Life

Snow Day + Interval Training

| cheriarmour

The schools in our county are out again today, and I’m feeling for the teachers and parents, who I’m sure are going a little stir-crazy, but the side roads are still kind of sketchy.

So for those of you who are northerners that are reading, I am a transplant from Brooklyn, NY, and most of my family is either there or in New Jersey now. I know you guys might be dumbfounded on how 2-6″ of snow can cripple a state or a city like Atlanta, but very simply put, our secondary roads haven’t been plowed, and it makes it really dangerous for a lot of folks.

As far as Atlanta is concerned, Atlanta and the larger state of Georgia largely ignored the forecast, didn’t cancel schools prior to the weather event, and then everyone was released from work/government jobs/school at the same time, creating that horrific gridlock. One of my best friends had to sleep in a school. Thank you to all the teachers, the security guards, the bus drivers, and the cafeteria ladies that worked wayyy overtime to take care of folks, you are incredible. As for the higher-ups in that metro area, you get a HUGE side-eye from me for endangering literally millions of lives.

Moving right along. 

photo 1We actually got a decent amount of snow, and for someone like me, whose neighborhood is kinda woodsy and hilly, the ice is still pretty bad.  It’s also really annoying to try to get your dog to poop in the snow, fun fact.

photo 2So instead of going to work, I largely stayed in until I had to venture out for some soup and coffee.

photo 3So since the snow started on Tuesday night, I ended up taking a rest day on Tuesday because a lot of the gyms were closing early, and it just didn’t make sense to try and bang out intervals in the ice.  So yesterday night, I made myself a little cheat sheet, and ventured over to the gym to do some interval training.  But how was I going to do this distance interval without a track?

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Enter Garmin 610.  What good is a fancy watch if you don’t use all the features?  So I changed the distance interval to a timed one, and banged them out.  I honestly have never used the interval featured on the Garmin 610 because my training has been more about just getting mileage in and not necessarily focusing on strength or speed (not a great thing, because the end of a marathon gets ROUGH).   This time, I’m focusing on more than just the long run, and I’m sorta loving it.  The coolest thing about doing a timed interval is that you rack up some serious mileage without realizing – over the 6 intervals I managed to squeeze in 5 miles without like, staring at the distance ticker on the treadmill.  Very nice!

photo 5And after working out, the husband-to-be took me out for dinn, which consisted of a small salad and some sweet potato fries, one of my favorite indulgences!  Still fries, but not necessarily as bad for you as regular fries.

So folks, how are you making out with this weather?  Anyone still out of school today?  Anyone iced in?  Anyone perfectly dry?  

 

 

 

Old School Blogging #OSBlog 5 Things…

| cheriarmour

I totally love this idea, and I’ve stolen this from a few bloggers.  PLEASE, please, feel free to steal this, blog on it, or even answer some of the questions here in the comments.  You know I live for your comments right?  They’re like delicious treats!  But I stole this from Miss Elaine, who did this particular one back in July.

Five Things I Have a Passion For

1.  My growing family.  This year, I’m getting married, I have adopted a little orange cat, and a little dog.  I’m so in love and so crazy about the idea of creating my own family.
2.  Writing.  This blog.  I’d love to go full-time with this one day, sooner rather than later.
3.  Running.  My gosh, I love what running has done for me.  You know this.  
4.  Exercise.   Not just the running kind, but swimming, hiking, yoga, and all the stuff I do when I’m not running. 
5.  Nail polish.  #sorrynotsorry.
6.  Can I do 6?  I love my shows.  Mostly Bravo, but I adore my shows.

Five Things I Would Like to do Before I Die
1.  Write a book about weight loss and healthy living for black women.
2. Buy a house (with my husband) in a city with wooden floors, a backyard, a porch, and beautiful colors on the walls.
3. Run an ultra marathon.  I can’t believe I’m saying (or writing that) out loud.
4. Pay off these student loans. I want 0 debt. None.
5. Learn Spanish.  Austin is doing his Rosetta Stone now.  I want to learn it so that the both of us can travel with little difficulties.

Five Things I Say A Lot
1. Literally…
2. I love you babe!
3. Babe!
4.  Beautiful! (This usually applies to motivation for my fitness classes.)
5. I’m dying/I’m dead.  (I’m dramatic).

Five Books and/or Magazines I Have Read Lately

1. Dean Karnazes wrote 2, and I read them both. Ultramarathon Man and Run. Both good, both inspiring.
2. Most Talkative by Andy Cohen of Bravo. I didn’t stop laughing.
3. Fitness Magazine! Alexa somehow snagged a subscription and forwarded it along to me!
4. Cosmo. Because Ariana Grande was on the cover and she’s adorable,
5. I started reading this month’s Glamour because Shakira was on the cover

Five Favorite Movies
1. The Sex and the City Movie (Oh my gosh, when Steve tells Miranda he cheated on her).
2. Knocked Up
3. The 40-Year-Old Virgin
4. Taken
5.  And most recently, The Flight with Denzel Washington.  Denzel can do no wrong, and this movie is no exception.

Five Places I Would Love to Travel
1. Haiti
2. Trinidad
3. Bora Bora.  I’m really hoping we can travel here for our honeymoon.
4.  France
5. Just South America in general.

So your turn.  What 5 songs can you not live without right now?  

Here’s mine.

Happy

Pharrell has been a big winner as of late, and this “happy” song is no exception.  🙂

The best things ever.

| cheriarmour

photo (13)

 

Seriously, yesterday was an incredible day.  I’m finding that the more I choose to be happy, the happier I am, and yesterday, every little thing made me extraordinarily happy.

  1. The weather was gorgeous in North Carolina yesterday.  Seriously, it was like 60 degrees.  I was able to run 6 miles in shorts and a tank top.  Today, it’s supposed to snow.  Climate change at its absolutely finest.
  2. I forgot my Garmin charger in Florida.  Not the good part obviously.  But my sister sent it my way yesterday, which was perfect timing because I got the beeping sound of death that indicates your Garmin is fixin’ to die.  (Like the way I threw Southern lingo into there?)
  3. My sweet tooth was going nuts yesterday.  So I made an executive decision, stopped by the Harris Teeter on the way home, and bough this teeny tiny Ben and Jerry’s, pictured above.  It’s like a tiny taste of exactly what I needed, and it won’t ruin your life, as it comes in at 280 calories of cookie dough goodness.
  4. Apothic Red Wine.  Bought some of that too.  And drank some.  YUM!
  5. Gloves.  I was given some Columbia gloves as a gift.  Très necessary, as the temp plummeted from 60s to upper 20s as the evening went on.
  6. Glamour Magazine.  I love magazines.  If I could, I would have a subscription to Glamour, Rolling Stone, Elle, InStyle, Self, Shape, Women’s Health, Brides, Runner’s World, and Cosmo.  But there are only 24 hours in the day, and my bank account would be very upset if all I bought was nail polish and magazines like I want to.
  7. I made some time to clean!  So in between the baby ice cream consumption and a glass of vino, I was able to light candles, sweep, sprinkle some smelly stuff on the carpet, and vacuum.  There’s almost nothing that makes me happier than waking up in the morning to a clean space.

So, if you could have a subscription to any magazines, which ones would you have?

What things are making you happy today/this week?

Wedding Etiquette Question

| cheriarmour

Photo on 1-27-14 at 12.39 AM

Please help us out.

We’re a little less than 7 months out from the wedding, and since we have a ton of out-of-town guests, we’re for sure sending out save-the-dates next month.  So I asked Austin to put the final touches on the guest list, and he asked a really good question.

When it comes to work people, who do we invite to the wedding, and who do we leave off the guest list?  How did/would you navigate this?

 

Weekend update! We heart DC!

| cheriarmour

If you’ve been following along about anything here on the blog, you’ll know that I’m absolutely enamored of the District of Columbia.  So best bud Scott invited me up, and Friday, after work, I took off, and made the trip, that was a little over 4 hours.  Not a bad drive, right?

So Friday evening, me and the bestie braved the cold, and met some Elon friends out, and just enjoyed some tasty drinks.

The next day, we braved the cold temps and wind yet again, and hit this spot called Pound the Hill, a coffee bar that turns into a wine bar in the evenings.  We went earlier in the day, so we missed the wine, but enjoyed some ah-mazing treats nonetheless.

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Dear Scott, in front of Pound the Hill in DC.  It’s right next to a yoga studio – how genius is that, right?

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The space is small, but extremely warm!  These DC coffee shops get packed!  Best to get there early, grab a seat, and stay there.

P1020101Menus.  And I spotted Nutella.  Well, say no more, if there’s Nutella involved, I need to taste these.

photo 1

A Nutella latte with skim to cut the sweetness!  It was delicious – hot and creamy!

photo 2

The holy grail of things to eat!  This sandwich was a Nutella, banana, and honey sandwich.  SO sweet, but good if you’re into that….which I totally am.  If you don’t have a sweet tooth, just skip this one.  But I loved it.

I packed my running clothes.  I have big news, I’m running the Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon on April 13th, and it’s time to up the mileage.  The wind slowed down, and Scott provided me with directions to get to Capitol Hill.  So off I went.  Are you ready for this?

photo 3

In one of the greatest cities, in the greatest country in the world, I got to run to the Capital building, peek a few blocks down to see some monuments, and run back.  The run totaled about 4 miles or so, and I didn’t feel too chilly, despite some good wind.

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Next, we hit a birthday party, where the girls based it around the coolest theme.

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So this doesn’t look like a whole lot of pizza right?  Well, that’s because the girls made 5, yes 5 (?!) pizzas, allowed us to taste each one, and then paired each pizza with a beer.  Very cool, and I was impressed by how much DC folks, friend’s of Scott’s were so welcoming and seemed to enjoy meeting me and hearing about what I did.  Seriously, DC folk seem like nice, genuine, kind people.

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And finally folks, no post would be complete without a picture of a pup, right?  This guy, Fitzgerald, was the dog of the house where we were staying.  I’m glad I left little Coco behind – she had not yet received her ThunderShirt, and the long car ride, plus Fitz’s high pitty energy would have freaked her out.  But I’m glad to be home with my lady.

So folks, what did you do this weekend?  Fill me in!

Hiding behind a computer screen.

| cheriarmour

I was like a junior in college when this awful, terrible invention called “Juicy Campus” made its rounds around the internet.  10 points for anyone who remembers it.

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Juicy Campus, one of the most evil concepts to hit college campuses, was an online forum, organized by college campus, which allowed folks anonymously, without logging in, to post threads on each campus’ forum, which would in turn, generate a lot of responses.  I attended Elon University, a small liberal arts school of about 4,500 students at the time, which meant that everyone was logged on, and everyone knew who was talking about whom.

As you can imagine, this modern-day burn book took off like wildfire, and no one was spared.  There was one poor kid, who was rumored to have had social problems akin to a disorder represented on the Autism spectrum,  who constantly was the source of these posts.  In another, an anonymous poster criticized a friend of mine, suggesting that she get a nose job.  And when I was juiced, it started off as a thread that stated that I was one of the hottest black girls on campus (out of all .5 of us, whoopdie-freakin-doo), and someone commented underneath that not only was I not hot, that I was annoying and asked for extensions on papers.

Cool.

Juicy Campus is long gone, I think the rumor was some folks had committed suicide due to nasty posts.  I’m not sure if that was true, but it certainly hurt a lot of folks.

Fast-forward to now, when folks are still trying to hide behind computer screens to be nasty and bully others.

In a much more innocuous, but still snarky post on a local forum, someone posted that a duo that appeared on a local news segment was “annoying.”  A completely snarky, and unconstructive critical comment.  And for what?  I pointed out on the forum that local news folks could just as easily log into the forum as we could, and that such comments could hurt their feelings.

Here’s where I come in.  I blog.  I can be funny.  I have no qualms with making it very clear that I hate local morning radio for good reason, or that I’m a huge supporter of Rock n’ Roll coming to Raleigh in April.  But I can assure you that I will be transparent, that I will never hide behind the screen and bully or beat up on others of no reason.  I’ve poked fun at Lamar Odom, Olivia Newton-John, and every single Housewife of Wherever, but I do it with this in mind.  If this person were to read it (yeah right!) would they be in tears?  And if the answer is no, I feel okay.

So I challenge you folks, when you’re commenting on Facebook or Buzzfeed posts, when you comment on local blogs, or when you comment on Perez, that you keep in mind that celebrities, huge and small, are actual people.  If you might not like to feel like crap when you read something about yourself the way that I did, you might not like it either.  Okay?

Let’s hug it out.

 

PC Time Machine

| cheriarmour

Thank you God for Austin Samples, because my girl over at Olive to Run posed this question on her Facebook page.

What is the WORST injury you’ve ever had? [running related or not]

As i described my worst injury to her, I began on a quest to find the photo that would explain the injury.

  1. First, I called my mom, who allowed me to break into her email to see if I’d sent her the photo from my Elon email, since I’d been at Elon when the injury had been incurred.
  2. Then I logged into her email.  No dice.
  3. I emailed my Dad at work.  Except Papa Cheri would not be at work til like 9am.  Okay.
  4. I tried to log into my Elon email, knowing fully well that they’d shut us out of our email like 60 days after we’d graduated.
  5. And finally, I tore through my house, looking for an old PC that I hadn’t booted up since maybe 2010.  The thanks to Austin comes in where I realized I had no cords and no mouse to use the thing.  I got all of those things, and finally booted it.

photo 1

Time machine much?

photo 2

AIM was still on the desktop.  And Marilyn was asleep in the background.

But the main event, the only reason that I booted the PC in the first place?

Knee Injury

The worst injury I ever got.  

::clears throat::

I played rugby for a short time my freshman year.  During this particular game, where my boyfriend at the time was watching from the sidelines in horror, a girl tackled me from pretty high up.  Now take a close look at my right knee without getting nauseated.  So when she did this, I heard a loud crack, and went down.  I remember the coach asking me what was wrong, and I couldn’t tell her, all I could tell her was that I was in horrible pain radiating from my right knee.  It swelled up immediately, and what ended up happening was something called a tibial tuberosity, meaning that a bone that sat at the bottom of my knee had been pulled up and off by my ACL, accounting for that crack I heard.  I spent the next, like 8 weeks in an ACL brace and on crutches, and to this day, that knee gets sore from time to time.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERASee!

Okay, enough of me walking down memory lane.

What is the worst injury, running or not running related that you’ve ever gotten?

The scam in Acuvue Contact lenses…

| cheriarmour

This is about to be a hard-hitting piece on what I feel is a grave injustice!

Okay, it’s not that serious, but it really annoyed me, and you guys tell me if you’ve had this experience.

So I’m blind as a bat.  I started wearing glasses in like 4th grade, and my vision has steadily gotten worse, even more so now that I spend the second half of my day glued to my laptop.

My only option at this point is contacts – I work out way too much for glasses, and I think I look pretty stupid in glasses.

photo 4

 

So the way it all works, is that when you order 6 months to 1 year in contacts, they tout this rebate as like, the biggest draw EVER to ordering the contacts in bulk.  Since I wear dailies, that meant that I had to order a truckload of contacts to get a $35 rebate.

So I apply for the rebate, and I’m notified that it’s going to take 10 weeks to get the rebate.  Okay, fine, whatever.  At least this time I didn’t forget about the rebate, like they were hoping I did.  I got that thing in the mail over the weekend and my “rebate” is a prepaid Citi card with $35 on it that I have to activate, and it expires in a year.  I also have to spend all $35 in one place because they charge you per transaction.  That rebate sucks.  I’m buying my contacts through Walgreens’ website next time.

photo 1

 

Moving right along…SNOW!  Actually, it was fake snow.  Here in North Carolina, we never get good snow, so on my way to the gym last night, the snow was looking pretty serious, but it was for naught.  By the time I was done with the gym around 9pm, the snow seemed to have eased up, and was replaced by a bone-chilling wind and cold.  Ugh, North Carolina, can’t we get just one good snow before the spring?  Please?!

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Once I got to the gym, I ran an easy 2 miles, and then hit the studio to take instead of teach a class with the amazing Loretta Bates.  I look like a beluga whale next to her, but she is teeny, not only around, but she’s a good half-a-foot shorter than I am.  Her class was a blast!  It’s so nice to take a class instead of teach one once in a while.

So how are you guys doing today?  Enjoying a snow day?