My flight landed right around dinnertime Tuesday night. The Vegas airport cracks me up. Thanks to slot machines right at the gates, you instantly know you’re in Vegas.

Balloon at check-in, because why not? I was staying at the host hotel for IDEA World, which was SO SO SO nice. Also, not a terrible price!

(View from my room.)

I went to this conference 2 years ago and had an absolute blast. The energy actually felt life-changing. On the way to my hotel, I was thinking about where I was 2 years ago versus where I am now. Had 2 years ago Aurora seen what I am and what my life is now, she honestly wouldn’t have changed a thing. While this was my last hurrah before vet school (in two weeks…eeek), I really felt like I was living the life. I got to spend all day learning and doing what I love, and got to do the whole “fun young person thing” at night.

The first thing I did was grab a Greek salad from the hotel cafe. I got ketchup for the chicken, and the cashier definitely made fun of me for that…#no shame.

Knowing I had a big week ahead, I called it an early night. I spent some time wandering around the giant hotel, and found a room with the biggest sports TVs and every imaginable game on. It’s for betting, but whatever. I definitely spent some time there pretty much every day. I love my boys!

Before I knew it, Wednesday morning was here! I did a pre conference Schwinn indoor cycling certification. I am currently certified through Spinning, but my certification is expiring in a few months and I chose not to renew it again. I feel like Schwinn is a little bit more in line with the future, and I was no longer able to find any Spinning in-person workshops for continuing education. And honestly I think a lot of the online options for credit are a waste of money for what you gain.

I packed a ton of food, and grabbed a few fresh things at the airport when I arrived. Day 1 breakfast was yogurt with cheerios and a nectarine that I brought. I knew I could have something a little bit heavier because it would be a few hours before I would be riding. Most days I had a Luna bar for breakfast.

Let’s do it—Day 1!

The certification was 8-5, and taught by 2 of Schwinn’s top master trainers, Jeffrey Scott and Amy Dixon. I went to some of their workshops at IDEA last time!

We learned the basics of bike fit, as well as the main tenets of a good class. We had 2 bike rides during the day, one right before lunch and one at the end of the day.

For lunch, I packed food from home before I left. A sunbutter and peach jam sandwich on GF bread, plus snap peas.

I had a bar in the afternoon, as well as a GF sea salt chocolate chip cookie that my sister brought me from the airport restaurant at SFO with amazing GF cookies.

I want to talk a little bit about Schwinn, and the difference between Schwinn and Spinning, because I am now currently certified in both. Both are based on riding like you would outside: no gimmicks; if you wouldn’t do it on a real bike, we won’t do it in spin class. This is definitely how I teach. Honestly, I think I teach about halfway between Spinning and Schwinn (maybe because I went to a number of Schwinn workshops before!). The biggest difference is in class structure and music selection. Spinning I think is a little bit more old school: you mimic a real ride with hills and flat road, and music is not necessarily the banging modern music; a lot of times they encourage instrumental. Schwinn is more of what you might see at Equinox or a high end gym: while it is divided into hills and flats, it’s more time interval based, both for sprint efforts and steady state. They also really emphasize the science behind each type of work, and HIIT (high intensity interval training) is a big focus. This day honestly really solidified my knowledge, and my identity as an instructor. Here are a few of my big takeaways:

-Most people have their seats too low. A longer leg=more power. With one foot at the top and one foot at the bottom of a pedal stroke, there should be a slight bend in the knee (Spinning always says a 30 degree angle).

-Schwinn really emphasizes their “coaching pyramid.” The main tenets are content (how long you do something, the intensity, the leg speed), clarity (what the ride is) and perspective (where you are in the class). The frame is coaching.

-It’s really important to let riders know exactly what they’re doing and what’s coming (in the near future), as well as give a brief overview of what the class is going to include that day. This is something I really emphasize as an instructor for a couple reasons: 1. It drives me crazy when I’m in a spin class and it’s unclear what I’m supposed to be doing and 2. People will work harder if they have a known end point. For instance, if you tell riders they have to sprint for 15 seconds only, they will go all out.

-Build the class before the music. I used to find music as I built the class, but lately I’ve been leaning ore towards building the class first anyways. It’s just more efficient. I let the music inspire the class sometimes, but I do think I will build the class first more in the future.

-Have a purpose or a theme of class. This lets the students know what they should be doing, and it gives class a direction. It could be something like “HIIT intervals,” or “steady state,” or even something fun, with themed music, or simulating a ride outside. (Anybody remember my Thanksgiving ride that I taught in a turkey hat, and simulated Thanksgiving day?)

-Schwinn encourages teaching with a rate of perceived exertion. Instead of complicated numbers, it’s easy, moderate, hard, or breathless.

Things that I intend on working on: build my classes with more of a purpose, and my overall presence in the room (more on that in another post!).

The two rides were incredible. The instructors are the best of the best, and therefore they really were able to push and motivate me! I left totally beat, even though it was only 2 classes (note I’m saying “only” 2….there’s a little foreshadowing for ya!).

In terms of outside of conference activities, my amazing sister decided to come up and stay with me for one night (hence the GF airport cookies), so we made the most of it! She found a fancy restaurant for us to go to in the Wynn hotel. *Note: a lot of places in Vegas had dress codes that were definitely enforced, i.e. no shorts/flip flops.

We got all dolled up and enjoyed walking around Wynn en route to Andrea’s.

I’ve never been inside the Wynn before, and had no idea it was so fun and whimsical (and elegant, of course). (I’ve been to Vegas a number of times, but always for softball tournaments in high school, so I mostly laid eyes on the strip and didn’t go inside places).

This is how you know it’s fancy: they asked us if we had a water preference—Fiji, San Pelligrino, or “house water.”<- That cracks me up.

Our dinner came with a little cucumber garlic gazpacho taste.

To start, we got truffle salt edamame. Why have I never thought of this before?? Amazing.

We got matching beautiful cocktails. They had Asian pear, lime, hibiscus syrup (and I couldn’t tell you what else). Yum!

For my meal, I got a salad with sesame ginger dressing and fried scallions, and an avocado roll.

Then, we headed to Paris for a rooftop beer park, with over 100 beers!

The inside of Paris was super trippy. The ceilings were painted like sky and it was actually really realistic!

And of course, here’s the eiffel tower:

I liked the beer park a lot. Maybe it was because it was a Wednesday, but it was super casual and we had a chance to just talk. I got a brown beer that I really liked! My sister got a vanilla stout, but the stout was light in color…interesting!

After, my sister wanted to walk across the street to the Cosmopolitan because of their “wildly inventive” drinks and giant chandeliers.

Folks, wildly inventive was correct. My sister got something with passionfruit and curry (and coconut, so I couldn’t try it), and then we split the craziest drink. I’m not kidding. We looked at the menu, and ordered the drink without any idea what any of it actually meant. After getting the drink, we realized it was Willy Wonka themed. I’ll get the description for you off their website:

I started with squats to a fairly heavy weight, and then settled into 135# for my typical back squat workout of 2 squats every 30 seconds for 8 minutes. I followed that up with the workout on the card, the Metcon Honky Tonky. Yeah. My legs were pretty much done. SO naturally the logical step was to move on to RDLs and calf raises. Go hard or go home, right? I finished with a few sets of single leg squats and hamstring rolls. Can you say JELLO? Legs=demolished. 

Breakfast:Plain greek yogurt topped with granola and frozen blueberries. Plus a biscuit. I LOVE BISCUITS!

Aaaand here’s lunch: salad with a hard boiled egg and garlic hummus.After lunch, I had the pleasure of taking my Ochem midterm. It seemed difficult, but crossing my fingers, I think I pulled it off. 

After class, this was waiting for me in my room:It’s Big-Little week! My big is awesome, I can already tell. I got more mangos today, and here’s what I got last night:She knows me too well! Mangos and avocados?? I’m soo spoiled!

After a quick snack of freeze dried edamame and a mango, I went outside to do some sprints and abs (see workouts above). The sprint workout was from my old agility/conditioning coach I used to train with my sophomore and junior year of high school. Is it weird that I get nostalgic about workouts? And then I started to really miss softball. I miss everything about it, pitching, hitting, running after balls. And yes, I did love softball conditioning. Sigh.

Before dinner, I whipped up some Overnight Oats. I’ve never had them before, but given I’m on a yogurt kick, and my last yogurt expires tomorrow, I figured I’d give it a try. I seem to have lost my almond milk…so I used sunflower seed milk. It’s not my favorite, but that’s ok. I also discovered after dinner when I was eating a banana with sunflower seed butter, that I have a nearly empty jar! So that’s going to happen. I swear, either a) my room eats things or b) I’m going to find a ton of random things when I move out (in three weeks!!!). Also missing: a bowl (I only had 2 so this is bad…), 2 knives, and now my almond milk. 

Dinner was very unsatisfying (which explains why it was followed by the banana and a Thinkthin Divine bar). I had some avocados in the fridge which I thought went bad a while ago, so I brought those to dinner. The avocados were fine, but even they could not save a sub-par dinner. Our dining hall is so bad that NO ONE goes there anymore. It was pretty empty. How can a salad with chicken be so unsatisfying?Plus parsnips. Those were good, I’ll give them that. I eat so much more at the dining hall when the food is bad, ironically. So I made a vow to never eat there for dinner again for the rest of the year. I brought some spinach back to my room so I can make an omelet for dinner tomorrow, now that I know I have some decent avocados. 

Also, I haven’t forgotten about this Miranda! Thanks for nominating me for the Versatile Blogger award!

The Rules:

1) Add The Versatile Blogger award photo on a blog post
2) Thank the person (or animal) who presented you with the award and link back to him or her in your post
3) Share seven things about yourself
4) Pass the award along to 15 favorite bloggers. Contact the chosen bloggers to let them know about the award.