It's hard for me to write about an event that I know will be covered by others (and they'll do a better job of it too) and since this was a social event rather than a training session or a race, it's even more out of my wheelhouse, but here goes nothing...
Saturday May 4th (happy Star Wars Day!) was the eve of the Goodlife Toronto Marathon, and several Fitfluential Ambassadors were getting together to welcome Brian, the Pavement Runner to town and wish him good luck on the race. The whole thing was put together by Krysten, the Darwinian Fail. They're both great sources of leadership and inspiration in the running community, so any meeting of the minds between the two was sure to be the place to be!
The choice of venue/activity was carbo-loading at the Old Spaghetti factory; I don't need a race as an excuse to eat pasta... let's hope this doesn't set my DietBet back too far! One of my blogger heroes, Janice the Fitness Cheerleader got in touch and we carpooled to downtown Toronto for the event. (You'll notice I always include their blogger name - luckily my brain managed to stick to actual given names, but my instinct was always to use online handles, like they were superheroes with secret identities or something!)
We sat at the end of the table and were soon joined by Phaedra from Blisters and Black Toenails who organized the great #BostonStrongTO run, in short, another online running community leader (do you see a pattern yet?). Go to her blog for another recap of the night.
It was the first time I'd met people who I only knew online in real-life (unless I count the old days of internet dating *shudder*). I have to admit there's an underlying awkward vibe that goes largely unacknowledged, but I think everyone feels it all the same. The good news is that the crowd is so like-minded in their interests - running, social media, triathlon, blogging, health and wellness that good conversation is pretty much non-stop. There was just a lot of warm, fuzzy feelings as everyone wanted to support the racers, who wanted to support the community of Boston. If you weren't racing, you still had training or wellness or blogging goals that everyone wanted you to be able to achieve too. I even learned about a couple of kids Tri events that bear further looking into...
Phaedra not only beat me to the punch on the recap, but also did a great job of collecting links. I hereby hijack that list, and add to it...
and without blogs, but on twitter: Derek
I'll be spending the rest of the evening adding those to my Feedly (Google Reader Replacement), you should do the same and follow them on Twitter or whatever too. If you were there that night and I forgot you (or know someone fitting that description), please leave a link in the comments!
EDIT: Holy Cow! I nearly forgot the best part! We all got little loot bags of Clif Energy Products to take home. I'll bet I'm set for race season...
Labels: fun, links, running
