2010 Fitbloggin' recap

What could be better than a long weekend full of traveling to new places, seeing old friends, meeting new ones, and eating a whole lot of delicious food?

Nothing, really.

Janel and I traveled to Baltimore on Friday night for a weekend full of fitness and blogging. The Fitbloggin' conference was an event put on by fitness bloggers for fitness bloggers that included a whole lot of information on ways to improve your blog, grow your blog audience, and tips and guidance on accurately writing about health information.

The morning started out with Breakfast with the Dietitian(s). Janel and I shared our nutrition insight with those who had questions about tips on eating during pregnancy, how to fuel during a race, and becoming vegetarian.

Our first break-out was a nerdy session on Search Engine Optimization. I was pretty lost for most of it, but gathered the key points:

• Produce posts that are of value to your reader, not just a search engine
• Use key phrases in the title and meta tags for greater SEO
• When all else fails, hire a technical person who can do this stuff for you

Next, there was a panel of media (a rep from a PR agency, a TV news anchor, and a magazine editor) that spoke to the concept of pitching to the media. It was helpful to get a sense of exactly what the media is looking for when pitching a story. Speaking of this, I have an interview for a story I'm to be featured in for a local paper tomorrow! More on this to come.

Lunch! I met up with Gina, whom I met at the Healthy Living Summit in August. Hi Gina!

During the afternoon, we heard from Jeff at POM Wonderful. He queued us into ways to get 100,000 visitors to our blog...

Also heard from some published authors including Jeanette and Caitlin. I submitted a story for Caitlin's book last summer, and can't wait to see it in the book!

My favorite part of the conference was David Grotto, RD, LDN. He wrote 101 Foods That Could Save Your Life and is a great public speaker. And, he's a MAN! Who ever heard of a guyatitian? He shared his journey into the world of nutrition. This was my favorite slide of the presentation:

Post-conference, Janel and I shared some sushi and Jello (not together) while the authors did a book signing.

The Baltimore Inner Harbor is really a beautiful area of the city, and I'd like to come back some time to do some more exploring. I hear a lot of Red Sox Nation members head to Baltimore when the Sox are playing the Orioles. I'd like to go down for this and do some more sightseeing. Road trip, anyone? Ten days until Opening Day, by the way.

On Sunday morning, I headed to brunch with a friend I met at the Healthy Living Summit. Cat took me to one of her favorite brunch spots on the outer city limits called Eggspectations.

So many choices! I ended up going with the Bagel Dore which is a French Toast-like bagel topped with fresh fruit and yogurt. Yum!

Thanks to Roni for putting on an unbelievable conference with impressive sponsors and tons of cool swag including a pair of New Balance sneakers and technical socks and running shorts, a Gruve, drinks from POM Wonderful, an oatmeal breakfast courtesy of Quaker oats, a Fitbloggin' t-shirt from Thrive natural performance, and much much more!

Boston Marathon Running Update

Tomorrow I'm hosting my benefit Trivia Night to hopefully raise enough money to get me over the hump so I can rest easy for the next few weeks as I taper my running, wrap up the fundraising efforts, and amp up to run the Boston Marathon! I'm planning on running a 21-miler on Saturday as my final long run before I do begin the taper process. It will be along the course, so I'll have a better idea of what's in store on race day. I also got my official number and it's a good one (bib #: 25140). As I see it, it's meaningful because I'm 25 when I run the race, I'm #1 in my book, 4 is my favorite number, and I have had zero injuries, and will have zero injuries as I head into the final weeks of training. It's kind of a stretch, but it just feels like a great number to have, and for some reason, this is important.

If you're local and want more information about trivia night tomorrow, check it out here. If you're not local but would like to support me in this very worthy cause, check out my fundraising page here.

Question of the Day: Do you save your race bibs? Do you believe in lucky bib numbers?