Oh, Marathon Training Weekends!

December 3, 2012 by · 6 Comments

We had a good weekend full of lots of time together which included some fun, some productivity and some running! A little bit of everything and maybe a rare weekend of finding balance with it all?

Friday: 

We drove to Ft. Worth to hang out with our friend Mandy! For anyone who doesn’t live in the DFW area you might not know that these two places are not exactly as close and one would think. We left Brent & Beth’s house around 6 and after dealing with traffic the ENTIRE time, we finally made it to dinner around 7:30, but it was totally worth the wait.

We ate at Winslow’s Wine Café, which was an old gas station converted to a nursery, then later this awesome wine bar! If you ever go we recommend the pita bread and hummus. There is something secretly amazing about their pita! Just trust us and get it.

winslows

 

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We headed to Gingerman afterwards to hang out some more! Duh, plus why would we waste a trip to Ft. Worth to only staying like 2 hours?

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We closed that place down, well sorta, our oldness and the fact that we were up early, and just the fact that we were at the end of a long week, we left….around 1 a.m.!  We did last awhile considering we did have to make the trek back to the Dallas side of the metroplex upon leaving.

We decided to make a short stop by the Ft. Worth Museum of Modern art because this cool guy, Companion, is still displayed outside. What he is we aren’t really sure, Teal & Michael even went to the artist’s lecture about him and, yea not sure. Giant under 21 crazy Mickey Mouse? Perhaps we need Michael’s input on this one?

See Beth mimicking him!

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Saturday: Rest? Recover, Errands!

Teal headed to Luke’s Locker to solve her shoe crisis. The poor guy there had to suffer as she tried on like every shoe in the store. She ended up with these bad boys. Please God make them work better!

saucony shoes

Saucony Ride 5

 

 

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Beth finally got her birthday present! What’d she get? You guessed it! A bathroom cabinet, duh! Who doesn’t get one for these for their birthday?! We don’t have a picture of it,but it’s a lovely white cabinet that Brent and maybe his dad can put up over the master bathroom toilet. Hooray more storage space!

Sunday: Long Run

We headed to White Rock earlier than we have been lately. Last marathon training we got up early every Saturday and ran early. This time we have spoiled ourselves with later runs. Beth grabbed Teal at 7 and we headed to the lake. It was a nice day, overcast mostly, but still warm for Texas. We actually hit a record warm Sunday if that tells you anything.  This is a nice place to break up an 18 mile run since each lap is right at 9 miles.

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We actually saw a bunch of people we know to keep it entertaining. Katie (you might remember her from this blog or even from here), Catherine from North Texas Runners and The Kennemers a.k.a. #TeamK!!

We also have a PSA to all the bikers out there. We highly HIGHLY recommend that you steer clear of the white race kits. We got to experience the not so pretty butt crack of a rather larger biker. Trust us on this on bikers, stick to the darker colors.

The birds were seriously crazy! It was right at this part of the lake that Mr. K ran up behind Teal and was like “looks like a harbor” it was awesome. Huge white birds everywhere. This pictures doesn’t really do it justice but it was awesome.

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Teal decided to call it over at 15 and Beth made it the full 18! Then we headed for brunch at Campisi’s where we got to enjoy a couple of these!

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Mimosa reward!

I’d say we were super busy and productive! Next up? Week 10 of marathon training! And looking forward to Dallas Marathon (but just the half) this weekend!

How was YOUR weekend??

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Ready for the Weekend from This Weekend

May 4, 2012 by · 2 Comments

Does that make sense? It does in our minds! Ha, this weekend is full of busy, so we are ready for the weekend break from our busy weekend. Now does it make sense? 🙂  But keep in mind most of the busy is all stuff we will have a lot of fun doing!

You might know that we are kind of taking a break or maybe more accurately a step back from doing SO many races right now.  Summer will be here in no time and everyone knows that summer is always busy, right?  Teal is about to be graduating from grad school then wrapping up another school year with her students and this summer brings about a wedding for one of her best friends.  Which means there are wedding events to attend!

Bride-to-be, Sommer & Teal dressed up as Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs a couple Halloween’s ago

Beth is still trucking along at work, basically has a side job doing social media for a small local business and is trying to plan her wedding!  There are so many things to be doing!

What does that mean for us this weekend?

Teal will be Bachelorette Partyin’ it up!  See how that warrants a recovery weekend from the weekend?

Beth will be participating in the Dallas Running Club‘s White Rock ‘n’ Roll 10 mile race on Saturday!  Need to burn those calories before she and Brent are off to do a cake tasting!  Neither one of us have ever done a 10 mile race and honestly it’s starting to get HOT in Texas!  Hopefully White Rock Lake can provide some sort of a breeze!

So there is no pre-existing goal for this race, but maybe one will be set out on the course! Otherwise hopefully there will be fun and happy running going on! 🙂  Oh, and should you be running White Rock ‘n’ Roll tomorrow and are still needing to pick up your race packet – Beth is working the 4-7pm packet pickup shift at Luke’s Locker Plano today! So be sure and say hi!  Or you know if you need some new running gear stop by that time and say hi!

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Trinity River Levee Run

March 5, 2012 by · 2 Comments

I woke up Friday morning with beginnings of a cold coming on. Ugh, not so perfect timing! But got to bed early for a 6 a.m. wake up call for the 10k. That seemed SO late considering how early Teal & I woke up for Princess Half!

First I should backup and say the packet pickup at Luke’s was pretty easy at Luke’s Locker especially since I heeded the advice from email to know my bib number before getting there. I walked up to the nice fireman, told him bib 962 and in under 30 seconds I was off and looking at the running clothes sale. 🙂 Kudos to this race for having firemen help with packet pickup! 🙂

I’d seen multiple things regarding driving directions to the race and I had every intention of following them until I found myself on the exact street it said to avoid. Oh, well! Quickly parked on the opposite side of the Margaret Hunt Hill bridge from where the race started, but ultimately I was glad because I got to walk across it twice in addition to running across it!

After crossing the bridge I found my friends Mary, Cory, Tom and Paige pretty quickly and in no time it seemed like we were off!  Since Teal was on a field trip with her students I just assumed I’d be running this race by myself and I was totally wrong!  Tom and I ended up running pretty much the whole race together.  We chatted about anything and everything!  Talking during races and even during training runs is not something I commonly do, so it was a nice change of pace.  Tom kept me updated periodically on what our pace was.  I knew I’d want to do another 6ish mile run later in the day so I was too concerned with pushing real hard in this race.  Overall the course was fun, lots of awesome volunteers out passing out powerade and water.  I don’t frequent that area of town all that much so it was fun seeing everything around there.

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Tom & I after the race - please enjoy the mess that is my hair!

The results for this race were a little tricky to find or maybe I’m just not that use to having to click on so many links to be taken to a word document containing a link that holds my results?  My chip time was 57:41, 201st female to finish and 661st person to finish overall.  The thing I was most proud of in this race was the kick I gave at the end.  When I stopped my runkeeper at the end it said I had been running at a 7:14 pace! So excited to see the difference my hill and tempo workouts have given me in a short amount of time!  Would also, like to give a shout out to Teal’s workout buddy, Cynthia I saw out there!  Wish I would have seen you after the race!

After the race was over I made sure to take a picture of one of the three murals that Shepherd Fairey recently put up on Singleton Avenue in Dallas.  Tons of people were having their picture taken with the murals so I got just this one with no one else in the picture before I headed out.

On my walk back to the car I took advantage of the time and snapped some more pictures of the Margaret Hunt Hill bridge or as I’ve already heard some referring to it as #largeMarge.  I’m going to hold out and put one of my favorite pictures I took walking across the bridge to the race on Facebook only, so come find it on our Facebook page! And if you haven’t liked us on Facebook yet – why not??

Later that afternoon I headed out for a 6 mile run that I was hoping would include some hills.  I set off on a bit of a new route for me, and to be honest in the beginning I wasn’t completely feeling this run.  As I was nearing the halfway point of my run which also was the point where I was running down my soon to be monster hill to run up, I saw a police officer and contemplated asking him to give me a ride home if I wimped out on the hill.  But let’s be honest – no matter how much I wanted to wimp out I wasn’t going to.  The hill was hard, but once I did it and recovered from it I felt great!  The whole last half of my run was fabulous!  I get more of a high from running when I accomplish something hard out in the course than if it was just completely flat.  Run #2 on Saturday felt like another victory for my tempo and hill workouts!

Hope everyone had a fabulous weekend!  There were so many people out racing and Teal & I are both excited to see your race recaps! 🙂

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6.2 Things Friday

February 10, 2012 by · 5 Comments

1. Two weeks from today we leave for Florida for the Princess Half.  Tired of this countdown yet? 🙂

2. Beth did her first ever tempo run on the treadmill Wednesday night. Check it out:

3.  Unfortunately Teal isn’t going to be able to do the Hot Chocolate Run on Saturday. 🙁

4. Because she’ll be busy taking her certification test for counseling!  Yah, another big thing with grad school that will be out of the way!

5.  Disneyland Half – we are officially REGISTERED!  Coast to Coast medal we are coming for you!

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6.1 Last night Teal participated in her first ever social run at Luke’s Locker!  Got in 4 miles with the group and can’t wait to go again!

6.2 Last but NOT least! Beth finalized all of her Bridesmaids by asking her longest friend in life this past weekend over dinner!  They’ve known each other since they were 6 years old.

What was a highlight to your week – running or non-running related?

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New Things Friday!

January 6, 2012 by · 8 Comments

Happy Friday!! Well, we got a NEW header!  All thanks to Beth’s sister, Kate!!  What do you think??

Also, did you happen to notice earlier this week the appearance of a new button on our blog?? Right around this area —–>

 

We are SO happy to be able to tell you that we are ZOOMA Connectors for the 2012 Texas event which will be held in Austin on March 31, 2012!!

 

 

What is ZOOMA you ask? Well, it is a race series designed for women!  We all love girls weekends, right?  [well, all of us females at least :)]  ZOOMA has basically gone and created a girls weekend for runners!  You run your race and afterwards at the after party expo you are pampered with wine, massages, demos and shopping!  What else is cool about running their half marathon is each finisher gets an exclusively-designed piece of jewelry! We absolutely love the theme of the ZOOMA events:

run. laugh. celebrate.

The ZOOMA race series is really all about promoting a healthy & active lifestyle!  They really embrace that by finding Ambassadors in each city where a race is held to help train and inspire runners.  Their big kick off event for runners and Ambassadors to meet is actually tomorrow morning at the Luke’s Locker on Sandra Muraida Way, so if you are in Austin and want to participate go here to RSVP to the event!  There are a number of links on their site to inspire you and your training or just help you get started!

Ok, so we have really promoted this whole it’s a girls weekend aspect of the ZOOMA event, it really is just one big girls weekend, BUT men are welcome too!  So ladies if you want to run this race and your husband/significant other/brother/etc. is looking for a race to run too, well, bring him with you!

Registration is open NOW for the Austin, Texas event on March 31, 2012 and if you sign up before January 7, 2012 [tomorrow] you will beat the price increase!  The two of us will be heading down to Austin and running the half marathon portion of the event, so come and join us!

Sign up today and let us know that we will see you out there! 🙂

If you are one of our readers outside of the great state of Texas be sure to checkout the other 4 events in the ZOOMA race series and plan to make one of those!

Atlanta – April 22, 2012

Annapolis – June 2, 2012

Cape Cod – September 22, 2012

Great Lakes– October 20, 2012

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Thirteen Miles & Feet Problems

October 18, 2011 by · 1 Comment
Because we ran/walked Susan G. Komen 5k on Saturday, we both set out for our long training run Sunday morning. Not sure that either one of us was really in the mood to run. Our plan was to start at around 7:00 a.m., but Beth sent a tweet about 7 that said –
“I am trying to use mind control to tell @Likethecolor she should come over at 8am and we’ll run our 13 miles. Haha.” 
It worked and we really didn’t set out until after 8:15.  Luckily the weather is much better now so starting later isn’t as big of a deal. Thank God!

Teal decided to try running without her camelbak for this long run. She has this thing where once she feels tired she doesn’t want anything to touch her and starts to blame being tired on crap touching her. Lately it has been getting worse, all though about half way in the run, Teal wished she had it based on thirst alone. We started out fairly fast given our prior training runs, but really we both still feel kind of slow. Beth felt pretty good body wise but just lacking in speed for this run. Teal was actually hoping to feel the same, but that didn’t happen.

We both had a rather scattered training week all together. According to our marathon training plan, we were supposed to run 5 on Tuesday, 8 Wednesday, and 5 Thursday and basically that didn’t happen. Beth ended up with 4.71 on the treadmill which is not bad considering it was the treadmill without music. Teal made it 4.47 but literally stopped twice to walk. Then the 8 was interesting too, Beth made it 3 of 8, she said her mind was just checked out from her crazy week, and Teal made it 7.72 but it was not pretty, it took her 1:22 minutes and she walked, her mind was all over the place too. Neither one of us made the 5 and then really we walked the 5k so we lacked some miles this week. You would have figured our legs were pretty rested, but thus they were not. Beth was sore from Johnny’s and as soon as Teal started running her knee kept popping out of place. She figured it would go away but it literally never really did. We are worried about this knee. Teal ended up stopping at about 10 miles, (shoe issues) then had to run/walk that last 3. Beth ran some circles around to stay close and asked Teal if she wanted to stop but really was like- you keep going- I’ll eventually keep moving.  Teal decided to walk up the hills (really there was one left) because that hurts the most. Teal made it 12.54, Beth made it 13.1. Slow but done, we guess that’s what counts- or at least we hope??!!

We both went to brunch after the run with a bunch of friends and both of our significant others joined for the first time. We were both surprised they came! They usually avoid the social brunch thing, typically make fun of us in their loving way but they came! We actually think they ended up enjoying brunch more than either of us expected.

Teal’s foot was bothering her so much she could barely touch it and her hubby had to carry her to the car. Teal also b-lined it back to Luke’s Locker who graciously helped her change shoes as well. They are so much better than buying shoes at like Academy or other places – very helpful.

 

 We both decided we needed some stretching and went to Yoga that night as well to stretch out and de-stress! Yoga actually felt really good on our sore muscles.  Teal had been contemplating the yoga thing again due to price, but decided it might actually be much better for my body then what she was currently doing — maybe save her from muscle issues. We shall see! Beth goes a lot and it seems like she has way less issues- she has some feet and knee problems, but is usually able to recover quickly.

We are hoping that this week brings a better training week altogether. I am sure you saw Beth’s post a couple weeks ago about what was happening with her work outs and Teal’s has been fairly similar. We need out of the funk!! This week we are supposed to run 5, 8, and 5 again and we had to change our long run around because Teal is leaving for San Fran Thursday and Beth to Austin so the plan is to run 12 miles alone and then 19 miles the next week Sunday night (10/30). We are actually going to make our planned 19, a 20 miler possibly inspired by fear and also reading one of our Twitter Friend’s blogs— Courtney actually ran two 20 milers, a 22 and a 24 before her first marathon. We are slightly worried about the fact that training to 20 miles is all we have; there are still 6 more miles to cover!  Surely some of that is newbie worries – right??

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September Race No. 2

September 19, 2011 by · 4 Comments

As we were thinking back over the Tour des Fleurs race this weekend we realized that this was literally the race that kicked off our first half marathon training last year. We only ran the 10k last year and actually ended up running the longest distance of our life only 1 short year later. We were up early as usual and rode out to the Arboretum together and met our friend Steven (a.k.a. Bitner) for the race. I am not sure either of us was really worried about the race itself, but rather the extra 3.6 miles at the end to make the 16 mile run.  Before the race we ran into our friend Katie and then as we lined up for the race we saw fellow North Texas Runner, Michelle!

 

We decided to stay together for this race as well because we both really knew that we were going to need each other at the end. We decided to not dodge anyone and stay at a constant pace for the entire race, get the miles in and don’t die! We started out  pretty strong, running faster than we had recently trained and really maintained that for most of the race. The last section was seriously crazy. It seemed like every time we turned a corner we had a huge up hill leg to run. Around us you could seriously hear the collective sighs of people as we approached the hills. At one point a college friend of Beth’s was next to us and was like ‘it is way to close to the end of the race for this.” It seriously seemed like they lasted for about 3 miles, and really as annoying as it is to admit we wanted to stop—they were nuts. We didn’t, we just kept talking to each other, giving reminders of distance and just saying keep going. Here are the hills from our runkeeper:

 

We powered through really not dealing with much else and just concentrated on maintaining our pace and not stopping. As we approached the finish line we started to look for Steven to catch him to run the lat 3.6. We weren’t 100% sure what we would do at the finish because this was the first time we actually had to keep running past the finish line. We saw him and literally neither of us stopped. We jumped down to the actual trail part of White Rock Lake and just kept going. We finished the 16 miles right around the same time. 2:47 min. The longest run of our life! With that said- 16 was hard but better than we thought, we both ended tired, sore, and with random cuts from god knows what article of clothing but we finished and are able to walk today!

First chaffing from the ol' camelbak

Results:

Teal: 2:05:04

Beth:  2:05:04

And that’s all the result information you get – maybe there is something wrong with us but we do not totally get the break down and what all the different numbers mean on the result page for this race! 🙂After the race we headed up and grabbed a beer and frozen yogurt from the vendors and actually got to meet another runner we have talked to on twitter, Heidi and her husband. We hope to meet up with them sometime and run the hills around our usual area in Plano! Hopefully that will help make those crazy hills we ran today seem like nothing.

 Since the Tour des Fleurs is always at the Dallas Arboretum we had to take advantage of our surroundings and take some cheesy pictures! 🙂 Enjoy!

pumpkin house

Cinderella's carriage

And in true Beth and Teal fashion we didn’t rest and kept up the day, Beth attended a 1 year old’s birthday party, Teal to work, and then we both went to Steven’s for drinks and dinner to celebrate his 29th birthday!

 

Mustaches & margs at 1 year old's Birthday party

Happy Birthday, Bitner!
Happy Birthday, Bitner!

Overall another great Tour des Fleurs race for us, but we would be lying if we didn’t say we were definitely disappointed we didn’t get hats at the end of the race like in the last 3 years at least! They’ve always been great hats to run in, oh, well!

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