Turkey’s Done!

November 29, 2012 by · 6 Comments

Some races just get complicated by life events.  We know some of you out there know what we are saying!  This Thanksgiving brought some firsts for both of us.

For Beth it was the first time that she and Brent actually spent Thanksgiving together, so we were finally forced to figure out how we would get time with each of our families.  We spent it with his family and they start earlier than my family does and my family had Thanksgiving at the house I lived in for the past 3 years so doing a race and getting ready for family was no big deal.  This year I had barely any time.  And why does the Turkey Trot start at 9 a.m.?! I didn’t remember it starting so late.  I vote we go with 8 a.m. next year! OK? OK!  And isn’t it cute how in my world 9 a.m. is now late? Haha

For Teal, well, we will just share with you the lists of things that includes firsts and therefore annoyances with Thanksgiving. 🙂

1. My dad did not come from Maryland (like he was going to) and I had to make a turkey (instead of my dad making it).

2. I had to get up at 5am to deal with stuffing a turkey, which I don’t know how to do so I was automatically stressed. Oh and I had the words of Michael’s cousin in my head, who was being playful but said “Don’t ruin the turkey, you will ruin Thanksgiving” Great.

3. The neck of a raw turkey is absolutely GROSS and I almost gagged and then the intestines bag had a hole and I had to touch the liver. Gag, again.

4. I turned the turkey roasting pan on and I thought it was going to catch on fire, smoke everywhere! Had to send my husband to Wal-Mart to get a new one, and for those of you who may not know I don’t like that place and once pushed one of their front doors off the track. I don’t go there!

5.  I felt bad for waking him up, making him go to that dreaded place, being annoying, and oh, by the way Happy Anniversary,  sorry I suck and can’t cook or read directions… see 6….

6. Turns out it wasn’t actually going to catch on fire, perhaps, read the directions first?

7. I didn’t know what to wear. I know, #firstworldproblems

8. I was going to be late and was afraid Beth would kill me, so then I worried (not that she ever would, but a girl can worry, we are people pleasers)

9. Ohhhh, you need to eat before a race?? I didn’t have any food so I ate Oreos, 2 of them to be exact, and I should have eaten 12.

10. I was starving, that starving where you want to throw up starving.

11. It cost me more money to take money out of the ATM then it actually cost to park.

12. The original $3 parking lot machine wasn’t working, so we couldn’t park there.

13. We drove to $5 lot and it was full.  Full as in the car in front of us got the last spot.

14. I HATE PARKING!

There. I feel much better. WOOOSSSAAAA.

Ok, so after surviving all of that, the two of us and Chase (Beth’s cousin) made it over to the race start.  We all three got hooked up with VIP wristbands so we got to use some nice port-a-potties with a not so ridiculous line.  Ohhh, the little things that make racers happy!

After that it was pretty much time to get lined up to start the race, but oh, yah…they put up a fence that makes it impossible to enter the racing area.  How quickly we forget these things after multiple years of running the same race. Ha!

Mile 1 to 5K Split

Teal: This is like a fun game of  “let’s try not to run any children over, kick a dog, elbow an elderly person, trip over a fire extinguisher, speed bump, or sidewalk,  have to come to a screeching halt every 5 seconds.” It’s sooooo fun. So needless to say, the first part of this race is a complete and total pain, if you would like to run, but I still managed to keep a somewhat decent pace. And just a disclaimer, I know this, and have known this, and still run because I like this race, and will always like this race, it’s just kind of a pain to do. AND I don’t think it will change, so this is more of a statement and not so much a complaint, although I am not sure maybe it’s both! I knew I would not PR at this point and was letting my list of 14 annoying things get to me. I wanted to take the 5k turn off, just wait for Beth and Chase and be done with it all but I didn’t. Just run the stinking race, and get happy.

The sea of people before the start of the race

Beth:  Maybe I’m a jerk for saying this, but while the 3 of were trying to get into the starting area I made probably the comment I make every year “why don’t they let the timed racers start in the front? or why don’t they start the 5K and 8 mile in waves?”  This man next to me informed me that “the mat will pick up your time when you cross it!” WHAT?! It will?? Haha, bless his heart. I am pretty sure that every year in the first about 2.5ish miles of this race I ask myself why am I running this race?? I hate this!  I’m fairly use to going out and running around White Rock Lake and hearing cyclist say “on your left” so I just decided to use that with the walkers.  Man the people that come out to the Turkey Trot spa-read themselves out on those streets!  This race always makes me think that people need to go through a Common Courtesies of Race Course before they can embark on their first race.  Not that that will ever happen.

5K Split to Finish

Teal: LESS CROWDS! We lost half the race to the 5k turn off! Yippee!! I actually got in a better mood, ran a lot faster and didn’t feel as pissed. This is the best reason to run! They changed the course and I liked the change in the long run, but not as it was happening. It was way hillier than it was last year, but we didn’t have to run through a very boring part of Dallas. This change made the race feel fast at the end.  I really was trying to pick up my pace to overcome the first 2.5 but I just felt like it was not going to happen. I ended up being annoyed (theme of the day) with this women who kept on running at my shoulder up the hills and would then linger back to keep doing it again. I was determined to make her go away so my last 2 miles were about and 8ish to 8:30 minute pace, where I had been running more at a 9:30 min pace. My last mile was 8:03, which is fast for me, mainly to be done and away from the lady.

Overall it was not bad and I am glad I ran and I am still very proud of my time. It was not a PR and it was not as bad as 3 years ago so there! That’s a win in my book. And despite everything, I would and will still run this again, BUT I will not cook a Turkey, which will then make me less stressed and annoyed. MARK MY WORDS PEOPLE!

The sea of people after the race and a little bit of downtown Dallas

Beth: Ahhhh, this is why I run this race! It is amazing how much a 5K split can change things!  Not long after the split off we ran by where Brent and I got married which put a big smile on my face! 🙂  I had started noticing some small changes in course and was really hopeful that this one area would be cut out.  It was! I remember thinking the last few years on the last few miles being like when is this going to be over?  But this year it just seemed like it was over in no time.  That was when I remembered the trickster finish line they have! Haha, you see the start line and think, almost there!  You aren’t your going to fork to the right, go up a small but long  incline then keeeeeep going even though you already started your last minute sprint to the end and then BAM! you’re done. According to my runkeeper I had an overall pace of 8:35 for the race.  Also according to my runkeeper I ran 8.36 miles which makes me wonder how much of that is extra mileage from my dodging at the beginning, and then there is always one area in downtown where the GPS gets off.  Don’t start telling me how GPS systems are not always 100% accurate because I know!  And please don’t start talking to me about running tangents because, again, I know.  And I”m also admitting that the dodging of people in the beginning was me probably adding on some extra mileage.  Pretty much like Teal said this is a race where you get frustrated in the beginning, but ultimately the annoyances get overpowered by the last two thirds of the race roughly.  It is a great race and great that it brings so many people out together to get some activity in before a full day of eating far too much!

So, Capital One Bank Dallas YMCA Turkey Trot (that is a mouthful), we will see you again next year!

Results:

Teal: 1:15:33, finished 73rd in age group and 1,850 overall

Beth: 1:11:36, finished 66th in my age group and 1,396 over all

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Ft. Worth Marathon But You Know Only the Half

November 13, 2012 by · 5 Comments

Perhaps it was the mix of activities for Beth’s wedding or the fact that both of our houses have been a complete disaster, or that we didn’t see each other for a week, or any number of other things but let’s just say this half definitely snuck up on us. We didn’t even do a pre-race post! Whoops?? Perhaps just another bit of proof of our not preparedness.

We double bagged our phones in case it really did rain during the race

Because we were driving to Ft. Worth we wanted to make sure we got to the race in time and especially since we had to get our packets that day!  Teal wasn’t even actually sure she had registered and the guy couldn’t find her name on the list… Oh, he was looking at the list for the marathon, but it was rather hilarious that we really couldn’t remember. So by the time we finished picking them up we had about an hour and a half to kill before our race started.  The different distances at this race are staggered by 30 minutes, so it was a 7:30 a.m. start for the marathon, 8:00 a.m. start for the 20 miler and a 8:30 a.m. start for the half.

Look at how long this race shirt is?!

Miles 1-5

Teal: We talked to Caron before the race and she had mentioned taking it 5 miles at a time. In my head that sounded like a good plan, I hadn’t fully registered that she was running the 20 mile when I decided that sounded great, and it sorta works for a ½ so I went with that. 1-5 seemed to take forever and I couldn’t really figure out why. I am usually done with a mile in about 3ish songs and by mile one I had heard 5. This was not registering with me. Apparently not being prepared also causes my brain to not work. The course was flat for the most part which made me happy! It was too windy to deal with hills too. The wind at points was rather ridiculous.

Beth:  I really didn’t have a game plan in my head AT ALL about this race.  I knew I needed to not start too fast considering the month of October I let my marathon training and mileage be all over the place. 🙁  Plus Thursday night I was hit with a 24 hour stomach bug. So I thought I’d just kind of play it by ear!  Soon after we started and I had turned on my runkeeper there was no music coming from it.  Then I remembered how I had turned the music option off in the app while I was in Hawaii, so I just tried to turn on some music.  When I did it was a slow song, so then I remembered how Thursday night I’d just put my music on shuffle during my stairmaster workout.  To make things even more fun I’d turn down the brightness on my iPhone to help save some battery life which means I couldn’t see through the two plastic bags I had my phone in to turn on a playlist.  My music during this race consisted of almost every slow song on my phone and Christmas music. Ha.

Miles 6-8

Teal: Still not bad but super freaking windy. I was ready to get to the turn around. Not to mentioned this women that had thrown her water on Beth was about to get my foot up her toosh! ( I mean I really would never do that) but she was that much on my nerves. She kept cutting me off for no reason, or running right next to me within like breathing distance. Sometimes Beth and I run like that next to each other but that is because we are LONG TIME RUNNING BUDDIES!! Back up off lady! At 8 I finally was annoyed at how long this seemed to be taking and the time not adding up so I asked Beth what we were really at. She said 7.96! Sweet! I had us at 7.41, so apparently my trusty little Garmin was also not prepared for the day! I actually felt a little energy

Beth: Um, yes to the freaking windy! Do you remember how at the Taco Run there was a guy that messed with my head for the last few miles of the race? Guess who was here at this race? Did you say the Mind Messer Man then you are correct!  I forget when but at one point we caught him and passed him a teeny tiny little bit, but don’t worry, y’all, he surged and he passed us! There was just this nice stretch of me being annoyed that he was there and with the lady who dumped the whole cup of water on me.  It’s one of those things where I get that you don’t want to STOP and walk with your water, but for the love, at least slow down a little.  Her technique of trying to grab a small cup of water at full speed was not affective.  At one water station where I didn’t even get water I was excited because she behind me so no water on me! Wrong, she spilled a cup on my feet. We should also mention that I for one ran more than 13.1 on this race course. Yes, I know tangents, we wrote a blog that included that in it.  There were a couple parts of the course where it split and was either a gravel/dirt path or a paved path and there were no markers to say stay this or what not. I just don’t like courses when it makes me wonder if I’m on the intended path or not?

Miles 9-13.1

Teal: My energy from that .6ish mile increase made me happy and until 10 I was happy. Then at like 10.1 I wanted to die. I had dropped a little behind Beth but just at the perfect timing she slowed to let me catch her! We stayed together until about 11 again and then it was just get home to the finish line. I could see the storm coming in and was just ready to be done mentally but my body just said, Nope you are staying at this pace. I managed to get in and done but was ready to die. My legs hurt and I was pretty shaky and actually a little dizzy. I think the fact that the running was off and 10 mile long runs missed made this difficult. Overall however, I am not disappointed! I finished with a clock time of 2:07 something and really wanted to find out the real time! I am not disappointed with that as it is still pretty quick for me!!

Beth: I was going back and forth on how I was doing and telling myself when you get to 10 it’s just going to be another 5k.  I kind of got pumped at one point and was like LET’S DO THIS!!!  Then at 10 I told myself to take a chill pill.  I was pushing myself too much too fast.  I was coming off inconsistent running and being stick with a stomach bug (a.k.a. not holding food down). So I stopped to find Teal because I was pretty sure if I didn’t chill out and run with her I was not going to make it. When we were about 2 miles out from the finish line I knew I could do this and pushed a little bit harder and at some point in here I passed Mind Messer Man when he stopped to get water. YES! All, I had to do was keep him behind me now! And I did! We actually talked briefly after he crossed the finish line. He was all – weren’t you at the Taco Run? Considering how the last month has been and being sick I am dang proud of this race, but now I got some work to do! We have another half coming up that if I don’t PR at it I better be dang near close!

 

Results:

Teal: 2:06:27, finished 17th in her age group

Beth: 2:05:15, finished 16th in her age group

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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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[Not Entirely] Marathon Running Weekend Part 2

January 26, 2012 by · 1 Comment

Last year we both ran the Too Cold to Hold race together and just on whim decided to do it again. Beth mentioned wanting to run and Teal of course agreed. It’s not too hard to persuade each other to run something around here! You might recall Teal’s recap of her 5k on Saturday which started out at 36 degrees and in keeping with the craziness that is Texas weather, we were again not too surprised that our run started out Sunday morning at 52 degrees and ended up with a high of 78 for the day. Definitely NOT Too Cold too Hold!

We really were not all that prepared again for this race and had to discuss directions again.  Whoops!  Hopefully this direction problem isn’t turning into a trend. 🙂 We got to the park and made a b-line to the port-o-potties as usual. We ran into one of Beth’s Fiancé’s friend’s Hanes who we didn’t know would be there!

We waited around and met/chatted with many of our twitter friends and even met some new people in real life! SO good to meet Lee a.k.a. @runneronabudget and his son, Angel out there! Bonus for sure and really chatting with them was the only really highlights of this day.

We started out the race together as we both basically decided to run this race as a training run and not a true race since we have been a little off in our training. Beth had run about 9.5 miles on Saturday and Teal around 7, plus both of us did yoga, so our legs were in no way shape or form rested.

The race was in a word “normal”- nothing new or different and no real problems besides this dude who kept swerving in and out from us. At one point he basically cut Beth off weaving, would run backwards, look back and weirdly smile and randomly cheer for people whilst running backwards.  We couldn’t decide if he was running tangents or dizzy or what…We have no clue what he was doing but kept us entertained for a while due to he weirdness. 🙂

Around 4.5 we got the BEST surprise! This race is kind of boring because there are literally no spectators besides finished runners at the end so we were both pumped to see Heidi and Brian cheering us on around the turn around. This pumped us up and made it a little easier to keep running.  We made it a point to wave and cheer on our fellow North Texas Runners in an effort to pass time and keep from being bored, and of course be supportive.

A post race pic of our cheerleaders! The Luebs are awesome!

Teal and Beth split at about the 6 mile mark which made the last 3 miles a drain. At around 9 Teal saw Heidi again and she ran her in right up to the finish line! Such a great cheering surprise for a relatively routine and regular race!

Afterwards we hung around to celebrate Michelle’s birthday and eat with our running friends at Fuzzy’s! We got to here all about Greg’s upcoming 100miler at Rocky Raccoon in Huntsville and hang out with their precious girls, an all over great ending to the day!

Frunners!

Shout out to Mama C the awesome picture taker…we stole two pictures from you and the term frunner! =)

Love this photo! Marci and her age group award...a lil Ninja!

Frunners at Fuzzy's!

It was also SO good to meet Michelle a.k.a. Drum at this race!  We finally after a long time of chatting it up on twitter we saw her for two seconds at White Rock Mary but actually got to meet this weekend!  Also, a shout out to Stacy it was SO good to meet you too and hope that we see you again soon..you know not just on twitter! 🙂

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