running Archives - Page 4 of 19

Tour des Fleurs 10K

September 26, 2013 by Life is a Run · 1 Comment

By now you’ve probably learned that with some of our weekends we really like to go big or go home and by that we mean fit ALL of the things into one weekend. 🙂 Our Wordless Wednesday post was a glimpse into everything we had going on this past weekend.

We kicked it off Saturday morning by running the Tour des Fleurs 10K at the Arboretum just like we’ve done every September for the last 5 and 6 years. And per usual our friend Bitner also participated in the race with us, but this year we also made Catherine join in the fun as well!

You can probably tell from the picture that Bitner was a little cold that morning – ha! A “cold” front had come through and we woke up in Dallas to temperatures in the 60’s. It was woooonderful and a big change from the heat! By the time we catch a shuttle bus from the parking lot to the Arboretum and walk through the Arboretum to the race area we aren’t really there that early and it’s time to start the race. Off we all go on our merry way.

Running along White Rock Lake as we have done every year at this race. We make it to the one “major” hill on the course that’s almost at the halfway mark. Beth encounters a runner that’s running a zig zag pattern up the hill with her fingers out dancing along to her music. We turn the corner and the hill is over! There’s a 3 mile marker sign. Huh? Where was the 2 mile marker sign? Oh, well surely someone just messed up. Running, running. Hey 5 mile marker sign. Ok, this is just messed up! We are a little over a mile off from these mile markers. Beth opted to go music-less for this race and no one else around her was commenting about the markers so she kind of assumed maybe she just took a wrong turn because it wouldn’t have been the first time (hello, Too Hot to Handle 2011!). Teal right away knew something was wrong with the course and reaffirmed that with other runners around here.

It turned out that the lead officer took that right turn onto the “big” hill instead of going straight a little bit further and us coming back to the hill. And then there really wasn’t a person out there to direct racers either, so we all ended up running a 5.15 mile race. PR’s for everyone! 🙂

When the race was over we each grabbed our finisher’s hats (THANKS for bringing those back, TDF!!) and made our way to the after party. They do throw a darn good after party with beer, lots of different food options and some free schtuff.

see the free schutff in our hands?

One of the best parts about this race is getting to walk around the Arboretum afterwards and see all the pumpkins and gourds out all over the place. The majority of the time it doesn’t feel like Fall is even that close when we do this race, but we absolutely love getting to see the Arboretum all done up for Fall.

There were a lot of racers whose family came with them and were taking their children out of strollers to have their pictures taken amongst the pumpkins. As you know we don’t have kids so we opted to put Bitner in the pumpkins and take his picture. 🙂 He loves of us, clearly, because he puts up with us doing these things!

It is sad that the race wasn’t a true 10K, but we love this race! We can still remember the feelings of nervousness when we were running our first 10Ks. So far! It’s a bit pricey, but considering the great after party, the finisher’s hat (though they were gone for two years) and the free entry into the Arboretum it’s a good deal! We’ll be back!

Filed Under: Races, Uncategorized Tagged With: 10k, Dallas Arboretum, Fall, gourds, mile marker, Mile Markers, pumpkinds, races, running, shuttle bus, TDF, Tour des Fleurs, transportation, White Rock Lake

Wordless Wednesday 39

September 25, 2013 by Life is a Run · 2 Comments

Filed Under: Uncategorized, Wordless Wednesday Tagged With: balloon festival half, Dallas Arboretum, dallas contemporary, faile exhibit, Fall, gourds, Half Marathon, pumpkins, race, race spectating, running, TDF, Times Ten, Times Ten Wine Cellars, Tour des Fluers, wine

August Report Card

September 9, 2013 by Life is a Run · Leave a Comment

Here’s how we measured up for the month of August!

Teal –

1. I HATE doing weight lose goals because I always disappoint myself because my body clearly loves all of its fat (and you probably roll your eyes that this is another stupid weight goal), BUT this month is the month before my birthday and IF I lost 5 pounds I would weigh what my goal was for 30. So it would have taken me until 31 and a rather roller coaster year for my weight but it would be off! SOOOOO there you go, lose 5 pounds and make my 30 year old goal weight (not really what I want in life just what I wanted at 30) but really do it at 31!

C- : I ultimately lost like 2.5 pounds if I get to count the morning weight! Hahaha. We shall keep working on the forever struggle of being consistent, healthy, and fighting the fat gene!

2. I changed my half marathon training plan slightly from Beth’s because I don’t want to burn myself out like I did last time so my goal is to make my runs! This is totally doable because I have basically started an “I am a newbie and haven’t run” training plan to not destroy my love of running again!

B: I have missed a few “short” runs but have been getting the longer ones in and loving my plan. I do not feel discouraged, slow, or overwhelmed by the plan. I know my next half marathons will not be my “fastest” but I am 100% ok with just enjoying the run!

Beth –

1. To get up once a week and do a workout before work. If you follow me on twitter you pretty much know that usually on Tuesday & Thursday mornings I am up at Private Training Zone by 6:00 a.m. to get in an hour of weights with Johnny and the other ladies in my workout group. This goal would mean I have to get up an additional morning to do a workout on my own. There was a time when I would do this with yoga, but that has been awhile and I know I just need to transition into this type of routine. Let’s hope this makes a habit of it!

F: Haha, this one is gonna take a lot of work on my part. I’ve reverted back lately to even having a hard time wanting to get out of bed for my Tuesday & Thursday mornings, but I do! I did get up early in the first week of August, but it was to try and get a bunch of reading done for my book club. lol

2. Finish yet another project at our house.

A+: There are now two walls in my house that are no longer blank! Hooray! I even bought some fabric for a window decoration project, but still have a few more supplies to get for that one!

now to finish accessorizing the shelves 🙂

3. YOGA! Haha, my goals are back and the idea for this month is to get in at least 3 yoga classes a week.

C-: Ok, so there were two weeks where I didn’t go, BUT I still went to yoga 10 times throughout the month of August so that’s why I’m still giving myself a C range grade. All things considered with Birthday celebrations and work picking up steam with busyness I’m proud of those 10. I love me some yoga and glad I’m making it a priority during this marathon training cycle!

this was before I missed a week…then another…. :-/

See you tomorrow when we lay out all of our hopes and dreams for the month of September! 😉

Filed Under: Goals, Uncategorized Tagged With: goals, Half Marathon, half marathon training, healthy-living, marathon training plan, Private Training Zone, running, training plan, weight loss, workout group, yoga

B is for Back to School, Birthdays, Barbies & More!

September 4, 2013 by Life is a Run · 4 Comments

It seems like for the first time in a looong time we had a completely race-less month! We have had a couple times where one of us made a race without the other, but August 2013 was completely race-less for both of us!

But it worked out for us and was in hindsight just what we needed. Also, yes, we know y’all are tired of hearing us say we are busy. We are too and really who isn’t?! And let’s just go ahead and stop with the glorifying of that word. Many of y’all might not know that Teal took a new job and is back to the world of middle school and this time as a counselor! So if you were tracking her professional timeline it would be 5 years as a middle school teacher, 1 year as a high school counselor and now the new gig back in middle school.

In Beth’s family everyone was born in August. OK, not really but it sure feels like it. 🙂 It starts with celebrating her Mom’s birthday (hi, Fancy Nancy!), moves into an August birthday celebration that includes her uncle, aunt, sister and husband and ends with at least some sort of friend celebration for sister (Kate) and husband (Brent). Since those last two are just two days apart in birth days it makes it that much more fun (challenging)!

Kate’s surprise Birthday party was a success!

Teal & Michael got Brent this awesome Aggie Yell Leader Barbie as a Birthday present. Best Birthday present ever!

Thankfully, we’ve still had time to de-stress with running! We’ve put in a lot of hill work in the month of August with our fellow NTX Runners. Actually that statement is true for pretty much the entire summer!

We’ve also added to our fall racing calendar with a not so surprising registration for Dallas Marathon! It is our halfiversary race! This year will be the 4th year we’ve participated in some form of this race (half or marathon).

So, anyway, we survived race-less August, we’ve been doing our training for Dallas, but now that it’s September bring on the next race!

What have YOU been up to? 🙂

Filed Under: Life Tagged With: Aggie Yell Leader Barbie, Dallas Marathon, fall races, Half Marathon, Hill work, Marathon, NTX Runners, races, running, training

Friday Food Finds {2}

August 30, 2013 by Life is a Run · Leave a Comment

Labor Day weekend is upon us! We are totally bummed that we aren’t yet again make a trek out to Anaheim to race the Disneyland Half that we LOVE like we last year and the year before that!

Anyway for us this weekend makes us think of pool parties, BBQs, college football……so in case you are still searching for your perfect side dish to bring to a Labor Day party look no further. #LiAR has got you covered!

Peas & Crayons – Chipotle Sweet Potato Salad: Why make your normal potato salad when you can put a healthy and spicy spin on it?! Our mouths are watering just looking at this picture!

Happy Healthy Mama – Fruit Salsa and Cinnamon Chips: Down hurre in Texas we pretty much break out the chips and salsa for any and every occasion. This weekend instead we’re sweetening it up with this fruit dish and homemade cinnamon chips! Another mouth watering recipe!

Kate O Lynch – Best Ever Guacamole Recipe: This recipe truly lives up to it’s name! We can both attest to that as we both have made and enjoyed it many a-times when Kate’s brought it over for a celebration of some sort!

Pinch of Yum – Southwestern Quinoa and Black Bean Casserole: If you are a 7 layer dip loving person THIS is the dish you need to try for this weekend! You can thank us later! 🙂

A Hint of Honey – Tomato and Fresh Corn Quiche: Maybe since it’s a long weekend you’re wanting to have brunch at home with your roommate or husband or your neighbor. Here is the breakfast must make dish!

Happy Labor Day {weekend} to you all! Be sure and let us know what you make! 🙂

Filed Under: Food Tagged With: Anaheim, Disneyland Half, food, fruit salsa, guacamole, Labor Day, Labor Day Weekend, LiAR, potato salad, quiche, races, running, sweet potato salad, Texas

Liberty by the Lake 5K

August 14, 2013 by Life is a Run · 2 Comments

pre-race car pic!

Sooooo July 4th a bunch of our running friends were doing Liberty by the Lake 5K/10K and if they were doing it we had to do it too. Right? That’s how it works? The internets also had a special so we got this race for pretty cheap!

We didn’t have big hopes and dreams for this race because, come on, it’s July in Texas. Hot! But being the weird summer that it is the temperature that morning wasn’t really as bad as it could have been, but don’t worry the humidity was still there. Blah!

Frunners!
(pic stolen from Mama C)

NTX Runners!
Look at Ninja representin’ w/his tank

We should also note how pumped we were to wear our latest purchase from Compete Every Day with our Texas Strong shirts! We loooooove them!! We did see a few other runners out there sporting different CED shirts as well. If you haven’t checked them out you really should, especially if you are a Dallasite, as they are a local business! And no we weren’t paid or rewarded with free things by that mention we just really love their stuff and awesome customer service!

Then at some point it was time to do what we we went to The Colony for and that is run a 5K. So run a 5K we did. Not a lot of shade out there and we hear the 10K-ers have it even worse. We stuck together and ran the whole thing together. This was also our first race back in the same age group since Beth fiiiinally turned 30. We crossed that finish line together at 28 minutes flat!

Several in our group that day won age group awards, but only a couple of them won the privilege of a LiAR photobomb. Way to go Brian & Jesse!!

Another thing we should point out which you can’t see from the above pic, but we totally love Jesse’s method of keeping cool in the Texas heat:

Step 1: wear a hat

Step 2: insert ice in hat

Step 3: put your ice hat on your head

Step 4: repeat as necessary (if you have a cooler full of ice w/you which he normally does somewhere close by)

It ended up being a fun time, but the fun did not stop there! We made our way over to Team K’s house for some 4th of July waffles and mimosas!

Fun times were had by all! We are so blessed to have made such awesome friends in the running community! It really is incredible all the greatness that running can bring to ones life! 🙂

Again the fun did NOT end there because after this we went and met up with our husbands who were drinking some beers to get thaaat much closer to reaching their plates at Flying Saucer.

So here we are – officially caught up on our race posts! 🙂 We don’t have any races scheduled for August though so unless something happens no more race recaps until September!

Also, shout out to all the people whose pictures we stole without telling them to make this post that much more fun (a.k.a. Mama C, MK, Jesse and Alison P.)!

Filed Under: Races, Uncategorized Tagged With: 10k, 5k, apparel, Compete Every Day, frunners, LiAR, liberty by the lake, NTX Runners, races, running, texas strong, The Colony

August Goals

August 5, 2013 by Life is a Run · 4 Comments

And now for what we hope to accomplish throughout this month!

Teal –

(source)

Beth –

2. Finish yet another project at our house.

3. YOGA! Haha, my goals are back and the idea for this month is to get in at least 3 yoga classes a week. 🙂

(source)

Wish us luck and we’ll be back with our report card at the end of the month! What do you do to make sure you accomplish shorter term goals?

Filed Under: Goals Tagged With: goals, half marathon training, monthly goals, Private Training Zone, running, weight loss, yoga

July Report Card

August 2, 2013 by Life is a Run · 2 Comments

Our one idea for changing up our goal posts was to divide them up, so here’s how we measured up for July and August goals will be up next week…

Teal-

1. Clean out the garage. This thing is a mess and has just become a catch all for whatever crap I don’t want to look at in the house. We have stuff everywhere and half of it is not even needed. I have attempted twice to have a garage sale but because I work every Saturday or if I am off we are usually racing, I don’t have time for that. So my goal this month is to get the garage clean. And not just clean, an organized clean so that it won’t continually get messy. Then I think I will have to walk my husband through what I did because he will just start putting stuff wherever. 🙂

A+: I mean I don’t even think I have to say much. Just check out these pictures. I will also note that I did this all by myself in the Texas heat. Yea clean garage.. or at least as clean of a garage as I can get!

the before shot

the after

2. Create a headboard for the guest bedroom and fix the weird paint job. When my brother lived with me forever ago he painted the guest room navy blue and got the paint on the ceiling. I would like to fix that and then add a headboard to the new bed. I went cheap (sorry guests) and just bought a bed and the lower frame, so it needs something to spice it up. If you follow Beth’s sister, Kate, she recently re-did the room Beth used to live in and created a headboard. I literally want to copy her and do the same thing!!

Big FAT F: So basically all I got to on this was reading Kate’s blog on how to do it. That’s it. I didn’t even so much as buy cloth or paint to fix the ceiling. I shall try this again, but not next month because next month is just insane!

Beth –

1. We have a couple of blank walls in our house that I know what I want to do with them but I haven’t really moved forward in the execution of the plan in my head. One will be a long collage wall so even acquiring 50% of what I want for that wall will be an accomplishment for this month! I also keep hearing over and over in my head my husband saying, are you going to put any of our wedding pictures up in the house??

A: Right after our initial post I made a trip to a local thrift shop and picked up a bunch of frames for under $13 and was so proud of myself for finally doing that since I’d been meaning to for awhile. I still need to do this a few more times to get everything I need and I just can’t afford to buy new everything. I give myself an A because the only blank wall I really finished was on in our bedroom that was not going to require much, but hey, Brent and I also hung up the curtains we got months ago in our bedroom too. We are getting there! Slowly….but we are!

the 3 frame collage is the new addition to this wall

2. Lose 5 pounds. Yay, for bringing back the weight loss goals!!

A+: I did IT!! Now to keep it off and maybe shed a few more of those lbs.

Joint Goals –

1. Get caught up! We’ve been working on this one pretty hard lately – can you tell??

We are soooooo close to caught up! So close so we give ourselves an A- here!

2. Today marks the third time we’ve redone a half marathon training plan for ourselves and this time we are going to actually DO the runs!

Well, you’ll see from our August goals partly we we give ourselves a…..let’s say C here. One of us might be doing something different and the other missed 2 runs. Oopsies!

Have an awesome weekend!

Filed Under: Goals Tagged With: cleaning, decorating, Half Marathon, running, training plan, weight loss

Must-Dash 5K

August 1, 2013 by Life is a Run · 4 Comments

Basically the whole mustache incorporation for this Father’s Day weekend race made it necessary for us to run this 5K! 🙂 This was kind of an interesting morning for us as a whole as well. Beth ended up having a flat tire so we got there by way of her husband’s car. You know how sometimes little things like that can throw you off your game?

We got there and ended up having about 20-25 minutes to kill before the race actually started, so we grabbed mustaches that were being passed out and then took pictures with them. Naturally. That’s what you would do too, right? Being a June morning in Texas it actually wasn’t really that hot outside….

….until you started running and it was pretty humid. 😛 This was a new area for us to be doing a race so it was definitely nice to have new to us scenery. Neither one of us ran our best 5K, but we ran it and it was worth it! Only complaint would be that whoever put the 3 mile marker sign down really put it at 2.75 miles. If you weren’t wearing some sort of GPS and decided to give it your all for the last .1 well then you misled and still had .35 left to go. Ha.

We even ran into one of our NTX Runners buddies, Clara! NTX Runners are eeeeverywhere! We love it!

This will probably be our favorite race tee for awhile!

Filed Under: Races Tagged With: 5k, healthy-living, Must Dash, NTX Runners, races, Run Project, running

Goals: They’re Making a Come Back

July 15, 2013 by Life is a Run · 8 Comments

It turns out when you do goals for a whole year then decide to take a break and consider revamping them you end up just taking an all out break. So goals are back! Yes we are halfway through this month, so we are starting small and we had each already been working towards these goals for this month anyway so now it’s in blog form. Let’s see if we can remember how this works:

Teal-

1. Clean out the garage. This thing is a mess and has just become a catch all for whatever crap I don’t want to look at int he house. We have stuff everywhere and half of it is not even needed. I have attempted twice to have a garage sale but because I work every Saturday or if I am off we are usually racing, I dont have time for that. So my goal this month is to get the garage clean. And not just clean, an organized clean so that it won’t continually get messy. Then I think I will have to walk my husband through what I did because he will just start putting stuff wherever. 🙂

2. Create a headboard for the guest bedroom and fix the weird paint job. When my brother lived with me forever ago he painted the guest room navy blue and got the paint on the ceiling. I would like to fix that and then add a headboard to the new bed. I went cheap (sorry guests) and just bought a bed and the lower frame, so it needs something to spice it up. If you follow Beth’s sister, Kate, she recently re-did the room Beth used to live in and created a headboard. I literally want to copy her and do the same thing!!

Beth –

2. Lose 5 pounds. Yay, for bringing back the weight loss goals!! 🙂

Additionally, we have a couple of joint goals for ourselves as well:

1. Get caught up! We’ve been working on this one pretty hard lately – can you tell?? 😉

2. Today marks the third time we’ve redone a half marathon training plan for ourselves and this time we are going to actually DO the runs!

See you on the grading side of goals! 🙂 Happy Monday!

Filed Under: Goals Tagged With: goals, Half Marathon, half marathon training plan, running, training

Tour des Fleurs 10K

Wordless Wednesday 39

August Report Card

B is for Back to School, Birthdays, Barbies & More!

Friday Food Finds {2}

Liberty by the Lake 5K

August Goals

July Report Card

Must-Dash 5K

Goals: They’re Making a Come Back

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