I had such a wonderful time at the inaugural Fitbloggin’ 2010 that I signed up immediately when the 2011 conference was announced last summer. After a long wait, Fitbloggin’ 2011 weekend finally arrived!

This year was a lot different for me. Ever since last year’s conference and the start of the weekly #fitblog chats on Twitter, I’ve gained so many connections in the health/fitness community. Last year? Sure, I blogged about running and I’ve followed the fabulous Fitbloggin’ conference creator Roni for years. But I only knew a few people from their blogs or Twitter at the time.

I’ve gained hundreds of followers since last year’s conference, most of them are new #fitblog friends. And I got to meet so many of them in person this weekend!

The people are a good part of what makes this conference so great, sure. But we were there for a conference too!

Friday morning was filled with fun activities. We started with a 5K, and then had cherry recovery smoothies and some breakfast.

After breakfast I went to a kettle bell demo, followed by a Zumba class. It was my first time — and I was a little intimidated. Uh, I can’t dance! But nobody cared that I wasn’t getting all the moves quite right or that my butt just won’t shake like the instructors!  As long as you were moving and trying, you were doing OK. I enjoyed the parts where we were just moving really fast — less dance, more endurance. I’ve got that!

And because two workouts weren’t enough … I went to a 30-minute fitness challenge with Cathe Friedrich. And *then* I decided to take a break — I chose to see MizFit’s Ugi demonstration. Only the schedules were a little off between the two rooms … so I was actually able to catch most of the trampoline class as well!

And then I finally showered.

The day concluded with lunch, expo and a couple of panels. I couldn’t do them justice to report on them (but look at all these recaps! I’m sure somebody took notes!), but we had great panelists and good discussion!

Saturday started with a 6:30am pilates class with Andrea Metcalf. I do yoga all the time, but my only pilates experience was a yoga/pilates class at a Sandals resort. The resort instructor didn’t seem too experienced, so I’m counting this as my first class!

It was just 30 minutes, but it was quite a workout! I definitely need to work more pilates moves into my workouts.  Some of the moves were difficult with my tight runner legs and hips!

After breakfast and a shower, I was ready to start a day of sessions! There were a lot of tough choices when deciding which room to go to, so I’ll have to go back and check out the presentations that I missed. Fortunately, we had live bloggers and many of the presenters put their slides online (scroll thru the recent posts at fitbloggin.com).

Much like last year, the conference had wonderful and generous sponsors. Delicious, healthy meals and snacks, samples and coupons, and tons of fun stuff. Repeat sponsor New Balance gave out shoes (the new 890s!), capri pants and headphones. Wow!

If you didn’t make it to the conference, I’ll have a contest soon. I managed to grab some extra goodies to share with you!