We’re always on the lookout for the NPSF members who may be interested in eventually taking over as a Co-leader of NPSF. We want to dive into our day to day and share the expectations so we can give you a better sense of what it entails, and hopefully make you feel empowered to step into leadership and be an effective co-leader of November Project San Francisco. And if after reading it you are interested in leading or have ideas of someone who would be a great fit, fill out this interest form!
NPSF MoM aka Leader Summit Recap
Sup NPSF! We wanted to give you a little bit of a recap of what we did in Seattle and some thoughts on it. The basics: We had 3 days of meetings, some workouts, and some hangout time.
Day 1 started with a run with Des Linden (If you don’t know her, check her out @des_linden on IG – she won the Boston Marathon in 2018, the first time an American woman has won in 33 years, and is overall a badass runner), and then a day of meetings at Brooks HQ talking about Brooks as a company, what their values are, and why they’re amped to partner with NP. In summary, a partnership with NP doesn’t change much for us in SF, but it was cool to hear that their goal is to get more people out and running, regardless of speed, experience level, background, etc, and with the goal of enjoying it (that’s why their motto is #runhappy) – which we think lines up pretty well with NP’s goal.
The Making of a 3rd NPSF Co-Leader
Happy Friday NPSF! As we mentioned this morning, we’re stoked to be bringing on a new leader next week. We think having a 3rd will allow us to get re-energized and have more bandwidth to plan cool workouts, events, and collabs. While we’ll wait until Wednesday to share more about who it is, we want to take this opportunity to share some of our thought process behind picking a leader – some of you have asked in the past about leadership selection, what goes into it, who we consider, and pointed out ways we can improve the process.
All the Announcements (SF)
After we tricked you into working super hard on Monday by throwing a game of tag into the workout, we got an onslaught of messages telling us how sore you all were. We love hearing that, so we decided to make Wednesday just as hard. Agility is something that Zip used to do with Tweeners back in the day, bringing his DI soccer skills to the table, but we figured it was time to bring it back to the main stage today. And unless you’re Ryan “Speedster” Scura, you probably realized that it’s harder than it looks. Don’t worry, we’ll be bringing it back soon enough.
We have a bunch of announcements for you:
This Friday, hills are in the East Bay at Claremont Canyon. Meeting spot is here. Let’s show some love to NP OAK and all the East Bay badasses who come west for Friday hills almost every week.
Next Friday is the main event – Sunrise 6k! Treasure Island, 6am, NPSF and NPOAK face off in the annual Sunrise 6k race. Not to be missed!
We have a carpool doc for you that has a tab for this Friday (Claremont Canyon) and next Friday (Sunrise 6k). Add yourself, add your friends, add your enemies. Bring em all!
NP Summit is September 14-16. Here’s a doc you can use to find a relay team and coordinate with other tribes. We also want to hear your stories. During Summit, they will be filming unique stories from people across the 49 NP cities. Have something interesting to share? Add yourself in this form! Even if you’re not sure if it meets the cut, or you aren’t going to Summit, we definitely want to hear from you. These answers will stay only with us 3 until you tell us otherwise.
Don’t worry, we made a calendar for you guys to help keep track of all this good stuff. Check it out in online here, or use this link to add it to your own calendars.
Happy Wednesday Party People!
Welcome to Sunny California (SF)
So you know how people who don’t live in California think that California is one big beautiful, sunny, warm beach? Well nothing like coming to SF during the summer to crush that fantasy. That’s what we did to the leaders from all of the other NP cities that were in town before the leader summit this weekend.Insert the Mark Twain quote about his coldest winter being a summer in SF here. You expected nice weather? Well you get fog. And lots of hills (sorry Virginia Beach for the rude awakening). But throw in an NP workout with some box jumps and planks and you still get a lot of happy people, so at least we gave you that.
Friday Hills are at Mount Davidson with our illustrious guest leader Perry Wang. 6:28am at the Vista Point https://goo.gl/maps/m9pAq5yyjrR2.
This Shit Is So Good You Wake Up Early on a Holiday (SF)
Happy Fourth of July SF! While normal people might think “I get a day off of work, I guess I should sleep in and chill”, you crazy humans show up at Alta Plaza Park at 6:30am (or 5:30am – we see you Vivek and Henry!) to take on the day and absolutely crush a difficult workout. That’s what I love about you, especially since Zip and Tony are off biking across the continent and I was worried I’d end up there alone.
Because I’m left to my own devices this week, I decided to step up my photo game. You might of seen me running around with a fancy camera. Did I look like I knew what I was doing? That’s good, but I didn’t. Those of you who I made stop mid star jump and do it again multiple times (i.e. Perry) so I could get the perfect shot probably already know that. TIL that having a fancy camera doesn’t actually make you a good photographer – working on it!
I tried to make the workout form a flag if you used Strava. Alice just sent me hers, and my assessment is that it looks like more of a fork but I think I’m ok with that for today too. So in that spirit, eat up that BBQ, drink that beer, listen to the fireworks that you inevitably won’t be able to see through the fog. And then I’ll see you all Friday at Moraga Steps, meet at the top at Grandview Park at 6:27am https://goo.gl/maps/AG5zAmjf6Ak. See you then!
We’re Proud of You [+ a note on our move!] (SF)
Today we celebrated the last week of Pride month with a special Pride workout led by our core member, Jide. We loved seeing your rainbow tags fly up those stairs and watching you look each other in the eye to say “I’m proud of you”. Make sure you thank Jide for making it happen, we’re sure your quads will be thanking him tomorrow.
We wanted to add a quick note on the move to Dolores Park, since we’ve been getting a lot of questions. November Project is meant to be for anyone who wants to get fit, meet great people, and discover an awesome, supportive community. We’ve been thinking about how we can be better at making NP more accessible to and inclusive of people from different backgrounds, neighborhoods, ages, races, and fitness levels. One thing we realized (with feedback from the tribe) is that our workout locations were not very conducive to that. While we love the views and versatility of Fort Mason as much as you do, Dolores Park is also iconic, gives us a chance to shake things up, is closer to more neighborhoods, and is accessible via Bart. This will give people who haven’t yet come to a workout a chance to check us out and see what we’re about.
So find all those friends/co-worker/family members that haven’t come to a workout yet because of the location. Tell them the good news and bring them! Yolo’ing in Dolo this weekend? Meet a stranger and tell them to #justshowup Monday morning! Our first workout in a new location doesn’t happen every day, show up on Monday to see what we have in store for you!
Before we get ahead of ourselves, Friday hills will be at Corona Heights Park. Meet at the flat part by the peek. Here’s a pin that took me 10 minutes to find using the street view before I realized I could’ve just used satellite https://goo.gl/maps/3mPeBtVfBHC2. Tech is hard. Happy Hump Day!
This Is How We Do It (SF)
So I’ve noticed a trend in the past couple weeks since Laura left us where people like to talk about how hard her workouts were. And don’t get me wrong, I remember many a McGreen workout where I could barely get out of my chair at work, but I also recall a few other hard workouts too. And don’t think just because Laura’s off to greener pastures that we’re going to let you off the hook. We can kick your ass into gear too when we want to.
That’s what today’s workout was about. Two shorter workouts to drive up the intensity, because as Courtney said, doing either of them for 30 minutes would’ve been miserable. JMak looked mad at me from the start. Sam Goldstein showed up and smoked everyone on the burpees. Doing RDLs felt like a relaxing vacation (stretch those hamstrings though or you’ll pay for it tomorrow). And you still had the energy for some solid dance moves at the end. I look forward to the posts and virtual fist shaking coming my way. But you all went after it and I appreciate that very much.
In case you didn’t get enough this morning, join us tonight for a Bay to Breakers Dress Rehearsal at Alamo Square at 6:30pm. Wear your costumes to test them out, or wear a B2B shirt, or wear nothing if you want, we don’t really care we just want you there. There will be a fun workout, there will be nuun, there will be prizes, and there will be a happy hour after. Sounds like my kind of Wednesday night!
Friday we’re at Sutro Baths, hoping to woo the out of town visitors who are here for B2B weekend into moving here like the rest of the NP world. We want all your people!
Meet at the Lands End Parking Lot at 6:27am. https://goo.gl/maps/8yjgXebDv5N2
The Fittest Tribe (SF)
A couple of months ago, November Project leaders across the land voted on superlatives for their fellow leaders. There was Shittiest Winter, Best Hometown Pride, probably some other things that I don’t know because I wasn’t a leader yet. While San Francisco is the best city in the world, we have a winter that’s anything but shitty and it’s very few people who live here’s hometown. But one thing San Francisco is known for is being a fit city, and your fearless leaders were voted The Fittest Leaders in the NP Kingdom. Now while I can’t take credit for this because I wasn’t even a leader at the time, I will say Paddy, Zip, and Laura seem pretty damn fit. But when you actually think about it, do leaders ever actually workout? Or do we just wave our hands enough in front of you guys that you think we’re the ones doing the work? I took a look through old photos to investigate.
Here’s Paddy and Zip making a breakfast feast while you all toiled away at PR Monday a few weeks back.
Here’s Zip and Paddy laughing on the steps while you see our badass tribe members sweating in the background.
And here’s Paddy, Zip, and even Laura standing in front of you all forcing you to squat all the way down to sit on the stairs after a leg crushing workout to listen to us ramble about stuff for a while, only to force you to get back up on those sore legs once we decide you’ve heard enough of us.
So if you look at it, I’m not really sure we’re the fittest. I’m pretty sure you’re the fittest, and we just take the credit. At least we’re doing a squat here, but mostly we’re just talking shit.
So thanks for keeping us looking good, tribe. We owe you one. Come to hills on Friday as we continue our Seven Summits Vert Challenge with a local favorite, Telegraph Hill. Meet at Coit Tower, 6:27am.
Happy Pi Day, NP World!
Happy Pi Day! As someone who loves both math and delicious sweets, Pi Day has always been my jam, so I took the opportunity to share that excitement with another one of my loves, NP. The workout was chock full of pi references. Early gang did Clayton’s infamous little loops and some “circular” exercises. 6:30’s workout included a lap around the park with partner exercises at every corner. The lap was supposed to be a circle, because pi. Cat brought to my attention that it’s more of a square but also pointed out that the formula for the area of a circle is pi r *square*d, so really it all worked out in the end. For the exercises, the number you did for each made up the digits of pi (3 hoistees, 14 partner pushups, 15 around the worlds, you get the idea), which was also Cat’s idea, so let’s be real she gets all the credit for this workout.