New Year’s Double Eve & Day

New Year’s Double Eve & Day

We have decided to blame #Icepocalypse on a lot of things we have found annoying lately. We also approve of any Dallasites doing the same! Prior to #Icepocalypse, we signed up to run the Day part of the New Year’s Double race to support and keep our friend Catherine entertained. She was going to use the double races as training for her 50 mile race in February. 50, yes,  50 miles, we think she is nuts too! BUT… the stupid weather gods had other plans that basically changed the makeup of the two days. Catherine trained super hard for Dallas and wanted to race for a PR and instead decided to race the Eve portion of the the New Years Double and drop the Day race all together. That left Beth running the Day marathon solo (she would have run with Catherine the entire race) and Teal running the day half solo.

We whined…. a lot and then just decided we would make the best of it.

We woke up New Year’s Eve day and headed to Celebration Park to cheer on Catherine and Paul as they worked towards a sub 4 marathon.

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Jesse found us!

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Race spectating is hard work! …..especially when you’re preggo 🙂
photo cred: Jesse Puentes

 It totally looked like Beth was drinking a mimosa or some sort of adult bev in that giant cup until you actually learned she was pregnant, huh?

Catherine is flying!

Catherine is flying!

 We also gotta to help out another runner fan club/cheer squad and jump there car for them. 🙂  Thankfully, Teal comes prepared for such a situation!

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@mcgaritydotme having fun out on the course

@mcgaritydotme having fun out on the course

Beth and Brent stayed the night at Teal and Michael’s house and basically had a chill evening of Aggie football watching. We say “chill” but did anyone watch that game? Madness! Beth, in true Beth fashion left her Garmin at home and trekked home at midnight to get it putting us both in bed after midnight, we made it to see the ball drop! Which we really didn’t expect to happen but are glad it did. Brilliant plan for marathon and half marathon running, right?!

Luckily the race had a late start and we strolled up, went to the bathroom, chatted with Ninja and began the race. Super laid back with a small race, we even missed our wave starts, whoops.  From here there is really not much else to say except we ran the entire half together, again in true preggo running fashion, we took it super slow and cautious. 🙂 Thank god for patient running buddies who don’t kill you when you have to go to the bathroom during the race!

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After the first lap of the race we were greeted by basically the BEST bicycle cheering squad one could hope for. All of our frunners were in the area knocking out a New Year’s Day bike ride together and they decided to bike over and cheer us on! We LOVED it and it gave us a boost to run around that dang course again!!

photo cred: @thatpinkgirl

photo cred: @thatpinkgirl

We also LOVED the Frisco Running Clubs water station. They sure know what they are doing. Our crazy friend Mark was at the station and we swear you could hear is voice all over the park. He kept us motivated and ran alongside us in a few spots, but don’t worry, never more than .25 of a mile. 🙂 We might also add this station had it all, oreos, m&m’s, skittle, coffee station, and black eye peas! That’s a first for us.

photo cred: Nancy Howard

photo cred: Nancy Howard

 

Running by Frisco Running Club's water station! photo cred: Nancy Howard

Running by Frisco Running Club’s water station!
photo cred: Nancy Howard

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We are both proud to say we finished our races and love starting out the new year with a healthy activity. Next year however, we think we are sleeping in!!

The Great Santa Run

The Great Santa Run

We signed up for this 5K because, well, ALL of our frunners seemed to be doing it. 🙂  There was also a groupon for it.  Everybody needs a small race to get you back into running after a marathon weekend…..oh, wait, Dallas Marathon didn’t happen……

Plus, when you register you get a Santa suit to run in as your swag for this race.  We realized the week of this race that it wasn’t actually chipped time, so it makes it that much more of a good lowkey race post Dallas Marathon, if only Dallas Marathon had actually happened.  Dang you, #Snowpocalypse!

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FRUNNERS!

As you can see in the pic above we found our people quickly when we got there.  We heart them!

Beth’s SIL, Tiffany, actually turned their pants into cute skirts for the race.

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There were ALL kinds of interesting outfits out there!  Although most people just threw on the ol’ Santa suit and called it a day, but perhaps a couple of the runners maybe should have double checked in the mirror that what they wearing was not see through. 🙂  Sometimes your eyes can’t unsee things is all we’ll say!

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we have never felt more attractive!

Thanks to Mark for providing us with Christmas music while we all ran together and entertainment as he yelled at every Santa that passed him, “SANTA!!! I know him!!” 🙂

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Really it was a fun race as we ran with our friends and got to catch up with them.  We got to hear all about Drum braving the weather elements and still getting her marathon in the weekend Dallas Marathon cancelled and not only that but BQ-ing her race! Talk about speedy!  This race you might have also already learned that Teal knew she was having a baby boy. 🙂 (sorry we forgot to tell you for so long here!) So many things to catch up on while running.  A nice stress free 5K!  Mark even took a video of the race….if you watch long enough you might see a snowman take a tumble.

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Remember That Time We Ran the Turkey Trot in 2013?!

Remember That Time We Ran the Turkey Trot in 2013?!

Happy 2014!! We are playing catch up over here….we enjoyed our holidays a little too much that we neglected the ol’ blog.  Maybe next holiday season we should just plan on that and let you know we are taking a vaca.  Things to think about for this new year, huh? Well, let’s get to the ol’ catch up……

pre race car pic

pre race car pic

All we really want to say about this race is we are SO glad that the Turkey Trot people got it together and let the timed runners start in a separate corral from the non-timed runners. They also banned the strollers and dogs in that corral making it much safer for the actual runners. We were very worried about this race last year with falling and obviously a little more worried about it this year (you know since Teal is with child) before we knew about the change. It seemed to work so much better and we didn’t see anyone fall which was reeeeeally not the case in the past!

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Miles 1-4

Teal: So with all that said about the new system we got there and had to pee really fast and get in that corral because it’s shut off! I think we made it by like 3 minutes!  Please note that I actually went to the bathroom before the race. By mile 1 I was dying and needed to pee again and there was not a stop there. The stop was just before mile 2 and apparently everyone and their dog had to go as well. I was seriously contemplating stopping but in my head I was like, you are running slower, Chase is doing the 5k and Beth is speedy so you stopping here it is going to take like 10 minutes just suck it up. Worst mistake. I figured at the next water station they would have at least a port-o-potty. NOPE, nothing! I would also like to add here that this was really the first time I ever noticed the X in the road to mark where JFK was killed. They had made a big deal about that this year due to the 50th anniversary and they repaved the road. So any concerned can now rest easy because it’s there! Anyway, I kept thinking, get to the bridge they always have one up there, but little had I paid attention, they changed the entire  course. I saw a bathroom on the way other side of the road at about mile 3 and that was going to take too much effort again. Then my saving grace at about mile 4ish this women was passing out tissues. I ran over, grabbed a handful and peed behind the dumpster basically in front of a cop. I was super worried that he might get mad or ticket me, because he kept looking over like, what is that lady doing. You totally aren’t allowed to pee in public so the entire time I was coming up with my very true pregnant lady excuse. Either way it saved me! Thank you to whomever you are for our tissues!

Beth: Per usual there was still a lot of weaving to be done in this race in the beginning.  It just brings so many people out that it happens.  I was confused though since we had the timed corral with NO DOGS and NO STROLLERS allowed to see some dogs and strollers.  I guess some people did not start at the actual start line and just jumped in!? There’s always a side of crazy at this race. Or maybe that’s every race and we just don’t always know it? No real complaints on the first few miles I was just trying to find my groove and stick with.  I was annoyed towards the 5K cutoff because that comes up and there’s a sign that says turn left here for the 5k then down the road there is a sign that says you missed the 5K turn so turn around.  A pair of walkers on my right decided to turn left as I was running by them.  I hope they enjoyed my “WATCH WHERE YOU’RE GOING!” 🙂

Miles 4-8

Teal: Really went by without me even noticing, the course while flat is pretty boring. Not much happening and there really is like no crowd support or anything. By 6 I had to pee again. This is the worst I have ever had this pee issue before. I stopped at the one that was like at 6.5ish (the one that was too much of a pain earlier) and then went on about my way.  The last mile is up hill and kind of a pain in the arse but really still not bad. I was just super glad they changed the course because last year’s course was waaaaaay hillier! Thanks again Turkey Trot people. We appreciate it. They really have restored my love for this race and I have way less bitchy issues about it this year than I have in the past!

Beth: Here I was excited for the change of scenery a little bit, ok, well it isn’t really a beautiful area of town per se but having a change in the course was a nice change.  This portion provided a bit of an out an back part and as I was running the out part I overheard a teenager walking down the median of the street saying “I guess I missed the turn off somewhere??” Haha! I laugh but I’ve missed a turn off myself too. I wasn’t really trying for a PR this day, but I was happy to find out my time that day was only 7 seconds away from my 8 mile PR!  Not only that but this race has been pretty consistent over the past few years – 2013: 1:11:43; 2012: 1:11:36 and 2011: 1:11:46. Now to try and break that 1:11 time! 🙂 This year was a fun year because I actually got to see my SIL, Lindsay out there and Uncle Rob!

 

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Lindsay, Uncle Rob and Beth

IMG_1292[1]See you in 2014, Turkey Trot!

DRC Half 2013

DRC Half 2013

So we ran our first half in 7 months! 7 months?!?! Can’t believe we went that long, but we did.  But this is a great race put on by the Dallas Running Club hence the DRC and we weren’t able to run it last year as it was the day Beth & Brent got back from their honeymoon.  So 2011 was our last and first encounter with the DRC Half!

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This year we got a long sleeve shirt and upon completion of the race a finisher tech shirt! Behold the long sleeve shirt.

The way in which we handle race mornings kind of goes back and forth a lot and depends on how big the race is, the location of the race and what experience we’ve had with this race in the past.  We had a 7:30 start time for the DRC Half, so Beth was going to aim to be at Teal’s house at 6 a.m. which meant she’d be there a few minutes after 6:00 a.m. at the earliest until she realized she left her Garmin at home and turned around to go get it which would have put her at Teal’s house past 6:15 a.m. Ha!  But then Teal texted about how she meant to get peanut butter because they were accepting donations of peanut butter to be given to the North Texas Food Bank and Beth went ohhhh, yah, I wanted to do that too.  So plans were quickly altered and we met in the parking lot of Walmart, Teal’s favorite store (sarcasm font), to get us some peanut butter!

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We basically made it in time to stand in the line for the port-a-potties, Teal to spot her trainer friend, drop off the peanut butter and run into our friend Elaine before we made our way to the “corrals.”

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Miles 1-3

Teal:  I was pretty nervous going into this race even though I have been running. Pretty much between 9 and 10 miles each weekend and shorter runs or cross training during the week but the first ½ marathon while pregnant made me nervous. I knew I would not run under 10 minutes a mile so I started out at just that. Beth and I had both decided to not run without music because really we haven’t been running with it at all lately. It actually proved to be very entertaining. During the first 3 miles I stayed with a pack of men between the ages of 68 and 70. Yes I felt slow, and I only know their ages because they made fun of each other the entire time. One man was like, “only those in the 60-69 age group wear knee braces,” needless to say they both had them on the exact same leg. Another said “I can’t wait to get to that 70 age group next year and smoke them all.” I was pretty much dying laughing for this stretch and it made it go by pretty fast!  So impressed they are still running at 70!

Beth: I didn’t really have expectations for this race, so I more just wanted to run, not die and be happy with myself by the end of it.  Ok, well, actually I did ideally want to run it in under 2 hours since I know I am capable of that.  It was chilly race morning so I was just more anxious to get warmed up in these first few miles.  It was in these miles that a lady dropped something I went back and grabbed it for her and thought wonder if I’ll regret doing this later because of the big maybe 3 seconds I just lost. 🙂

Miles 3-6

Teal: HILLY.. FREAKING HILLY!! Beth lied to me! She told me it wasn’t hilly and I am pretty sure at this point I knew why she lied to me. It sucked. It is one of those that literally every other turn is up hill. I made a decision to run them. I wanted to walk them but I RAN them! I figured if nothing else, if I didn’t make it or died at the end, I could at least say I ran the hard part. I kept going back and forth with a trainer I knew from 24 hour fitness, Mark, and he kept walking the hills. I actually felt pretty strong up them but once I hit about 6.5 my legs felt like lead.

Beth: Hehe, I wasn’t tryyyyying to lie to Teal.  Maybe I’m just really bad at reading race course elevations, OK?!  I thought there would be two main bad hill areas and so I’d apparently not even made myself aware of how hilly this race was.  Neither one of us really remembers the course for DRC 2011, but we know we didn’t run the exact same one.  Pretty much anytime you run a race that’s around White Rock and takes you off into the neighborhoods surrounding the lake there will be hills.  I normally slow pace down to run up a hill and don’t go for the as fast as you can so it’s over faster method because I fear I won’t recover my breathing and what not soon enough should there be another hill. So that meant this area I had a lot of back and forth with some other runners that would pass me on the hills and I would catch back up to them once they were over.  At the mile 4 marker I was presently surprised to see one of my tweeps that I know not because of running! 🙂 Laura was volunteering at that mile marker calling out times as everyone passed it was a pleasant surprise to see her and helped get me up the hill at that moment!

the elevation chart found online for this race

the elevation chart found online for this race

Miles 6-9

Teal: Legs are pretty much dead at this point. I always wonder if people get the same feeling I do after running tons of hills in a row, my legs feel fine on the hills but when I get to the flat part if feels like soooo much more work. At 6.5 is the first time I actually walked during the race. I had walked all the water stations but didn’t walk during the actual race. I ate all my gummy bears between mile 6.5 and 7 because I was starving!

Beth:  More back and forth with the people plowing up the hills and then me catching back up to them.  At this point in the race I was around this dude and maybe it was because I was getting tired that I kept thinking you really aren’t funny! 🙂  He asked a volunteer where a turn was that you know was abundantly clear WHERE the turn was.  At the mile 7 marker he asked that volunteer calling out times what mile we were at.  I don’t think that volunteer found it funny as he was taking his job seriously and having to be on top of calling out times.  Oh, well I eventually lost him at some point and wasn’t too sad about it.

Miles 9-12

Teal: After mile 9 you have pretty much made it up the last hill over by the spillway bridge. THANK GOD. If there had been more I might have died. I am super familiar with this part of the lake and just did my normal mental talks. “make it to the arboretum”, “make it to the forest” “make it to the boats.” It worked and I just continued to walk water stations. I knew at around 11.5-12ish I would see Catherine because she was going to hang out in the “forest area” because there is a playground. I kept running knowing I would get some motivation and I knew after that I wouldn’t stop again. That area was the last water station! I saw Catherine and she made an awesome sign that said “ baby Catherine Elizabeth wants her first bling” (Please note: Catherine and Beth have named my child after them, they are flexible in the order, Catherine Elizabeth, Elizabeth Catherine, either will due for them…. She really has no name at this point so I’ll let them claim this for now 🙂 )

Beth: It was in this part of the race I hated myself.  I knew after we got just far enough from the car before the race started that I hadn’t put body glide on my shoulders for where my sports bra tends to chaff and oohhhh I could feel the pain of that chaffing.  I knew Catherine was going to be at one of the park areas along the lake with her kids, but I didn’t know for sure which one she’d pick and then I saw her and was so excited to see a familiar face!  She had a sign for me that said “Hurry up, Beeper, only 3 more miles to the port-a-potties!”  Haha, because every long run we’ve done I make her stop at some point during the run for me to go the bathroom. 🙂

Miles 12-13.1

Teal: Pretty much felt like the death march. I was super-hot and very much wanted to be done running. I  took off my jacket around 12.5 just in time for Jesse to snap a ridiculously ugly pictures of me walking and taking off my top, HOT I tell ya, HAWTTT!!! @@. I was secretly hoping I would see someone I knew here and maybe Beth had been done so long she wanted to come drag me in. I saw Mark and he cheered me on to the last stretch and saw Beth immediately after finishing!!

Beth: I was just ready to be done during this part.  The chaffing part of my shoulder sucked.  It was nice to see Jesse out there and see yet another familiar face!  At this point I knew I would be coming into the finish line under 2 hours and I was happy!  My official time ended up being 1:57:42 – a success!

Teal: This was not my fastest, duh, who is surprised, but not my slowest, which kind of surprised me. Overall I was pretty proud of my effort and lack of walking. Bring on half number 2 slash 20 on December 8th!!

Side note: We are super excited about the race bling serious they have started. Each year will represent a different part of the lake on the metal. This year was the pump house, next year, Winfrey Point, which many of you know has a special place in our heart now. We have tons of motivation to keep running this over the next few years to collect them all! God help us that we can keep staying in this kind of shape!

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We also stayed at this race for. ev. er. 🙂  We found #TeamK in the beer garden and had to hangout with them.  They’d actually acquired a new friend in the beer garden, Glen, which we all might run into again at Dallas Marathon. Fingers crossed!

The LiARs and Michelle from #TeamK

The LiARs and Michelle from #TeamK

 

Erik from #TeamK

Erik from #TeamK

We all enjoyed chatting with Glen and hearing about all the running he’s done over the years.  We also all admired his legs! Ha Hence while the below picture captured them. 🙂

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January babies!

Over all it was a fun day and such an exciting day for Teal & baby to complete their first half marathon!!

Tour des Fleurs 10K

By now you’ve probably learned that with some of our weekends we really like to go big or go home and by that we mean fit ALL of the things into one weekend. 🙂  Our Wordless Wednesday post was a glimpse into everything we had going on this past weekend.

We kicked it off Saturday morning by running the Tour des Fleurs 10K at the Arboretum just like we’ve done every September for the last 5 and 6 years.  And per usual our friend Bitner also participated in the race with us, but this year we also made Catherine join in the fun as well!

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You can probably tell from the picture that Bitner was a little cold that morning – ha!  A “cold” front had come through and we woke up in Dallas to temperatures in the 60’s.  It was woooonderful and a big change from the heat!  By the time we catch a shuttle bus from the parking lot to the Arboretum and walk through the Arboretum to the race area we aren’t really there that early and it’s time to start the race.  Off we all go on our merry way.

Running along White Rock Lake as we have done every year at this race.  We make it to the one “major” hill on the course that’s almost at the halfway mark.  Beth encounters a runner that’s running a zig zag pattern up the hill with her fingers out dancing along to her music.  We turn the corner and the hill is over! There’s a 3 mile marker sign. Huh? Where was the 2 mile marker sign?  Oh, well surely someone just messed up. Running, running.  Hey 5 mile marker sign.  Ok, this is just messed up!  We are a little over a mile off from these mile markers.  Beth opted to go music-less for this race and no one else around her was commenting about the markers so she kind of assumed maybe she just took a wrong turn because it wouldn’t have been the first time (hello, Too Hot to Handle 2011!).  Teal right away knew something was wrong with the course and reaffirmed that with other runners around here.

It turned out that the lead officer took that right turn onto the “big” hill instead of going straight a little bit further and us coming back to the hill.   And then there really wasn’t a person out there to direct racers either, so we all ended up running a 5.15 mile race. PR’s for everyone! 🙂

When the race was over we each grabbed our finisher’s hats (THANKS for bringing those back, TDF!!) and made our way to the after party.  They do throw a darn good after party with beer, lots of different food options and some free schtuff.

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see the free schutff in our hands?

One of the best parts about this race is getting to walk around the Arboretum afterwards and see all the pumpkins and gourds out all over the place.  The majority of the time it doesn’t feel like Fall is even that close when we do this race, but we absolutely love getting to see the Arboretum all done up for Fall.

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There were a lot of racers whose family came with them and were taking their children out of strollers to have their pictures taken amongst the pumpkins.  As you know we don’t have kids so we opted to put Bitner in the pumpkins and take his picture. 🙂  He loves of us, clearly, because he puts up with us doing these things!

IMG_0031[1]It is sad that the race wasn’t a true 10K, but we love this race!  We can still remember the feelings of nervousness when we were running our first 10Ks. So far!  It’s a bit pricey, but considering the great after party, the finisher’s hat (though they were gone for two years) and the free entry into the Arboretum it’s a good deal! We’ll be back!

Liberty by the Lake 5K

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pre-race car pic!

Sooooo July 4th a bunch of our running friends were doing Liberty by the Lake 5K/10K and if they were doing it we had to do it too.  Right? That’s how it works?  The internets also had a special so we got this race for pretty cheap!

We didn’t have big hopes and dreams for this race because, come on, it’s July in Texas. Hot!  But being the weird summer that it is the temperature that morning wasn’t really as bad as it could have been, but don’t worry the humidity was still there. Blah!

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Frunners!
(pic stolen from Mama C)

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NTX Runners!
Look at Ninja representin’ w/his tank

We should also note how pumped we were to wear our latest purchase from Compete Every Day with our Texas Strong shirts!  We loooooove them!!  We did see a few other runners out there sporting different CED shirts as well.  If you haven’t checked them out you really should, especially if you are a Dallasite, as they are a local business!  And no we weren’t paid or rewarded with free things by that mention we just really love their stuff and awesome customer service!

Then at some point it was time to do what we we went to The Colony for and that is run a 5K.  So run a 5K we did.  Not a lot of shade out there and we hear the 10K-ers have it even worse.  We stuck together and ran the whole thing together.  This was also our first race back in the same age group since Beth fiiiinally turned 30.  We crossed that finish line together at 28 minutes flat!

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Several in our group that day won age group awards, but only a couple of them won the privilege of a LiAR photobomb.  Way to go Brian & Jesse!!

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Another thing we should point out which you can’t see from the above pic, but we totally love Jesse’s method of keeping cool in the Texas heat:

Step 1: wear a hat

Step 2: insert ice in hat

Step 3: put your ice hat on your head

Step 4: repeat as necessary (if you have a cooler full of ice w/you which he normally does somewhere close by)

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It ended up being a fun time, but the fun did not stop there! We made our way over to Team K’s house for some 4th of July waffles and mimosas!

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Fun times were had by all!  We are so blessed to have made such awesome friends in the running community! It really is incredible all the greatness that running can bring to ones life! 🙂

Again the fun did NOT end there because after this we went and met up with our husbands who were drinking some beers to get thaaat much closer to reaching their plates at Flying Saucer.

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So here we are – officially caught up on our race posts! 🙂  We don’t have any races scheduled for August though so unless something happens no more race recaps until September!

Also, shout out to all the people whose pictures we stole without telling them to make this post that much more fun (a.k.a. Mama C, MK, Jesse and Alison P.)!

Must-Dash 5K

Basically the whole mustache incorporation for this Father’s Day weekend race made it necessary for us to run this 5K! 🙂  This was kind of an interesting morning for us as a whole as well.  Beth ended up having a flat tire so we got there by way of her husband’s car.  You know how sometimes little things like that can throw you off your game?

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We got there and ended up having about 20-25 minutes to kill before the race actually started, so we grabbed mustaches that were being passed out and then took pictures with them.  Naturally. That’s what you would do too, right?  Being a June morning in Texas it actually wasn’t really that hot outside….

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….until you started running and it was pretty humid. 😛  This was a new area for us to be doing a race so it was definitely nice to have new to us scenery. Neither one of us ran our best 5K, but we ran it and it was worth it!  Only complaint would be that whoever put the 3 mile marker sign down really put it at 2.75 miles.  If you weren’t wearing some sort of GPS and decided to give it your all for the last .1 well then you misled and still had .35 left to go. Ha.

We even ran into one of our NTX Runners buddies, Clara!  NTX Runners are eeeeverywhere! We love it!

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This will probably be our favorite race tee for awhile!

 

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Wounded Warrior

Something crazy has been going on in Texas this summer and more specifically in Dallas as I can’t really speak for the rest of the state. 🙂  It’s called rain.

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I was in top 500 or something like that so I also got a hat with my registration and every year they give you a pair of socks in addition to your race shirt.

I woke up race morning and this race really isn’t that far from my house though I was running behind and my fellow NTX Runners who were also running Wounded Warrior had planned a meet up for a pre-race picture.  Just a few minutes behind I was making my way over to packet pickup and juust made it under the awning of the building when all of the water from the sky began to pour down. All of it. Luckily, I’d found some of my NTX people so I wasn’t just standing their by myself since Teal wasn’t able to run this race with me due to high school graduation where she works.  We got a couple updates from a human being that the race was delayed 15 minutes and then another 15 minutes as there was just a massive crowd gathered together trying to stay dry.

For this race they have two distances, a half and a 10K, and per usual I was sticking with the 10K which started after the half did.  It’s too darn hot to be doing a half in June, amiright?  Except for this rainy race day.  I also began tweeting with some other local runners who were hearing the delay was even longer than what I had heard.  Eventually I knew I had 5-10 minutes before my race was to begin so I made my way to the start line in the rain.  I’d already made the executive decision that I was not going to even begin to mess with my phone and Runkeeper for this race.  The life of my phone was more important than music and having exact info on my race.

It rained for half if not more of my race.  They actually had to do a detour on one part of the race that runs on the Campion Trail because it wasn’t just kind of flooded over it was REEEEALLY flooded over.  As in if I ran through that I think the water would have been up to my hips, but I’m also short if you have noticed from all the pictures where I stand next to Teal. 🙂

Throughout the race I didn’t really know how I was doing and was just excited every time I passed a mile marker.  With less than a mile to go I spotted some friends on the course, Lisa & Lucy (who I still had not meet IRL until that moment).  That was  nice little boost at the end.  And then the race was over.  I was drenched and had no clue how I did, but was excited to have my 10K bling! 🙂

 

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I absolutely love this race!  It’s for an awesome cause, it’s close to home and I get a medal for running a 10K!  I didn’t get to stick around too long after the race as some friends of Brent’s were in town and I need to get to brunch. Priorities, people!  But I did get to see quite a few people at the end which was very fun!

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Julie and me

 

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Jesse & me – love his shirt!

I was pleasantly surprised to find out later that day that my naked run at Wounded Warrior was only 15 seconds behind my 10K PR!  I finished in 54:46 which was 9th in my age group.  Not too shabby!

The Vineyard Run 5K

The Vineyard Run basically popped up in our email, most likely because we have run our fair share of Mellew sponsored races. Teal really wanted to run this race because the Vineyard run is set at Delaney Vineyard where Teal got married!

Plus it offers a few more bonus points such as a free wine tasting and live band.  Although we didn’t actually enjoy any wine while we were there. But it’s at a winery and since that is somewhat rare in our parts it’s a nice change of scenery!  We should also mention that it was actually a little chilly that day! Hello cold day in May in Texas, what?!

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Brian you are all over this blog now!

We headed out together as normal and perhaps our need to be at races super early is dwindling because we really almost missed this one. Oopsies! We hadn’t picked up our bibs and the cut off was like 30 minutes before the race. We thought we left in time but due to the fact that one of us updated our phone to the stupid new operating system that brought with it a horrible update to google maps, and its lame, and the fact that the area around the DFW airport is the biggest cluster of construction, we found ourselves driving in circles trying to get to the stinking race. We finally figured it out and ended up getting in the back way and then running to packet pick up. Apparently that is a way to force us in to a pre-race warm-up?

We made it and got to hang with our fellow NTX Runner Brian for a few minutes before the race started. He was out there volunteering for the race! We might add that he was wearing his 100 miler sweatshirt. Show off 😉

Waiting for the race to start

Waiting for the race to start

SOOO really we ran a 5k. It was flat, it had 2 kind of annoying hills but nothing we couldn’t handle and then it was over. Also we might add that it was in no way our fastest or our slowest race, so we can call that a win right!? How do you like that for a recap?? Recapping 3 miles is much easier than 13.

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Fairview Half Marathon

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This year has been a little scattered with our running as you might have noticed. We are seriously behind on recapping races and really surprisingly enough we are currently only registered for a 5K and one half marathon that seems like forever away. When we get asked what we have done this year we seriously have to think about it. We both keep forgetting the fact that we have run 2 half marathons this year. We told you about Sugarland already so here is our “this is what we remember” recap from the Fairview Half. Get excited!

As you may know The Fairview Half is put on by the awesome Libby Jones who runs The Active Joe, and she is also the creator of our running group NTX Runners!  She is responsible for the New Year’s Double, Showdown Half, and her newest race, The Fairview Half. She gives awesome perks to repeat runners of her races and also those that volunteer. We were able to get in super early and for super cheap because we have both run and volunteered for one of her races!

This race is actually a very pretty race. It runs through some very fancy neighborhoods in Fairview, through what feels like the middle of the country, and it starts and ends at the Fairview Town hall. Our only disclaimer for this race is it is HILLY. Not as hilly as the ZOOMA race we ran last year (we don’t think anything is that bad hill-wise) but this one is a somewhat distant second. Really that is about all we remember! Great scenery, hills, and the BEST PART is tons of our fellow running friends were at this race. So we will just go ahead and skip to the fun part…Post race pics of all the fun people we got to see and some awesome race bling photography!

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We might add, we don’t have a picture of The Unlikely Runners but we saw them out there volunteering the crap out of this race! And also big props to Ninja for making it out to one of the steepest hills to cheer us on to the top! You were a great site on that hill around the mile 9-ish marker!

As soon as the race was over we booked it out of there to pick up Beth’s sister and then make a 4+ hour drive to San Antonio to see our friend Rebekah and hang out for the weekend! We clearly like to jam pack as much as possible into a race weekend.