running Archives - Page 2 of 19

Kacie’s Run 2014

July 3, 2014 by Life is a Run · Leave a Comment

Not to get all sentimental but Kacie’s Run is special to us! We have now run it 3 times and was one our first races together when we started all this running madness. Last year we got rained out, booo mother nature, but this year the weather was awesome. As you know this race is put on by Teal’s school district to honor one of their former students and to raise money for Special Olympics! What’s not awesome about that?!

We met up Saturday morning and found some of Teal’s old co-workers. We have talked about our friend, Chris, a few times before and he actually ran his first 50 miler with Catherine at Rocky Raccoon in February. We found him dressed as a Flying Monkey from Wizard of Oz. Yep, we really don’t know why but his entire school was dressed as Wizard of Oz… at least the ones cool enough to dress up. He cracked us up because he was going to just “run” the race until another co-worker, Duncan, wouldn’t dress up because he wanted to “race”. Chris said “Now, I am racing this thing and he will get passed by a flying monkey!” It was on and it was cracking us up!

How cute were this year’s shirts?!

Teal really had no idea what would happen with this race. She basically just showed up either ready to walk the entire thing or run/walk, but probably not run. She really hadn’t run in over 2 weeks and the last time she ran she made it .25 of a mile and had to walk and pee. She basically ran/walked 2 miles and wanted to die. Sorry TMI, but good lord the bladder pressure is REAL! She didn’t drink water before the race (she knows this is bad) to give herself the best chance at not having to pee over the 3.1 miles. IT WORKED! She was actually able to run that entire dang thing without peeing and without walking! It was very interesting to run sans headphones and that pregnant! People on the course were super awesome and supportive and really made it easier to keep running. It’s nice to still be able to move at this point and just be active!

Beth ran this race at just over 21 weeks pregnant! Remember how Chris was going to work on beating Duncan dressed as a flying monkey, well he did and Beth… pregnant Beth, was just behind Duncan by about 8 seconds. Take that! Ha

This was Teal’s last race before Baby Perez got here! We are glad it went well and we look forward to coming back next year. You guys should totally join us! We say this every year, so when are some of you going to take us up on that?!?!

Filed Under: Pregnancy, Races Tagged With: 5k, CFBISD, Kacie's Run, pregnancy, pregnant running, running, running for two, Special Olympics

Rock ‘n’ Roll Dallas 2014

July 2, 2014 by Life is a Run · Leave a Comment

So at this point it’s July and it’s about dang time I put up a recap of my last half marathon in MARCH, right?! Right! Here goes – when we ran New Years Double on January 1st Teal did the half and I did the the full so we found ourselves yet again at not the same half marathon number. Don’t you love how we try and keep that the same?? It just makes it easier to keep count!

I had signed up for Rock ‘n’ Roll Dallas as the last half I would run during this pregnancy. The weather has been pretty good for this race minus 2012 when it was hot! I didn’t then and still don’t now really know how pregnancy and hot weather mix, but it completely scares me! 🙂 Anyway, I thought this would be a great last half to do plus it was great motivation to keep me going with running. And my cousin/friend, Chase, would be coming up from Houston to run this race as well!

It was hard to have goals for this race other than finish it! At 20 weeks pregnant and still not really noticeable that I am pregnant I just didn’t know what my body would want to do that day. While you couldn’t totally tell I was pregnant my pace had definitely slowed down some so I knew I was not going to be busting out a new PR or anything that day. Of course, as race day got closer I did have this idea in my head that maybe I could achieve a 2:10 half, but again this would take a lot of listening to my body.

I got in my corral just minutes before the first corral was signaled to take off. I was getting nervous, but was also thankful that it was kind of chilly out there instead of really, really hot! When it was our turn Chase and I took off together although we didn’t stay together long because of a potty break. 🙂 In our family we joke about how some of us have the world’s smallest bladders and lucky for both Chase and me we inherited it! I knew I would see some friendly faces out on the course so I just tried to start off conservatively and keep an eye out for people to say “hi” to!

photo cred to Amy Stubblefield

My first sighting was Amy from NTX Runners who snapped the above picture of me. Since I waited until the beginning of July to write this recap (minus the few notes I put in my phone) I can’t remember now when I expected to see Teal & Catherine out there cheering, but it was juuuust shortly after this and I was soooo happy to see their smiling faces!

My happiness of seeing them is evidenced below. 🙂

A little blurry, but I was surviving which is good to do somewhere around the 3.5 mile mark of a half marathon. 🙂 So I kept on going and the next big thing I remember from the course was that I was running through a neighborhood, saw this group of people outside of a house and thought that little kid looks familiar! Ohhhh, it’s Cason! As in the son of J-Si from KISS FM and sure enough his wife, Kinsey, holding their daughter and their son, Cason, playing. Though I didn’t actually see J-Si out there anywhere. Bummer! But I thought that was fun since I’m a Kidd Kraddick in the Morning fan!

Shortly after this I saw the most awesome cheering squad comprised of FRUNNERS!! Right around mile 8 which made me oh so happy! I mean, look at those happy faces and look at that hot dog! 🙂

photo cred to Mama C

This left me with a goofy grin on my face and not even a mile down the road from that sighting did I hear the sounds of a police officer being an awesome cheerleader for all of the runners! This was the first time I’d really heard an officer be THAT encouraging and vocal towards runners on a race course. I loved it! So pretty much the goofy grinned stayed on my face that much longer thanks to him. Before you know it I was telling myself you only have a 5K left! And then it was you only have a mile left! Somewhere I was able to tap into a bit of a reserve for a final kick right before the finish line.

I don’t know who exactly gets the photo cred here, but Lisa texted me the picture 🙂

Oh, did you wanna know if I actually came in around 2:10 or not like I had put in my head?! Well, I made it across the finish line in 2:09:19! I was pretty darn proud of myself and felt like I ran a really conservative race considering I was in fact running for two. 🙂

With that I was caught up to Teal with half marathon no. 21 in the books! We will see you half marathons again on the other side of our pregnancies! 🙂

Filed Under: Pregnancy, Races Tagged With: 20 weeks, frunners, half, Half Marathon, J-Si, Kidd Kraddick, Kidd Kraddick in the Morning, KISS FM, pregnancy, pregnant running, Rock 'n' Roll Dallas, running, running for two

Running for Two: Trimester Two

May 27, 2014 by Life is a Run · Leave a Comment

I had to go back and really remember what range of time made up the second trimester for me which is kind of sad since I’m really still early on in the third trimester. My second trimester was made up mostly of February, March, April and a little bit of May. I was hoping to still put in at least another 100 mile month in either February or March, but that just did not happen. February ended with 71.81 miles while March came in at 67.41 miles. During this time I had the fact that I was registered for Rock n Roll Dallas as my last half to run while pregnant as my motivation to get the miles in as much as possible. A lot of my running at this point had become solo which was not really what I was use to and made for some lonely times out on the pavement.

16 weeks 3 days pregnant

an overall pace of 9:52 don’t be fooled by the garmin set to current pace

I had already seen somewhat of a decline in my pace (which was to be expected), but then the month of April came and not only did I find another pace decline but also an overall mileage decline. 🙁 For me personally April was one of the busiest months as far as work was concerned and then to try and motivate myself to run solo after long days at the office or just feeling guilty about how late Mr. H and I would be eating dinner if I ran before cooking for the night. I really have never been an early morning workout person. Pre-pregnancy I faked it for about 6 years with my Tuesday & Thursday 6:00 a.m. weights sessions at Private Training Zone. But when you have a group waiting for you AND you’ve already paid for the sessions it’s easy to get your lazy behind out of bed. During this pregnancy those weights sessions have moved from the a.m. to the p.m. because there is just no will power whatsoever to get up and especially not get up for a solo run. I’m hoping that one day this may change. Fingers crossed.

Back to April, my total mileage came in at a lame 16.96. Talk about a drastic decrease! But you know what?! I may have only gotten out there to run on four different days (one of them being a race), but that’s better than 0 days of running!

It was probably in this month as well that I started noticing when I started my runs that my legs just felt like bricks. And the times when you would dig down deep and pull from your core for a run, nope, that wasn’t really happening anymore. I found myself one day on the treadmill trying to bust out a mile but in the last tenth of the mile I bumped the speed up a couple of notches, got an ache in my stomach and had to stop. I walked at an incline for 5 minutes on the treadmill before it finally went away and I finished out the last bit of that mile at a very reasonable pace. My body just can’t do the things it use to with running. All of this is such a HUGE lesson in constantly listening to your body and not pushing it past its limits. I like to think for the most part I’m doing a pretty good job at obeying it. It’s just a weird combination on run of feeling like your legs are bricks, your mind knowing you really can do this and your body just saying, “Nope, slow it down! We’ve got a baby to look out for!” It is also pretty incredible the protective mode your body goes into!

25 weeks 3 days pregnant at the Running Moms Rock 5K

Being in Texas we should be in a regular stint of just HOT weather, but we have been completely blessed with some amazing weather so far this spring! Don’t get me wrong there have been some hot days, but then a little cold front comes through and we’ve had some mornings in the low 50’s. The weather is just another aspect of this pregnancy that has spoiled me! Regardless, for the past month or so you will NOT find me outside running without at least a handheld water bottle. Staying hydrated and taking care of my lil guy is a high priority to me! Pretty soon if I’m still outside running my camelbak will make it’s glorious return to my runs.

While my numbers might have been down in April and they might not be much better for this month either, but as a whole I’ve put in (according to Runkeeper) 428.4 miles in this pregnancy. I am so very proud of each and every one of the miles! I don’t really have any goals going into the third trimester other than to get runs in when and while I can. And in the times when I can’t run to make sure I’m getting other forms of cardio in as well!

Filed Under: Pregnancy Tagged With: 5k, camelbak, hydration, pregnant, Private Training Zone, Rock 'n' Roll Dallas, runkeeper, running, Running Moms Rock 5K, running while pregnant, weights

The 2014 Running of Large Marg

May 8, 2014 by Life is a Run · 2 Comments

Ok. Not that race recaps are the most exciting thing in the world but they get even harder when you decide to wait for.ever. to post them but here goes! Hope you are still reading! 🙂

We signed up to run the Levee Run in March because lets face it, who wouldn’t want to run over Large Marg? We love Large Marg and Teal was still holding on to her jealously from when Beth got to run it the first year without her. 🙁

At this point Beth was about 17 weeks pregnant and Teal about 30 weeks, so we pretty much knew we wouldn’t stay together since our times were very different at this point. Teal was already having a hard time not having to stop often or pee and her pace was pretty slow at this point. Beth was still able to stay pretty close to her normal pace and way less peeing was going on. Hope you guys like knowing that information about us?

We couldn’t miss an opportunity for a picture so we made sure to stay together for the first .5 miles to at least get on the bridges together and take a pic, the rest we ran alone…. BLAHHHHH. And blah for sure with this race course.

Now, while we do not bash this race by any means, the best part is literally the bridge and the rest is basically LAME. The race does an awesome job of stalking the bridge with so many cheering people. The trek across is loud and awesome because you get what seems like 10 schools of children cheering with signs, noise makers, instruments and anything else they can find! It’s awesome! The rest is dull, no cheering, no real on lookers at all, almost no water stops, and it runs you through the design district which is basically a bunch of buildings. It’s only a 10k so really it’s not that big of a deal or different from many 10ks with cheering or water or anything like that… just being whiney 🙂

The course had no bathrooms along the course. Teal had to stop and use a construction course bathroom and then another random one just sitting on the street at around mile 4.5. Pregnancy will make you lose any pickiness when it comes to needing to go. They were disgusting!

The race finishes over the bridge, which gives you something to look forward to. The kids on the bridges actually made one of us cry while passing. They are just so positive with their cheers and really make you “in a super cheesy way” feel inspirational. One lady’s sign said, “ these kids are watching in awe of you.” Which is kind of cool to think about!

Next year we totally plan to hang around. Perhaps one of the coolest things about this race is the after party. It’s located in one of the newest up and coming parts of Dallas and is located in the same area as many of the new local breweries and restaurants that are around after serving local beer and food. What’s not to love there, well, except when you can’t participate in the adult beverages?

Filed Under: Races, Uncategorized Tagged With: 10k, bridge, Dallas, large marg, levee run, pregnant running, running

A Little Baby Update

May 6, 2014 by Life is a Run · 4 Comments

Well, it’s been awhile since we’ve given an update on our pregnancies and OK, fine, it’s been awhile since we’ve given any sort of updates in general! Since we posted the Wordless Wednesday last week we thought it was only fair to update.

SO many things have been going on from preparing for each of our babies to get here to fun life events for friends to each of us having stuff at work pick up steam. Which ultimately has all played a part in making the time just feel like it’s flying by!

Time has flown by so much Teal now finds herself 40 weeks pregnant! We are all on baby watch with her!

Beginning of 2nd trimester on the left and the end of 2nd trimester on the right

While Beth is 27 weeks pregnant and welcoming in the third trimester!

Beginning of the 2nd trimester on the left and end of the 2nd trimester on the right!

It feels like it was just yesterday we were posting the big news of Teal being pregnant! For the most part things are still going smoothly with each of our pregnancies. *knock on wood* It would be nice for them to remain that way!

Filed Under: Pregnancy, Uncategorized Tagged With: babies, pregnant, running, second trimester, third trimester

#LiAR Goes Ultra

May 1, 2014 by Life is a Run · Leave a Comment

Ok, so we didn’t totally go ultra…..but we DID go and crew our favorite groupie in her first ever ultra race!! Since Catherine refers to herself as a LiAR groupie we can just put that out there on the ol’ blog, right?!

Thanks again to Ninja for letting us ride with him down to Huntsville for Rocky Raccoon! We all meet up verrry early Saturday morning which was race day to make the roughly two and a half hour drive. We actually left Dallas at the time of the race’s start and hoped to get there just in time to see Catherine come in from her first of three 16.7 mile loops! And we did in fact make it! We got to join in a set up right by the finish line so we could see her coming from a mile away. Ok, just kidding it was less than a mile, but you get the idea….

This was really our first time at an ultra and we’d heard about “crewing” and knew people that had gone out to “crew” a friend’s race, but what all “crewing” entailed we did not know!

Ha, mostly we sat around a lot and learned from other people “crewing” around us what to do. Which was good because by the time Catherine came in from loop 1 Ninja and Byron that we’d been hanging out with had wandered off somewhere and it was just us with our racer!

If you zoomed in you’d definitely see the beginnings of a smile on that face – loop 1 is done!

Do you need food?!

Do you need your water refilled?!

What do you need help with?!

Are you changing shoes?!

We don’t know what to do but ask you questions?!

So again, do you need food?!

Do you need something to drink?!

And then she was off again! And we resumed our sitting and eating the food that Teal, the smart woman that she is, brought with her! We are pregnant….we’re allowed to sit around and eat all the food! 🙂

We should also mention our buddy, Paul, was out there as well. We did zero things to crew for him. Ha! Paul was pretty darn reliant on himself and the food tent for the runners. Which also, holy cow, ALL of the food they have out there for these crazy ultra runners!

Congrats, Paul! A nice first 50 miler in the books for you!

And then our girl, Cat, came in for the BIG finish! Of course she’d stolen Ninja’s jacket from him at an aid station so we were looking for the wrong color race attire. Teal could tell she was coming solely on her gait and we were excited to see her after a few hours and finished with such an awesome accomplishment!

She did it! (of course she did)
photo cred: Ninja

In case you ever doubted in this post that we were the most awesome crew people ever, well, here you go…..

photo cred: Studebaker

Now we are just waiting for Catherine to tell us when her next 50 miler is so we can test our crewing skills again! 🙂 She’s a freaking rock star in our books! We are lucky she let’s us even hang out with her! 🙂

One, last shout out, for that day goes to Jason of Cook Train Eat Race who completed his first 50 miler that day and in the time since this race Jason has completed his first 100 miler! Freaking awesome! Who runs 100 miles?!

photo cred: Byron

You ultra people are freaking crazy! 🙂 In a good way! Hope you’ve enjoyed this blog post of a race that happened almost 3 months ago! We have such rock star friends!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 50 miler, rocky raccoon, running, Trail, ultra

Wordless Wednesday No. 47

April 30, 2014 by Life is a Run · 1 Comment

Filed Under: Pregnancy, Wordless Wednesday Tagged With: running, running partners, running pregnant

February’s “Race”

March 13, 2014 by Life is a Run · 5 Comments

You guys!!! Our last post was our 300th! *pats each other on the back* It’s crazy that we’ve been doing this whole blog thing for right at about 3 years now! Thanks to those of you for sticking with us! Starting #LiAR has definitely opened us up to a wealth of knowledge (running and then some) and a lot of great frunners! Shoutout to Mama C who, we believe, is responsible for coining that term! 🙂

Back to the original reason we sat down to write this post…..a half marathon about 5 weeks ago! We posted some pictures on instagram, but still wanted to put some details out there. We signed up to run The Texas Half in February. The timing on this race was pretty perfect for around the time Teal wanted to run just one more half before she said good bye to racing half marathons during pregnancy. Plus this year they were offering a jacket with your registration! Apparently you change things up just a little bit from a shirt to a jacket and the people want to sign up for your race. We were sold and handed over our moolah to The Texas Half.

Our pre-“race” pic

Fast forward to race weekend and Saturday a front was moving in and bringing the cold weather back to DFW. It was another one of those times of religiously stalking the weather to see what would happen. We saw rain, we saw snow…..but what was really going to happen?!

Ultimately we didn’t give the race a chance. We decided to let our current state of each of us growing a human + slower running + freezing temperatures = no race for LiAR. You can call us wimps! But the idea of having to run/walk a half in freezing temps just did not sound appealing nor did the idea of the weather potentially getting REAL bad and either one of us getting hurt. We each still wanted to get miles in for the day so we hit up Beth’s gym together for some good ol’ treadmill miles.

26 weeks!

13 weeks

Between the two of us we put in 14.2 miles that day so if we pretend like it was a relay with just some extra mileage then we completed a half! YAY! 😀

Filed Under: Pregnancy Tagged With: DFW, frunners, Half Marathon, miles, pregnant running, running, The Texas Half, treadmill

Running for Two: Trimester One

February 28, 2014 by Life is a Run · Leave a Comment

So, hey, I’m pregnant! Ok, that’s old news, but I’m in my second trimester now! Based on the way in which your due date is calculated (which was something I didn’t really know, perhaps, I am a dum dum) I was technically pregnant when Teal and I ran the DRC Half in November. Let’s just go with that so I don’t have to have a birds and the bees plus pregnancy calculation discussion on the internet. 🙂

Turns out Teal wasn’t the only preggo in this pic!

At the time I got pregnant I was not far off from finishing my training cycle for Dallas Marathon which was to be my last big marathon HOORAH! before I knew I’d take a step back from such long distances while pregnant. Since this is a new thing for me I didn’t want to pressure myself at all with running and let it play out the way it would. I found out I was pregnant around Thanksgiving which made me immediately think – wait, what all long run distances have I covered during this short amount of time? And it made since why there were a couple of runs where they just felt HARDER already and I would come to find out why shortly!

My first race where I knew I was pregnant

A couple of side notes about my pregnancy that have nothing to do with running. 🙂 There was one point I thought I might be pregnant, I remember telling Teal this, but when I took a test it was negative. Which was fine thought I felt already like something was just different with my body. As it turns out I’d really just taken the pregnancy test too early. The other thing which I just think is neat that your body just naturally start do is…Brent and I like to drink wine, but my desire for it just decreased. We’d sit down to unwind, I’d have one glass and I was just done. Again, I’d end up finding out I was pregnant during that time so it would all make sense later. OK, here is my final side not for you, I actually had a dream the night before that I got a positive pregnancy test so naturally I got up the next morning and took a test which was positive!!

Anyway, back to running, in the time that I was putting in long training runs for the marathon and I was pregnant but didn’t know it I’d actually run an 18 miler and 20 miler. Honestly, I just felt like runs got harder but I didn’t at the time know why. After my first doctor’s appointment they had told me to make sure I could still carry a conversation while running to know I wasn’t pushing myself too hard. OK, well, that’s easy because when Teal and I meet Catherine to run we all talk each other’s ears off. 🙂 When I’m by myself you can sometimes find me mouthing things to myself to see if I could carry a conversation if I had someone with me to talk to. Ha.

End of my last 20 miler for marathon training…a very toasty day!

I tried very hard in this first trimester (and still do now) to embrace that I will slow down, to remove any pressure I am guilty of normally putting on myself and know a slower pace of running is better than no running at all. This was a little bit harder in the first trimester just because I was keeping the pregnancy secret until I was out of the woods with the first trimester.

Other than that I’m trying to drink as much water as possible and hope Baby H doesn’t mind my continued running! I’ve been trying to get in 20 miles a week, so we’ll see how long I can keep that up!

Please note I don’t actually know the gender of my baby yet, so don’t read into the color of the header. However, I think, this baby will be a girl. 🙂

Filed Under: Pregnancy Tagged With: 18 miler, 20 miler, Dallas Marathon, DRC Half, marathon training, pregnant, running, running for two, trimester one

Honkers Marathon, Spoiler: We Did the Half

February 26, 2014 by Life is a Run · Leave a Comment

Back in January, Beth and Brent had one weekend where they were invited to three weddings. In order to make it to at least 2 of the 3 they decided he would stay in Dallas and attend one and Beth would set off into the sunset with Teal to California for another wedding. 🙂

Conveniently, the California wedding was for Beth’s high school buddy who let us stay at his house each time we went out to Cali for Disneyland Half, so Teal had gotten to know him. When we came up with the plan of the two of us going out to California based on planning to try and get pregnant we anticipated that both of us would be with child on the trip. 🙂 So that also meant we probably wouldn’t be staying up late drinking adult beverages which meant we could definitely squeeze a race into the weekend too!

We searched the internets and narrowed down our search to two races – we ha d a Saturday option and a Sunday option. Turns out that Sunday’s option was the winner of the two which was Honkers Motivational Marathon. We liked the name of the race. 😀 Annnnnd part of the logo involves a duck which Teal is named after a duck so it’s fitting, right?!

The first time we’ve ever gotten a tech half zip pullover

Ok, really we found out later that the logo features a goose not a duck. A Canada goose to be more specific. 🙂

Contrary to what we thought – we did stay up late both nights that weekend, but we were able to get out of bed Sunday morning anyway and made our way to Riverdale Park.

The race was on the smaller side and was entirely along the Santa Ana River Trail as well as being an out and back course. From the beginning the plan was to stay together the whole way. 🙂

We still have wedding hair!

Off, we went! Pretty sure we stopped around mile 1 for a potty break. The joys of running pregnant, right? Shortly thereafter we ran by a lady whose capris were so see through we could actually see the tattoo on her butt cheek (because you know we notice these things which is why we wrote THIS blog post).

We are both pregnant running here although you cannot tell that AT ALL

At one point we had a back and forth game of catch up with the course director and he said to us, “hey get your camera back out I’m going to photobomb you!” Haha, OK! Such an encouraging guy!

We caught up with a runner who was out there doing the full and we offered to take a picture for her who gave us more background on the race than we knew about. The woman who started the race was a friend of hers that wanted a way to celebrate her remission with cancer and run her……marathon (OK so it’s been to long and some of the details are foggy now and we have pregnancy brains!), so the Honkers Marathon was born!

And just like we said we would run together…..our finisher’s pictures prove that we did! This was half no. 21 for Tealio and half no. 20 for Beeper!

Filed Under: Races Tagged With: California, goose, Half Marathon, Honkers Motivational Marathon, out and back course, pregnant running, Riverdale Park, running, Santa Ana River Trail