Sarah Brown

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Every time I am at the Ryman Auditorium for a concert, I always scan the crowd to see if I recognize anyone. Almost always I see this new East Nasty of the Week sitting in her favorite seat, the 5th row pews in the lower bowl. Say hello to completely awesome Sarah K. Brown!!!

Sarah was born in Olympia, Washington and at an early age moved to the bright sunshine of Southern California. In the 8th grade her family relocated to Charleston, West Virginia. The differences between So Cal and the heart of Appalachia might have been a bit of a shock to system, but she took it all in stride and made the best of it. She turned her time out in the country into a new hobby of discovering new music and trading tapes of Dave Matthews Band shows. This was the early 90’s were talking about, and DMB was all the rage!

In school Sarah was a bit on the nerdish side of things. Some of here accolades include editor of the high school yearbook, sportscaster for the high school morning TV show, and four years of basketball…even though it was primarily spent on the bench. She did get some playing time as the goal keeper on the girls soccer team her senior year. In her spare time she would occasionally go to “Mountain Stage,” which is recorded for NPR broadcast out of Charleston, WV.

For college Sarah wanted to get as far from West Virginia as possible. She ended up at the University of Washington in Seattle (where she completed her first two years), and then spent a year in Florence, Italy through Gonzaga University. Her time both abroad and in the Northwest were some of Sarah’s best moments in life up to that point, but with a switch of major she ended up at Belmont University to study Finance and Music Business. Her intentions were to head back West after graduation, but she ended up getting a job offer at Belmont, and by the end of two years Nashville had become her new home. Now she is the Event Manager of Belmont University, where she is colleagues with other ENOW SARAH SPENCE!

In 2004 Sarah decided to start working out in order to lose weight. In those early years, she would occasionally walk on the treadmill because she viewed running as a “cruel form of punishment.” In 2008 Sarah took a boot camp at the Y, and from the small amount of running in that class she figured she could run at least a 5K. So in 2009, Sarah began here running career at the Tomato Arts 5K. At that point she had no idea what East Nasty even was.

On her blog  in January of  2010, Sarah listed off a couple of her New Years’ goals. One of them was to run the Country Music Half Marathon that year. The Annie Parsons read it, and left a comment on her post that said she should check out this little running group that met on Wednesday nights. The rest is history.

Since then Sarah has had some major accomplishments in running. To name a couple, the first happened this last summer when she ran a mile in under 7 minutes during the summer speed sessions. The second also happened this summer when she ran her hometown race, the Charleston Distance Run (America’s 15 miler!) Sarah told me that growing up an overweight kid, those were two things that she NEVER thought she would do. So kudos to her!

This summer Sarah also trained with a group of East Nasties to go up to Chicago and run that city’s legendary full marathon. The group trained together two to three times a week, travelled up there together and had a blast representing East Nasty all throughout the “Windy City.” Sarah completed her first marathon in 4:12:09, and ran the entire 26.2 with her bright, friendly smile leading the way. All of her running companions claim that Sarah was a big part of keeping everyone cheerful and excited about the race, both during the training and on race day.

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So there you have, a deserving East Nasty of the Week if I have ever seen one. Please go check out her blog, HERE, and leave a comment on this post.

-Rod