Author: Emily Bryson

This year has been rather insane. It’s hard for me to differentiate between whether the pace of my life has picked up rapidly because I took on co-leadership of this momentum building movement or whether the state of the world has my previously nonexistent anxiety picking up and noticing everything around me. I honestly feel like I blinked a few times since Sydney handed over an extremely thoughtful gift of the “key” to November Project Baltimore last December and yet, here we are December 20^th, 2017. Little did I know what would possibly be in store for me over the coming year and beyond. I have gotten to know SO MANY AMAZING HUMANS who #justshowup to workouts routinely! read more

Once-ish a year November Project Baltimore decides to flip itself upside down and host an evening workout run ending in celebratory fashion. We did things a little differently this year at City Glow! We enlisted the help of some rockstar regulars at November Project and made teams and a scavenger hunt to make way from Rash Field to the Lithuanian Hall. We (Nick, Kaye, Bryson) arrived with about .05 seconds to spare to try get things together because the tribe was real speedy on their scavenger hunt!! Luckily we had spent a few (hundred) hours earlier preparing or maybe just blowing up the balloons and doing gymnastics through the room. City Glow 2017 was a product of many minds coming together to celebrate this community that has us all up and at ’em before the sun wakes up week after week, year after year. We have just one thing to say and then we will hand it over to one of our line leaders to recap the tale from her perspective: WE ARE SO HAPPY YOU’RE ALL HERE!  Christine took this role seriously and we really loved that. She went so far as to create her own business card for the evening with her photo, a map of the route, her team name and ALLLLLLL THE HASHTAGS so no one would forget!! Too much? Not enough? No no, the perfect amount of HYPE and excitement for a fun evening! Take it away, Christine!!  ***************************************************************************************************** The anticipation was imminent, all the HYPE HYPE HYPE with the official announcement at NP Workouts, the FB event, many shares, encouragement, #verbals and word of mouth. A small group of us were tasked with being a part of Team Line Leader and volunteered to take charge of a LIT UP group. It meant a lot to be asked to join in and all the line leader thoughts & ideas already started rolling through my mind. I was eager to get my team and jaunt out on the City Glow Scavenger Hunt. I spent all week thinking up the perfect team name that would be fun, catchy and also POSITIVE as that is how I wanted my team to roll! ! I created Glow Guides that included the map of where we would travel and some pictures of encouragement. =&0=&will be ready for a FUN evening! We started prepping as soon as we heard the date! It started with finding what Amazon had to offer in the GLOW department and gathering up the bright and LIT swag we already had, by the time the night arrived we had put together the perfect outfit that ‘sparked’ our personalities! I have to say my most exciting part of my outfit were my festive light up shoes, worth every penny!! They even have a remote with various color options and speed settings, Whoa, Amazing, right!! They are called SIKELO Led Light Up Running Shoes if you would like to score a pair! You best believe I will be using them for other various occasions such as other NP night-time activities Baltimore’s Light City, Bowling, Holidays and beyond! When everyone gathered at the pavilion at Rash Field the positive energy was all around and everyone looking crafty AF with their own light shows on their bods! The bounce warmed our souls welcoming everyone. The high fives and hugs were all met with huge smiles! Team Line Leaders got on up and with the guidance of our fierce leaders, Nick, Bryson, and Kaye and explaining how the Scavenger Hunt will RUN.*** And they’re off… Leaders ran to stand on colored tarps and people naturally joined teams for their first challenge of the flip, using team work to completely flip over the tarp when 10 people are ON it. Ten other Clues allowed teams to run along the route and complete the mission while taking pictures as proof on an Insta Story. I will say, I appreciate ALL members of team Glo-Getters, we really worked together and some delegation ensued with some volunteers to read the clues, guide if they knew the way and even a team song/chant!! Our team was engaged and worked collaboratively to succeed in finding and posing for all the clues! The camaraderie was present as we worked together and lit up the night on our adventure. We arrived at Lithuanian Hall and rolled in saying/singing our chant to let everyone know of our arrival! All the teams trickled in and were ready for the Glow Get-Down! The Hall was so welcoming and we appreciate them inviting us and the staff being so kind to get us proper libations! We got to enter a sweet drawing and received the official #cityglow #np_Bal keychain. Sweetgreen provided some after run fuel and we had dashing DJ STEVE and Pixilated had their photobooth set up to capture some great shots. I know I was taking photos right and left, LOL. The conversations were flowing and dance floor was hoppin’! Our Leaders had a glorious slide show and shared some highlights of the past years excitement with NP and shout outs to some specific people for  amazing accomplishments. The night continued on with some light up limbo (my personal favorite) and some Light up Jump Rope in normal NP activity mode. City Glow 2017 was such a success for NP_BAL. The positive people came together to light up the night and celebrate our fitness community. I have been an NP Baltimore Tribe Member for going on 4 years and I couldn’t be happier with all the fitness fun and friends I have met. Most of my best friends are from this group of positive people. Thankful for the friendship of Dan & Louie and our Beach Volleyball nights and Beach Trips! Dan and I’s adventure to Peru! Thankful to have met Alison A. now Alison Hines as we ventured on a Mediterranean Cruise then I introduced her to her now husband! Thankful for the Lobaugh Sisters, Emily for setting Marie and I up to be Roommates and the BEST of Roommates/Friends! And to all my other NP peeps, I could go on and on, Love you ALL! Your Vibe attracts Your Tribe! Happy You’re Here November Project! Healthfully Yours, Christine B-Tastic ****RUN pun intended!

INFO FIRST, BLOG SECOND:

TODAY –> WAS DOPE LIKE NICK’S HAT SAID! Sorry if you missed out this morning, we had PRs dropping like hot cakes and a very large crew of racers joined us from Under Armour with coffee and bagels for the hungry racers. Will they be there next week? You know there is only one way to find out..! Not to mention some people cashed in their #PRcoffee at Light Street Cafe. read more

HEYO Happy friday to the dice-game rulers of the world! For those who weren’t there, this morning we played dice games in three big teams. Each individual rolled a die, did the designated hill and workout and then got to add their roll to the running tally for their team. Teams then got to count their score and the team with the most points at the end won…or got to do more of the given exercise during the burnout. read more

TRY NEW THINGS. TRY NEW THINGS (insert any number of cheesy quotes here about trying new things, failing sometimes but succeeded others). I realize as I am typing this that I am preaching to a choir of November Project people who are consistently “just showing up” to things all across their life but my first take away from this morning is keep trying new things. We took a chance this morning and tried a new workout based on bananagrams. We were pretty sure it would work well, keep people moving and ensure some silly interaction. In our super formal debrief we ruled that the workout was a success, people were dripping with sweat within minutes (thanks Baltimore summer humidity!) and burpeeing galore to form more words on the board.  We made someone’s morning because we encouraged keeping score on the scoreboard that hasn’t been used in decades (see photo below). He was super jazzed to be able to let out his inner middle school rebel by “writing on the wall”. Did we anticipate that? Nope definitely not but we are happy to facilitate letting out inner rebels by getting you up and interacting with all sorts of people before your colleagues, neighbors, children or boss even know that it’s Wednesday. read more

As far as workouts go, the beast brought the thunder and we got to see the creative (?) side of the humans we sweat with week after week. Did we plan this workout just to figure out who could do our next art job? Maybe. Do I want to commission anyone in the tribe to mural my currently white unpainted walls in my apartment? No probably not but the jury is still out. Actually we can hold court right now.  (if you want the real info you need to scroll down past all the beast shots)  read more

HAPPY WEDNESDAY! We are happy you’re here! This morning we saw ~20 newbies across the 5:30 and 6:30 and solid groups at both workouts! WELCOME hope to see you all on Friday!

Middle School Dances…you know it goes. It usually starts with lonely wallflowers…songs progress, the DJ excites the crowd, maybe you  make one friend and you’re timidly dancing in your pair. The crowd starts feeling a bit more comfortable, making friends having a good time and soon enough 2 turns into 4 turns into 8 and you’re electric sliding your way to new friendships while tripping over each other pretending you know the moves. No? That was just me? Probably so, but you get the point! read more