First Look Friday – Websurfing Edition, Amber

We’ve got a lot of things shaking right now at Groucho – the launch of our first line in the spring of 2011 (03.01!) has the three of us immersed in a flurry of emails, phone calls, meetings, and the occasional (though increasingly more frequent) victorious fist punch into the air.

While the process and the product of all of this is unbelievably awesome, sometimes it can translate into some long days and nights.  Which means that sometimes, like you, we need a break.  We’re finding that nothing helps spur us on than a little shot of inspiration, a quick internet snapshot of all the things that psych us up to keep doing what we’re doing with Groucho.

So for First Look Friday, we thought that we’d start a new edition where we share five of our favorite performance-inspired blogs and sites with you.  The ones that are our go-tos. The ones that rev us up to live our lives a little better and enjoy them a little more fully.  The ones that are so rad we want everyone to know about them. For every Edition, we’ll have someone new showcase their picks.

(Groucho Creative Director) Amber’s picks –

For my 5 picks, I wanted to showcase some of the blogs and sites that I don’t already talk about every day (Loving the Bike, ARTCRANK, The Old Singlespeed, Beer Runner ,etc).  Like…

Coming Thru was one of the first sites I fell in love with when I was brought on board as Groucho’s Creative Director.  A Belgian and a Finn collecting the things they like about bikes and talking about their everyday adventures…  Not only are these two of the coolest guys around, but their posts are helpful and fun (hello, bike light buying guide?)…

And sometimes I hop on there just to stare at the pictures for a minute while I dream about going to Finland.

Outside Online is my go-to. When I’m having a bad day, when I need a shot of adrenaline, when I want to learn something new, when I just want to look at amazing, inspiring photography. It’s a lifestyle on a website. And a pretty amazing one, at that.

If you don’t know about Knog, now you do. Anything more I could say about it would just make it less cool.

Grit & Glimmer is one of my favorite new blogs. Produced by Heidi Swift, it bursts of beautiful writing, photography, and awe-inspiring adventures (mental and physical). Like she says, the content there is “sometimes informational, sometimes inspirational, but always, always straight from the gut.”

I love Idiot Runner. The guy is freaking hilarious.