13 Things Friday

January 13, 2012 by · 8 Comments

In honor of Friday the 13th here are our thirteen things:

1.  Today is our LAST day of the Advocare cleanse! YAY!! Look for a recap next week.

2.  Two weeks from today we leave for Austin for our weekend of volunteering for the 3M Half Marathon. Our first volunteering experience together AND we can’t wait to meet Courtney & Luke…you know IRL!

3.  Tomorrow night we have a wine dinner at Beth’s house with friends both old and new – we can’t wait!

(source)

4.  This week Beth put a big check mark next to “pick Bridesmaid dresses” on her wedding to do list.  Extra bonus that the 4 BMs so far are happy with the dresses!

5.  In 4 weeks, Teal & Michael will be living alone for the first time in the history of their marriage. 🙂 No more roommates!

6.  Six weeks until we leave for our next big race weekend – Princess Half at Disney World!!!

7.  Since this month started Teal has attended 5 yoga classes and Beth has attended 10 yoga classes.  Will we meet our goals??

8.  Teal’s last semester of grad school starts Monday.

9.  We received some Celliant samples in the mail this week that we are anxious to try out!

10.  Teal is going to the doctor on Monday for her foot! Keep your fingers crossed for her pleeease!

11.  We got another NEW button on our blog! You can now buy Go Sport ID’s through us just by clicking the link on the right hand side of our blogy blog!

12.  We each have a secret goal of learning to swim in 2012 – you know as in be better swimmers because we know the absolute basics of swimming i.e. doggie paddling 😉

13.  We are not really superstitious.

13.1  Are you superstitious?  What race superstitions do you have?

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November Race No. 3

November 28, 2011 by · 4 Comments

Our last race in November is in the books!  How have 11 months of our goal year already passed??

Thanksgiving morning we woke up and did not necessarily have to be up super early since the Turkey Trot didn’t start until 9:00 a.m. SO late!  Teal and Beth’s cousin, Chase met over at Beth’s house to carpool together downtown for our Thanksgiving run.  We really had no issues with traffic or parking down there just had to fret over whether or not we might get a ticket when our metered parking spot expired.  We have no fear we were ticketless! Hooray!

Chase opted not to dress up as a turkey with us, but we quickly made our way over to the table to get our costumes approved and into the Turkey Coop we went!  The Dallas Turkey Trot this year was attempting to set a new Guinness World Record  for the largest gathering of humans dressed as turkeys!  All of us turkeys 🙂 had to wait around in the Coop until 8:35 when the clock started and we were all in the coop for 10 minutes with our costumes on.  We never actually heard it declared that a new record was set, but we did see the person with Guinness World Record there counting each of the turkeys as the passed through the entrance of the Coop.  We will hopefully receive a certificate in our email for participating in setting a New Guiness World Record!

The Pilgrims who came to shoot the Turkeys 🙂

One of the guys with the YMCA in his freaking awesome Turkey costume!

Once it hit 8:45 a.m. all of us turkeys were then walked over to the start line.  We were all excited this year to not have to dodge as many people since timed runners started 5 minutes before everyone else, buuut dressing like a turkey didn’t really allow us to make that earlier start.  This race we might have stayed together for maaybe a whole minute then Teal darted off and Beth stayed behind doing her own dodging.

This year was much like last year – lots of dodging around until the 5k turn off.  It was also around this part of the race where our distance got off.  All three of us discussed after the race how our Runkeeper app had us almost a half mile ahead of where we were and Chase mentioned it happened around the time we were all passing through a part of downtown with lots of buildings that must have messed up our GPS.  Here are our splits and we wish we were as awesome in mile 3 as our Runkeeper app tries to make us out to be:

Teal's Splits

Beth's Splits

Beth had actually stayed up late trying to sew the feathers onto the back of our shirts, so was literally running on only about 4 hours of sleep and was SO glad we had run that same race last year to know what kind of hills were coming a long the course.  Teal had forgotten about the hills throughout the race, but you would never think that based on her time!  Teal completely crushed her time from last year by almost 14 minutes exactly!  Here are our results –

Teal: 1:11:06, finished 82nd in her age group, 424th female to finish and 1,724th to finish overall

Beth: 1:11:46, finished 87th in her age group,  455th female to finish and  1,799th to finish overall

Turkey Trot 8 mile Elevation

Once we were all finished and found each other we went immediately back to the car and to head back to Beth’s house.  Beth’s sister, Kate, is awesome and had some mimosas and champagne punch waiting for us when we arrived back from the race!

Checkout that Go Sport ID shirt Chase is wearing! =)

We will leave you with this little tidbit of information – I think we both have been asked before ‘How did they come up with an 8 mile distance to this race too??‘ Well here is your answer straight from the Dallas Turkey Trot website –

The unique eight mile distance was created when the one hundred and seven participants were instructed to run along the shores of White Rock Lake “to the big oak tree and back”.  By 1979, the race had become so popular that it was moved to the downtown area to accommodate more runners and to showcase “Big D”.

We hope you all had a safe and happy Thanksgiving with your families! 🙂

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Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!

November 14, 2011 by · 2 Comments

Happy Monday, y’all!! We made it back safely from our Rock ‘n’ Roll Half in San Antonio last night!  We just want to once again thank everyone who donated to us over the past five months!  Words cannot express how much we appreciate you and are thankful for your generosity!  And we thought of y’all every step of our race on Sunday!  We got ribbon and wrote everyone’s name that donated on the ribbon and wore them in our hair during the race –

 

So thank you for not only donating but also being a source of inspiration for us as we ran in memory of Cindy on Sunday!

THANK YOU!!!!

 

Now the moment you have been waiting for – who will be the winners of the following prizes??? —

First Prize

– a $30 gift certificate to Go Sport ID

– a pair of Tommie Copper Compression Sleeves

– a six pack of GU Energy Gels that we are throwing in to the mix

Second Prize

– a $30 gift certificate to Go Sport ID

– your choice of a Tommie Copper Hat or Beanie

 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1JRoBeJMZI]

CONGRATS to our WINNERS!! 🙂  We will be in contact with you soon so we can get your prizes to you!

 

 

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Rock ‘n’ Roll San Antonio

November 11, 2011 by · 3 Comments

source

It’s here!! The race we signed up for and started fundraising for in June is FINALLY HERE!!

After work today we are headed out to Austin to spend the night with our friend, Mary Alice, who is also running the half with us on Sunday!  We’ll get up early Saturday morning and hit a yoga class before making our way down to San Antonio!  If you didn’t see our blog yesterday – we’ve thrown together a last minute lunch at noon at The Cove.  If you are going to be down in San Antonio for the race or just down there please come join us and RSVP here so we’ll know how many are coming!  We’ll be wearing our Go Sport ID shirts, so if you don’t feel like you’ll recognize us then here we are in them from our Disneyland Half earlier this year –

Maybe we’ll take a new picture in our Go Sport ID shirts that has less of the wind blown hair look!

Y’all!! We can’t tell you how excited we are for this weekend!! As of November 9th we hit our $1,200 fundraising for Team Cindy and breast cancer goal!! Thanks so much to every single one of you that have donated even those of you who have continued to donate past hitting our goal! We’ll just go ahead and say it again – it is SUCH an honor to be running in memory of Cindy Marshall-Death and each and everyone of you who have donated will be running in spirit with us if you are not actually running the race! We are so grateful to the generosity of real life friends, friends we’ve made on twitter, friends we’ve made on twitter and then met in real life! 🙂  With that said – we do still have our Pink Donation Raffle going for a chance to win wonderful products from the fabulous Tommie Copper and Go Sport ID companies! We will be announcing our winners on Monday! So don’t miss our Monday morning post!

This weekend while we are in San Antonio, Cindy’s youngest daughter, Cynthia who is pregnant with Baby Cindy is having a baby shower!  Beth is sad to missing out on that event, but if she has to miss it what better reason is there than to be running for Baby Cindy’s Mammy!

As far as the race goes here is what we are looking in elevation-

We are SO elevation spoiled in Texas!

Goals:

We are both very scared to even put down the true goals in our head for this weekend!  What if we can’t do it??  We both are looking for a sub 2 hour half this weekend!  There we said it!  Beth got on with her very first half and hasn’t seen one since.  Teal’s half PR sits SO close at a 2:01:36.  If all goes right with the start and our corrals hopefully we can achieve this goal.  I’m pretty sure you will all still be our friends even if we don’t go sub 2 hours, but we WANT IT!  This race means so much to us that it would just be the icing on the cake!

Weather:

Low:  61*

High: 76*

Wind:  6MPH

Precip.: 0%

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November Race No. 1

November 8, 2011 by · 7 Comments

Ok so we admit, we might have had ulterior motives for Sunday’s race, at least a little bit, and it seems more justified after our brief conversation with Racing it Off, but really, who doesn’t want a little race bling for completing long runs? As you know we both decided it would be an awesome idea to sign up for the DRC ½ on Sunday after a little convincing from Heidi. Beth’s convo to Teal was like –

“So, how do you feel about running the DRC Sunday?”

“Lets do it!”

“Great ok I’ll sign us up at lunch!”

Bling & a long run- not a bad deal not to mention good practice with running around the lake.!

So anyways, we’re sure you want some of the race recap! We set out Sunday at around 6:30- feeling well rested given the extra hour of sleep and headed to White Rock Lake. Neither of us had nerves for the race but rather nerves for the fact that we wanted to run 22 miles Sunday and make that our last official super long run for our training. Neither of us wanted to die and we had just come off a rather good 20 miler the week before! We got to the race and waited in the bathroom line forever – Caught up on race stuff, life and even tried to convince a lady and her hubby to sign up for the New Year’s Double!

Right before the race we met up with some fellow Twitter friends and wished our friend Heidi good luck – she wanted to PR! We got to meet a new twitter friend April! We lined up and we were off. The race started out almost exactly like Too Hot to Handle was and Teal had to remind Beth to not go the wrong way… see this post if you’re not sure what we are talking about.  😉  The beginning of the race was very tight, there were tons of us jumbled into to a fairly narrow space and it was like that for a good 3 miles. At one point you basically had to walk to get through parts, which is slightly a pain. We managed to stay at a good pace considering and stayed pretty much under 10 minutes a mile given we were going to run for 22. The rest of the race wasn’t bad. The hills were there a little bit between mile 4 and 7ish but it’s not THAT bad. The stations were awesome as usual and one guy was even handing out Oreos! We saw him too late and were both slightly bummed. Cookies sound really good during a race for some reason. We also had to keep a watch out for the dude in front of us who kept blowing snot rockets! Seriously??  It’s gross! We wondered if that just gets worse with the weather.

Teal, Heidi & Beth

We both kept counting down to each other with every mile we passed. Only 13 more, 12 more, 11 more..you get the point.  Both of us felt pretty good overall, Teal mentioned slight pain in her booty – stupid hills, but other than that not bad at all. We got down to about 1.5 miles left and separated a little bit. Teal wasn’t quite sure what was happening but Beth knew we were close and could finish the race under 2:10 so she picked it up a little. Teal was just in her own little world and was like —we’ve got 10 left – I am not moving any faster than I am now. We both finished and really did not want to keep running. We got our race bling and hung around to chat with Heidi and her hubby, Brian. Ran into Michelle again – love how many races we see you at!! We ate, sat for a while and decided we would pick up our extra 9 miles at home. We figured that we would be ok if we ran the rest on tired legs the same day given that we did already complete the longest run on our schedule.

 

New bling ....and checkout that Go Sport ID on the wrist!

After leaving we went home, charged our phones, ate a little more and then headed back out for 9 more miles. Sure enough it felt as if we hadn’t actually stopped. It got hotter outside which was annoying, we were both still in pants, tired and really our minds were kind of done with racing for the day. We had looked at wedding stuff and talked with Beth’s sister, Kate for a while and really we weren’t in the best run moods, but we knew we wanted to get this in! We set out at about the same pace and ran 4.5 out and then back around our normal training route. We managed to get in the full 22 and really after we started it wasn’t that bad. Our legs felt the extra miles but overall not too bad. Teal went home and soaked in the tub and had to switch off legs with her Tommie Cooper calf sleeves- it appears as if her dog, Wilson, has run off with one of them and Beth of course did the same but with both sleeves!  We feel prepared for White Rock and have a little more confidence that 26.2 is doable! It’s just 4 more? Right!!??

 

We set out this coming weekend for Rock ‘n’ Roll San Antonio and are super excited about that trip. More to come about that race this week!! We seriously are super excited!!

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A Pink Donation Raffle

November 4, 2011 by · 3 Comments

We are NINE days away from running Rock ‘n’ Roll San Antonio!! Nine, people, NINE!!  This is the race we are running and raising money for breast cancer in honor of Team Cindy a.k.a. Cindy Marshall-Death!!  Sadly we have NOT yet met our fundraising goal for the race of $1,200.00 🙁

Cindy & Jimmy on her 50th Birthday in 2007

We need YOUR help and as an added bonus to donating you will be entered in our raffle to win one of two prizes —

 

First Prize

– a $30 gift certificate to Go Sport ID

– a pair of Tommie Copper Compression Sleeves

– a six pack of GU Energy Gels that we are throwing in to the mix

Second Prize

– a $30 gift certificate to Go Sport ID

– your choice of a Tommie Copper Hat or Beanie


How to Win

For every $5 you donate to Team Cindy your name will be entered into our raffle!

If you go and LIKE Go Sport ID and Tommie Copper on Facebook that will give you an additional entry into the raffle when you have donated.  So if you donate $20 and like Go Sport ID & Tommie Copper then your name will be entered five times to win these awesome prizes!

 

We could not be more excited for the generosity of Tommie Copper and Go Sport ID in helping us with this raffle! Not only is it great to have two companies help us, but two companies that we absolutely LOVE means so much to us!   Multiple times a week you could find either of us at home wearing our Tommie Copper calf sleeves after a long run or even the day after at work under a pair of jeans!  They have been a great product to have in terms of recovery from long runs and being preventive in running injuries!  Each and every day you can find the two of us wearing our Go Sport ID bracelets!  We love them so much we never take them off!  So these are all items that if you don’t already have them, you need to get on that and what better way to do so than by entering our raffle and winning them!

To donate please go to our Team Cindy/Life is a Run page here — DONATE

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Commuting by Foot

October 26, 2011 by · 5 Comments

A month or so back after chatting with Lisa on twitter and learning she bikes for her work commute, I decided it would be cool if I ran home from work! So I immediately go to google maps to see just how many miles it is – 8. Perfect!

See my sister actually works in the same building as me just for a different company AND we live together! We can totally just ride into work together and when the end of the day comes I’ll hand over my purse and work clothes for her to take home!

I figured this would be an awesome way for me to get in one of my weekday lengthier runs aaannd then I forgot ALL about this idea! It’s either that OR I thought I had all the time in the world to make it more than an idea! 🙂 Until last Thursday I went for a short run around my office which I declared my scouting run. Yah, I learned I was totally wrong about there being sidewalks on the majority of the route because right by my office they’re kind of non-existent. Then I remembered Daylight Savings! When is that? Will that mess up my plan? If it does I’ll be so pissed AT myself! Oh good, it’s not until November 6th (if ya were wondering -now ya know!)

So anyways, last night was the night! And when I left my office I was the only person there so there would be no turning back. A run can be kind of different when if you don’t do it you won’t make it home. All day long I had the I’m running home from work – no big deal attitude – then when everyone was gone and it was time, I was nervous!

Had everything I needed - camelbak, Go Sport ID, my iphone and a house key

Nervous because one, I’d have to run under George Bush Tollroad and two, there are some sketch areas I’d be running through.

The run started off fine, I actually ran by my friend Kim as she was leaving a gas station! Then I found it hilarious when I was almost run into by another runner. She wasn’t paying attention until we were right up on each other. I was on the right side of the sidewalk – what else does one due to avoid being hit by another runner coming at you? I might have been a little freaked out when I ran by the dude with a tatt under each one of his eyes walking down the sidewalk towards me. I’ve decided the drivers who freak me out the most are the ones turning right that never actually look right and/or those turning who are looking at their phone so you’ll never know if they’ll see you in time.

I survived the sketch areas and believe it or not running under George Bush Tollroad really wasn’t bad at all. Throughout the entire 8 miles I hit most of the lights JUST at the right time!  There were two instances where I did a loop around a building to hopefully come back to the light when it was green and that worked.  Under George Bush I did one loop around all the pillars that hold it up and made it back just in time to make it across.  Right after that I was coming up on a small area where I not only ran out of sidewalk I also ran out of ground to run on – bridge.  Also, in case you are wondering why I am crazy to run through some sketchy areas, I felt it was fine because I was running during traffic times and at all times there would be cars on the road that could see me should someone try and kidnap me, steal my iphone, etc.

The two things I dislike about outdoor running are:

1. Having to stop because of lights as I really lose momentum and jogging in place does NOT do it for me!

2. Not knowing what kind of ground you’ll be running on if there’s a not sidewalk.  I don’t have to have a sidewalk, but it kills my feet if I’m ever running on a patch of grass that has a side incline.  Do you know what I mean? My left foot has had some slight pain underneath the big toe ever since I killed my feet in a pair of shoes in college and those side inclines just bring that pain back.

So at the end of the run was it much different than what I normally do when I got out running? No, not entirely, but I couldn’t exactly just stop and go home if hit a wall – I HAD to cover those 8 miles on my own.  Less than 2 miles of my whole route was an actual part of other runs I’ll go out and do, but it was something different and I’m glad I tried.  My dad and Bossman called me just as I was walking up to my front door to make sure I made it home ok.  Everything considering, I felt good during the whole run even when I was running up the hills! Happy running!

This probably isn’t the most exciting post, but it’s something I’m glad I did and probably not something I’m going to do regularly. 🙂

Do you have some sort of out of the ordinary running goal for yourself that you’d like to accomplish and just haven’t done it yet? What is it?  And how are you going to make sure you get it done?

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October’s Race

October 17, 2011 by · 3 Comments


Another race is done for us this year and that makes 13 races for us total! Saturday we participated in the Susan G. Komen 5k here in Dallas.  Before we even got to race day Beth realized she had thrown her race bib away since Susan G. Komen mails you your race packet. Which is very convenient but not the norm amongst races, so that was a bit confusing. Thankfully it had been a couple weeks since the trash had been taken out and barely any digging through the trash had to take place since it was pretty much on top!

20111017-075251.jpg

We made great time getting down to the race and were able to park with no problem whatsoever. We walked over to Northpark Center (mall, for you non Dallasites) to look for the Creekview Cheer Squad and Teal’s friend Cynthia from school and the gym. We found the cheer squad but no Cynthia, so we made our way to the name plate table and fastened pictures of Cindy on our backs.  Since we planned on pinning pictures of Cindy to our back we’d brought extra safety pins with us which are not actually something that come in your race packet with the bib.  Those little safety pins were hot commodities and so many people tried to steal them from us. Ha.

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Can you spy the Go Sport ID in this pic? 🙂

Snapped a picture real quick in between taking a potty break and lining up for the start of the race!

It took us twelve minutes to get from where we lined up to the start line….then a few seconds after that we remembered to start our Runkeeper apps.  We started out walking because there were SO many people out there!  Glad we both had decided our goal was going to be to enjoy the race and take it all in otherwise if we were really trying to race it I think we would have been so frustrated.  All of the walkers out there were all over the place – of course in the street but also up on the sidewalks and in the grass.  We were able to get some running in during that first mile but it was saaaaaa-low and full of dodging around or having to stop and walk or being cut off. 🙂

By the time we got to the first mile marker we’d been out on the course for about 14 minutes and at this point we had resolved to just walking the rest of the way, but walking as fast as we could!

During our 2nd mile we noticed a woman on someone’s front porch with a bunch of people surrounding her.  Not sure what happened there if she fell and got trampled or what, but so nice of the people in that house to take care of her!  One of the best parts of the race was that you could just tell a lot of the people out there do not normally get out and exercise like that.  We talked about how neat it was that t his cause encouraged so many people who aren’t regulars to working out to get out there and walk for a cause!  Hope some of them were inspired to keep up the walking!  We also laughed at the little girl we heard on the course tell another person in her group “if you wanna be skinny you gotta run!”

Somewhere past this sign Teal’s friend Cynthia texted her to say she had finished and wanted to know where we were.  We were so surprised she was finished AND she had gotten to run the whole thing.  Apparently, if we do this race next year we need to sign up as “Elite Runners” to be able to actually run it.  We didn’t do that originally because Elite Runners? – do we really fall into that category?  Beth was annoyed she hadn’t signed up to be chip timed, but who knew it wouldn’t end up not mattering anyways?  As we mentioned in our pre-race post, Teal actually did this run about 10 years ago and back then it had less people and the majority of them were runners. Ohh, how times change! 🙂

As we neared the finish line we found Cynthia and the Creekview Cheer Squad!  They had all finished the race and were motivating and inspiring everyone as they passed by and made their way to the finish line.  They were awesome!  We took the opportunity to get some pictures before crossing the finish line!

our junk in the trunk 🙂

I’m pretty sure I was suppose to crop that last picture, but it kind of makes me laugh so I didn’t. 🙂

Neither of us had expected to be out there as long as we were so we grabbed some free coffee and walked back to our car.  We probably walked faster to the car than we did the whole race, but we don’t care! We got to get out there and walk in honor of Cindy and #TeamCindy and that’s ALL that matters.  When we run Rock ‘n’ Roll San Antonio I think the emotions of running in honor of Cindy will be multiplied as we have been raising money for a few months now and have invested our own hearts into her story and her family!  And then, of course, we wouldn’t be Teal and Beth if we weren’t race walking to our car because Teal had to get to work and Beth was headed to a make up weights session at Johnny’s!

And because who doesn’t love a picture of a baby? – 

Post workout at Johnny’s, Beth was off to her nephew’s 5th Birthday Party (costume party)! That’s the youngest nephew trying to get in the spirit of the costume party, but not sold on it!

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Wordless Wednesday No. 7

September 28, 2011 by · Leave a Comment

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September Race No. 3

September 27, 2011 by · 2 Comments

Since we both did different things on this race day here is a race post that’s a little back and forth from both of us! Enjoy! 🙂

Beth – Going into race morning I had NO idea what I was going to be doing exactly, but nonetheless I was excited to be behind the scenes of a race!  I got to the Shops at Legacy at 5:00 a.m. and shortly thereafter I was given a golf cart.  I’d actually never driven a golf cart before, so it was exciting for me.  At this point the majority of our vendors were setting everything up.  Only problem we had was the barricades hadn’t exactly been put up so off I went (on the golf cart) with my boss lady for the morning to keep people out of our 5k course.  I am not even sure how the time passed so quickly from 5:00 a.m. to 7:25 a.m. when opening ceremony began, and I can’t even remember everything I did but I basically was a gopher.  I’d already determined I was not going to run the 5k as I’d have no clue what I’d be doing the moment it started not to mention where I’d keep my bib, armband for my iphone, headphones and anything else I might want to run with while we were getting ready for the race.

Teal – I was excited about the race this weekend because I knew how much Beth had been involved in the process and also because I was going to get to run with a few friends from teaching. My friend Chris from work joined the team- he is also training to run the White Rock Marathon in December and we talk basically every day about our running. The last time we actually got to run together was back in March for Kacie’s Run for our school district. My fellow work-out buddy, morning motivator, and friend Cynthia also joined the team and ran with us this morning. She has recently come off a long, nagging foot injury and is currently building and training to run the Rock n Roll Dallas half in March, so they are awesome fellow runners! Cynthia and I also ran into our personal trainer friend, Nemo from 24 hour fitness and one we both see at least twice a week when we are training with Will. While he’s super in shape he is not a distance runner so it was fun to pick on him at the end!

Beth- As the runners began to arrive I was pretty much just hanging out in the golf cart after eating my Chickfila chicken biscuit and waiting for my next job.  Thanks, Chickfila for providing the 5k Committee and volunteers with breakfast! Haha  But I got to see my mom and sister who I’d signed up for the race. 🙂 As well as a bunch of other friends that had started to arrive to support this great cause!

Teal – I met Chris early and we were able to catch Beth in full volunteer mode and chat with her a while. Somebody at Heroes for Children gave her a golf-cart to drive around—she seriously looked official. I was sad she wasn’t running with me but just overall impressed by her volunteer spirit! The race did a very cool balloon release thing at the beginning. The yellow balloons were released to represent each child battling cancer & their family that had been helped in the past year by Heroes for Children.  Then they also released 2 red heart balloons to represent the two little girls of the mothers who started Heroes for Children in their honor!

 

Beth- I do not think I’ve mentioned much about the co-founders of HFC, so let me take this opportunity to do so.  I met Jenny Scott (co-founder) through yoga at the end of January this year, and learned her story and her daughter, Allie.  She was Jenny’s first born child and at 8 months and 27 days passed away from Acute Myeloid Leukemia in September of 2004.  Larissa Linton’s (co-founder) 4 year old daughter, Taylor passed away in Novemeber 2001 of Acute Myeloid Leukemia.  It was after the death of Taylor that Larissa formed Taylor’s Angels, a non-profit that provided financial assistance to families who had a child battling cancer.  Larissa and Jenny meet in October of 2004 and realized the need for Heroes for Children.  On race day I actually saw a runner wearing a Taylor’s Angels race shirt which was very neat. If you’d like to see a picture of Taylor and Allie or read a little bit more about them then please visit the HFC website here.

Teal – Chris and I had discussed prior in the week how fast we wanted to run. He mentioned 24 mins and in my head I was like- no way. I’ll try but I highly doubt I can do that, my goal was 25:19. We both lined up together at the start line and we were not paying attention and had to wait a while to start after the gun went off, because none of my technology was ready… Runkeeper wasn’t up and my music hadn’t start- priorities!!! One day I may learn to do with out but for now this is a requirement! We took off and dodged and ran on the outside until about the end of the first mile, we passed the clock at about 7:14—what?? Really? I knew we were a little behind the clock but not more than like 30 secs. In my head I was like 1 down 2 to go, which mentally at this point is NOTHING, we are used to saying 1 down- 13 to go or whatever the crazy distance is for that week. I was able to maintain this pace fairly well; I lost Chris at about the 2 mile mark, but only by a few seconds. I managed to run the rest of the race right on the tail of what looked to be a 7 year old, this kid was hauling! Keep in mind I am 5’10” and I could not pass this kid who was like 4 feet tall! My goal at that point was to beat him, or at least attempt to keep up with him since he was the closest person around. I crossed the finish line at what I thought was about 25 minutes. Slightly wondering what my official time was. Chris was able to stay for the entire awards ceremony which was awesome because I can never stay. I managed to set a new PR by over a minute! I was seriously surprised and super excited because Chris even stayed long enough to pick up my medal! I was second in my age group! I have not won an individual medal for running before!!  Overall the race was awesome! Flat, spread out, not a lot of issues with walkers, dogs, strollers, all those random things you get at a lot of races! Cynthia and I also discussed at the end how awesome it was to see the pictures of the kids along the way that HFC has helped and how it was hard to not get choked up by the pictures. Very inspiring race and atmosphere!

Beth – Just as the 1 mile race began I got to drive Hannah & Hannah to the pace car a.k.a. a Ferrari provided by Boardwalk.  Hannah & Hannah were selected to ride in the pace car by the nurses at Medical City Children’s Hospital.  I loved it – they were getting driven over along with one of their little brother’s and a HFC staff member and I heard one of them say “I wanna ride on the one with the girl!”  So I happily drove them over on the golf cart and told them to have fun! Then I quickly took off to get some trash cans out to the awesome volunteers at the water stations and made it back to the start line just as the 5k was beginning.  Here’s a picture right after the gun went off – 

I kept looking for Teal and Chris and never saw them.  Maybe it was because of their technology mishap – I just figured since they are both so tall there would be no way I missed them, but I was wrong!  Then I met up with my mom and sister at the finish line a few minutes before Hannah & Hannah were on their way in on the pace car bringing in the first runner who finished in 17:38.  Then I got to see Teal coming up on the finish –

And just a minute or so behind Teal there was Chris (on the right) coming up on the finish line-

All three of us got to watch Cynthia cross the finish line! [So sorry Cynthia I didn’t snap a picture! :(]

Chris & Teal

Teal & Cynthia

Nemo & Teal

Since we did not take any pictures with Disney characters while we were in California for Disneyland Half we took advantage of all of the Disney characters that came out Saturday for the 5k.  Here we are with Tiana from The Princess and the Frog –


This is such a great race to bring your little kids to since there were the Disney characters and there were also firemen out there with their fire truck – SO many fun kid things!  It was such an honor to be a part of this race.  If you live in the Dallas area we’d definitely encourage you to put it on your calendar/racing schedule for 2012.

Results:

Teal: 23:58; 2nd in age group, 13th female to finish and 39th finisher overall

And one last picture for the road…we ended up having the same workout shorts on that day AND the same yellow band to go with our Go Sport IDs

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