Winning! (and also giving up)

Posted by Katie

Let's start with the good news shall we?

A few weeks ago I WON running shoes! Salomon trail running shoes no less which I already wear and love.

Bored one evening I happened to open an AnyMountain promotional email and at the very bottom was a description of a contest they were having. The rules were to post a picture to their facebook page with the hashtag #RunAway to enter and best photo will be chosen (based on likes? that part was unclear). Anyway I figured this was a pretty low effort contest and the prize sounded awesome (running shoes yay!) so I posted this picture.

#RunAway

You might remember this picture from my pre-race thoughts post for IM Lake Tahoe 70.3. I posted and promptly forgot about it figuring that lots of people would enter and I am not particularly lucky in contests. Then BOOM, I get an email saying I won and would I like to come into AnyMountain to pickup my shoes. Um yes.

 Salomon XR Mission my FAVORITE trail running shoe and in this sweet teal color. YAY

I have to shout out the Corte Madera AnyMountain staff, they were so super friendly and awesome when I came to pickup my shoes. I had the choice of several different models of Salomon shoes from light weight track shoes, to heavier hiking shoes but I ended up settling on a model that I already own, the Salomon XR Mission. I  love how they fit and I use these shoes for both trail running and backpacking (my other pair scaled Mt. Whitney!). Thanks again AnyMountain and Salomon!

Okay now for the "giving up" part of the title and the bad news. I've decided not to run CIM this year. I've been nursing a strained back for the past two months and not really giving myself time to heal. This all came to a head today on a run that should have been 18 that I convinced myself 15 was okay and then it turned into 5. I pushed through this back injury for Challenge Rancho Cordova 70.3 triathalon, and Healdsburgh half marathon so I was fully planning on being somewhat reckless again and going for the full marathon at CIM in December but I realized on my run today that I need a break. I am hoping that with this break I can get healthy and build some core strength before ski season and IM Canada training kicks off next year.

At least the 5mi that I slogged through had good weather.. #fogcity