ZOOMA Zoom Zoom & a Boom Boom!

Perhaps if we believed in signs we would have seen this weekend’s madness coming but alas we did not…..

As you may know  we had a race this weekend in Austin, the ZOOMA’s [women geared yet men are welcome!] race series half marathon. Because we live in North Dallas we were not able to make the expo so we had to have our bibs mailed, and due to uncontrolled matters Beth did not receive her bib. We were a little worried/stressed but we were able to get that solved [thanks to Tricia for helping us out!].  Teal, worried about chaffing as usual and really wanted to stop at Lululemon for a running skirt. So much so she was willing to try anything (and yes, body glide is not totally working). We stopped, shopped, and then sat down and ate dinner.  We actually didn’t leave North Texas until after 8. Whoops?? We arrived in Austin to literally crawl in bed to wake up in less than 6 hours.

We got up, realized we hadn’t prepared food wise for the race and basically were like – Whelp, what can we do? Not a good sign here for us. We had PB sandwiches and shared some Swedish fish left over from our Rock ‘n’ Roll race weekend. Haha.

The race started right on time and it is clear that neither of were really paying all that much attention because as soon as we crossed the start line we had to run up our first of MANY hills.

This one was not too bad, but we kind of looked at each other in a “oh lord, is this a sign of things to come?” way.  We knew the race was a “challenging course” per the website, but we really had NO CLUE what we were about to get into, we hadn’t seen or maybe missed an elevation map. So we were completely clueless!!

As you know we both had just come off of pretty successful half’s the week before at RnR Dallas, and it was clear within a mile that our legs were not feeling it. Teal looked at Beth and was said “I feel like a brick” Beth agreed. Crap! We kept running along, Beth decided for fun to keep track of the hills we ran because it was that crazy. After mile two, we had counted 9 hills. We are not talking little ant hills, these things were insane. We started walking up the 9th hill at mile 2. NINTH! Oh crap. We have 11.1 miles left.  13.1 had never seemed so long before to us.

We continued this,  “run down, walk up,”  business that we are both very sad to admit happened.  Because for us, it’s just personal preference for the two of us, but we aren’t run/walkers.  There was just no way! We can honestly say that we checked out mentally and our bodies were not there physically, which made matters worse.  Oh and maybe we can pour a little salt on the wound with this screen shot of our weather.

Stinking spring humidity in Texas is no joke. There was a breeze but yuck, thick air.

We decided that we would basically not let the 2:20 pacer pass up. 2:20! Good lord! What was happening?? The hills literally just kept coming. Some were so steep that EVERYONE around us walked. We honestly think crawling them would have worked just as well.  After the race our trust Runkeeper app informed us that this was our highest elevation EVER.  We have used Runkeeper for going on almost a year and a half now.

We had no clue where the course went but luckily we ran (haha!) into this lady in front of us who was running this course for the 4th time. We give her uber props! She said we had about 2 miles out and back then around the golf course on the Hyatt Regency Lost Pines resort. Ok! How bad could that be? Yah, bad. We made it down the 2 miles out and still just felt blah, we walked a little, ran a little, ran up a few hills, but then we were just both so mentally checked out that pushing anything was just terrible.

Beth had miscounted (yep, did we mention mentally checked out??) and thought we had 3 left just as we hit 9. She looks at Teal and was like 5k left. Right?  Nope 4. We walked. That is deflating!

We hit the golf course at around 11. This is a mental issue too.  We had to do a little “trail” running. We had to run on this mulch stuff that takes every ounce of bounce out of your legs. Teal looked at Beth and said “ I do NOT want to finish.” Luckily, Beth in her logic was like, “you don’t have to, but you’ll still have to go back that way.” UGH. Might as well finish at this point.

We did some more walking. Grrr!! and managed to run it in right around 2:20ish. This marks our worst half marathon to date for each of us. It was bound to happen, we know, but we were still a little blah about the entire thing. This marked our 10th half marathon but really you wouldn’t know it by how it went for us.

We hung out after and were luckily able to grab a glass of wine from the Barefoot Wine garden and met some nice ladies out there! Fun hearing other ladies’ running stories, but ultimately we decided to just get home to Dallas!

Oh, but wait, we consulted the twitterverse as to where in Austin we should get lunch so with the recommendation of a twitter friend we stopped off at Moonshine for lunch.  If you are ever in need of a place to eat when you are visiting Austin then store Moonshine in your memory bank!  And uhhh, we HAD to stop by an Austin Lululemon and uhhh, we were in Austin we HAD to stop by The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf!  Y’all, have we told you we love that place??

We pretty much passed the time in the car singing along to and every CD that Beth had in her car.  There might have been some dancing too….

Welp, March is Over So Time for Our Report Card & April Goals

Y’all, how is it already April?! Good Lord, time flies!  Well, here is how we measured up for March’s report card! Hope we aren’t grounded!

Teal

1. Paint Bedroom and guest room for real this time. Spring break should make this possible! A+: Done! I did this all by myself from 8-1am one day during spring break! So glad that is done. Every room in my house is now painted! Wahoo.

2. Survive my 2 week break from running and cardio by not cheating. I am going to give my body a true rest. I think it is overworked and is partially to blame for the plateau of weight-loss, my injury and that it is not fully gone, and from being tired from having 2 jobs and grad school. The break will be hard because rest is really not part of my vocabulary but it’s a needed part of life. Must get better.

A: I survived this and technically started cardio back one day early. I am happy to say that I have no foot pain, well minus our run from Saturday, but it feels great! I think my body feels better, but is ready to get back into training. Running has not been what I want but I am glad I did this. I really only ran 2 times last month outside of the 3 races we did. So it really was a good well needed break!

 

3. Yoga 12 times this month. This will be how I survive the “rest” from running/cardio. Low impact, restorative, and a good way to focus on flexibility.

C: I only went 6 times. I think my break went to my head because I really didn’t want to do anything. I was, however able to earn new Yoga bling for my 50th class this month.

 

4.  Finish Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes F: Not only did I not finish this book I A) can’t find it and B) I read the Hunger Games instead! Whoops.

 

Beth

1.  Run a sub 2:00 hour half marathon at Rock ‘n’ Roll Dallas! A+: I did it!  In case you need the proof here it is 🙂

2. Lose 5 pounds. Seriously, y’all!! I need to get SERIOUS about take some pounds off for my wedding! F: Pretty sure I gained a pound. Womp! Womp!

3. Get a caterer for the wedding.  You thought this one went away didn’t you?  Well, I was all on track, got one approved by my venue and haven’t heard back from him after our initial phone call about my homes and dreams of wedding food.  I’ve chosen to take that as a sign and look elsewhere just need to setup tastings! B: Brent and I are going to a tasting Thursday and Saturday of this week! Never thought it would take THIS LONG to get to that stage of getting a caterer! Holy geez!

4.  Attend 3 to 4 yoga classes a week. You’re probably like whaa?? You yoga all the time!  Well, technically I don’t totally have yoga goals like I did for all of 2011 and I took 2 weeks off when I hit my 200 and let me tell you my body knew it!  So I want to see how I do with 3-4 times a week for a month where this blog holds me accountable! B+: I did this every week with the exception of the last week of April! So pretty darn proud of myself!

5. Update my handwriting/calligraphy website.  It needs a MAJOR change starting with a new theme that allows for a real blog inside the website.  Change is a coming! D: It still looks the same.  Part of this I need my sister’s help on and we thought she’d uploaded a new theme for my website but it didn’t go through.  AND she got to work on self-publishing her first ever book, Creative Chaos, so she got a little tied up which I don’t blame her!

As far as hills went in March I did a hill workout in 3 out of the 4 weeks of March.  And I’m totally behind on my two books a month goal and only got through Mile Makers by Kristin Armstrong in March.

 And now for April’s goals….

Teal:

1. Successfully complete the BluePrint Cleanse.  This will start Monday April 2nd and end Tuesday April 10th.

2. Complete one hill and one speed training per week, in place of regular runs or cardio.

3. I have one paper left for Grad School that is technically not due until the middle of May but I want to finish it and not procrastinate. Also I would like to finish up with all of my hours before the end of the month so I can order, submit, and file everything early to be ready for graduation!

4. Earn my 75th class yoga band.

Beth:

1. Please don’t hate me, but I’m going for lose 5lbs again.  Third time is a charm right?  I plan on doing the Advocare 10 day cleanse again this month and take a two week supply of the Advocare MNS Max 3, so all of that alone should guarantee I lose more than 5lbs we’ll just have to see how I do keeping it off the rest of the month! 🙂

2. Save the Dates – have them printed, addressed (myself) and sent off to wedding guests before this month is over!

3. Stadium workouts once a week.  This week sometime I should be meeting Johnny to do a stadium workout the way he wants me to do them and should that happen I would like to complete them once a week!

4. Prepare food for each week on Sunday nights this month.  I’ll have to do this for at least the 10 day cleanse, but to help me get serious with my food and losing weight this has to be done every week!

So time for us to get busy!  What do you have in store for the month of April? Personal goals you are trying to accomplish, running goals or both?

And the Winner Is….

Sooooo we kind of forgot to remind people to enter our giveaway over the weekend since we were down in Austin for the ZOOMA half marathon.  Oops? But better odds for the ladies who did enter it for sure!

Drumroll please….

Congrats to Marla a.k.a. @coolmomof4js, you are our GlitzBandz winner!  We know you’ll love your GlitzBandz as much as we love our’s!

Shoot us an email lifeisarun2011 at gmail dot com and we’ll tell you how you can claim your GlitzBandz prize!

We’ll be back tomorrow with Aprils goals, so see you there! Have a great Monday, everyone! 🙂

To PR or Not to PR, What Did We Do? [Part 2]

This post should start off with the Rock ‘n’ Roll expo on Saturday because our day was made when we officially got to meet @KatieRUNSthis and @cajun_runner!  Both of these ladies are truly fabulous and we were so lucky to get to spend some time with them!

The one and only picture taken at the expo..ha

We left the expo and dined with our dudes at Breadwinner’s Cafe. MMMM!  A must visit place in Dallas if you are ever visiting from out of town! Anyways, race morning was upon us and we got down to the start line super early just so we could be sure and not stress before the race, used the facilities 🙂 (sorry Mom, we just blogged about that) and looked for people we knew!

We saw Mama C & Marci all fancy in the VIP tent pre race until we saw Katie that morning who hooked us up big time and before we knew it we found ourselves smack in the middle of the VIP tent as well!

Teal, Katie & Beth

Thank you SO much, Katie!

And then up walked Melvin a.k.a. @apa1906!  If you don’t follow Melvin on the twitterverse you need to march yourself over and click follow!  We have been twitter friends with Melvin for awhile now and missed an opportunity at the Hot Chocolate Run to met him, but he is such an encouragement to both of us!  We are so thankful to you for that!

From here you are going to get our race play by plays from both of us! 🙂  Enjoy and hope we don’t bore you to death! 🙂

Teal: It was not until we entered the corral that I started to get very nervous. I had joked all week that I was going to end up walking this entire thing and Kacie’s run, while not bad, hurt. My legs were shaking after the race and marked only the second real run since Disney- over 4 weeks ago. In case you were wondering I had taken a two week break and then really had really taken 2 more from running, but had done some shorter cardio.

We found the Luebs!

Miles 1-3

Teal: We met up with the Lueb’s (also known as Heidi & Brian :)). I had known Brian was working on running a PR and wanted to hit 2 hours. So really I decided that I could stay close to him for as long as I could and then I would be fine if I slowed down. I stayed with Brian until about 3 miles. Ha- so much for that! I actually felt good despite dropping back. He was hauling and those first miles were all around 9 minutes or less. I knew I would see people at 3 because Greg and his crew (ladies, She-Ninjas, what have you) would be there to cheer us on. I passed him at 3 and he told me I was only seconds behind Beth, Heidi and Brian. I got nervous. There is no way I will be able to keep this up but just decided to stay with where I was regardless.

Beth: My biggest fear for this race was starting out way too fast and bonking!  In the first 3 miles-ish of the race not only are those miles fast because hey, you’re racing but also because you have some nice down hills like when we ran right by Dealey Plaza.  We also ran by the Old Red where I’m getting married, but that has nothing to do with a downhill I just wanted you to know that. 🙂  The one time my runkeeper alerted me in the first mile to my pace was on that decline at Dealey Plaza and said I was going at a 7:45ish pace.  Errrr, tap the breaks, Beth!

Miles 4-7

Teal: These miles were still not bad. I knew that Kate and Brent and Michael would be at 7ish and decided to make that my next goal. I still was feeling pretty good but getting tired and hot and not to mention started to feel the ridiculous blister forming. The hill between the relay exchange stations is NUTS. I hated every last second of that part and remember thinking, I am so glad I ran leg two last year. That was a beating. It took me a while to recover from that hill.

This picture is where you play "Where is Teal??" Can you see her?

Beth: This whole section of the race had pretty constant inclines.  We knew this because we drove the course the day before and I knew that I would slow it down in this section.  That was my plan run the first three at a pace that wasn’t exhausting, slow for the hills and pick it back up for the last third of the race as I have gotten second winds after hill work. I knew there was a chance I could bust it out!  Plus I knew somewhere in mile 7 I’d get to see Brent, Kate & Michael!

Brent caught Brian in this picture too! I had NO idea we were basically running with each other. Ha!

Miles 8-10

Teal: Here goes my mind. I’m still convinced that I was going to end up dying and really I was not dying “lung wise” but my body (legs, things, calves, and feet) just hurt. I got to 9 and decided that due to just feeling blah that I would walk the water station. I had really only eaten like 4 Swedish fish at this point and was hungry but it took a lot of effort to eat. More than I was willing to give. I hate this and hate admitting it with a passion but I had to walk those stations. I was running pretty fast in general and was starting to feel the effects of heat and little training in between. It also felt really good on my blisters to stop and give them a little rest and walk on the side of my foot. At 9 I had literally had 4 cups of water and dumped one on my head.

Loading up Teal's pocket with Swedish Fish

Beth: And this is where things start to get hot! Neither one of us has mentioned yet that we have done zero, zip, zilch in the way of running in heat so far this year, so the last half-ish of the race was weather conditions we hadn’t been in since sometime last Fall.  It’s so funny to me that Teal and I both struggled with food out there…it’s like even though we aren’t together on the course we still have something that aligns with the other.  I had eaten a shotblock minutes before the race started and by the time I needed to start eating – yah, I just didn’t have the strength to pull the Swedish Fish out of my sports bra.  Yes, that’s wear I keep them when I’m running sans camelbak.  Overall I think I ate a grand total of 4 or 5 Swedish Fish. Hmmm, perhaps if I had fueled properly this race would have ended differently.

Miles 11-13.1

Teal: At 11 I was certain I would make it, but kept the plan to walk the water station because the in between parts where exhausting. You enter the park around 12.5 and then spend the next half of a mile running turns through Fair Park. BLAHHHHH! I wish they would change this finish because it really does suck. You can’t see it, it takes forever to run through there and based on other races that end there you finish as soon as you get in the park, which is so much better.

Beth:  These last few miles were not very shaded at all.  I had been taking water at the water stations but I was just getting to a point where I needed more water than I had.  It always disappoints me when I walk water stations because for me personally I don’t like doing that.  I say that like I’ve done that a bunch but I haven’t this might have been the 2nd half I’ve done where I walked, but I felt like I was going so slow carrying my water and drinking it I might as well just stop.  The last water station I walked all of a sudden I heard “Beth Lynch!!”  I turn and there’s Brian which was funny after the race realizing he was pretty much with me the whole time – how in the world did I miss that?  We entered Fair Park for the never ending finish that then just pops out of nowhere.  I tried to warn as many people as possible about that because, uhh, it’s annoying! BUT I finished in 1:58:13, sub 2 hour half marathon number three is in the books for me!  I didn’t get a new PR, but I am proud of that sub 2 hour for sure!  Big shout out to Brian for knocking like 19 minutes off his half marathon, you my friend have an awesome, new, shiny PR! 🙂

Teal: I finished and decided I was scared to look at my feet because the blister was either going to be the size of my entire foot or bleeding. As you can see it’s the size of my foot.

I finished in 2:06:31. Which I am completely not upset about. I ran hard and listened to my body. I honestly thought I would not finish as well as I did. Guess I have underestimated my body. I hope to be back on track now! The foot is healed (at least I think so) from the rest and I don’t seemed to have lost much!

Half Marathon #9 is done!

And shoutout to Chase who came out and joined us at another Rock ‘n’ Roll race!

cousin/friends, Chase & Beth and look Beth and the girl in the background have the same shorts on! Ha

And an even BIGGER shout out to Teal’s gym buddy Cynthia for completing her first half marathon!! You did awesome, lady!

Pre-race pic courtesy of Mama C!

All About the Ladies!

Happy Monday to you all! 🙂  Hope you all had great weekends!  We did, but you’ll have to wait to hear about that until tomorrow! 🙂

Well, this week is pretty much our ladies week here at LIAR (you know Life is a Run)!  Tomorrow night we are supporting some of our favorite DFW vendors in their Girls Night Out event! AND to kick off our week leading up to the ZOOMA run in Austin we are hosting a GIVEAWAY!

We are excited about this giveaway because it is for a product we LOVE!! Thank you to Emily over at GlitzBandz who is SO generously giving one of our followers the GlitzBandz of their choice!  We first got the GB bug when we were searching for what we would wear to run the Disney Princess Half.

Yep! We sure are wearing GlitzBandz in this picture! 🙂

You can’t go wrong with a sparkle headband – what lady doesn’t love something sparkly?  We both wore our bands for the entire half marathon and neither one of us had an issue with slip-age!  Teal even added a flower onto her Glitzbandz to help her top off the Ariel look and even that addition created no problem for the headband!

Emily is truly awesome!  She definitely takes care of her customers and is so personable!  Plus she’s a local DFW-er and who doesn’t love to find something you love locally?? Since Princess Half we have acquired more GlitzBandz.

The bands are no-slip headbands and really they don’t slip!  They are made in either 19 or 20 inch, so the 19 inch would fit most youth.  There are SO many options to choose, so whoever wins this giveaway good luck on actually picking out just ONE that you like! Ha.  Emily also does custom orders!  We are pretty sure she does this special regularly – but if you order 2 GlitzBandz you get half off the 3rd one! How can you beat 3 Glitzbandz for $25?!  Very affordable, cute and do not slip!

The GlitzBandz site does not lie they do "make the perfect gift" as we've already given two away to a friend for good luck in a race!

At this point you are probably like ok, LIAR, tell me how I freakin’ win a GlitzBandz!  Here are the deets on winning your very own GlitzBandz:

  • Go over to the GlitzBandz Facebook page and like the page!
  • Next you will need to leave a comment on the Facebook page telling Emily which GlitzBandz is your favorite and “Life is a Run sent me here”
  • Last but not least – leave us a comment on here saying you did the above two and you are entered!

You have ONE WEEK to get all of that done!  Monday, April 2nd we will be selecting one winner at random to receive the GlitzBandz of their choice!  Good luck and we know you’ll love these bands just as much as we do!

Three Things Thursday [Ladies Themed]

Sorry to the dudes…this is geared more towards the ladies! BUT you can still read if you would like! 🙂

1.  In two days we are running the Kacie’s Run 5K, in three days we are running Dallas Rock ‘n’ Roll Half Marathon AND in nine days we’ll be running the ZOOMA half marathon in Austin!! Like how we snuck three things into this one thing? We’re awesome like that!

2.  For our Dallas area people – come join us and some amazing vendors at this Girls Night Out! Event!  If you are coming PLEASE let us know!! 🙂

If you’ve been meaning to find a Scentsy person – there will be one there!

If you’ve been meaning to buy one of those cute no-slip headbands you see other ladies wearing at races – GlitzBandz will be there!

If you’ve been meaning to buy a new chicklit book – self published author, Kate O Lynch will be there!

If you’ve been meaning to get cute new jewelry – Melissa Vest will be there selling her handcrafted jewelry!

If you’ve been meaning to checkout a new line of skincare products – 3000BC will be there!

There will be little of something for everyone there plus a door prize and who doesn’t love wine?

3.  In keeping with the about the ladies theme of this post..check back with us on Monday as we have a GIVEAWAY coming!

Happy pre-Friday, friends! 🙂

February Report Card & March Goals

It’s that time! Here is how we did on our February goals…

Teal:

1.  Let’s try this damn weight/fat loss thing again – I’ll keep it at 4lbs. Wish me luck, perseverance, and calmness through the frustration. I know this will fix itself eventually!  F-: not sure how it is calorically possible but I have gained weight this month- that is all I can say about that. What fun.

 

2.  Paint my bedroom and hang the pictures – I have had the paint and the frames for our prints since the end of December and they have tortured me ever since.  I am actually going to give myself a B on this even though I didn’t do it BECAUSE – my brother moved out and I managed to get all that mess cleaned, the second bedroom organized and cleaned out, his room cleaned out and ready to be painted, the garage is free of his stuff, the laundry room was cleaned out from the dogs, and my house is generally in awesome condition. No paint yet but hey, that’s why we have March right?

 

3.  Read about and become more knowledgeable about Clean Eating, general good nutrition and Gluten. I have purchased Wheat Belly by Dr. William Davis and Good Calories Bad Calories by Gary Taubes. The goal is to read both this month.  B: Read and finished Wheat Belly- I’ll give you a recap later in the month. Very interesting! I am only half way through Good Calories Bad Calories because it is VERY hard to read. I almost feel dumb reading it because I have to keep re-reading pages to understand what I just read- if  had I known how hard it was I would have just read it a different month but it is very informative so I will finish. God help me!

 

4.   Make the foam roller my best friend and roll at least once a day, and complete ALL given Physical Therapy for my foot which includes stretching/tennis ball rolling at breakfast, lunch, and before bed and ice 1-2 times per day.  A: I completed all therapy given and I am feeling better, although the 13.1 on Sunday did hurt, I still iced immediately! I did not ice 1-2 times a day but only because I felt like the therapy was working and ice was not as needed as before! I foam roll constantly and am making progress!

5. Oh and on a “Non- Actual goal thing listed” I did Pass my Counselor Certification Test that I took the day of the Hot Chocolate Run that I had to miss!! So A+++ on that! 

Beth:

1. HILLS! Do them once a week – for real this time!  D-: Haha, I did them twice! Y’all what is my deal?  Maybe I should make this stop being a goal and just know that each month I’ll tell you what I did hill-wise?? What do you think?

2. Wedding Schtuff – Part A: Get outfits settled on (for both of us) & take engagement pictures!  Part B: Finish two of my three registries! <—Just want those things done and over with! Ha, is that a bad way to phrase it? A-: well, going into this month I had most of my outfits already, but Brent did not.  We spent two Saturdays shopping for him because in general he just needed some new clothes and shoes.  He starts a new job next week which is part of the need but he just needed new pants and shirts to add to his work mix and we made it happen.  We took engagement pictures!!  My dad is a photographer as well as a freakin’ awesome lawyer and he spent almost 4 hours with us one Sunday taking our pictures all over Dallas.  We also spent a few hours one Sunday starting and completing our registry at Crate & Barrel.  That was the only registry we have complete, but I am still proud!  Another wedding thing to check off is we have a Best Man!  We had a planned dinner with Brent’s friend, his wife and their son and got our first person in Brent’s side of the wedding party! So I feel like I still deserve an A range grade because a lot of weekend days this month were taking up with wedding related items!

3.  Lose 5 pounds!  I’m taking engagement pictures this month, so a  few pounds off and working towards a smaller weight for upcoming races needs to happen!  F: Yah, I am at the exact same weight. Ha. In all honesty, I meant to go get a scale to be more conscious of this and to meet my goal, but uhhh, yah that never happened.  Oopsie??

4.  Clean the craft/guest/whatever room!  My sister and I have a guest room at our house and we each kind of have half of it to ourselves and then a teeny tiny twin bed sits in the middle of it. Ha, we are both former, big-time scrapbookers so we have got crafts galore in there!  This will be my next room I conquer! F: Nope, just did not have the time for this! 🙁  If I’m going to get something on this scale done it has to be on the weekend and all the weekends this month were FAR too full to make this happen.

Joint goal:

5.  Both participate in #FabAbFeb Well, Teal finished the challenge even if some days she doubled up on days she still finished it!  Beth on the other hand missed the last week of it.

 

And now it’s time for March’s goals…..dun dun dun!

Teal

1. Paint Bedroom and quest room for real this time. Spring break should make this possible!

2. Survive my 2 week break from running and cardio by not cheating. I am going to give my body a true rest. I think it is overworked and is partially to blame for the plateau of weight-loss, my injury and that it is not fully gone, and from being tired from having 2 jobs and grad school. The break will be hard because rest is really not part of my vocabulary but it’s a needed part of life. Must get better.

3. Yoga 12 times this month. This will be how I survive the “rest” from running/cardio. Low impact, restorative, and a good way to focus on flexibility.

4.  Finish Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes

Beth

1.  Run a sub 2:00 hour half marathon at Rock ‘n’ Roll Dallas!

2. Lose 5 pounds. Seriously, y’all!! I need to get SERIOUS about take some pounds off for my wedding!

3. Get a caterer for the wedding.  You thought this one went away didn’t you?  Well, I was all on track, got one approved by my venue and haven’t heard back from him after our initial phone call about my homes and dreams of wedding food.  I’ve chosen to take that as a sign and look elsewhere just need to setup tastings!

4.  Attend 3 to 4 yoga classes a week. You’re probably like whaa?? You yoga all the time!  Well, technically I don’t totally have yoga goals like I did for all of 2011 and I took 2 weeks off when I hit my 200 and let me tell you my body knew it!  So I want to see how I do with 3-4 times a week for a month where this blog holds me accountable!

5. Update my handwriting/calligraphy website.  It needs a MAJOR change starting with a new theme that allows for a real blog inside the website.  Change is a coming!

It should also be noted that I haven’t given up on my hills every week, but I feel like that’s annoying to keep putting it as a goal and not mastering it.  And another note would be at the beginning of the year I gave myself a goal of reading 24 books this year which this has really been a goal of mine for a couple years now.  I got close one year with 20.  This are two things I kind of want to keep up to date with in these posts but make them different from the things I try to achieve that vary each month.  Does that make sense? Can you handle that? I’m going to be busy this month!

We will see you guys on the flip side of this month with how we did! 🙂  Wish us luck!

Austin, 3M Volunteering & Weekend of Good People!

Ok, so we left you with our “Seven Things Friday” and we figured to recap our weekend we’d let you see how we did on those seven things, so here goes.

1. We are going to AUSTIN today after work!! Wheee!

Well we did and we made it back safe & sound!  Though we are still trying to work on the whole teleportation thing so we don’t have to endure the hours in the car!

2.  So that we can volunteer at the 3M Half Marathon!

We had two volunteer shifts over the weekend and our first was Saturday working packet pickup.  We walked in and were immediately put behind computers next to each other to help check people in.  Those 4 hours fa-lew by!  So many happy runners coming to pickup their bib, chip and awesome swag bag!

It was so sad hearing stories of people who thought they were registered for the race, but their registration really did not go through or they thought they’d still be able to get a spot, but it was sold out.  Definitely a lesson in registering ASAP and double checking your confirmation!

Then we were up bright & early race day morning to help pass out medals.  Along with other volunteers, we unwrapped 6,000 medals for the half & half relay which took about an hour and a half or so.

We had good timing because the first person to finish came in completing his half right around 1:07.  The 1:40 to 2:15 finish time frame was the when the BIG rush came in.  It was awesome!  Seeing the finishers’ faces and being able to congratulate them!  Some people were so excited that they even asked Teal if it was time for a smooch.  Then there were tamer moments like when Beth put a medal around a man’s neck and he wrapped his arms (stinky, sweaty and all) around her for a hug.

The whole time we were looking for our friends who were out there running to finish.  Our first familiar face was from C-Stand [we can’t stop calling you that :)]!!

Pretty positive it was those crazy pants that gave her a kick ass (sorry mom, we used the a word) PR!! Way to go lady! 😉  But really, Courtney, you killed it out there WAY TO GO for real!

Just a few minutes later in came Courtney a.k.a. @cisforcourtney who was easily spotted by us in her purple tank, Teal  yelled out to her and she came running over to us!  It was so cool to put that shiny medal around her neck!  You’ll have to check out her bloggy blog to see how awesome her PR was!

We also got to see and medal Lesley (@RacingItOff) and Tricia (@TriciaRunning) after their beer race 🙂  You ladies awesome! We have managed to see Lesley at a handful of races in Dallas, but it’s never for thaaat long. We have got to fix that!

We should mention we saw a couple of familiar faces from New Years Double out there too! Each of us spoke to one of them briefly – other NYD runners would know him as the marathon winner of New Year’s Eve and her as the half marathon winner of both days!

It was neat to be there and see the entire spectrum of runners out there from an 11 year old boy running his first half to a 62 year old woman crossing off “run a half marathon” from her bucket list.  She was so proud of herself, as she should be, because she could tell her kids that run marathons she had completed a half marathon. LOVED that!  We were there to see the 30 year old first finisher cross the finish line to the 69 year old who was the person to run across that finish line and regardless of their time each of them had such a sense of accomplishment to them!  Just further proving running is really for anyone with a goal!  Such. A. Great. Experience!

3. We are SO excited to get to meet Courtney & Luke!

Obviously you know we saw Courtney at the end of her race, but we first got to FINALLY meet her and Luke during our packet pickup shift! Who doesn’t love meeting someone and being handed over de-licious goodness in the form of a s’mores cupcake??  We also got to hangout with them for a little bit Saturday night too at this cute bar – Dive Bar.  While it was fun to hang with them that night it was at a bar where it was hard to talk and all hear each other, so we were grateful for the opportunity to see them Sunday afternoon too at Austin Java!  Courtney & Luke, you two are awesome!  We loved getting to see you, spend time with you and we can’t wait for the next time!! 🙂

You two are wonderful and we WISH we lived in the same city as you guys!

4.  We are officially signed up for the ZOOMA Austin Half on March 31, 2012!!

Yep, we still are!! 🙂  THAT didn’t change over the weekend, so you should sign up if you STILL have not…AND we still have a coupon code good through TODAY!  You know you wanna!!

5.  Neither of us have actually run in Austin and you know what? We are going to change that this weekend!

OOPS!! Yah, we didn’t!! Wait, we saw a bunch of runners, does that count?? Guess we’ll change that when we run ZOOMA!

6.  We canNOT wait to get coffee at The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf – have been dreaming about it since our last trip to Austin!

Yep, we went there! TWICE!  One trip there we might have gotten more than one drink! 🙂  It is safe to say that we are also a fan of their breakfast food there! We would have made a third trip there but we cheated and went to Austin Java.  Brigid to answer you question the other day – when we go there Teal gets either a sugar free caramel latte or vanilla latte and Beth tends to stick with Hazelnut.  If we are remembering correcting all of their drinks with milk are made with non fat milk.  And now we are dreaming about them again…..

7.  We really wanted to post 27 things…

Aren’t you glad we didn’t post 27 things this time either?? 🙂

We also would like to say thank you to Mary Alice for once again letting us crash with you!  And thanks to Mandy & her cute little munchkin, Meranda for meeting us for dinner Saturday night!

Seven Things Friday

1. We are going to AUSTIN today after work!! Wheee!

2.  So that we can volunteer at the 3M Half Marathon!

(source)

3. We are SO excited to get to meet these two:

 You know also known as @runthetrailsCO & @cisforcourtney

4.  We are officially signed up for the ZOOMA Austin Half on March 31, 2012!! We have a discount code good through the 31st for $5 off the 5k or $10 off the Half! Let us know if you want to join us and we’ll let ya have it! 🙂

5.  Neither of us have actually run in Austin and you know what? We are going to change that this weekend!

6.  We canNOT wait to get coffee at The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf – have been dreaming about it since our last trip to Austin!

7.  We really wanted to post 27 things because, uh, duh – today is the 27th! BUT we thought that was excessive and that we wanted to keep our readers around! 😉  Thanks for hanging in there with us! 🙂

Wordless Wednesday No. 16

What do you think? Suggestions?