“We are going to have fun, but you will break a sweat,” noted Chris Geier, Director of Group Athletics, just before we left for our OutRun.

This turned out to be a huge understatement – there was a lot of fun, and  A LOT of sweat.

Before pic: not sweaty.

Roam is the hottest new fitness trend in DC – based in a hotel (the Savoy Suites in Glover Park), it offers the standard equipment and personal training you’d expect to see in a first-class gym, but also provides OutRuns.  OutRuns are trail runs and high-intensity interval training combined – there are planned stops at designated locations along the path for pushups, dips, burpees, hip thrusts…and less conventional exercises like parachute sprints, wood chopping, and resistance band work.

“Jogging and other steady-state exercise pushes your body to move toward efficiency – your metabolism, heart rate, and breathing will acclimate to save energy.  Interval training pushes you past those boundaries so you can get faster and stronger,” says Chris.  “In this workout, you’ll learn to use the running time to recover.”

If running doesn’t sound like “recovery” to you, don’t worry – I was a little dubious too!  Fitness and running bloggers Ericka and Marlesa were there for the workout, and have way more races under their belts than me.  Both Chris and Ghraham King (Roam’s founder) are in the upper echelons of fitness and have been in the industry for years as athletes and CrossFit coaches, respectively.  But with some bumping music and lots of high fives, it was easy to feel mentally comfortable while extremely physically challenged…let me take you through the morning:

Our fearless leaders, Chris and Graham:

Getting Ericka strapped in:

Just starting off with a light jog…the square on the back of Chris’s bag is a portable speaker that can really crank!
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Chris demonstrating some jumping switch lunges:

Tricep dips on a fallen log:

Hip thrusts on the log…Ericka and I were laughing throughout this one…

The trails through Glover park are awesome – plenty of terrain changes, creeks, rocks and roots to challenge balance:

Chris demos an 8-count burpee:
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Chris gives us a quick demo of the resistance band exercise (sidebar, any guesses on how much these houses go for?!):

Ericka looks like she has some mixed martial arts training…I promise I was not goofing off here…

GET THOSE KNEES UP!

Sometimes a good workout means you don’t look that cute:

More dips (these runs would be a great way to train for an obstacle race!):

Run run run:

It’s about to get real:

Mar and Ericka looking pretty fierce, while I do some band exercises in the background:

As a lady running through Glover Park alone, an ax could have self defense as well as exercise purposes.

Last stop: a beautiful meadow, complete with grazing fawns.  GRAZING FAWNS.

And also parachute sprints:
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We finished up with mimosas back at the hotel!

I would highly recommend anyone who wants an invigorating challenge and the chance to see some nature in DC to try an OutRun – they’ll be opening a Dupont location in a few months!  As they say at Roam, “think outside the box – metaphorically and literally!”

When was the last time you did a workout that was “outside the box?”  What was it?