Member Of The Quarter: Valerie Ross
Valerie Ross is a perfect example of the fact that, with time, patience, and enough hard work, you can go from 10+ years of inactivity to winning a planking contest against a naval officer and hiking Machu Picchu! That’s why she is our newest Rock Creek Sports Club Member of the Quarter.
Growing up, Valerie loved playing sports, from volleyball and track & field in high school and intramural teams in college and law school. However, once she started working full time, Valerie admits — “I spent about 10 years not very active at all.”
When her friends convinced her to join them on an Alaskan biking trip, Valerie decided she was going to have to start training if she was going to be able to bike 30 miles a day, for a week, including some pretty steep Alaskan hills! That’s when she joined Rock Creek Sports Club.
“After three or so months of working out regularly at the gym, I went on the trip and was able to keep up with my friends and the other guests on the trip,” Valerie says. “Once I returned from the trip, I realized how much better I felt working out regularly, so I kept at it – and I have taken a number of other active vacations that I would not have been able to enjoy if I did not work out regularly.”
These days, Valerie tries to make it into the gym five days a week, including the 7:15AM spin class on Saturday mornings, and once-a-week training sessions with Sharon Sellers.
“I have been training once per week with Sharon for years; she constantly comes up with new ways to push me to my limits,” Valerie says. “Until I started training with Sharon, I didn’t realize there were quite so many varieties of push-ups!”
In order to discover something new, Valerie has also taken a couple of Small Group classes, including TRX and Beginning Yoga.
“I’d been thinking for a while about trying yoga, but was intimidated by going into a regular class without knowing the basics,” Valerie explains. “The beginning yoga class was a perfect introduction, and now I’ve been making it to yoga classes about once a week.”
And that’s not all!
Because Valerie finds herself traveling a few times a month for work, she always packs her workout clothes. As she explains it – if she’s going to go through the trouble of packing her sneakers, she’ll make time to head to the hotel gym, or head out for a run.