Weekend Update!

May 15, 2012 by · 4 Comments

You might be wondering what we have been up to since we have taken a short break from running, kind of….well, OK, at least official ½ marathons every weekend 🙂

So here is a quick update of this weekend!!

Friday Teal graduated with her Master’s Degree from the University of North Texas- as you saw on Friday’s post but why not repeat it!?! Long time coming!!

Michael & Teal

Teal and her parents

Beth is trucking along in wedding planning, (How is it already the middle of May?) and has been super busy checking things off the to do list. This week she got to check off the WEDDING CAKE!! Can’t wait to eat that for sure! Then was able to also take advantage of the fact that one of our best friends, Rebekah, was in town. Rebekah is an awesome quilter/seamstress and Beth has a secret sewing project in her mind! As a bonus Beth was able to hang with Baby Eliza who you may remember from one of our Christmas posts! She is growing up SO fast!

Such a happy girl!

Because one picture just isn’t enough! See how cute she is?!

Saturday we were both able to meet up and have a graduation celebration and spend more time with Rebekah and of course our other close friends!! We ate at Coal Vines for dinner and had a blast, despite that fact that it took FOR. EV. ER. to get a seat. (you think we are kidding….nope it’s the truth!) Seating a party of 10 at a busy restrurant on a Saturday may have not been the best idea but we made it work! 🙂

Sunday was of course Mother’s day and who doesn’t want to celebrate Mom!!  Teal at her Granny’s house for a cookout and Beth at Babe’s Chicken. SOOOO good!

Teal and her brothers – Trey and Brad

Beth & her oldest nephew, Wesley, on Mother’s Day! If you look close enough on the left you can see Beth’s Mom!

And you think that wasn’t enough?? We got in a little work out too!!

Beth headed out for a 6 plus mile run

And Teal to do some bleacher work at the local high school!

Let us know how your weekend was! We would also like to give a belated shout out to all of the Mother’s out there! You do more than anyone could ever know! Hope you had a fabulous weekend! 🙂

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Wordless Wednesday No. 23

May 9, 2012 by · 2 Comments

(source)

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May not have totally Rocked it, but at least I didn’t Roll!!

May 7, 2012 by · 15 Comments

After spending a few hours Friday helping with packet pickup for White Rock ‘n’ Roll I was getting pretty excited to participate in the race.  If you aren’t already excited all on your own for a race there’s no better way to get pumped than volunteering for a race.  Or at least maybe that’s just my opinion?!

(source)

I slept in until 6:00 a.m. Saturday morning and was thrilled that I got to do that.  I was out the door by about 6:30 a.m. and immediately thought “man, it’s gonna be hot…wish this race was starting in 30-40 minutes from now Buuuuuttt I still liked sleeping in!”  Then I realize that my plan of bringing both my camelbak and my armband for my iPhone to choose between running with or without water was no longer an option as my armband was still sitting on the counter in my kitchen.  Pretty sure I was a big mess that morning as I also didn’t know where my headphones were but they magically appeared in my car. 🙂  Guess I should just be glad I made it to White Rock Lake period. Ha 😉

Before the race got started I got to see some familiar faces out there!  Fellow NTX Runner, Jesse, and two tweeps I’d made friends before knowing we all had running in common, Tom & Matt.  Great to see all of you out there!

The race got started and I’m pretty sure the whole time I was out there could be equated to me having hot flashes.  One minute I’m thinking this isn’t so bad there’s a breeze here in the shade! The next minute the shade goes away and holy cow I’m HOT!  This basically sums up how I felt the whole time.  The course was an out and back so I kept thinking just get to 5 miles and you got this!  A little bit before mile 5 I saw Jesse and was able to give him a little cheer since he was really one of the only people I knew running the 10 mile distance he was the only one I was looking for to see out there.

I know I started out fast which was not on purpose at all and I tried to keep it steady the rest of the way so I would survive in the heat.  Plus if I was going to have a chance of kickin’ it up a notch at the end I knew I needed to keep it at a steady pace.  My  main goal out there on the course was to finish it without walking. Accomplished. Very early on I thought that I should try for finishing under 1:30, but then I realized I was forgetting it was 10 miles not 9 and altered that goal to finishing under 1:35.

Another nice surprise out on the course was a familiar face at a water stop along the course, Paul!  He was giving out lots of encouraging and happy words to all the runners!  His pep was just what I needed when I saw him again on the way back! Thank you for that, Paul!

Pretty sure I’ve mentioned before I usually run with music, but there’s a majority of the time that I’m actually lost in my own thoughts than the actual music.  My ears did perk up though in the last mile as Beastie Boys – Fight for Your Right. Which helped push me to the end.  I didn’t have enough in the tank to kick it up a notch in the last mile, but I did have enough to sprint it out at the very end.

sprintin’ it in!

(Thanks to Jose Vega posting this picture on Facebook – hope it’s ok I stole it :))

My official results were 10 miles in 1:32:16 and I finished 6th in my age group.  Not too shabby!  Which also means my goal of running under 1:35 was accomplished!

Overall it was a good race!  Thank you DRC for putting on a great race and everything that y’all do!  Once the race was over I parked it on the grass to catch my breath and was able to finally meet a twitter running friend slash fellow NTX Runner, Alicia!  Just love getting to connect with people you spend time chatting with on the twitterverse!

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April Report Card…dun dun dun and May GOALS!

May 1, 2012 by · 12 Comments

We said this last month too, but seriously…May? How?

Ok, enough with that here’s how we did in April –

Teal:
1. Successfully complete the BluePrint Cleanse.  This will start Monday April 2nd and end Tuesday April 10th. A+: This went very very well and I want to do it again. You can check out the recap here for more information. I honestly felt wonderful and I wish I could do if for life because I had almost no knee pain! I also managed to keep a total of 5lbs off this month which if you have been following is a huge success for me!


2. Complete one hill and one speed training per week, in place of regular runs or cardio. B+: I did 3 hill workouts, missed one week for some reason I can’t remember and also did speed intervals on the treadmill in the mornings! Other cardio included stairs and cardio classes at the gym (I’ve totally branched out!!)


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! A++: DONE and DONE!! I actually submitted my paper on the 30th but it is done! T-minus 11 days until Graduation. I can’t wait!!
4. Earn my 75th class yoga band. F: Hey something has to give right?? I only went to yoga 5 times! Whoops.

Beth:

1. Please don’t hate me, but I’m going for lose 5lbs again.  Third time is a charm right?  F, I trimmed down the length of the goal this time around for the recapping. 🙂 But I was going to do the advocare cleanse. I did not do the advocare cleanse. I realized I had not factored in a wedding I would be at during the only Saturday of the month where the cleanse fit.  You might be thinking, well, Beth just suck it up and eat clean at the wedding.  Have you ever been to Babe’s? If not then think chicken fried steak, fried chicken, etc and that’s what we had.  Anyways as to the weight lose…yah, I’m still at the same weight. Oops? At least it’s consistent?

2. Save the Dates – have them printed, addressed (myself) and sent off to wedding guests before this month is over! B- Ok, so I’ve only seen Save the Dates as a PDF, BUT I was at the mercy of couple other people’s time that are just giving me their free time.  I had all my parts done (how I wanted them to look a.k.a. my own design and samples of my handwriting) and hopefully I will have them very, very soon! I can’t wait for people to see them!!!

3. Stadium workouts once a week.  B+ I did 3 out 4 weeks of stadium workouts! I missed last week due to going out of town and trying to fit everything into my schedule before my long weekend out of Dallas. Excuse? Haha, yah…..

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! B+ This is another where I did 3 out of 4 weeks of this. Two of the weeks I made these tasty enchiladas which I’ll share with you in another post!

the colorful veggies for my latest pre-made food!

As far as the extra monthly goals (weekly hill runs & read two books a month) I have going on for myself! I attend the hill workouts every week in April with the NTX Runners! Makes them soo much better to run with company! As far as books I had some makeup work to do for my reading in March and I didn’t quite catch up!  I did read The Paris Wife byPaula McLain  and The Lucky One by Nicholas Sparks. I’m not ashamed – sometimes you gotta mix up the serious with some cheese!  And I’m currently three-fourths of the way through The Girl in the Green Sweater: A Life in Holocaust’s Shadow by Krystyna Chiger.

Ok, and let’s look forward to our May goals –

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!

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!

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!!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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.

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Things We’ve Learned & Wished That We Knew Sooner

April 24, 2012 by · 13 Comments

As you may or may not know in 2010 was when we began our training to run our first half-marathon.  Both of us had run in high school and/or college, but never to the distance we would hit in our half marathon training.  The two of us and probably like a lot of people who train for their first half marathon followed Hal Higdon‘s guide.

 
Hal Higdon’s guides are great and perhaps there are some people out there who work their way through a number of his different plans.  We, however, did not and kind of decided to start looking through different plans (one of which was definitely Hal Hidgon’s) and piecing them together.  After all what works for one person might not work for another and it never hurts to try something to see if it works for you!

Throughout the not quite two years of us running together we’ve learned to appreciate aspects of our training, realized some things that needed to be added and why, so we shall share with you!

Weight Training

Both of us got personal trainers at a point where we each wanted to lose weight (You can read about Beth’s story here and Teal’s story here).  Boy are we thankful to Will & Johnny for helping us to get into shape, get healthy and teaching us a lot!  Weight training is very important as you need to build a base for yourself.  If you only rely on running to build your muscles then you are missing out!  Not every single race you might run will you actually feel yourself digging deep and using that core strength or pumping those arms hard to get to that finish line, but those are important parts of your body to work on strength so you have it when you need it.   With that said it’s important to find a balance with your weight training and make sure you are working every part of your body.  Build that strong foundation so you can be a stronger runner!  It was well into us running together that we realized we were at an advantage by already having trainers and having those weekly weights session.  We didn’t know where we would be in our running if we didn’t have them!

While yes, a trainer makes it so much easier to get your weights session in you don’t neeed to have one! Grab a friend that’s knowledgeable about weights and ask them to show you the ropes a few times or look into one of the many apps that’s how there and available to guide you through a workout!

If you would like more of an explanation of the benefits weight training please see this post from Runner’s World.

Tempo Runs

We just recently started to incorporate these into our workouts.  What were we waiting for with these??

What? There is lots to read out there about tempo runs and sometimes it doesn’t seem to be written in layman’s terms, or is that just us?  Part of why we probably did NOT do tempo runs for awhile was because we did not truly understand them.  A tempo run normally consists of running at an easy pace to start, let’s say we are doing a 4 mile tempo run, so you may run your first mile at an easy pace then for miles 2 and 3 you kick it into a higher gear. This higher gear is a hard pace yet if you were rate levels of hard you might have comfortably hard, hard, and extremely hard.  You want this higher gear to be at a comfortably hard pace so that you can sustain this level of intensity for the entirety of your two miles.  Once you hit mile 4 take your speed back down to where you were in mile 1 for a nice recovery mile.

Importance.  The idea behind a tempo run is to raise your lactate threshold. If you are at a point in your running where you are able to run the mileage you want in a long run but are ready to work on speed this is a workout you’ll want to add into your training schedule once a week to build speed and strength.  The one thing that really helped us in determining how to do a tempo run was by using the McMillan Running Calculator not only did it help with tempo runs but also discovering what type of speed we needed for all sorts of runs.

Hill Workouts

What? While yes there are races out there that you might register that are flat, flat, flat!  But that is simply not going to be the case for each and every race that you will ever run.  Those hills in your runs/races continue to help challenge us as runners.  The best workout we have found to make sure a hill does not defeat us in a race are hill repeats.  We’ll be honest they aren’t the most fun type of workout, but believe us when you finish a race with hills you’ll be thankful for the time you spent on hill repeats.  For us a hill repeat workout consists of:

1.  Doing your homework and find a hill that will work.  You might want a hill that is somewhere between .1 – .2 of a mile.
2.  Get a little bit of mileage in before your hill repeats, i.e. run from your house out to the hill
3. When you reach your hill if it’s your first time maybe try 4 or 5 runs up the hill and back down (but have a goal of working up to 10 hill repeats)
4. Get in that last bit of mileage back to your house
Importance.  We’ve recently heard a couple people say this and it is the absolute truth, “the difference between me continuing to run and the people walking up the hill in that race are these workouts.”  Even if you are not specifically training for a race that has hills in them, this workout is beneficial! It’ll build muscle that running on a flat path does not, help with your endurance and help you to get faster!  Throw this type of running workout into your weekly mix as well and you’ll feel a difference at your next race!

Tangents
Just for good measure we are throwing this one in this post.  And no we aren’t taking you back to geometry class either! 🙂 Or is it basic algebra?? Ha, math is hard, y’all! 🙂 There were plenty of times that we can remember one of us saying “ugh! My Runkeeper says I ran 6.43 in that 10k race!” and there were times when we’d finish our long runs together that we were asked “why did Teal run a further distance than you Beth?” TANGENTS! It’s about tangents!  We can honestly say we were taught this very valuable piece of information from reading katieRUNSthis’ blog!

The majority of races we have run together have a certified course so it has been measured and is exactly the distance the course claims it to be.  When a course is measured it is done so on tangents, so when there is a curved portion of your course the person who measured it did so on the tangents.  This is also why for instance when we go run our long runs or even if we run side by side during a race our mileage for that long run or race could be different because neither one of us is running the curves the exact same.  For the visual people out there, let us show you the tangents in visual form.

 

While you might have learned about tangents today know that at your next race you might do your best to run the tangents but still find that you have some extra mileage at the end, well, it’s hard to run the tangents EXACTLY.  As you have to be looking ahead and plotting out exactly how to run the next curve not to mention that there are other runners out there with you on the course that might keep you from running that straight line exactly.  All we can do is do our best!

We are no experts by any means! We read articles, blogs, etc. online in an effort to try and learn how we can improve our running.  We wanted to share some information that opened up our eyes, helped us to understand running more and that we think everyone should have the benefit of knowing!

If you already knew all of this, well, thanks for bearing with us today!  If you didn’t know all of this – are you going to be making some changes now to your weekly running?  Glad to know why there is extra mileage on those races you’ve run before?
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We’re Running in the Rain, Just Running in the Rain

April 17, 2012 by · 17 Comments

Should we get out of the car now? Or wait a few more minutes?

Well, Saturday afternoon the winds started picking up here in Dallas.  It never really rained in our neck of the woods that day and even when we went to bed that night it was still dry.  By the time we both woke up think the rain hadn’t fully started until it was time to actually drive down to Fair Park. But enough about that let’s just cut to the chase. Here’s how Big D Half went for each of us…

Miles 1-3

Teal: Ugh! Where is a water station when you need it? These first few miles were HOT! I think I had more sweat in these 3 miles then I did during any other stretch of the race. It was hot and humid and the air was seriously thick! I kept coughing because it honestly felt like something was stuck in my throat. I start looking to the sky and thinking where is the rain we’ve been hearing about and if it doesn’t rain I am going to be pissed because I decided to forego buying new shoes because I felt like that would be a dumb idea to run in new shoes in the rain and then feel like they were ruined after one time.

Beth: I didn’t really have a goal in mind for this race because I knew I needed to see how the weather would play out so my goal would be determined out on the course. Somewhere in mile 1 a man asked where the water stops were and I told him I had heard they were few and far between out here. In these miles I saw a man who is a regular with me in spin class and talks to me about my running. He asked me why I wasn’t further up and I told him I was trying! Ha. Teal and I had decided we needed to take advantage of each water stop since we wouldn’t know how the weather would be throughout the race. At the second water station we had to stop and wait for water to be poured in a cup for us.

Miles 4-6

Teal: Not bad but I was worried about being too hot as there was still no sign of rain and I was like, I’m not in the mood to deal with this heat and decided to slow down. Not based on total need just based on me really only going to do what makes me happy right now and that is not run fast in the heat. Happy also meant eating all my gummi bears, which I did! At this point, I was thinking, just do what you feel like, just be happy, and who really cares about the rest. At mile 6.5 the air started to cool and you could see darkening clouds! I kept crossing my fingers!

Beth: I forget when exactly now, but somewhere around 3 or 4 miles I’d seen the 2 hour pacer pass and thought welp, there goes that, but if it’s going to end up being hot this whole time I can live with that. Still have yet to get many runs in while it’s just been HOT outside. At some point running along White Rock Lake a breeze was coming through periodically so I started to feel good and knew I could pick up my game some but that there where still hills to conquer! Even though I had my Runkeeper app going I wasn’t fully aware of where I stood to finish this thing at the pace I was at, but I knew if I wanted it I could possibly bust out another sub two half. Just as we were leaving the lake we had pretty much switched over into a new climate. It was cool! I let out a woohoo!! And the people around me said yes! This feels good! This next part I mention only because it gave me a laugh out there but shortly after this I’m coming up on this muscular guy running without his shirt on and then I see him raise one arm, flex and admire his bicep. Ha! Then I passed him. Ha!

Miles 7-10

Teal: Sweet RELIEF!! The rain hit at 7 and I could not have been happier. Had the crazy humidity kept up it would have been a different story. Everyone around me literally started to cheer! Most people put their hands in the air and you could just tell we all wanted that rain. This excitement died shortly after, and honestly I got a little worried. I didn’t want to deal with lightening or anything and decided to speed it back up and just get off the course. It pretty much rained consistently during these miles!

Beth: After the rain hit in the beginning of mile 7 I knew a sub two half was mine that day I just had work to do to in this last half! The rain was completely exhilarating to me and from there on out I was running happy! I thanked as many police officers and volunteers as I could. I also high fived as many little kids as I could! I just felt awesome so I picked up the pace! Go time!

Miles 11-13.1

Teal: Not bad at all. Not too tired, didn’t feel great but didn’t feel bad. Just wanted dry clothes. I usually count when I run but instead of counting as pace keeping I just decided to repeat the phrase “ dry clothes, dry clothes” as motivation to get this over with! I saw Beth at 13 and she ran a few steps with me and then it was over!

Beth: To me some of this last half truly runs together because I was happy. I was constantly thinking you got this! Let’s get it done! It was also somewhere in here I spotted the 2 hour pace and eventually passed him! YES! Running through numbers in my head and somewhere in here I thought, wait a second, could I get a new PR today?! So I kept pushing. When mile 12 came I knew I’d put in a ton of work and my body could only take so much more pushing. I knew if I did PR it would be a close one and I thought if I don’t I don’t care. I’ve run a strong race and I am so proud of myself!  It was kind of nice that Teal and I happened to walk by the 13 mile marker that morning as we made our way to the start and knew just where the finish was.

Teal: Not my best run and not my worst run. I can honestly say I am excited for the break. I have not expected a PR or anything in a while for the simple fact that I have not been training at all. I have done a couple hill work outs and nothing over 2-3 miles randomly besides the hills. I am ready to have time to train, change things up and use the second half of the year to work getting faster and stronger. Continually just running races and using them as “training” is no bueno and does not make you faster! I’m healed now and ready to go. Can’t wait until August when I feel better about doing actual training work and regaining the confidence that I have worked on speed! The break is needed because I really have not felt that huge desire to push!

Beth:  I didn’t stop my Runkeeper app right away, but I’d gotten across the start fast and when I crossed the finish line I knew I was in the 1:57 range.  I missed my half PR by 34 seconds meaning 34 seconds faster and I would have hit my same exact PR so 35 seconds faster and I’d have a new PR barely.  But I didn’t care! I had a good race! Overall, I finished 22 in my age group and 326th in the race. The past few months I had put in a lot of hill work and with just the two short stadium workouts my trainer Johnny has had me do in the last two weeks I had that push in me during the race.  Yes, we are taking a few months off from running halfs and I’m excited to take this opportunity to get stronger!  I know that I’ll come back in the Fall making sure I conquer my overall goal of having mostly sub two half marathon races.

Once the race was over we wanted to try and see a few people who were running the marathon.  After the marathoners hit the mile 26 marker they had to keep running up this road that takes them along the gate of Fair Park and we stationed ourselves where they’d make their last turn into the park.  We cheered for a good two hours out there!  Ultimately we ended up missing the people we knew, but we managed to see Army Amy as she was closing out her marathon!  We still haven’t met you in real life, but it was good to see you out there! You were looking strong, lady!  So there you have it our Big D race recap and if you’d asked us 4 months ago after White Rock Marathon if we would ever be grateful to run in the rain again we both would have probably yelled NO!! But the rain made this race bearable!

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The Day We Got to Be Superheroes

April 15, 2012 by · 5 Comments

If you’re not from the Dallas area then you probably have no idea that the forecast called for rain on Saturday and Sunday this past weekend. Well, at least in the beginning of the week! The weather gods must have smiled upon Dallas CASA as they put on their first ever Superhero 5K because the rain did not make an appearance!

If you read our pre-race post then you know that neither one of us really  had a goal for this race, weeelll, we aren’t fully capable of just making a race an easy/laid back/casual race.  There is very much a competitive edge that lives on in each of us.  Plus as the temperatures are staring to go up and bring us the hot weather goals for a race can change in our minds in an instance.

Lindsay, Teal a.k.a. The Green Lantern and Beth a.k.a. Ms. Marvel

Lindsay, Brent and Beth

The race start was counted down and we were off!  We got going running side by side with each other and the course started out with a couple of hills right around Lindsley Park (where the 5K was held).  We powered through them though and from there the course took us onto the Santa Fe Trail which neither one of us had ever run on before.  About the last half mile we got off the Santa Fe Trail and pushed on towards the finish line.  It was probably about here were as a result of how hard we were running Teal first felt the need to throw up.  As we got to about the 3 mile mark Beth was starting to need to throw up. Ha!  Both of us successfully made it across that finish line without any throwing up.  Although Beth can’t say that for after crossing the finish line. 🙂  But that’s a sign of knowing you gave it your all in a 5K right???

Teal had paid more attention to how many females may or may not have been in front of us finishing the 5K.  We thought that at the very least Teal might have placed in our age group, so Beth & Brent stuck around in the end to find out since Teal had to get to work.  Before they announced any results they gave a big shout out to a little girl named Teal for being a Superhero that day by bringing all of her allowance to the race to donate to CASA.  How sweet is that?  And kind of fun that her name is Teal!  Unfortunately, the awards part of the race only mentioned who won the race and from there who won in each age division.  In our age group it was a man so he was the only person announced.  So Beth left there still not knowing exactly how we did.  It wasn’t until results were put up online that we found out we finished 1st and 2nd in our age group and 18th and 19th overall!

If only they had done an award for the male and female in each age group Teal would have gotten an award!!  This race brings a new PR for Beth!  We are both so proud of how we did especially considering Beth’s previous PR and Teal’s PR was from an all out flat course.  We definitely gave it our all and owned those hills instead of letting them own us!  You should definitely consider signing up for this race next year! Just a fun atmosphere with everyone dressed up in their Superhero costumes!  They had everything from Quail Man (who remembers him??) to generic superheroes to Wonder Woman.  Lots of great costumes out there!

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We Are Seeing Doubles Again!

April 13, 2012 by · 3 Comments

We liked our double race weekend in March so much that we decided we needed an April repeat….or something like that! 🙂

As you probably already know from previous blog posts tomorrow we are running the Dallas CASA Superhero 5K at Lindsley Park! This race will bring a bit of newness for both of us as neither one of us have ever run at that park AND it’ll be the first time that Beth gets to run a race with her future sister-in-law!

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Then Sunday morning we are running the Big D Half the first half marathon to kick off the start of our Four Seasons Challenge we decided to participate in and you know, get extra bling for when we complete it! 🙂

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So it’ll be a full weekend, but hopefully a good one!  Though we have already gotten a heads up email from Big D that they are closely watching the weather for Sunday since right now there is a 70% chance of rain and/or thunderstorms for the race!  If it does rain at least it won’t be in the 40’s like White Rock Marathon was in December! =)

We both do not have set goals for this race!  We are going to go out there do our best, race smart and hopefully have a lot of fun while running! 🙂

What are YOUR weekend running plans?  We want to know!

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Wordless Wednesday No. 21

April 11, 2012 by · 2 Comments

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What’s a CASA??

April 10, 2012 by · 2 Comments

If you follow us on twitter or have connected with us on Facebook then you might already know that this Saturday we are running in the first ever Dallas CASA Superhero 5K and Family Fun Run.  Beth’s future mother-in-law works for CASA and is really the main reason we know about their 5K this coming weekend.  Yes, we are also doing Big D half on Sunday – we like to do double race weekends! We’re crazy like that! 🙂

Both of us have been familiar with CASA for quite some time, but realized that not everyone might not know as much as we do! So we’ll let you in on that –

CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) is a nonprofit organization of community volunteers who serve as voices in court for abused and neglected children.  CASA volunteers are trained and supervised to advocate for the best interests of children in protective care and to make recommendations that help judges decide what is best for each child. For many children, a CASA volunteer is the one constant during a frightening, uncertain time. A CASA volunteer can have an immediate and critical impact on the life of a child. Less than half of the children in protective care in Dallas County have CASA voices in court. 

Fun fact for you – the sole reason that each of us know about CASA is because in college we each had a friend who was a Kappa Alpha Theta and well CASA is Theta’s philanthropy.

The superhero theme behind the race is because – Like the superheroes of childhood, CASA volunteers know that in order to achieve the best possible outcomes for abused children, they must never give up. They also know that they are more powerful when working together. The Superhero 5K brings our community together as superheroes for abused children to help Dallas CASA provide volunteer advocates for every child who needs one.

Did you know that there are more than 2,000 children in Dallas County who have been removed from their homes and are waiting for the courts to decide where they can live safely and permanently?  

As of now only two out of five abused children have CASA volunteers to advocate for their best interests and help them find safe, permanent homes.

So we would love for you to come join us, come help support Dallas CASA and help spread the word about  who CASA is and what they are doing for local Dallas County children!

Children are very near and dear to both of our hearts as Teal is a middle school teacher and Beth majored in elementary education in college, and it is our privilege to help support a great cause through our running! Registration is still open at runontexas.com

Dallas CASA superheroes to race for a better future
for abused and neglected children

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