Awww…snap! Summer is in season, my friends! Before we jump into June, let’s rewind on May. Check out the list below of my May favorites – places, products and passions. As per usual, if you have a suggestion of a workout, product or recipe I should try in June, let me know in the comments. Happy kick-off to summer!Roll out the red carpet, here’s the top 10 places, products and pastimes from May!

1.) Favorite Places to Lolly Dolly: every spring I look forward to the opening of the Green City Market Lincoln Park. It’s my favorite farmer’s market in Chicago for the rows of fresh produce, divine bits like fresh tamales and a great spot for Moose to meet new pooch friends. I love how the market evolves as new produce pops up throughout the season!

2.) Favorite Brunch Spot: Mindy’s Hot Chocolate is a staple in Wicker Park and while it may be most famously known for the rich cups of hot cocoa and decedent desserts, it’s one my absolute favorite brunch spots for its rotating seasonal menu of fresh fare like the creamy spring pea risotto I had there recently. My husband is a die hard french toast fan and inhaled the strawberry rhubarb french toast with sweet cream. I’m more of a savory brunch fan, but it was hard to keep my hands off that french toast.

3.) Favorite Workout: with all that brunching, something needs to offset the decadence. This month, the first of my favorite workouts was flowing to Cardi B at Y7Studio in NYC. This hip hop yoga studio gave me all the positive yoga vibes.  And I absolutely NEED every piece of apparel on their racks, including the “I make yoga moves” tank.

4.) Favorite Workout Jams: nothing gets the body moving like good tunes. Get my personally curated playlist featuring my favorite mash-ups of May on SoundCloud. Catch these songs as I return to teaching spin as a guest instructor at Cycle X Studio Monday mornings in June! First class is free!

5.) Favorite Beauty Hack: when you’ve got a 9-5 and side hustles as a blogger and spin instructor, time is a hot commodity. Thanks to Amazing Lash Studio Lincoln Park, I can roll out of bed looking gorgeous with lashes for days.

6.) Favorite Indulgence: my willpower may have been at a low, but I did not regret stocking up on a stack (literally) of Vosges Haut Chocolate Bars at O’hare earlier in the month. I wouldn’t have expected it, but my favorite of the bunch was the Coconut Ash & Banana Super Dark Chocolate Bar. It was just the right amount of island sweet to offset the bitter, but rich dark chocolate. Close second was the Matcha Green Tea & Spirulina Super Dark Chocolate Bar. Give me all the antioxidants and superfoods!

7.) Favorite New Product: The Trader Joe’s Cauliflower Gnocchi is worth the hype peeps! Seared in a pan, it had the perfect crispy exterior and pillowy center. Paired with a simple sage butter and…perfection! Get the sage butter dEATs here.

8.) Favorite Workout: there were too many favorites this month to pick just one, but the Peloton Tread class absolutely killer! I literally booked the class before I even booked my flight when I had a business trip to NYC earlier this month. Now the wait begins until the new tread is released this fall! Check out my blog post on the class and treadmill here.

9.) Favorite Way to Restore: Chill Meditation + Massage in Chicago’s River North turned this busy bee into a believer. Living in the moment and tuning out the noise is not my forte, but Chill helped me to see the light and pause in the moment. Walked out feeling the sweet sweet nirvana of a mind at rest. For more on my experience, check out my post.

10.) Favorite Recipe: it’s always SO HARD to choose just one because I love all of my babies! But, if I had to pick (which I force myself to pick just one), it’s hands down the vegan red pepper crema that I paired with everything from fresh veggies, to strips of baked avocado in tacos and even pasta. This one is a must try, my friends!

I hope you enjoyed these May favorites. Excited to see what June brings and hope you are too!

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The smell of freedom and teen spirit…oh, you thought I was talking about those Friday feels? Throwin’ back to that epic rock bootcamp at the new Peloton Tread studio in NYC. Instructor Olivia Amato kicked my butt with 45 minutes of chasing down dreams and breaking down barriers in this new HITT format. And I loved every *ss kicking minute. Dare to check out more below.

Peloton, the ingenius masterminds behind the at-home bike / in-home studio experience are treading into new territory, literally. This May, the company that brought live streaming cycling into your average home broke new ground by launching a treadmill. I was a runner before I was a cyclist, so I was beyond stoked to hear the news and to see how Peloton would up the ante. With so many other treadmills and bootcamp classes on the market, was there room to do anything different? The verdict: did. not. disappoint. In fact, I’m using this post to make my case to my husband that we NEED the Peloton Tread.

Let’s talk about the treadmill first. My favorite feature is the spin dial that controls your incline and speed on each side of the handle bars. You literally spin the wheel to increase/decrease your speed or incline in seconds. No more holding down a button FOREVER to get to that sprint speed – just whip the dial and you’re going from a comfortable 6 to an all-out 12 (let’s be real, 11 is my max).

Also, the shock-absorbing slat belt with ball bearing system (vs rigid belt) is similar to Woodway treadmills and helps to absorb shock. Joint issues are what caused me to switch from running as my main activity to cycling, but this technology is game changing. “Pound the pavement” is no longer in my vocabulary thanks to Woodway and Peloton.

Finally, the 32″ screen is easy to see/read without being obnoxiously large.

So let’s talk the live class. I’m that overly enthusiastic front row person who wants to see EVERYTHING. And OMG, Olivia ran the whole dang time! And not a lolly dolly jog, this girl was movin’. We started out with the run portion. There were two segments of running and two segments of free weights. This was a rock bootcamp, so I was definitely digging the Green Day and Rage Against the Machine to work through some weekday angst. You choose your own speed, but are given guidance as to how you should feel. And yes, it is a competition. It’s always a competition The run had me pushing my pace and the weight segments had me cursing under my breath. The only drawback was that we didn’t do a lot of incline work on the tread, but I imagine that I would get more variety with additional classes.

All in all, it was the kind of torture that you love to hate. Peloton Tread studio, when you coming to Chicago???

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