Motivation Monday

I have to admit it – my motivation was waning a bit this past weekend.  I’ve been dealing with the aftermath of a chest cold for weeks, Leo wasn’t feeling well, and pollen counts are off the charts around here… the right combination to make me want to hole up inside and skip a long run.

But, just as I was ready to bag my planned six-miler, I saw this from Run Chat:

Game on. Time for the #RunChat Scavenger Hunt

March 14, 2013 By David 31 Comments

Get your camera (or phone) ready, put on your running gear and start searching. It’s time for the first ever #RunChat Scavenger Hunt.

In early March we took your submissions on what to find, then took your votes to narrow down the list. We’ve taken the top 10 items for you to find to snap photos of and post them to Twitter to show off all in the name of fun … and some great prizes.

The #RunChat Scavenger Hunt will run through 9 p.m. ET March 31 to give you plenty of time to find these items in case you need more than one run to do complete the search.

Here’s how it will work: you run, you take photos of the items below, you post them to Twitter with the hashtag #RunChatHunt and you’ll be entered to win our prizes.

Here are the items to search for (in order of your No. 1 choice to No. 10 in last week’s voting):

A running sticker (13.1, 26.2, etc.)

Bridge (bonus for covered)
A giant hill you’re going to run
Christmas decorations still up
Historical marker/sign
Letters from signs to create #runchat
“Welcome to” state/city/county sign
Water (lake/river/pond)
Trail marker or mile marker
A scene from your favorite place to run

I love photography. I especially love photo scavenger hunts.  And I needed more motivation to go run.  It was the Perfect Storm of incentives.  Minus the George Clooney.  And.  Marky Mark.  Though I did choose INKS Kick and Shriekback Oil & Gold as my albums for my previously mentioned album run experiment.  So I totally had the 80s music covered.  Yo.

Ahem.  I digress…

It was a gorgeous spring day here in west-central Florida, so I headed out to the beach and started running and shooting.

Not just "a" running sticker - three of 'em! Four if runDisney counts.

We don't have big hills in coastal Florida. But we do have bridges - this covers both!

Mile marker. D'uh.

Welcome sign - and to my very favorite beach, no less.

Water: a turtle pond at McGough Nature Park.

Does 1990 count as "historical"? It was  the previous century...

Last, but certainly not least, my favorite place to run! Bliss.

So, how'd it go?  Beautifully!  Literally and figuratively.  Taking time to stop for photos forced me  out of my run-data-filled head and into the world around me.  Paying close attention to the sights so as not to miss a potential photo made me more aware of my truly awesome surroundings; I'm darned lucky to run in such an amazing place.  And having a running goal that really had nothing to do with the act of running was just plain fun.  And... I finished my six miles feeling great.

Many thanks to Run Chat for posting the challenge; I may not win a prize in the contest, but I kinda feel like I already won big!  :)

10 (Running) Things...

You know those “25 (or 10, or 20, whatever) Things You Don’t Know About Me” lists that were popping up on Facebook with the frequency of pimples on a hormonal teen’s face a while back? I loved them.  LOVED. them.  (The lists, I mean, not the pimples.  Thank all that is good in the universe for Retinol.)  I love answering quizzes, making lists, and, just as much, reading everyone else’s answers and lists.  I don’t much like people, as a whole, but I find them fascinating and those Facebook lists never failed to entertain me.  But they’ve been absent from my life for quite a while and, though I social media it up as a profession, I’m not a Facebook trendsetter, so I haven’t had the nerve to start a new one up.

So imagine my joyful surprise (picture a kid awaking to find a pile of Benjamin’s left under her pillow by the Tooth Fairy) when my favorite lady runners posted this little number on AnotherMotherRunner.com this morning: 10 Running Related Personal Questions.

Ooooooooooo!!!  Yes, I literally squealed in delight.  In the middle of car circle, whilst dropping off my 10-year-old son at school.  He was… thrilled.  I’m sure.

I’ve been mentally working on my answers all day and I’m now ready to commit them to paper (pixels, whatever) and share with you.  And I’ll be checking back on Another Mother Runner’s site to see what other people answer – remember, the answers of others are even more fun than listing your own!  Hope to see yours, too.

1. Best run ever: This is actually a tough one and I have to do that annoying thing of giving it a tie.  Go ahead and hate me now.  It’s hard to beat the excitement of my first race, especially when it involved running in one of my favorite spots on earth – Epcot – with my favorite person, the thrilled son mentioned above.  It was runDisney’s Royal Family 5K in Feb. 2012; we weren’t fast, but we took lots of pictures, made lots of memories and became inextricably hooked on running in Disney.  Which makes my second nominee for Best Run Ever rather unsurprising: my first time over 7 miles, run while on vacation this past summer in Disney World.  We were staying at Disney’s Beach Club Villas and it was a beautiful, strong, well-paced run… with the promise of rides and piles of yummy food offerings at its conclusion.

2. Three words that describe my running: Determined. Cleansing.  Wonky. (‘Cause that’s how I run – wonky.)

3. My go-to running outfit is: A C9 black running skort from Target, Badass Mother Runner tank, black compression calf sleeves, white visor.

4. Quirky habit while running: As I’ve written before, my cadence naturally goes along with the beats per minute of whatever music I’m listening to. Though I’m not sure that’s very “quirky.”

5. Morning, midday, evening: Morning, in order to get the miles in before the temp here in Florida goes from “hot” to “surface of the freaking sun”, but I much prefer late afternoon.

6. I won’t run outside when it’s: Monsooning.  No – make that monsooning with lightning.  Because I’ll totally run in a torrential rain – I’d just prefer not to be electrocuted.  Unless that would speed up my pace…

7. Worst injury—and how I got over it: IT Band Syndrome.  I’m still working on it.

8. I felt most like a badass mother runner when: I took on a mountainside in North Carolina – 300’ elevation climb in less than ½ a mile.  Boo-ya!

9. Next race is: runDisney’s Twilight Zone Tower of Terror 10-Miler, Sept.. 29

10. Potential running goal for 2013: There is no "potential": this IS the goal - runDisney’s Princess Half-Marathon, Feb. 2013 – with the most amazing group of fellow Mother Runners a gal could ask for!