Working Out | Left Coast Contessa

Vacation, sweet vacation. I love it! Today I took advantage of my car and drove to the Santa Monica library to open an account and get some books.

This library is ah-mah-zing! First of all, its super modern and clean looking. There is a little courtyard with a coffee shop and a beautiful water feature and gorgeous desert plants. It’s a total oasis. On the inside the library looks like a bookstore. There is so much light and the books are laid out so nicely. I have love in my heart for the Boston Public Library, but this is a pretty damn good replacement. This time I got several “light and fun” books. I love non fiction but I just can’t read them right now. My brain needs to detox from law school for a while. So I grabbed my books and hit the cafe:

It was so relaxing. Then I went to the Third St. Promenade and took a yoga class at Yoga Co. I was a bit early so I took some pictures along Ocean Ave. More reasons I love California:

Now, that is a beach!!! After kicking around taking pictures I headed over to Yoga Co.

I loved my experience at Yoga Co! The last time I did yoga was 9 months ago and it was Bikram. I like Bikram but its really intense and expensive and isn’t that relaxing. I look a vinyasa flow class which was awesome. I really needed to stretch out after all the running I’ve been doing and this did the trick. Nice, slow, long poses. My hip seriously cracked 20 times.

Overall, the studio is amazing. The classes in two of the rooms are by donation, so I wasn’t sure how nice the studio would be but it was clean and well decorated. The studio themselves are some of the nicest I’ve ever practiced it. My teacher, Joey Soto, was so nice and so is the rest of the staff. I was in the earth room today and my class only had 5 students which was great. I love a small class because the teachers give more attention to the students and the postures. At the end we got to do a 20 min meditation which was relaxing. I haven’t done a full meditation in a long time and it was nice to take stock of my body and my breathing and just let go of any tension and worries. When I left I was so serene.

Even though I haven’t done yoga in a long time I fell right back into it. My teacher said that I have a good practice. I think it because Bikram is very focused on the postures and perfecting them which I was able to translate into my yoga practice. Plus, it totally strengthened my muscles. I can’t wait to do back to Yoga Co!

Can you see it? The finish line is in my sights! There will probably not be any blogging here until Friday. I have my final final in two days (Civ Pro) and Thursday night will be a party night with no blogging. There are so many things I cannot wait to do after I’m done with finals:

Get a car
Read the Sunday New York Times
Go to the beach
Get a library card
Try a donation based yoga studio in Santa Monica
See my little bro, whose visiting LA a week from Thursday!

There is so much to look forward to, not to mention the huge feeling of relief when 1L ends. I mentioned getting back into yoga, and I definitely need to. My hips and knees have been really tight since I got back into running and are starting to hurt slightly. On my off running days I’m going to start going to yoga. Until I get my car I’m doing yoga from home. This presents a slight challenge:

Perhaps “play with Izzy” should be on my list of things to do. I get the feeling she is restless. And hungry. The past two nights she has started counter surfing and trying to eat a bag of bread. I almost always have some type of food on the kitchen counter and its never been an issue.I had to hide all the food!

As mentioned today I had a final. Then I went on an awesome run! My post final runs are always some of my best. After I had roasted brussle sprouts with multi grain pilaf. After I entered my calories into “Lose It!” I realized that with my food, minus the running and walking calories I burned, I still had 900 calories that I could consume. Obviously I went to the promise land: