#FirstsNeverStop Part One: Arrival, UA Headquarters, Camping and More!

Okay, I’ve finally sorted through the hundreds of photos I have from my time in Oregon with Under Armour and Samsung and I’m ready to start my recaps of #FirstsNeverStop. To be completely transparent, I’ll disclose that my trip was covered by Under Armour and they set us up with gear for the experience but I did not receive financial compensation to participate, nor was I asked to write these blog posts in exchange for the trip. It was just such an amazing experience that I have to share it with you!

My initial plan was to wrap it all into one post but 70 edited photos later…I’ve decided to break it up into several (that will be published in quick succession!).

For today…arrival in Portland, a visit to the Under Armour HQ and our surprise camping expedition the first night.

I left Charlotte on Halloween morning. Under Armour sent me an outfit that I was instructed to travel in as well as a Samsung Galaxy S8 phone and a Samsung GearFit2 Pro watch. We received details on how to set our phone and watch up and what apps we needed to download for the trip. My travel outfit was super comfy and here are links to the shoes, tights, t-shirt and pullover.

Now is a great time to also let you know that while this trip was supposed to be a “surprise of firsts,” I was provided details on what we would be doing prior to the trip so that I could clear the travel and activity with my doctor. The team at Under Armour was SUPER accommodating of my pregnancy and went out of their way to make sure that I knew everything was scalable and I could skip out on anything I wasn’t comfortable with or didn’t feel up to. I was 12 weeks on this trip.

I arrived in Portland shortly before 3 p.m. and was picked up by a driver who would be with my small group for the duration of the stay. He took us to the Under Armour Portland headquarters as our first stop. Though I had a general gist of the physical activities we’d be doing, I had no clue what the details of the experience were and oh my gosh, were they ever GREAT and keeping things a secret and surprising us at every turn.

For example, when we arrived we were told to remove our toiletries from our luggage and to leave everything else in the van – purses, luggage, personal items, etc. They said we’d see it again the next day but not to worry because they’d provide everything we needed. I was like okaaaayyyy…let me just make sure I have my prenatal vitamins. 😉

In the vans that picked us up at the airport were backpacks with our names on them. We brought them into the headquarters and were told to change into the outfit we found inside.

Trying but failing at hiding the baby bump!

The first order of business was a crash course in how to use our Samsung Galaxy S8 phones paired with our Samsung GearFit2 Pro watches. A team from Samsung took us through a short but helpful presentation.

After that, we were surprised to see Olympic track athlete and Under Armour sponsored athlete Natasha Hastings roll in to talk to us! She was super chill and real and just shared a little with us about her training.

She is just so gorgeous and friendly…and an incredibly inspiring runner.

I guess that was supposed to motivate us for our first activity, which was a 3 minute max effort on the WATT bike to find our maximum heart rate. We used our GearFit2 Pro watches to track this.

I was all smiles for this after I whispered to our trainer that I was pregnant while he was yelling at us (lovingly) to push harder. I was definitely NOT going to attempt to find my max heart rate at 12 weeks. I don’t think that qualifies as “keeping things conversational” as my doctor has told me to do. 😉

After the bike we completed a functional movement screen with another trainer. My problem areas were ankles and hips (no surprises there) and I scored well on shoulders and knees. The cool thing was that they plugged our results into a program called Fusionetics that gave us an individualized approach to improving our mobility so we could actually know what to do about it on our own.

Under Armour’s main headquarters is in Baltimore but they opened a Portland headquarters recently and just moved into this amazing new facility in July. It was really cool to see!

Next up we were loaded back into the vans where we found heavy coats hanging on the seats with our names on them. We drove for what felt like forever out into the Oregon countryside before arriving at a campsite!

The campsite was beautifully lit and all set up for us. I still have absolutely no idea where we were. Haha.

We shared tents with two other participants and our tents were set up with sleeping bags, air mattresses and a big duffle of gear. I sorted through mine and found all the warm clothes I could to layer on. It was probably around 40ish degrees out so not too cold but I am super cold-natured.

After a long travel day, we were all starving. Dinner was quickly brought out to us in these layered stainless steel containers.

Inside was three tiers of hot, healthy and delicious food – lentils and tofu, sliced chicken and mixed veggies.

There were 12 of us participating in #FirstsNeverStop and we sat around the fire after dinner talking and getting to know each other. It was a super cool and diverse mix of people and I’m pretty certain I was the only “traditional” blogger on the trip. We had run club leaders from LA and NYC, fitness professionals, a YouTuber, magazine editors and freelance writers in the mix, to name a few.

We also got to know our “spirit guide” for the trip, Collin O’Brady. He was kind of our “host” for the three days were were together and has an incredible story. In 2016 he became the fastest person to ever complete the Explorers Grand Slam as well as the fastest person to complete the Seven Summits Challenge. I asked him about a million questions about his experiences over the course of our time together. (Remember my post, “I’ll never climb Everest!?”)

Not gonna lie, while we did have to sleep in legit tents, we had pretty sweet bathrooms. They were heated AND had hot showers. I definitely took one of those before bed. I think you can call our camping experience more in the category of glamping with the food and bathrooms!

As can be expected, sleep wasn’t great that night…both due to being wound up from all that was going on and was to come the next day and trying to get comfy sleeping in a tent with two people you just met hours ago when you’re in your first trimester. My GearFit2 Pro did tell me that I managed to get 6ish hours of sleep in so we’ll call that a win.

We were told to be up, dressed and packed by 7:30 a.m. the next morning. We were greeted by quite the breakfast spread when we made it out of our tents. Avocado toast with smoked turkey and hardboiled eggs, overnight oats and fresh fruit. There was also coffee and tea.

We did some group mobility and foam rolling out in the woods (can definitely say that was a first) with one of our UA trainers to prep us for the day ahead.

Which you will hear all about in the next post! This concludes part one. I can’t WAIT to share all of the gorgeous photos of our #FirstsNeverStop adventure with you. It was such a cool experience and I’m still replaying it in my mind over and over!

Camping…are you a fan? 

Have you ever done any heart rate testing or movement screens? 

Do you like surprises? They literally wouldn’t even tell us what was coming in the next 5 minutes!