Members Of The Quarter: Sam & Melissa
When some of your favorite activities include rock climbing, scuba diving, and road racing motorcycles, you definitely have to stay fit! Which is why you’ll see one of our favorite couples — and our newest Members of the Quarter — Sam Fleming and Melissa Berkoff in the gym training several times a week getting ready for their next big adventure.
To say these two live an active lifestyle is an understatement. Both Sam and Melissa said working out at the gym really began as a way to stay in shape for one of their shared passions, motorcycle road racing.
“We endurance road race, which means we wrestle 180 horsepower, 400 pound motorcycles around a closed-course, paved track for multiple hours,” Sam explains. “But the fuel and tires only last an hour so each rider has to be able to ride, at race pace, for an hour before we can pit the bike and replace the tires and refuel the bike.”
Melissa, who began participating in the sport in her 20s, says she realized she needed a higher overall level of fitness if she wanted to “stop feeling like I had been run over by the van and trailer on the drive home from the races, so I started doing regular cardio and weight training.”
To stay fit, Melissa says she comes to Rock Creek on average 3-5 days a week, or more if she’s training for an upcoming race. You can either find her running on the treadmill or with Hector’s Running Club, taking a group class like BodyPump, or working out with Sam in a small group training class with Craig.
For Sam, he says he tries to make it into the gym about three times a week for 60-90 minute workouts, including those small group training sessions.
“We use the gym to help us maintain a good base level of fitness so we never have to wonder if we’re up for whatever activity we want to do,” Melissa says.
Together, in addition to racing motorcycles, Sam and Melissa also like to ski, rock climb, and SCUBA dive. Melissa also climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro in 2011 and more recently started training for the upcoming Cherry Blossom 10-miler foot race in DC.
“We really like getting outside and particularly like things that get the adrenaline flowing,” Sam says.
And the couple also tries to encourage others in their life to get active too. The two both work at Sam’s software and policy consulting business, where Sam sponsors some Rock Creek Sports Club memberships for his employees.
“Melissa has so much motivation and drive that she set an example for the rest of us at the office so a lot of folks at the office wanted to get gym memberships and follow the path that Melissa has blazed,” Sam explains.