running

Orlando Runchat! This one’s interactive! #runchat

| cheriarmour

I blog to you today from Orlando, where my youngest sister, and the maid-of-honor at my wedding, currently resides.  I’ll have to let you guys know how a run in pretty temps in the middle of winter works, but I must say, I’m really looking forward to it, especially with the prospect of possibly running another marathon in the spring is lighting a little bit of a fire under my bum.  I’m still not sure on Rock n’ Roll, but I’m really seriously thinking about it.  I think I’m truly addicted to the feeling of crossing the finish line, and each time I’ve run, having Austin at the finish makes it so much sweeter.

But enough gushing about my boo. ::cues Usher and Alicia Keys::

I love this style of blogging that I’ve yanked from my friend, Olive, who’s also a fantastic local blogger.  So before I launch into this fun running themed version of “Would you Rather,” please note that  ALL Would You Rather Running Style Surveys were created by Cori at olivetorun.com.  Got it?  She’s awesome ps, check her out!

Onto the good stuff!

#1. Would you rather run in a thunderstorm or a snowstorm?

Absolutely a thunderstorm.  I think because thunderstorms are usually warm, and running in the rain totally makes me feel like a badass.  I’m almost hoping that it rains a smidgen tomorrow in Orlando so I can capture that feeling.

#2. Would you rather breathe through your nose or breathe through your mouth?

Nose!  My mouth will make my throat all sore I think!  Especially in cold weather.

#3. Would you rather do 100 squats or 100 crunches? [Now take a break and go do them. ;)]

100 crunches.  But full disclosure, I’m writing this from my sister’s bed, and I haven’t done my crunches.  I will do them tomorrow, after my run, promise!

#4. Would you rather have a baked good for dessert or an extra serving of your favorite entree?

That’s really tricky.  It depends on the entree.  No it doesn’t.  Who am I kidding.  I’d rather have dessert for dinner.  Maybe a giant freshly baked cookie and a cup of milk to dip it in?

#5. Would you rather run on a treadmill for an hour or run around the same street block for an hour?

Around the same block for an hour.  I bet I could find  a trail on that block!

#6. Would you rather have a headache during a run or a side stitch?

Oh a headache for sure.  I think the further I run, the more the headache would kind of wear off.  A side stitch literally feels like someone is stabbing you, so no thanks.

#7. Would you rather have a rest day on a work day or a day off?

Is either allowed?  I like to run on work days because it’s an awesome destressor, but I love to run on a day off because what else am I gonna do with a day off besides watch Bravo?  All I like to do on Sundays is vacuum, run, watch tv, and snuggle with my husband-to-be.  Nothing else.

#8. Would you rather be a race director or a race volunteer?

I value the work that volunteers do.  But I think one day, I’d love to direct a cool race.

#9. Would you rather spend your money on running gadgets [HRM, GPS watch, Headphones] or running shoes?

I don’t spend a ton of money on running shoes, but I once owned this incredible pair of Nike Headphones, which were stolen out of my car when I was parked near NC State during grad school.

Headphones

I have not since found a pair of headphones as good. Totally taking suggestions.

#10. Would you rather run in a relay or do the run portion of a distance triathlon?

Oh, a total relay. I have been wanting to do one for literal years!!

Okay, so your turn.  Which would you rather? 

I know, I know, I’m so late with a post!

| cheriarmour

I’m sorry.  But if it makes you feel any better, here is a picture of my cat.

photo-8You can’t be mad at me, most especially when I’m giving you photos of my dear sweet Martin, right?

But I have a good excuse.  I’ve taken a trip down to see my sister in Orlando (she works for Disney), and I will be running in actual balmy temps for once come tomorrow!  Eep!  I’m so excited.

But with all the nasty weather in the country, a trip that should have taken me only half the day, took all day.  I slept on the plane between Raleigh and Charlotte, and thank you Jesus for my running abilities, because, due to the delays, I found myself running in heels through Charlotte Douglas, and quite hungry I might add.

I hunted the airport for something edible that wasn’t Moes or Sbarros, and came up with this, which cost me $6.38.

photo-9Needless to say, Mama was still quite hungry when she finished her expensive “dinner,” and I immediately asked my sister to find me some dinner as soon as she picked me up from the behemoth of an airport that was Orlando’s airport.

So after a harrowing day of travel, Kimmy (the youngest sister) provided me with a glass to ease my travel troubles.

photo-11

 

And the best part?  This is the only wine glass she owns.  I’ve taught her nothing.

So don’t be mad, I promise, I will update you with all the things tomorrow.  But in the meantime, I’ve got a serious question for you. I did my 5 miles on the treadmill at the gym yesterday, January 1st, and the gym was totally dead.  Where was everyone?  When are you starting some of your New Years Resolutions? 

 

 

No more Blackfish!

| cheriarmour

Seriously.

I’ve watched it like 3 times since it started streaming on Netflix.

That’s sort of my personality to be a little all-or-nothing, and to add to this, I’ve always be fascinated by marine life, so much so, that I swore after I told everyone that I was going to be a veterinarian, that no, I was to be a marine biologist.  All of this happened in the fourth grade, by the way.

But no more, because I dreamed last night that my family’s beach house (and we don’t have a beach house in real life) was being attacked by killer whales.  I’ve got to stop with Blackfish.

Moving right along, however.

For the last run club of the year, I was joined by none other than my husband-to-be, an old friend from high school, and a new friend from my job!  Yay!

nogAnd I hear it’s New Years Eve, no?

Enjoy your last runs of 2013, enjoy your day at work some of you, and see you in 2014!

 

What was your workout tune of 2013?

| cheriarmour

Fitsugar posted this sweet list of the “Top Pop Workout Tunes of 2013,” and I’ve brought it to you!

  1. “Timber” — Pitbull, Ke$ha
  2. “Roar” — Katy Perry
  3. “Safe and Sound” — Capital Cities
  4. “Blurred Lines” — Robin Thicke, T.I., Pharrell
  5. “Pompeii” — Bastille
  6. “Work B**ch” — Britney Spears
  7. “Demons (Remix)” — Imagine Dragons
  8. “Best Song Ever” — One Direction
  9. “The Monster” — Eminem, Rihanna
  10. “White Noise” — Disclosure, AlunaGeorge
  11. “Don’t Save Me” — Haim
  12. “Get Lucky” — Daft Punk, Pharrell
  13. “Slow Down” — Selena Gomez
  14. “Under Control” — Calvin Harris, Alesso, Hurts
  15. “Wake Me Up” — Avicii
  16. “Mirrors” — Justin Timberlake
  17. “Burn” — Ellie Goulding
  18. “Wild” — Jessie J, Big Sean
  19. “Applause” — Lady Gaga
  20. “Can’t Hold Us” — Macklemore & Ryan Lewis
  21. “I Love It” — Icona Pop
  22. “We Can’t Stop” — Miley Cyrus

So, I find these kinds of articles totally interesting, because I love my pop, and I love love matching up to see how many of these I hit in my workout playlist.  Funny enough, when I went back and checked my Spotify, I’d hit a really good number of these.

So, as a total side note,  for those of you kind of new to figuring out the easiest way to do your music on your treadmill or long run, Spotify, is the total jam.  I discovered Spotify like 3 years ago.  Basically, when you do the free version, you have access to every single song you can think of across the world for free.  I pay about $9.99 a month to access Spotify premium, which allows me to access the songs when I’m not connected to WiFi, and it’s been really awesome for me, not only to create sweet playlists for me to race to, but also to create and explore new music for me to bring to my Zumba classes.  Because I can switch which country I’m based out of too, I can pull new Latin music for my classes from the top songs from Mexico, Cuba, and Spain.  It’s pretty sweet!

But I digress.

SpotSpotify was kind enough to sum up my year, and as you can see, there were a few songs I couldn’t get enough of, especially when racing and working out, including Pegate Mas, Balada, Kiss You (for all you 1D fans), Blurred Lines, and the ever classy F*ck You by Lily Allen.

So,

What were your workout tunes of 2013? 

 

Happy Belated Christmas, folks!

| cheriarmour

I think it’s the law that the WiFi in your childhood home has to, has to, be incredibly horrid, so I’m blogging a little late from the McDonald’s a few minutes from the border of South Carolina.

I’m avoiding eye contact with like 4 youths who’ve taken an interest in me, and seem to be trying to catch my attention.  I’m wearing my headphones and pretending I can’t hear them – but nothing is really playing.

But I digress.

I hope your Christmas, or whatever you celebrate, was wonderful.  Mine was really really nice.

I started with some Redbox action with my brother upon my arrival.  We watched that Melissa McCarthy/Sandra Bullock cop movie, ‘The Heat’, which I was totally sure was gonna be hysterical, but it was honestly a little off-putting.  There wasn’t a minute in the movie that you didn’t hear the f-word.  Now don’t get me wrong, I totally live for some some dirty language, but it was really too much for my delicate sensibilities.

Christmas Day, I woke up, and once we got everyone up, we started opening presents.  The fan fave?  This:

Soda Stream

The Soda Stream!  My pops, like me, is a huge fan of some seltzer, and we got into making a few glasses before we even started breakfast.  My dad kept looking at his glass and saying, “This is amazing!”

So I’m pretty sure I went with the right choice.

So knowing that I’d be probably indulging in a few more cookies than I usually do, I made sure to hit the run in some way, shape, or form a few times while here at home.  So when I was sent out for our Christmas dinner, some key Chinese dishes (veggie lo mein, sesame chicken for my brother, and general tso’s chicken for my dad), I put in the order, and left the restaurant on foot to make sure that I wouldn’t make an excuse to skip my run.  I ran around the back of the building….and right onto a golf course.

Golf 1

Seriously.  I ran, and found myself on a golf course, and it almost looked like another planet, with the amount of balls (hee hee) that were back there.

Golf 2

Like, doesn’t that look just like Mars or something?  So my quick run turned into one that was a little longer, around a local golf course as the sun went down.

Golf 3As predicted, I ate a few more cookies than I planned to before I went to bed last night and watched some Sherlock Holmes with my brother, so this morning, I hit it again, with some time on the treadmill, followed by some time spent with weights.

Some of today’s highlights?

  • I got to be lazy, aside from my workout, which was fabulous.
  • I used the Starbucks gift card that my mom got me!
  • I went to the Whole Foods in Charlotte, and they have a wine bar there.  A glass was on special for like $3.00, so of freaking course I indulged!  I also walked around, picked some produce with my mom, ate lunch from the hot bar, and got some handmade soap, which is super spensive, but awesome.
  • And I found my wedding dress today!  I’m keeping it super secret, otherwise, I’d post a little pictorial evidence for you.

So onword and upword!  Next up!  New Years!

What are your New Years plans?  Any running related ones?

With a creative spirit also comes this irritating trait.

| cheriarmour

I’m horribly forgetful.  Horribly, horribly forgetful.  The only way I remember to keep my class schedule and show up to places is that I write every single thing, every single appointment down I have in an appointment  book, and once it’s written, it’s real.

Last week after a Zumba party…
Zumba Party

…I decided in order to keep up with my streak (more on that later), I needed to run, even though it was after 10pm.  But I didn’t want to miss my mile, my honey was gone for the weekend, and I was feeling antsy. So still wearing my Santa hat from the party, I drove to my old condo, which is in a super populated, well-lit area, don’t worry.  I parked my car, hid my keys somewhere in the car, and closed the door.  When I went to test the door to make sure it was still unlocked, I found, much to my immediate horror, that I had locked the door with my keys inside.

Damnit.

I called AAA from my phone, which I’d thankfully not locked in the car, and since in my experience, AAA takes years to get to you to unlock your car, I decided to go for my run, since it was also about 40 degrees out, and I wasn’t necessarily interested in freezing as I waited.  So down the road I went in my purple Moving Comfort jacket and Santa hat.  I’m sure I got a lot of strange looks.

Murphy’s Law must have been at work, because not a half-mile down the road, I got a call, which I answered mid-run from the tow-truck driver.

“Yeah I’ll be there in 10 minutes…”

And in the fastest lockout time in history, I arrived back to my car to the tow truck driver waiting on me.  So I jogged up, and explained to her why I was jogging around downtown at night with a Santa hat on.

Bruise

Now, in completely different news, I discovered this bruise the other night on my thigh, and I cannot, for the life of me, remember how or when I could have whacked myself so hard that me, being the dark-skinned girl that I am, could bruise like this. My forgetfulness at its finest…

10 things I wish I’d known at 20.

| cheriarmour

I feel really reflective this time of year.  Not in a bad, I’ve screwed up my entire life kind of way, but in a, look at what I’ve done this year kind of way.

I was on Twitter yesterday, and noticed a friend of mine, still a student at my wonderful alma mater, lamenting that he couldn’t wait til he graduated to get out of there.

I was there.  I think we all were there, especially toward the end of undergrad, when you’re 25-pounds plus more than when you entered the door, and your liver is revolting for all the awful things you’ve done to it, especially that second semester of senior year.  Yikes.  But here are 20 things I wish I’d known at 20 (or technically 21, which was when I graduated, but 20 kinda rolls off the tongue better.)

  1. Take care of your body.  A lot of the weight I gained during undergrad didn’t just have to do with my horrid diet, but it had to do with the fact that I never worked out.  I would work out once in a while, get super sore, and not embark on another workout adventure for weeks at at  a time.  Had I figured out that working out would transform my body and my palate, I would have saved my self hours of lifting up my shirt in front of the bathroom mirror, sucking my belly in, and telling myself I could never get my stomach to look like that.
  2. While you’re taking care of your body, quit hating on it so much.  Putting crap in and never working out also served to create a thick, greasy, layer of hatred and self-loathing for my body.  Now that I work out, you can’t tell me nothing.  Cause I am extremely fly.  Extremely fly.
  3. Networking is so important.  I ran into this kid at homecoming who was starting the job search and I gave him my dad’s email address, since my dad is pretty high up at a financial institution.  I don’t know why he never contacted my dad, but when someone gives you an email address or a phone number and tells you to call it for a job, do it.  I learned this the hard way.  But use everyone around you as a resource for your job purposes.
  4. Do your thang.  There was a time in my life when someone making fun of me would have sent me over the edge.  But if I had allowed it to tear me up so badly that I never taught a Zumba class, for example, I would not be sitting on my sexy behind writing to you all.   So make fun of me for my running, my love of coffee, hummus, and three-quarter tights, I will not be giving any effs any time soon.
  5. Don’t take that breakup so hard because…
  6. You’re not in love.  I have not been in love until I met my husband-to-be.  And I wish I hadn’t taken it so hard when I broke up with my two serious boyfriends in college.  With both, I suffered incredibly crushing heartache, and I literally thought that the pain of the situation was going to kill me.  It didn’t, and I grew back stronger, kinda like a weed.
  7. Cherish good friendships.  I have a ton of friends.  But the quality friendships, I like to nurture, water, and feed.  Good people who will support you when, for example, your mom has a stroke, are hard to find.  Keep them close.
  8. Dump bad friends.  Nobody’s forcing you to stay friends with the butt who lived on your hall your second semester of freshman year.  Dump them on Facebook, dump them and real life, and laugh in their faces when they try to get themselves invited to your wedding 6 years later.
  9. Work hard.  Play harder.  That’s not just the rule in college – it’s the rule in real life.  If you don’t play enough, you will turn out to be super stressed and super broken.
  10. When in doubt, run.  Don’t run fast if you can’t.  But just run.  You will be absolutely shocked at the things running can fix.

What 10 things do you wish you’d known at 20?  

Road Rage – have you ever just lost it?

| cheriarmour

Run Selfie

Requisite run selfie. The air in my office was hot, dry, and stagnant yesterday, so I felt like I was escaping prison to be able to get out and run a few miles on the greenway. I also was running with a belly full of holiday cookies – we’d thrown a holiday party for our clients and me, usually cool as a cucumber around office treats, totally lost it on a plate of homemade chocolate chip cookies. Getting my feet to move after that was so difficult.

But I digress. Yesterday, I went to go have cocktails with a girlfriend who got married a year ago. I tell you what, there is no greater resource than a bride who’s been recently married. On my way there, I was feeling good, the endorphins were flowing, and I was in a great mood. I hit some rush hour/holiday traffic around a local shopping center. Still no big deal.

Let me interrupt this story to tell you a pertinent tale.  Years ago, I was in Manhattan with my dad.  The traffic there is obviously horrible and my dad pulled into an intersection without checking to make sure that the traffic on the other side would move, and by the time the light turned red, my dad was stuck in the intersection.  A cop was riding by at that moment,  pulled us over, and gave my dad a ticket for like obstructing the flow of traffic or something.  From that, I always understood that you waited to make sure that traffic would clear the intersection before you pulled through.

So back to yesterday.  Traffic was beginning to back up into the intersection, so I patiently waited for it to clear before I pulled through.  The woman behind me honked.  One thing about North Carolina, you don’t honk.  I gave her a look in my rearview, and assured myself that she had to see that the intersection wasn’t clear, and that we’d be blocking up traffic.  She honked again, and then started pulling around me to pull into the intersection.  And that’s when I lost it.  The left hand came up.  My voice rose an octave.  The New York in me came out.

“No. NO. NO.  THAT IS NOT HOW WE DO THINGS HERE!”

And she looked frightened.

“Absolutely not.  You get back where you belong!”

And she did.

I’m not sure what exactly came over me, but as I age (I’m 26) my tolerance for people’s rudeness gets smaller and smaller, and I’m a little more willing to stand up for what’s right – in this case, my right to avoid a ticket!

When was the last time you lost it in traffic?