my blogging friends. Read the recap Fitbloggin’ 12! So FitBloggin is the fitness bloggers conference where we exercise three times a day, hug everyone you see, cry about your weight loss journey and get lots of swag from sponsors. Sometimes you might even learn some fundamentals about blogging, i.e. SEO. Last year my goal was to go to every session and learn everything that I could about blogging. This year it was more about cultivating relationships with my fellow blogger and with brands, I also signed up to an Ignite Fitness presentation. Come to find out that will haunt me until the next FitBloggin but I’ll leave that for another blog post. This year FitBloggin was in Portland Oregon a.k.a. home the food trucks and Voodoo doughnuts. I have not been to Portland until now and I was very excited to be there. We stayed at the Nines hotels which was this swanky boutique hotel above Macys and cross the street from Nordstrom’s. The hotel was in the epicenter of everything. Now that I set the tone of Fitbloggin’ 13, let’s get into the nitty-gritty of what I experienced.
Welcome Mixer
Before the welcome mixer a few of us got together at the bar for drinks and the Hot Monkey challenge. It felt good to laugh and do some catching up with some friends. At the welcome mixer Susan from Foodie Mcbody did all of these icebreakers and it was nothing but hugs, hugs, and more hugs. Susan had us doing all types of Icebreakers! From a version of speed dating, to line up in order of zip codes, to reading what everyone is excited/nervous about FitBloggin.
Boot Camp
The next day we had a 6 am boot camp led by Erin from Dig Deep, Play Hard and she’s was sweating for two. The cool thing about boot camp was it was in pioneer square the uncool part was the police giving our Erin a hard time about the chalk on the grounds. So a few of us gave her a hand to clean it up… Don’t the police know that when it rains later that night the chalk will get washed away?
During boot camp a news crew came out and recorded us. After the work out the invited us to come in and tour the station. Keep It Up, David and I got to sit behind the desk. Then everyone wanted to join us. David is a pretty cool guy; make sure you go check out his blog.
Zumba
Later came Zumba and you know me I’m really not a Zumba type of guy, (Read my Zumba experience from FitBloggin’12). I’ll do it once a year and that’s at FitBloggin. They had a cool idea this year though… They let all the FitBloggers who are certified Zumba instructors lead a song. Check out the Footage below:
A discussion and a workshop
After Zumba I went to a discussion titled: “Dealing with Your “Before” when you reach your “After.” It was led by Kelly Espitia of Curvy Fit Girl and Dani Holmes-Kirk of Weight Off Of My Shoulders. Check out the intro to the session.
I’m not going to go in-depth about the session because I could do a whole blog post about it, but I would say this… There was a lot of crying going on in this session. If you’re interested check out the live blog. Then I headed to a workshop titled: Writing the Perfect Pitch run by Kymberly Williams-Evans and Alexandra Williams of Fun and Fit, Jamie Walker of Fit Approach, Margo Donohue of Brooklyn Fit Chick. One of my goals this year is to establish relationships with brands, what other to do that than sending them a well written pitch. Here are a few pictures from the session:
Dinner Time
After the discussion and workshop it was time for dinner! Kimberly of Manifest Yourself and Schnelle of Brooklyn Active Mama, took the Portland by storm, looking for food trucks. Let’s just say that we found a few, i.e. the brunch box and the cultured caveman. My inner fay boy was jumping for joy on how amazing the food looked, while my outer fat boy was trying to make conscious meal choices. Let’s just say my inner fat boy won this battle.
After dinner we headed to Voodoo doughnuts and the line was crazy long. When we finally got in to the shop, I ordered a two glaze doughnuts and a maple bacon bar. Yea buddy its fat boy approved.
Welp I think this is a good place to stop… Stay tuned for part two of my FiBloggin’13 recap.
