Liebster Award

As I'm sure many of you have seen, the Liebster Award is making it's way around the blogger world. I've been nominated by two different bloggers and fellow Oiselle ambassadors (Paulette and Andrea)! What does this award mean? The Liebster Blog award is meant to honor "up-and-coming" blogs with smaller followings that you really like. I'm excited to be a part of it to share my story and to nominate other bloggers you should check out (including the above ladies who nominated me.)

The Liebster Blog award asks the blogger to do the following:
1. Answer 11 questions posted by the person who nominated you.
2. List 11 random facts about yourself.
3. Nominate 11 blogs.
4. Write 11 questions for the blogs you nominate.

As I was asked by 2 different folks, I'm only going to answer 11 questions total, picking and choosing my favs. :)

1. What's your guilty pleasure running song? I really love songs that talk about running. I mean, I'm not even tired of "Born to Run" by Bruce Springsteen yet! Right now my favorite song that mentions running is Florence and the Machine "Dog Days are Over"

2. Do you have siblings? Yes, I have 2 brothers.

One of my brothers will be returning home in the fall after 5 years of military service. I'm really excited to have them both home soon! Since they both are pretty active, I think a family race, crossing the finish line together, is in our future. At least, I hope so! :)

3. Best meal of your life? I'm a Chicago girl at heart so I have to go with the standard... PIZZA. Pequod's has the best deep dish you can find in the entire city and I miss it ever so dearly almost every day. (I'm not joking. I really love pizza that much.)

4. What did you want to be when you were little? I wanted to be a doctor. Yikes, I'm glad that didn't work out!

5. Ever have major surgery? No *knock on wood*

6. Do you have pets, and if so what kind? If you're new to my blog, I have a pup named Pepper. She is my favorite running buddy and is just pretty much amazing in every way.

7. What is your favorite long run fuel? The night before a long run I have some frozen fish (for protein and salt), brown rice (for carbs), and some sauteed veggies (obvi)... and maybe some ice cream if it's around! During my long runs, I haven't yet mastered the fueling aspect. I have a pretty sensitive stomach and I've had a lot of issues in the past. So far what has worked the best this training season are electrolyte tablets (Nathan, Gu Brew) instead of Gatorade for hydration and Honey Stinger energy chews for energy. I've been loving the flavor orange lately so I try to keep it consistent across energy chew and tablet flavors.

8. If you could vacation anywhere for a week, where would you go? I'd love to go back to Europe with my husband. I'm glad I had the chance to go right after college with a friend because life just seems to always get in the way of going back again! My husband has been a bunch of times and I'd love to go and share that experience with him.

9. Coffee, tea, or none of the above? I can't do anything productive in a day unless I have my standard 1 cup of coffee.

10. What hobbies do you have outside of running & fitness? Hobbies outside of running? What are those? Who has time for that?

11. Why did you start blogging? I've had blogs on and off since I was 18 (now THAT is an embarrassing read) including a vintage LiveJournal. I mainly started this running blog after the dust from the Chicago Marathon settled and I realized that all my friends and family were tired of hearing me talk about running. 

Now... Time for my 11 random facts...

1. I'm allergic to cats, but that never stops them from coming by me all the time. If you have a cat at your house and I come over, regardless of how shy they are, the will find me and try to sit on my lap. Those jerks.

2. I used to run the 400m in track in high school and even attempted long jump and the 100m hurdles. You may have already guessed that I'm extremely uncoordinated so those "attempts" at the hurdles and long jump didn't really work out so well.

3. Keeping on the high school track topic, my coach wanted me to try the 800m. I was stubborn and didn't feel like it so never gave it a try. Based on my life since and my love for the middle distance, I sometimes wondered how fast I could have run or how far I could have gone if I had only not been a stubborn 16 year old. Insert image of Uncle Rico throwing a football at a video camera. (Thankfully I found a gif instead.)

Source

4. I'm a huge Harry Potter nerd and have read the entire series from cover to cover twice. I've read a few of the books in the series as many as 5 times.

5. I just recently started watching Glee and I wondered where it has been my whole life. I LOVE musicals and, obviously, love the show. If only I had more time to watch it to get caught up...

6. My first concert ever was New Kids on the Block. I was in 1st grade and it was awesome. I remember I wore my GIANT button with all of their faces and I had my t-shirt in one of those neon side clip things. I WAS VERY FASHIONABLE IN THE 90S!

7. My favorite movie growing up was Newsies.

8. My favorite movie in high school was Can't Hardly Wait.

9. I hope to finish a triathlon at some point in my life. I hope that I can make this a priority, after I learn how to swim...

10. I don't own a bicycle and I really wish I did. 

11. I hope to qualify for Boston some day, but I think I have to finish a marathon without throwing up first...

As I know a lot of the folks already tagged, I'm not going to tag them again so I'm not going to list out 11 questions to answer. Basically, I'm drained from answering these questions and coming up with facts that my creative juices are done for right now. I'm taking the lazy way out... Lol. I hope you enjoy these facts about me anyways!