Marine Corps = Hard Core!

I finished the Marine Corps Marathon!  It was incredibly hard, but incredibly awesome.  My friend Janice and I barely made it through the gauntlet, and only beat the bridge with a couple minutes to spare, but we made it!  A full race recap will be up soon (hopefully), but I wanted to share that I finished!  I have this picture from after the finish to tide you over until I am able to post again.

Janice (left) & me (right) in front of the Marine Corps Memorial after finishing MCM.

Also, yes, thanks to Hurricane Sandy, I did get stuck in D.C. until Wednesday at noon, but finally made it home safe and sound and unscathed!

New Skirt - Disco Style!

Emma totally photobombed the pic.

That's right, Leah over at Sparkle Skirts has done it again!  Here's yet another fun new print - the Disco Skirt. As a fun treat to psych myself up for the Marine Corps Marathon, I used my birthday gift certificate from my parents to purchase this new skirt and it arrived tonight!

This picture doesn't do the Disco justice at all. It looks INCREDIBLE in person. I feel bad even posting this terrible in-the-mirror camera phone pic, especially considering I've got some serious post-mexican food bloat going on. But I was so excited getting it and trying it on that I wanted to share immediately. The small clear sequins (although I hesitate to call them sequins - they're like small clear dots on the fabric) add the perfect amount of shimmer when the light hits them with movement.

I tried it on with the following colored tops:

• aqua
• blue
• pink
• raspberry
• purple
• green

Each top highlighted that color in the skirt and really pulled it out to make it seem like the dominant color in the skirt. It looked great with all of them, but my favorite two were this aqua one and the raspberry color (but these are usually my two faves anyway, so I'm definitely biased on that).

I'm going to wear it on my TM run tomorrow and try to remember to snap another pic then to share.

*****Ok, I know what you're thinking at this point - she talks about these skirts A LOT.  She's got to be getting something in return, right - money, skirts, something?  Wrong.  All my Sparkle Skirts were bought and paid for by me.  So why all the hooplah?  I just really love the skirts.  They fit better than any other running skirt I've ever worn, they're made in the USA, and the owner, Leah, is one special lady whose customer service is phenomenal.  So I like to give them/her a little shout out whenever I can.  If you haven't tried a Sparkle Skirt yet, give them a try.  They are worth every penny! *****

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?