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#1800 Minute Challenge

| cheriarmour

I saw this on Living in Yellow yesterday, and I totally hope you don’t mind I borrowed your awesome image, but I was totally so excited about the challenge, I had to tell you guys all about it.

#1800MinuteChallengeYou guys know how much I love a good challenge right?  I love a streak during the fall months where there isn’t a whole bunch of racing going on, and this thing proves as no exception.  For this challenge, I (and hopefully you guys when you get into this challenge), we will be doing 1800 minutes of activity between the April 1st through May 31st.  That math kinda filters out to about 30 minutes of activity today, so in my mind, with my training for my two half marathons in April, I am totally ready for this, and totally read to make sure that after my half on April 27th, I don’t fall into a lull where I don’t want to do anything anymore.

Plus, Mama is getting married in August, gotta make sure I’m looking good right?

Head over to Living in Yellow and check out this challenge!

RnR USA Preview + I love DC :)

| cheriarmour

I’m not gonna spoil tomorrow’s epic post about my weekend running DC for you guys, but I cannot tell you enough how much I love this city.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Raleigh, it’s where I met my future husband, and I love the little love nest we’ve turned Raleigh into, but I haven’t always felt that way about the city.  When I first moved here, I was doing a lot, too much in fact, and that soured my experience a little bit with here.  I moved right after I graduated undergrad, was prepping to go to grad school, was in the process of breaking up with someone, and I felt like I didn’t have any friends here, when the truth was, I did.  But when you’re feeling sorry for yourself, you really and truly convince yourself that you’re alone, and no one likes you, blah blah blah.

So anyhoo, the things that I’ve learned this weekend (without spoiling the epic race post I have for you)?

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My view from Saturday morning’s race!
  1.  My stomach is still healing from the little debacle I had last October, where I found out that I’d somehow developed gastritis.  I’ve been really good about taking my meds, but not as good at avoiding caffeine, and during the race, which went really well, my stomach definitely had a few moments where it tried to revolt a little bit.  I was able to breathe through it but it jerked me back to reality.  You can’t jump from gastritis to ultra marathons in a matter of a few months.  That’s just the facts.
  2. All that said, I think it might be a good idea for me to drop from the RnR Raleigh Full to the Half.  My stomach told me so, and I have to agree with her.  She needs more time to heal up before I start shoving Gu and stuff into it.
  3. I am a boss at this city.  I’ve been super open about my love affair with this city.  And nothing has changed, between the public transit, which I rocked at, and between being able to find stuff, I am so comfortable here.  So this blog might turn from a running blog, into a convincing-your-husband-that-moving-to-DC –is-a-bomb-ass-idea.  I’ll keep you posted J

How was your weekend?  What are you looking forward to this week? 

10 Things They Didn’t Tell You About Life After College

| cheriarmour

I am literally crying. This is so true. I am SOBBING with laughter right now. As I write this, I am sick at my job because I know I’m taking a day off work next week and I can’t afford to miss today…

classandtrashshow's avatarClass And Trash Show

Hey y’all!!! Almost Friday…PAYDAY FRIDAY!!!!

laganja

Onto the post!

Remember that time when you waited to the last minute to finish a project in college. You were hyped up on coffee and energy drinks. Your eyes were burning from staring at the computer screen for so long. Blackboard crashed and you couldn’t submit your assignment. You flung your arms up in the air and screamed….”I CAN’T WAIT TO GRADUATE COLLEGE AND NOT HAVE TO DEAL WITH THIS CRAP ANYMORE! I’M TIRED OF THESE STUPID CLASSES. I’M TIRED OF THESE STUPID PEOPLE.”  Immediately after, your cheap laptop crashed and your life was over.

Listen. Ask any college graduate and they would tell you that they would do ANYTHING to have this life back! So here are just 10 things (I could go on forever but…) they did not tell us about life after college.

1)  8 AM classes too early for you? Oh…

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Would you workout with an overweight trainer?

| cheriarmour

Okay, but before we get into all of that, look at what I ate for dinner last night.

I met up with Kelly, a good friend from Elon last night, and we met up at this place called Pop’s in Durham.  It was a Trattoria, and choc-full of a ton of good wines to choose from, so it was the perfect spot for us.  So look what I had.

photo (5)This delicious thing, which came in its own skillet thingie is a fusilli pasta with tomatoes, basil, and mozzarella.  It was literally to die for and so huge, that I could only eat like a little bit of it before I packed up the reset for lunch tomorrow.  Lunch is gonna be BALLER tomorrow.

But back to the topic at hand.  So I was taking to a friend yesterday, and he was describing how is accountant had a lot of bad, outstanding debt.

“It’s like working with a fat personal trainer,” he said. “It just doesn’t make sense!”

And I wasn’t sure what to make of that.

I’d like to think that you can be overweight, and fit, and that I would be okay working with a personal trainer who was overweight, ESPECIALLY if that personal trainer was well-versed in his or her craft, but I’m not sure.  I never want to discriminate against someone on the basis of how they look, especially given the fact that you cannot necessarily tell how healthy someone is by looking on the outside.  So I’ll pose these questions to you without any judgement, or leading.

Would you work out with an overweight personal trainer?  Why or why not?  

 

That time I stalked a bartender…

| cheriarmour

I took a little break on Saturday, so I hope you guys didn’t miss me a ton.  Happy Superbowl Sunday!

Okay, so this weekend, thus far, I taught a gorgeous Zumba class, took the most killer nap that has ever existed with the dog, ran, and stalked a bartender.  Let me explain.

Zumba was beautiful.  Class was packed, and it was one of those classes where I sorta felt myself getting emotional because of how joyous the class seemed like they were.  I truly, truly hope the class can feel what I’m giving to them.

The Zappos Delivery.

Let me say this.  I have ruined nearly every gift that Austin has given me.  Not on purpose, but my propensity toward curiosity has ruined everything.  When he bought me my Garmin, I bugged him until he gave me the present before dinner on that birthday.  During our engagement, I asked so many questions that he started taking his iPad with him everywhere because he was afraid I was going to snoop on his purchase of my engagement ring or on his credit card statement.  Good call.

Well yesterday, this box randomly arrived at my apartment.

photo 1But Austin’s name was on the package.  My antennae went up.  I sent him a text.

“That wasn’t supposed to get delivered there!  It was supposed to go to the office.”

So I played it cool.

“Should I put it somewhere for you?”

I was hoping it was nothing and he’d tell me to open it, and that’s how I’d know it was a regular package.  But he asked me to set it aside for him, and Michael, the best friend, made me swear not to snoop.

FINE!  So he’s come to pick up the package, and now I have no clue what it was.  More on that, if it turns into anything later.

Moving right along!

How I stalked a bartender.

For weeks, I’ve been trying to hunt down the bartender that made a drink for me last summer, just before we got engaged.  It was a toasted coconut martini, and we had it at the place where we had our first date, just weeks now before we got engaged.  It was delicious, and I’d like to feature this drink at our wedding.

I called around to the place, the Rockford, a number of time before one of the bartenders told me that the bartender that I was looking for was now working at a different bar.  So I changed my running route to go right by the bar where he was working, and chatted with him about the recipe, which he gladly gave me.

Yes, I’m a creep, but I got what I wanted!

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Finally, on my run, I caught sight of this.  I think they’re calling these “knit bombs” and ladies around the city are knitting and decorating the trees, bus stops, and bike racks.  Do you guys have anything cool going on like this in your city?  Cause I’ll tell you what, this definitely put a smile on my face while I was plodding through a few rainy and cold miles.

So I’m pumped, I’m expecting a pretty decent crowd for the Superbowl.  Who are you going for this evening?  The Broncos, the Seahawks, or Bruno Mars?  What are you drinking?  And what are your plans?   

 

 

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.