“A person should set his goals as early as he can and devote all his energy and talent to getting there. With enough effort, he may achieve it. Or he may find something that is even more rewarding. But in the end, no matter what the outcome, he will know he has been alive.” - Walt Disney

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Be CHEERful: A Follow-Up Post


You may remember my rather tongue-in-cheek post last month titled What To Do When You're NOT Running a Race That All Your Friends Are?.  It was about your options for dealing with FOMO when all your friends are running a race that you're not, which, in this instance, was all my ROTE friends participating in the runDisney Twilight Zone Tower of Terror 10-Miler.  This is just a quick and funny follow-up to that post.

In response to that post, my friend Megan (check out her great running blog here: Elbowglitter) tweeted me the following pic of her cat, Pippin, telling me I needed to convince the cats to cheer with me:
Megan's cat, Pippin, "cheering on" our friends Katie & Kim from afar.

Which, of course, sparked an idea...what if I could come up with some funny signs for the cats that I could then text/tweet to my friends as they were running?  And, what if I could convince others to join me???  That's when another friend, Kim (check out her great running blog here: TriAndTrue) stepped up, volunteered her dog, Flynn, and helped me start planning.  Here's what we came up with:

My cat, Junebug, "cheering."

My cat, Emma, "cheering."

Kim couldn't get Flynn to keep his signs on long enough to snap a picture, so we "doctored" a few old pics of him to send.


Overall, I think we did a pretty good job of virtually cheering!  Kim and I worked out a schedule where we alternated sending our pet cheering pics to our friends throughout the night, and from their responses, I'd say we were a success!

It just goes to show that FOMO can turn into something fun, funny, and helpful.  Even though I wasn't running the race, I still had a good time that night tracking and cheering!

  • Have you ever virtually cheered on friends/family when they run out-of-town/state/country?
  • Do you take any of your pets along when you are physically there to spectate/cheer a race?