One Year Going on Seven
October 28, 2013 by · 2 Comments
It seems like with a new milestone in life the speed of life picks up just a little bit more. This past year has absolutely gone by at full speed, but it has been an awesome first year of marriage to Mr. H! It hasn’t been until this year that I’ve even thought about how long it feels like we’ve been together. We are quickly approaching seven years since that first encounter with each other and just days after that our very first date! 🙂
We’ve had so many good memories together and there are so many more to come! I am one very lucky, lucky lady!
June Report Card & Our Goals for July
July 6, 2012 by · 4 Comments
Have you noticed a trend in us running behind this summer?? 🙁 Thanks for having patience and sticking around with us those that are! Maybe it’s just a summer thing and come fall we will be back to our normal routines?? One can hope right? We continue to be freaked out by each and every new month that comes because well – time is flying people!
Teal:
1. Clean out the garage which involves properly deposing of all old paint, chemicals, and random things you can’t through in the regular trash, donating anything that should have donated a long time ago, if it belongs to my brother it’s going to his house, and then just generally cleaning. Why I pick June to work outside in the heat is beyond me but whatever!?
A+: this was so much easier than I thought. I just called the city, ordered the bag and left it on the front porch! The garage is cleaned out, despite an attack from 2 cockroaches, don’t worry the Orkin man has been out to fix that little problem too!
2. So I graduated at the beginning of May!! Yay, but I have very annoying things that I have/need to do
- Consolidate and move all my student loans to one place and get on a better plan to pay off faster. YUCK, YUCK, YUCK!
- Register for the LPC exam and not cry when I pay the $300 to take it
- Organize all the grad work that I did that I want, toss the old stuff, bind what I am keeping ( anyone have one of those spiral binding things?)
- Organize, bind, toss, or give away my teaching stuff! I will be moving to counselor next year and have a billion teaching things to go through
B: Turns out I can wait until November to consolidate, so I will, can’t register for the LPC until October, paper are organized ( I used binders instead) and my teaching stuff is ready for my friend to have whenever I see her!!
3. Follow my under 2 hour half marathon runkeeper running plan as close to possible! I will eventually run an under 2 hour half marathon if it kills me! Well not really, I want to live, but you get the point!
B-: I am not sure how to rank this, I have done most of the runs, I usually end up leaving one of the runs per week out because my body doesn’t do well with 3 relatively tough days in a row, by the third one my knee hates me and I would rather keep my body intact and not made at me than to run! However, I do feel stronger and better already so I’ll just keep working through July!
4. Eliminate random eating. Raise your hand if you stand around trying to figure out something to eat and you find yourself eating crap in the process! ME!! This has to stop!! It’s not like am eating like crazy stuff, but it is mindless and when I finally figure out what to eat, I’m annoyed that I ate weird random things in the meantime!
F: I think I need to make a sign for the pantry and refrigerator. Not sure how to stop this habit. I bought a book – The Power of Habit… maybe just maybe that will help? Re-do in July!!
Beth:
1. This time around my weight goal is simply: DON’T GAIN ANY!!! Ha, sounds simple right? Well, this is my birth month and my parents are divorced so this usually means multiple celebrations with good food, good drinks and dessert. So it’s a dangerous time of year for me. No weight gain in June!!
A++++++: I am still at the same weight! Wahoo! I survived all of the Birthday eating this month!
2. Yoga 2-3 times a week. Ever since I finished my goal of completing 200 classes in a year I’ve been kind of a slacker, so let’s get back to yoga goals! It’s soooo good for me!
F: Yah, I didn’ t go at all. Fail, Beth, fail!
3. Finish projects at Brent’s house. I volunteered his house to host a friend dinner (like this one) towards the end of the month and I haven’t finished some art I started for the walls, since I’ll eventually move in there (you know when we are married) I had already left all of my racing medals, hook to hold them, awesome race bib board my SIL made me over there they just need to be hung up.
A: I finished my “home” picture I was making though I have a feeling the perfectionist in me will make me redo it at some point!
It says home in a bunch of different languages all of which are written on the canvas so I can always know.
I also got my medal hook and medals hung up – now what to do with the OTHER medals that are not on this hook??
I might kind of have a thing for the color blue….
I didn’t get my bib holder hung up because I decided that I wanted to change out the hooks that are currently on it to clips so that all different size bibs can hang for it, so that’s still a project! But I did get a shelf all spray painted and it sits below the medal hook in the office AND we got the guest bedroom cleaned up for now. My purdy quilt Rebekah made me occupies the bed and I put up some other things around the room. I consider what I did at my future home a success this month!
4. Finish the two wedding projects I have ALL of the supplies for! 
Looking back at this goal I am not exactly sure which ones I was talking about. HA! But y’all I got A LOT of wedding schtuff done this month! Some projects might not be finished but they are well on their way to being completed! And there is one project for sure still sitting in the packaging, but it requires me sitting in the garage by myself for awhile to work on it which does not fully excite me hence the delay! 🙂 I am kind of afraid to show pictures of projects I am working on as I don’t want to give everything away on the internet and would like certain stuff to be seen for the first time at the wedding. 🙂
My reoccurring goals – Hills, well, I did 3 out of 4 weeks of hills in June and let me tell you that it is getting HOT in Texas! As far as books go I am still on Target with my goal of reading 24 this year and read my 12th book this month, the recent release, Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. Could not put this book down!
(source)
And on to July goals!! Here’s also to hoping that our July Report Card is up on the blog in the first few days of August!! Wheee! HA
Teal:
1. Read Power of Habit, work on the stupid ” I am just going to stand here and eat random crap while I look for something to eat” problem.
(source)
2. Get my office ready at my new job. My contract starts July 30th and I would like to be more than set before I start working. I can’t work if stuff is not organized and finished so this is a must. Right now it looks like a war zone and crap is all over the place.
3. Run an avg of 25 miles a week. This is close to the plan, not every week, but I am trying to still balance what my body decides it will do and my wanting to get faster and have more endurance.
I think 3 is enough for July as we have a late start and I will be out of my house for a little more than a week for training in Ft. Worth and Beth’s bacheorette party (wahoo!!) which makes just the balance of life harder! Here we go July!
Beth:
1. Read This Is Why You’re Fat by Jackie Warner. I saw Dorothy talk about this book on her blog and immediately wanted to read it. I’ve been a fan of Jackie Warner’s since she had that show on Bravo called Workout, so Jackie Warner book here I come!
(source)
2. Keep up with My Fitness Pal. I don’t usually record what I eat on the weekends, and so this month I’m going to try hard to keep up with it during the week! And this is a twofer – keep up with Daily Mile. I totally let that one go in June so keep up with my fitness apps in July!!
3. I have my own monthly challenge I started of doing dips and planks regularly, and have been keeping a record of it on a calendar I printed out. Here’s to getting in 5 days of those at least each week! I’ll show you my calendar at the end of the month!
Also, in other news…we LIED and we will reveal the winner of our Tone It Up Challenge Monday!! 🙂 Have a great rest of the month and hope you have some awesome things in store for it!
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!!
Twenty Miles: Check
October 31, 2011 by · 3 Comments
As you can see we’ve had an interesting few days here with Beth’s engagement 🙂 and the event of the rangers in the World Series! 🙁 Seems like a whirlwind around here really. Originally we both were supposed to be in College Station this weekend but a bunch of stuff came up with Teal at work at her Dad’s and teaching so she stayed in Dallas. Beth went to College Station with her new fiancé and we decided to do our long run on Sunday night. This is the first long night run I think we have ever done. Because we ran at night we had all day to think about it and believe me we did! I was back and forth in my head about if my legs were going to be tired and refused to stand up just about everywhere I went. My husband, Michael and I had to get laundry done so I just sat around in the cart at the laundromat to not wear myself out. Beth had many errands to run as people wanted to see her and her ring so we didn’t start until about 5:15 p.m. Both of us where nervous and we prepped Beth’s sister, Kate on where she would be just in case we needed a rescue…
No rescue was needed! We headed out on our usual route and ran at a pretty good training pace for the rest of the time! Its seemed, honestly if as if the traffic world was on our side. We hit the right lights basically every time and did not have to deal with moving around traffic much which is seriously awesome! People were very happy it seemed like- for example no one half stopped on right turns, they waited at stops signs for us, moved over to the middle lane- It was awesome. At one point this kid leaned out of his car and screamed “I love your camelbaks” at us and gave us a thumbs up. That boost of friendliness always helps!! I think at around mile 8 we both felt really good. In our heads I’m sure we were both like 12 more- that’s nothing! Beth even looked over at one point and was like, “See we can totally do this.” Neither of us felt really winded or tired at that point. We had both fueled with GU and Swedish Fish and we both kept our Camelbaks this time ( I learned my lesson- don’t leave home without it).
We both ended at the same time, walked into the house and just laid down and stretched. I am not sure how we ever actually got up. Our legs actually felt much better than other long run days, but for me the pain of sitting sets in. We talked about sleeping in our Tommie Cooper calf sleeves and worried about waking up starving in the middle of the night. Both of which happened on my end. I also kept waking up with weird pains that felt like growing pains all night but it has been much better than expected.
We both ended up with some weird chaffing again- dang running and Beth has moved onto a second runners toe! Battle scars galore but we love it!
All and all this was an awesome run together. This is some insane mileage and it’s hard to honestly believe we can do it. We are a little over a month away from our goal this year and couldn’t be more excited.
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?
Lazy Solo Running Weekend
October 24, 2011 by · 7 Comments
Beth here with my running recap for the weekend! 🙂 My weekend turned out to be NOT what I was expecting, but exactly what I needed! After my long run Saturday morning I was suppose to be hitting the road to Austin with my sister for a wedding, but life happened and sister felt she needed to stay in town to be with a friend. I took full advantage of this and slept in on Saturday morning! And by slept in I mean until 7:30 a.m. Woohoo! My favorite spin instructor at my L.A. Fitness had been out of town last Monday on my usual spin day, so I skipped it. I decided spin class on Saturday morning [since favorite instructor would be back] made more sense than Sunday morning and then back to spin class Monday after work. So I did spin, I did a 30 minute yoga class and then I spent hours with my littlest nephew! It was a fabulous Saturday! Here’s what my sister and I did to our nephew on Saturday –
This was inspired by what Jack’s Mom did to him last week. Jack being the first grandbaby of Cindy[#TeamCindy] who we are running Rock ‘n’ Roll San Antonio half in memory of and raising money for breast cancer. And here’s me getting some good cuddle time in with Easton!
Sunday I slept in until 8 a.m. That was some glorious sleep! I wrote that ‘What’s the Deal?‘ post a few weeks ago and to be honest I still hadn’t fully snapped out of it! I’m pretty positive I was wearing myself out during the week and then just going, going and going on the weekends. Pretty much since the weekend of August 20th I had been going on long runs then drinking tons of coffee in an effort to stay up and go out to celebrate things like: my sister’s birthday, my boyfriend’s birthday, being in California and running a half, celebrating one of my best friend’s birthdays, celebrating a 1 year old’s birthday, celebrating a 2 year old’s birthday, hosting a baby shower, celebrating my oldest nephew’s birthday and my sister in law’s birthday – see what I was doing to myself??
Anyways, I laid in bed Sunday morning catching up on my DVR until I had to get up and meet a friend at yoga at 1:00 p.m. I ate a late lunch and decided to lay in bed longer while my food digested before I could go out for my long run. And something happened that NEVER happens – I took nap! I am in no way a napper! I just lack the ability to take a nap and wake up refreshed, so the only times I do it are if I’m sick or I’m apparently wearing myself out THAT much.
Shortly before 5:00 p.m. I was off on my long run for the weekend! This run I decided to take with me a Clif gel I’d received while I was out on the Tour des Fleurs 20k race course in September. Like I do every long run I stuck it in the hidden pocket inside my Nike shorts only problem was that the Clif gel packaging is wider than the GU gel packaging I usually take on my run. I ran through the gel pack poking me for 4 miles then I had it, took it out and ran holding it for 4 more miles until I opened it. Now I am a HUGE chocolate lover, but I am now not a fan of chocolate flavored gels which is what I had! But don’t worry Clif! I have not given up on you just your chocolate flavored gel. 🙂
And there is my cut/chaffed area/what have you on the right in the picture above. I’m not going to tell you where that is exactly, but if I put the pack in an inside pocket of my shorts I think you can use your imagination. 😉 [Sorry Mom if you are reading this and are shaking your head at me! Love you!] Ok, back to long run – I didn’t know how this would go since I have never run more than 8 miles by myself and Teal had left me to go on an awesome trip to San Francisco! SO jealous! But it went great! I was so proud of myself for keeping my pace under 10 minutes the WHOLE entire time! I had a couple times where I wanted to stop more because I needed to use the facilities than being tired. 🙂 I guess that’s the downfall of running not at my usual time. I explored a little bit and ran a slightly different area than Teal and I have ever run before and overall I felt great during this long running!
I ended my Sunday night with some #runchat, Chipotle, Rangers, wine and my Tommie Copper calf sleeves [if you don’t own any – what are you waiting for?? Seriously!]
Check back with us tomorrow for Teal’s San Francisco Running Weekend recap!
Are you a fan of Clif gels? What is YOUR favorite flavor?
Fill Me Up!
October 20, 2011 by · 3 Comments
…with inspiration! We were looking for a dose of it today and decided to not be greedy and share some with YOU! 🙂
The third image is hard to read the fine print, but it says – starting is the hardest part, the rest will follow
Has there been a quote or image that’s been your inspiration lately? What is it?