Over the years, Zephyr Creative has built a fantastic network of people from attending events organised by the ever enthusiastic team at UK Active, with the latest event held last month to celebrate their 25th Birthday! Naturally we were there to show our support and make the most of another fantastic opportunity to catch up with some familiar faces and to meet some new ones.
This time around though it was a very different set up to the norm, with the event itself split in to two halves and every delegate given the chance to take part in something active in the morning before the networking dinner in the evening. Our options ranged from a 60 mile road bike, a round of golf (team based) or taking part in two Les Mills classes. But which one should we go for? While Jody, our Creative Director, would quite happily take on the road bike session, there was no way I was getting on to a bike with wheels the width of a leek. So that was a no. Perhaps the golf then?
Even with a little encouragement from the Zephyr team to show us how awesome we could look on the course (cheers guys), we weren’t convinced this would be a good way to go…
In the end we made what we felt was a safe choice and signed up for the two Les Mills classes – GRIT (a 30 minute HIIT class) and their new Sprint class (an indoor cycling class with a HIIT focus, just about to be launched in the UK). We both went in to the first class, Sprint, feeling pretty confident – we’re both regulars at our local gym and no stranger to an indoor cycling class or two so it couldn’t be that hard, right?
30 minutes later we emerged surprised to be alive, looking at each other’s beetroot red faces in a mixture of elation for having made it through and disbelief as to how hard it was. The reality was that yes, it was super hardcore and very different to anything we’d experienced on an indoor bike but it was a fantastic workout. The Instructor was excellent, full of energy and kept us all right at the edge of our own boundaries. It’s one of the workouts you really enjoy afterwards but as we stumbled across the hall straight in to the second class, GRIT, we started to wonder why we didn’t just go for a relaxed morning of golf.
If like me, you’ve never tried GRIT before I would definitely recommend it, it was awesome. It’s one of the best all over body workouts I’ve taken part in and the Instructor was fantastic. It was also over before I knew it, which in my book is a good thing, but I’m not going to lie – I thought I was going to vomit on more than one occasion, and Jody even asked me to roll her in to the recovery position at the end, but we both walked out of there feeling like workout heroes.
Thanks UK Active, and Happy Birthday!