racing

Random things Friday.

| cheriarmour

It’s been a while since I’ve done a post like this, but I think these posts are really good because they give you an accurate picture of what goes on inside my brain. Which is a LOT. And I don’t necessarily mean in the MENSA way, I mean in the ADD, pass the Adderall kind of way.

Onto the random things!

1. I wanted to run long on Thursday morning, but I fell asleep with a pretty severe headache and a touch of a sore throat. I almost NEVER get sick so it was sort of alarming. I woke up yesterday morning after some pretty fitful dreams, with an even bigger headache, and I spent most of the morning on the couch answering some emails and chugging coffee and water to try and get the headache to go away/flush some of that nasty stuff out of my body.

2.  I noticed some people who ran Tobacco Road had posted some of their times and photos from the race.  Check out this proof!

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So I ran 13.1 miles after arriving at a race late, and since I was late I could not check a bag.  this means I had my jacket (that was wayyyy too expensive for me to ditch), my water, and my phone, all with me.  Oh well, race ended well despite some residual soreness from having to fight my way up from the back of the pack during the race.  Check out that lobster red face!

3.  I think I found some tickets in a really good section of Stevie Wonder in Newark in April to surprise my dad with.  For the most part I don’t think my dad reads this blog super often.  If he happens to be reading today my surprise is ruined.  Also, is there a reason why ticket scalpers need to make all of our lives extremely difficult by buying up all the tickets?  A lot of times they have to drop the price down in the final days before the concert.  That has to be stressful.  Is that worth it?  Can’t they be normal people and get a second job that requires not gumming up Ticketmaster for the rest of us?

4.  CamelBak Eddy

I drink out of this thing on the regs. All sorts of watery beverages. Water, sparkling water. You know, I get pretty crazy. Well I happened to be looking at the bite valve on this thing last week, and it was full of mold. Which is kind of terrifying. But also explains why ::knock on wood:: that I’ve not been really sick in a long time.  Like I don’t count a little sore throat that I’m dealing with now.  But I’ve been ingesting all sorts of disgustingness while I’ve been trying to stay hydrated for some time.  Gross.  Also intriguing.

5.  My performance appraisal is next week.  Eep.  I hope it goes well.  It kind of makes my stomach hurt to think about it.  I’ve done a good job at my job, and I love my job, but I know there are things I can improve on.  And I want to take the time between this PA and next years to kill it even harder.

Tell me one random thing!

Terrified: thoughts before a half marathon.

| cheriarmour

Want to hear something that really made me laugh hard yesterday?

This is so so rude, but I was at home sort of in the middle of the day because I’m on duty Thursday nights, and I was sending some emails and such, and listening to E! in the background, when I realized that they were playing all the episodes of KUWTK involving Kris Humphries in Bora Bora.  Now the reason why this is so good and so rude is because clearly, Kim is no longer married to Kris (they only made it 72 days, which Austin and I celebrated as our “Kardashian Anniversary”), and Kimmy was the biggest asshole she’s ever been during the Kris era.

Exhibit A:

Now this particular scenario was really exquisite because Kris tosses Kim into the ocean…

Bora BoraCausing her head to slam against the ocean’s surface and her to lose her $75k diamond earrings.  Instead of being a logical human, Kim begins to whimper, then cry, as she runs to and fro on the dock.  When she tells Kourtney whats happening, Kourtney responds by telling her…

DyingIt must also be noted that the earrings were insured, so the tears were just extra.

The Kris era also ushered in this gem.

Ugly Little TrollNow, I won’t bore you all day with the wonderful things that KUWTK has brought to my life, but suffice it to say, that I was entertained for a full at least 5 minutes.

I’m terrified. 

I haven’t talked about it much here because of my fear of looking like a complete idiot, but I’m racing for the first time in a while on and it scares the piss out of me.  Here are my thoughts before a half marathon.

  1. Water?  I should hydrate.  Yes, hydrate.  Water.  Now.  Water, some tea, some seltzer, more water.
  2. Speaking of water, I should prep my water plan for tomorrow.  Where’s my hydration backpack?
  3. I’m not sure what they’re gonna have on the course, let me make sure that I pack some gels.  But gel makes my stomach hurt.  Maybe I should ask the chicks at Fleet Feet when I work what I should do.
  4. What shoes am I going to wear?  I don’t think the Glycerin is doing it for me anymore.
  5. What do I eat for dinner with only a smidgen of fiber so I don’t poo my pants tomorrow.
  6. Speaking of pants, what am I going to wear?  I should lay that out.
  7. Do I have any Coke around for after the race?  Shit. Shit.
  8. Also, what am I going to eat for breakfast tomorrow?

And then, I commence to not sleeping, or sleeping fitfully all night whilst dreaming that I’ve overslept and missed my race.

How was your weekend?  What do you worry about before a big race/event?

 

Addicted

| cheriarmour

It’s official…I’m addicted to quinoa.

It all started when I got a free quinoa bowl from Happy and Hale a few months back.

Photo via Bizjournal
Photo via Bizjournal

The place is a really cool concept – a very “Stuff White People Like” deal, with a full bar of fresh ingredients waiting to be combined into your delicious salad. Prior to my intro to the ‘noa, I’d kind of just avoided a ton of rice and grain, simply because the serving size on it is so small and I’d really like to eat more of something else without me getting bloated.  But I discovered the incredibleness that is quinoa, and now I just can’t get it out of my mind.

Similar to rice, you can cook it in the steamer, get a ton of fiber out of it, stay full for hours, and it’s SO plain, you can mix it with just about anything that you want.  Why I waited so long to be introduced to quinoa, I don’t know.  But I love it, and I’m not turning back.

2015 Events

Since I’ve been focusing more on the budget the past few months, even thought I’ve really wanted to sign up for races right and left, I’ve kind of held back, and as a result, I’m only signed up for Rock ‘n’ Roll Raleigh, and I’m so itching to sign up for something in order for me to keep my motivation and my fitness up throughout 2015.

So here are the options I’m looking at.

Rock ‘n’ Roll DC

P1160281I did this race, and since I stayed at the Westin, I ran into some cool-ass people like Carrie Keagan, who used to host Big Morning Buzz on VH1.  Still one of my favorite races, except for the killer hill at mile 6.

North Face Endurance Challenge

Since reading Dean Karnazes’ books, I’ve been really intrigued by the idea of ultra marathons (any marathon over 26.2 miles).  The idea makes my husband really really nervous, but I’m thinking about doing it just to see what I can do.  I love the sense of accomplishment that comes with finishing one of these things.

Marine Corps

Marine Corps isn’t open, but the lottery opens in March.  Which means that if I got in, I would have to train throughout the summer.  In North Carolina.  Kinda blah, but I hear the race is absolutely awesome.  I also did training with a friend end of last summer, and I forgot that I don’t completely hate running long.  I just hate the heat kinda.

Nike

So this one is just sort of annoying.  The past two years, I’ve done the Nike Women’s Half marathon, and love it.  Nike canceled their DC event, and have yet to announce a spring event, leading me to believe there is no spring event.  It sucks, because these races are definitely one of my top races, but it’s also a total first world problem, and I have clean water and a warm bed to lay my head down at night, so no complaints.  Well, not that many.

So those races are on my radar for the year.  Any races/events you’re looking forward to signing up for to keep you motivated?

 

Kardashian Anniversary + Weekend Updates

| cheriarmour

So, once again, this weekend was bananas.  Is that what adult life is?  You work during the week, and then you go into your weekends which are packed to the gills with things to do?  I’m starting to feel like it is.

Okay, so first things first, as you read this, Austin and I are celebrating our Kardashian anniversary.  You see, Kimmy K and Kris Humphries were married for grand total of 72 days before they decided to end things, so since we’ve been married, Austin and I have been really excited about celebrating that special day.

Hashtag never forget.

Moving right along…so me and Austin are huge Halloween people, but this year, between the wedding and the purchase of the Merrie home, the holiday snuck up on us this year, and a few days before Friday, I found myself without a costume or without a plan for the day.  After huddling with some friends, and the donation of a costume from a sweet member, I made some plans and ended up as Zoe Saldana’s character from Star Trek.

Star TrekThe costume ended up being a total hit – who knew so many people were secret Trekkies?!  I stayed out way, wayyyy too late, and suffered through Saturday morning’s class and ended the day at a baby shower for my step-sister-in-law.

Sunday?  I raced!  Because of the relay I have coming up, I had to hold back a little and stuck with the 10k.  The start was extremely chilly, and because the marathon started about 20 minutes before our race did, I was able to steal a cheap Hanes sweatshirt from the marathon toss that had occurred, and toss it later.  And luckily, because it was cotton, it was a literal sauna in there.  Cotton is rotten, except, when you’re freezing and you want to create a sauna inside your shirt.  Mile 4, I ditched the sweat, and finished the 10k strong in under an hour.

Here are a few snaps from the morning!

Legs felt strong, and they felt like they could do a lot more, leading me to believe that I am ready-eddy-eddy for this ultra relay end of this week.

My weekend was absolutely nuts.  What were you up to this weekend?

What would you do if your income doubled?

| cheriarmour

I read this a few days back on Roo’s blog, Semiproper, and I found it really really interesting.

What would you do if your income suddenly doubled?

This really stuck out to me because money has been a hot topic in our house – having just gotten marred we spent a pretty decent chunk of it, and now, having purchased a house, we’re always talking about money.

Spending it wisely, spending less on coffee, saving more, eliminating our debt – all things that have become the stuff of our weekly conversations.

So when Roo blogged about this the other day, I thought about it.  What would we do if our income simply and magically doubled?

If our income doubled:

  • I’d pay more down on student loans, and get them paid down faster.  As of right now, I’m on the track to have them down in a few years, but shortening that time would be amazing, and help me to sleep better at night.
  • We’d save more.  Thankfully, my husband is awesome at saving, but having a nest – for a bad day, for our parents as they get older, for kids and a college fund?  I want more savings for that.  The thought of getting caught with my pants down like so many folks did a few years ago really scares me.
  • We would travel more.  I would just love love love to go places, anywhere, with my husband.  I’d love to go to Alaska, go to Hawaii, go to Greece, go to Bora Bora – just beautiful places where we can go hiking and swimming together without checking our email.  The thought just makes me so happy!
  • I would race more.  Right now, I race as much as the budget will allow – but I would definitely race more if I could afford a few more registration fees and to travel to where all these races were.

And that’s really all I’d like.  Not too much to ask is it?

What would you do if your income suddenly doubled?

Feeling the itch…

| cheriarmour

I’m not really sure what the photo company that Reebok uses for the Warrior Dash is up to, but a few mornings ago, I woke up to an email containing the photos from one of the first races I did over two years ago. Warrior Dash

This picture made me smile for a few reasons.

One, because I barely have any memory of this race. I think I might have fallen down and sprained my ankle a little bit during this race, but I really, for the life of me, can’t remember!

The other reason is Austin’s incredible facial expression. I think we were both having a great time – we typically do every time we do something active together, but what an incredible facial expression, right?  This is going to be my husband!

Feeling the itch.

I ran a ton of races back to back in the spring, and my body decided that it was ready to take a break after all of that, and that’s probably good since I had a wedding to plan and all that good stuff.  But today, I was at the Whole Foods, and I saw a flyer for a race I’d run in October of 2013.  I also saw another ad for the Greensboro Marathon, and part of me was a little tempted to maybe take on that challenge again – but no, right?  I need to focus on everything that’s going on here.

But I really am starting to feel like I’m ready to get back in the racing game.  My runs have been good – the heat has been tough, but I’ve been really comfortable with how my body has seemed to adapt to time/distance even though we haven’t been there in a while.  I know for a fact that I have Ragnar in November, but does a challenge in October sound cool?  Not sure yet.

Who’s racing in the fall?

 

 

 

How long did it take you to fall in love with running?

| cheriarmour

I’m becoming a big fan of the Hungry Runner Girl, Janae, because she’s so freaking positive.  It’s funny, I’ve seen a few things written about her online, and the overwhelming “complaint” about her, if you even want to call it that is that she’s too positive or that she gets too excited about the littlest things.  I can relate to her – I actually had an associate at Barnes and Noble physically back away from me when I expressed my excitement that they had the Gavin DeGraw album in stock.  Okay lady, let me be happy, kay?

Anyhoo, so HRG posts yesterday and posed this question:

How long did it take you to fall in love with running?

The truth is, I don’t really know.

Sport Photo mailed me this blast from the past from my first race in 2011.  I’m not sure what possessed me to sign myself and my boyfriend (now almost-husband) for the race, except it sounded really really cool, and I think I saw in ad in one of the women’s fitnessy workout mags that I’d been reading like a Bible.

Mud Run

Austin so sweetly agreed to to the race with me, an obstacle 5k in Virginia, and we drove up there after a shift at the Whole Foods Bakery.   Yes, I know.  I’m a fitness director, and I worked at a bakery my first gig out of graduate school.  But I like my sweets, and I love Whole Foods so it worked.

I ran that race.  Finished in decent time.  Felt great afterwards, and within about a year’s time, I was running my first half-marathon.

There was never a moment where I was like “aughhh this is awesome,” but I guess I always just liked the way it made me feel.  I also loved the way you could kind of click into cruise control for a long run and just…run.  Like after a while it didn’t feel like death on a stick, but it just felt like a state of being, as natural as anything else did.  Sure, there were still some runs that made me feel like vomiting on on the side of the road, but the vast majority of the runs just felt…good!

So all that to say is, I just don’t know when I started to love running.  I’m not particularly fast or fancy, but it feels natural to me, and it feels like the kind of workout you can seriously do anywhere, and burn the most calories/stress off without killing yourself.

So my question on this wonderful Friday is….

When did you fall in love with running?

 

 

4th recap

| cheriarmour

The three-day weekend was perfect, but I’m almost at the point where three days was a little bit much for me because I laid on the couch nearly all day on Sunday, avoiding a smelly pile of laundry that needs to get done, and a dirty blender that has been in my sink all day.

As for my list of things that I wanted to do on the 4th, I think I achieved them all – the only thing I didn’t do was lay by the pool because the weather was unseasonably cool for North Carolina, and it was in the 80s all weekend – not blazing like I usually like it for pool days.

So on the fourth, we started the gorgeous day by doing NOTHING.  Well, almost.

First, I ran the Raleigh Downhill Mile with Matthew, where I found some friends.

photo 1I was able to crank out the mile fast enough so that I could cheer that little cutie on.

photo 2Matthew is a dear friend and my supervisor (for like two more days), and it was so fun to do something other than track down clients on a Friday morning at the race.  The girls raced first, so I was able to see him punch out a really impressive finish!

photo 5I cranked out a mile in 7:21.  However, my last name is not Armack, so the only proof you really have that it happened is my Garmin.  Which actually says I ran a 7:20 so HOLLA!  One of these days I will maintain a pace like this over the course of 13.1 miles.  A girl can dream, right?

photo 3

We were able to hit a local fancy coffee shop for some post-race eats.

photo 4And post race, we hit the WRAL Sand Desk that they’d set up.  How cool is that, right?

Once I got home, I laid on the couch, reading ‘The Fault in Our Stars,’ while Austin loudly chomped on peanut butter and jellies.  For hours, literally hours, Austin and I watched American Ninja Warrior while I fantasized about one day getting my upper body strong enough to fly through that course and make it up the Warped Wall.  Maybe one day…

I napped, of course.

And finally we headed out to see some friends for the 4th.

4thofJulyThe rest of the weekend was spent reading, napping, and running.  We also meet our wedding officiant, which is a fabulous woman who we seemed to click with really really well, so it feels awesome to cross another thing off the list.

On a personal front, I feel like emotionally, I’m a mess.  But I need to keep my eye on the prize, at the end of this emotional road, I get a new, wonderful husband, new pets, a new home, and a ton of time with friends and family, and that’s what’s important.

How was your 4th?

Epic Damned Post. #Werundc

| cheriarmour

So this past weekend (don’t you dare ask me what took so long to post this), I ran the Nike Women’s Half Marathon in Washington, DC.  This post is going to be split up into two posts, one for the race itself and the prep leading up to it, because I don’t want your brain to explode from how awesome all of the deets are.  But they are awesome.

Okay, so I drove up to DC last Friday night, and arrived to my place in Georgetown, which, luckily was right down the street from Niketown Georgetown.  As SOON as I got settled into my spot, I changed into some running clothes, and made the quick run down to Niketown to see the set up for the expo.   photo-1

Thanks to insomnia that night, I really didn’t sleep that well (think like 3 hours), and I headed down to the expo super early so I wouldn’t be caught in the shitshow that was the expo last year.  The lines were really too nuts for me last year, and I really don’t do that well around all those people in the sun.

photo 3

 

photo 1

 

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I meet up with these beauties for the #runnerslove meetup at Sprinkles in Georgetown after, and unfortunately, I wasn’t feeling great, so I skipped the cupcakes and went for a coke instead to try to settle whatever was going on with my stomach.  I will forever be known as “bike girl” in that group because I rode my bike down to the cupcake shop, and had to tote that thang around while we tromped around Georgetown.

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I could not eat any of these.  How cruel is this world!

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We determined this might have been this easiest way to eat the cupcake without making a mess.

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DSC_0450Here were all of the beautiful bloggers getting to work.  They were a BLAST.  A blast, I tell you.

The girls lead me to this amazing spot where I snagged some new bracelets to jingle and jangle my rest of the way through the night…

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And finally, we arrived to race day.  (Don’t worry, I will fill you in on the rest of the amazing things we did in DC, including this insane hotel I stayed in next post, to come tomorrow 🙂 )

Race morning, I woke up around 4:45, and jumped in the shower, since I wasn’t really feeling well enough to do it the night before.  I ate half of a nasty-ass bagel that I found at CVS, and made my way down to the Foggy Bottom metro station and road down to the start line.  Once I was there, I tucked my skinny behind in a corner, and called Austin, and observed people, because pre-race chatter makes me really nuts and nervous.  And about 15 minutes from the start, I made my way into my corral.

**I must have been smoking crack when I estimated my finish time because even though I finished in just a smidgen over 2 hours, I was in the 10:30 pace group, which proved to be so wrong, because I spent far too long in the race bobbing and weaving and trying to work my way up.  DO NOT underestimate yourself.**

And with that, off we went.

I cruised.  I cruised, I cruised, and I cruised some more.  I ran, I talked to people.  I read the signs.  At one point, when I was running back through the tunnel, a drummer hit on me by grabbing my arm, and I have to say, it was an awesome race.

photo 5

photo 2-1This handsome mane delivered me my Tiffany’s.

photo 1-1

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My blannnnng!

photo 3-1

My new boyfriends.

The race in review?

The bad?

Seriously, none.  I have nothing bad to say about this race.

The good?

Too much.

  • The Whole Foods chocolate table at mile like 11, staffed by women giving out chocolate.
  • The course.  Tons of entertainment, and tons of people came out.
  • The swag.  A Tiffany’s necklace, water bottles, Luna Bars, Nuun along the course
  • The friends and family station done by alphabet, where we could easily meet up with our friends and family?

The race was sick.

Anyone else out there do this race?  What did you love?