BlogFest + RunGo

You'd think with all this excitement in my life, I'd be dying to tell you all everything... < / sarcasm > But seriously! Despite the not-working-40-hours-a-week thing, I'm finding myself running around and staying quite busy. Between sorority commitments and aiding my mom and aunt's local Soroptimist chapter with some fundraising ideas (hint: I might be an RD soon!), somehow these days are just flying by... but I digress.

The one perk to not having a 9-to-5 right now is that I can kind of jump on whatever running group, celebration, fun run, party that I want. And that's what I did! Wednesday afternoon I got a Facebook message from a friend who wanted to know if I was interested in joining in on the BlogFest fun run - coordinated by none other than Pavement Runner and Sweat Pink and all things that I love. No sooner had I said yes than Sandy texted asking if I was participating too! So many cool people all in one place? Count me in.

Me + Nicole.. and Woody!

Sandy and I met up at the bright, shining hour of 5 am to drive down to Anaheim, park a hotel (for free) and run the mile to the Convention Center where the run started. We were at the Center by 5:45, just in time to see runners coming out of the woodworks and ready for the morning ahead - it was SO awesome getting to put some faces to Instagram handles and some blogs that I follow! < / fan girl >

The run was laid out to head out towards Downtown Disney and turn around at the park gates for both Disneyland and California Adventure. Most of the women I ran with and talked to had either never been to Disney (at least on this side of the country), so I enjoyed sharing some fun facts and the like about the original Disney. :) AND had the realiziation that despite living here and growing up here (but really only running the last three years), I'd never run near/through/by/to Disney, so that was some nerdy excitement for me too!

So the other cool nerdy fun with this is checking out a new running app - RunGo - that allows you to chart your miles and/or pre-map your run. I know, I know, this is very much like RunKeeper and every one out there. BUT - much like a GPS - this one TALKS to you. "Your turn is in 300 feet. Turn left." That way, you're not playing with your map while you're on the go, all you need to do is listen to her and she'll tell you where you're headed. If you veer of course, it'll notify you too! As the app is quite new, it's only in select cities (Seattle, San Francisco, New York), but I cannot wait to give this app some more playtime!

While my blog is far from a key point of my life, I love sharing stories and race experiences here and hope that someone, somewhere, finds a race recap or comment helpful - but man! After checking more of these womens' blogs out and reading more upon the conference... this really is a huge, inspiring community! Had I only known more about this conference sooner. Maybe next year. :)

All in all, a super 5 miles (3 with the group, the extras to/from our cars) to start my morning! Thankfully, we were also done early enough that I didn't have to fight traffic on the way home and made it home in just over half an hour and before it got too hot, so I leashed up Molly and added two more miles on to the day! Amazing morning, great meeting such amazing bloggers and fitspirations!

Have you ever attended a blogging conference?