May Report Card & Holy Cow it’s Time for June Goals!!

Yah, yah, yah…we are a little late to get this up, but we are started on June goals already! Have no fear! A lot has been going on over in our parts of the world as we are sure it has been with lots of you too! Anyways, let’s get on with it…

Teal:

1.  Lose 5 more lbs. I have tons of motivation right now because I will be on the beach June 6-11 for one of my best friend’s weddings in the Dominican Republic! C: lost 2-3ish depends on what time you weigh me (don’t you love that) BUT on a side note I am back to where I was before the marathon!!

2. Ok, I’m just going to change this yoga goal. The goal is to go 3 times per week. After looking back on the last 2 months I think this is doable and still a stretch.  I had a 6 time month and a 5 time month so hopefully just 3 a week will be a big enough push that is actually time possible!  B: Close… I went to yoga 9 times. So basically 3 short, not bad for a crazy month!

3. Stop skipping my morning workouts. My gym buddy and I got a little off track due to crazy lives and schedules. The goal is to go all 5 mornings. I had done this for over a year so it’s doable, just need to get back in the routine! I have been going at night more, but it’s not as easy to do and gets in the way of my yoga goal! Domino effect-boooo!!  UMMMMM, not 100% sure how to grade this, I worked out the same and went most mornings, it is just sooo much easier to go at night when I don’t have grad school or something else. I did most of the runs at night but still went about 3 days a week in the morning, PLUS, if you remember from earlier in the year, I wanted to do more weights alone…. DONE!! Feeling so much better about this, well except for the super creepy guy who told me my aura was beautiful. What??

4. Be nicer! I am not evil, but stress has taken over this month with preparing for graduation, looking and interviewing for counseling jobs, planning showers and events, tax season at my dad’s, state testing for schools, blah blah blah. I have NOT been the picture of niceness at all and have become way more annoyed at things than normal. I am not sure how I am going to actually do this or prove it, but I’ll come up with something and let you know how it goes at the end of May!  B-: Ok I was nicer for sure. I did some random things, that at least made me feel nicer including, walking to teacher friends to talk instead of email, putting shopping carts back in the shopping cart thing even if they weren’t mine,  waved at the people in my neighborhood when we passed each other in cars, I never once honked my horn, I bought the lady’s order behind me at Starbucks in the drive through line, and I just got a better attitude about work and stuff like that. Not too shabby BUT I still have a lot of room!

Beth:

1. I’m still chasing those 5 pounds to lose! Ha, one day…one. freakin’. day. I will be able to say I did it so. This goal is sticking! C: I lost two pounds! Haha

2. Survive my first 10 mile race!  I’m currently freaked out by this distance since I’ve never raced it and it is getting hotter down here in Texas!  A+: I DID survive!! It was a hot one, but I did the White Rock ‘n’ Roll 10 miles!

sprintin’ it in!

3. My wedding related goal is super vague, but the goal is to have at least 3 items on my checklist marked off and report back to you what I’ve accomplished them! B-:  I have a CAKE!!! 🙂  I also bought all the supplies for two projects I am working on and while that doesn’t seem like much of a feat, well, it is in my world! Finding time to work, workout and get to stores before they close is hard for me! Ha.  I’ve also done a lot of research into decorations I want to use, so while it would be amazing if I was further along I am proud of where I am!

This isn’t really what my cake looks like – I got more of a simple yet elegant look to mine! 🙂

(source)

4. I want to continue on with my preparing food for the week on Sunday’s goal, but to make it different the goal here is to find two new recipes this month and make them! Must add variety to what I’ve been doing! F:  I did do a lot of food prep in the month of May, however, I only ended up finding one new recipe that I wanted to try and then I didn’t even try it. Ha! I’m not going to make this a goal for next month, but I will make the recipe I have and find at least another to try soon! So help me God!

My extra goals each month – a. Hill workouts weekly! I actually hosted hill runs in the month of May for NTX Runners, but Teal had to cover one of my hill runs because I was sick. :-/  Which means I did 4 hill runs in the 5 weeks of May.  b. Read two books a month.  Well, I actually finished 3 books in May! 🙂  I was a busy reader!  I finished The Girl in the Green Sweater: A Life in Holocaust’s Shadow by Krystyna Chiger, Girls in White Dresses by Jennifer Close and Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford.

(source)

Joint Goal:

We will be participating in #runchat’s May challenge which is pretty much to run a different route, a new trail or try a race you have never done before.  For more information please visit the #runchat site.  Beth & Brent found a trail area by his house to explore during this month.  You might remember it from Wordless Wednesday No. 25

Onward to June goals….How are we in the 6th month of this year?!?

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!?

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

3.  Follow my under 2 hour half marathon runkeeper running plan as close to possible! I will eventually run and under 2 hour half marathon if it kills me! Well not really, I want to live, but you get the point!

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!

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!!

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!

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.

4. Finish the two wedding projects I have ALL of the supplies for! 🙂

Joint Goal:

We are doing and have asked YOU to participate with us in our Tone It Up Challenge for the month where we do as many days of pushups and planks!

Hope you all have are working hard on your June goals and have a fabulous month! Check back with you when it’s July!  But July please do not come TOO FAST!

10 Reasons We Love to Run

So we love all things #runchat which means we HAD to participate in their blog challenge to list 10 things we love about running keeping in mind if we were never going to run again.

1.  All the fun gear – shoes, jackets, socks you know….ALL of it! 🙂

2. FRUNNERS!!! [we stole this term from our Dallas area running friends] We have met so many people since we started blogging and our twitter account. We are SO thankful to them for the advice, support, encouragement, motivation and so much more!

(pictures courtesy of Mama C)

3.  Bling Bling!  Who doesn’t love being rewarded at the end of a race with shiny medal?  And who doesn’t love being reminded of the things they’ve accomplished by looking back at a shiny medal?

4.  Getting a break! Love being able to get out on the road and be free of the stresses and concerns of the day!  It’s so liberating to free your mind of all of that!

5.  Testing your limits and realizing you are a whole heck of a lot stronger than you even knew you were!

6.  That we each have a an awesome running buddy! 🙂

Running through Angels Stadium

7.  Those mornings when you don’t want to get out of bed and run because you just don’t feel like, and then you go anyways and the run is freakin’ fantastic!

8.  Feeling healthy on a daily basis because we are active and watch what we eat so that we can be better runs.

9. Travel to races!  While we have only left the great state of Texas once so far for a race we LOVED having that opportunity to travel to California and experience new things there as well as a new course.  At the end of this month our racing will take us to Florida, and we are looking into other states for our next marathon!  There are plenty of races in cities that we might not experience or we might just experience in a new way because we came there to run!

10.  Eating!  There are so many calories and so many food items we would have to cut back on if we just flat out stopped running.  We aren’t talking we run and then go eat the greasiest hamburger and largest order of fries ever, but there are a lot of foods we get to partake in because we are so active with running!

As a side note it was fun seeing our picture on the #runchat website this morning!

Did we leave out something that is key to your running?  Let us know – we want to hear what you love about running!

Lazy Solo Running Weekend

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 thatWhat’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?