racing

My year of running. #runchat #run

| cheriarmour

I cannot believe that we’re approaching the end of the year. I don’t know where the year went, but I feel so hashtag blessed that I’m still here.  It has been an absolutely beautiful year.  I’ve experienced a ton – good and bad, but I’m excited to see what 2014 in store for me and my family.

yearofrunning 225x300 How was your year of running?

I stole this fun idea to sum up my year of running from Miss Zippy, and I encourage you guys to go ahead and steal it from me now!  I’m nosy as hell, so I’d really like to know about your year – and I’ll post this to my Facebook status so some of you guys can play, and I’ll pull some of your comments into my blog.

What was your:

  • Best race experience?  Hands down, my best race experience this year was the Nike Women’s Half Marathon, which I blogged about back in April.  The race itself was awesome.  The weather was beautiful, the terrain was flat, and it was just incredibly well-organized, and I feel super lucky, because for the second year in a row, I won my lottery entrance into the race.  Eep!  Additionally, I am so enamored of Washington, D.C., and spending the weekend there with good friends made the weekend super duper enjoyable.  Now I hope this year my ENTIRE name makes it onto the wall of race participant names they plaster the street with in Georgetown.  ‘Member this?

Billboard

  • Best run? I need to choose a few.  One of my best runs was in Asheville, the weekend of Alexa’s bacherlorette party up in Asheville….

cabin 4

And this view of the river we stayed along…
Cabin 3
And I’d have to say my second favorite best run was a run I did with my brother the day after Thanksgiving a few weeks ago.   It was just fun to work out with a member of my family who kicked my butt.  It’s also so nice to talk to that kid, who’s really impressed me with how he’s matured in the past year.  Kid gets up at 3:45 to go to swim practice, and still manages to make it to school each day.  Like – bye.  Amazing.

  • Best new piece of gear?  Geez, that’s hard.  I have a lot of good stuff.  But I think my favorite piece that I’ve acquired this year would either be my Glycerin 11s, cause that shoe update was so  sweet, or this purple Moving Comfort full-zip that work gave us at the company holiday party.  I have a problem staying warm, so the fact this jacket can stand up to some of the ungodly temps we’ve had lately around here in the mornings says a lot to me.

Moving Comfort

  • Best piece of running advice you received?  Put one foot in front of the other.  A co-worker told me this as I was training for Shamrock in March, and that’s really all you can do, in racing, and in life.  When a race becomes challenging or miserable, you have to tell yourself to place one foot in front of the other.  There’s simply not another option.
  • Most inspirational runner?  I cannot pick just one, because working with runners, I am so inspired by my coworkers.  Jenny, who I ran Shamrock with, was a mother, a wife, and still found time to run that full with me.  Kerri teachers a full yoga course load, works, and trained hard and well enough to qualify for Boston.  Kerry runs a big race a month.  Fast.  Shelly is pregnant and still running.  I could go on and on and on, but you get it.  My coworkers rock, and when I don’t feel like working at my running, I think of them, and I usually can muster up enough to get moving.
  • If you could sum up your year in a couple of words, what would they be? Be present.  Don’t let worry or anxiety steal your happiness.

Now it’s your turn – fill me in in the comments, on your blog, on my Facebook, or Tweet me little tidbits!

Race Etiquette Question

| cheriarmour

Happy Thanksgiving week everyone!  If I’m a little sporadic or spotty this week, forgive me – it’s Thanksgiving week and I’ll be making my way down to Charlotte AND my fabulous upper endoscopy is this week.

I can’t lie to you, I’m kind of pumped for the potential blogging that can come from me being under the influence of Propofol.  But anyhoo, I have a question for you guys, as a lot of yous embark on your Turkey Trots this week.  What is the proper etiquette on wearing your race shirt during a race?

I ask because I whipped out my Greensboro Marathon shirt for the first time on Saturday, complete with misprint (the shirt reads ‘Greensboro Half Marathon’ despite the fact that I vomited through 26, not 13 miles of bliss), but I saw some folks (not a lot, but enough), wearing their shirts at the race.  I don’t put a shirt on until a race is completed, the same way I wouldn’t try on a wedding dress even though I worked at a wedding dress shop (it’s true) because I feel like it might screw up my luck.  But what do you guys think?

This is to all the marathon spouses.

| cheriarmour

Time to shift the focus of the blog. There is someone I feel like deserves a great big hug, kiss, and a thank you from me.

And I think some of you marathoners out there have a similar person in your lives.

Saturday, as I barfed my way though the final 9 of my marathon, there was someone on my mind.  Austin had dropped me off in the freezing cold, held my things, and reassured me all morning as I worried in Elon.  I know it wasn’t warm, and he fielded two mid-marathon phone calls as I sobbed and told him that I was throwing up, in grotesque detail, with incredible strength and calm.

“Okay love you so much. You can do this”

“Almost there babe. Love you”

A few of the reassuring texts I received from him, not to mention the kind words he passed along as I called him from the port-a-john.  Yep.

I raise a glass to you, marathon spouses.  Those of you who encourage through training, show up for race day, hold all the stuff, jangle a cowbell, and act like you’re happy to see us, even though you’ve been waiting in the cold, bored for hours?  We love you.  We appreciate you.  And we can’t wait for the day when we can do the same for you.

kiss

Time to have some fun! #runchat

| cheriarmour

In the comments below, on Facebook, or on Twitter answer me this.

What should I think about on tomorrows long beautiful run? I’ll do my best do think about it and address it in a little post next week.  

The first order of thinking business will be about food.  That’s all I’ve got so far. 

Here goes Buzzfeed, singing my life.

| cheriarmour

4 days away from the Greensboro Marathon, and I’m a little alarmed that I’m not freaking out or having a psychotic break. All I can think about is eating a biscuit from Biscuitville with an egg on it. 26.2 miles, and all I can think about is the fat I can consume immediately following. Oh well, have me arrested if you don’t like it.

This video though.  The one I related to the best was the isolation, which I distinctly felt at like miles 17-19 of my first marathon.  Justin Timberlake Pandora was playing, and I remember wondering where everyone was.

What I didn’t relate to, however, was the wall, and knock on wood for my amazing co-workers who guided me through the nutrition needed to prevent that exhausted feeling, I hope I don’t hit it this time.  4 days!  Eep!

Bull City Race Fest: A Review

| cheriarmour

I think today actually feels like the first day of fall I’ve felt since fall started almost a month ago.  I write to you from my apartment, zipped into a jacket, toes freezing, with that weird burny smell coming from the heat because I’ve barely used it yet.

Today, I participated in the Bull City Race Fest, Endurance Magazine’s race festival.  It was a fun way to get in a few miles in before next week’s 26.2 (eek) which looms at just about 5 days away now.

I was terrified.  I haven’t raced since the spring, and even though this was a 5-miler, nothing scary, and nothing I haven’ t done before, but getting back into it felt kind of like I was running a first race all over again.

Medal

The race featured a 1-miler, a 5-miler, and a 13.1, all winding through Durham, about 25 minutes from where I live in Raleigh.

  • The Improvements:  I don’t want to say “the bad” because there was really nothing bad about this race, especially for an inaugural year, which usually is a mess.  The only thing that kind of caught me off-guard, which could have been my fault, was that I was not 100% clear that the 5-miler didn’t finish where we started.  So, when I finished, I wasn’t aware to tell friends that I’d finished and I was on Duke University’s campus.  No big deal.
  • The traffic.  Almost 6,000 folks ran, and it created some congestion on the course.  I’m a little concerned for next year, which I’m sure will be bigger, especially if they keep it up with all the food trucks.

The Awesome:

  • The race was extremely well-organized.  The expo, the refreshments, the buses to transport us from the 5-miler line back to the start, everything seemed to come together pretty well.
  • The food trucks.  The race ended with a food truck rodeo that was pretty cool.  By the time we got to the trucks, literally every single truck was out of coffee, which would have been nice, especially considering the cold, but my breakfast biscuit and hash brown patty was tasting so right to my senses.
  • Packet pick-up.  Nice.  No complaints here.

    • And unrelated, it was good to see a ton of friends at the race from Raleigh and Durham, and I felt super lucky to run into some coworkers, one of whom won the whole dang thing, and two of whom were running their first half-marathons. How cool to witness that experience for someone else!

Ready to feel kind of inadequate?

| cheriarmour

Okay, not really, I’m never writing to make you feel bad about yourself.

original

This woman. She’s a schoolteacher. A marathoner? And she takes a wrong turn on a half course and runs the full.  She didn’t just run the full though.  She won the full.  Get it here on Gawker.  I pray, I pray, that the running gods will bestow upon me a teeny tiny bit of the magic she’s got, to allow her adrenaline (and obvious athletic gifts) to push her through.  (Oh, and read the comments.  There are some haters with a capital ‘H’ out there….)

The humble brag.

| cheriarmour

I did this the other day.
Humble Brag

I know guys.  It’s not quite the a humble brag, which is defined as, 
a brag statement artfully planted within a slightly deprecating statement; used in order to conceal pride that would otherwise be apparent by Urban Dictionary, but almost. It’s kinda like when you post a status about that 20-miler, but you do it under the guise of “Ugh omg, annoying Family Guy was totally on when I was running my 20-miler at an 8:47 pace. Gross!” What I did would slightly be considered the humble brag because I was sort of letting folks know I work out.  But it has a place.  As annoying at it is, the humble brag has a valuable place in health and fitness. 

The following morning, my alarm went off at about 5:20 am, and I briefly considered closing my eyes, and going back to sleep. But I remembered that I’d posted that I was going to Yoga, and then the thought of deceiving my friends and family, or not being accountable for what I’d said I’d do really made me feel uncomfortable.  Plus, I wanted to get my Yoga on!

So say what you will about people who post the details of their workouts on social media, and no, we’re not talking about you who posted about tying your shoes too tight, let’s not get into the minutiae of how your workout went, however, posting about your 5k, posting about nailing a pose in yoga, posting about hitting the gym 5 times instead of your usual 3, for example, is okay, and encouraging, both to others, (believe it or not, family and friends may be inspired by your actions), and it holds you accountable to a WHOLE LOT of people.  So keep up the humble brags.  Well, sorta, I don’t care if you’re gonna be douchey about it, but if it keeps you accountable?  Keep it up!

I’m the worst traitor, and runners are the nicest people in the whole world.

| cheriarmour

So I’m settling in at home.  Still trying to keep up with training, even though I haven’t picked a fall race yet.  And I realized yesterday, as I huffed and puffed through NC humidity, that I’d forgotten any type of hydration back at home in Raleigh.  Dang it.  That won’t work.

So I googled a running place, and slunk in.  Slunk, because I work in running specialty and I felt like such a jerk for being there.  But while I’m there, I may as well check out what they’re working with, right?

I walk in.  Put my Hater Shades on. And…our store looks SO much hotter.  Score.

So I’m trying to find something, anything wrong with this adorable store, none of which is real or true, to make myself feel better about shopping at a competitor.  Truthfully, I went into the store, the Charlotte Running Company, and it was cute, clean, well set-up, and the folks were so nice, even as some of my weird questions about the Hokas they carried revealed to them where, and for whom I worked.   When they found out I’d be in unfamiliar running territory for a few weeks while taking care of my mom, they directed me to where I could run, and groups I could meet up with. Okay, I feel kinda guilty now for being a hater when these guys were so nice.

And no sooner had I walked in the door when I spotted this.

photo

A 13-race 5k series?! Prizes? Uh, where do I sign up?

So I got my nutrition, chatted with the super duper nice folks at Charlotte Running Company, called my little brother, and signed us BOTH up for a 5k.  So tonight will be sibling bonding time – our first family 5k!