Wordless Wednesday No. 18

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What are your go to running gear items when you travel?

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!

Happy Monday, y’all!! We made it back safely from our Rock ‘n’ Roll Half in San Antonio last night!  We just want to once again thank everyone who donated to us over the past five months!  Words cannot express how much we appreciate you and are thankful for your generosity!  And we thought of y’all every step of our race on Sunday!  We got ribbon and wrote everyone’s name that donated on the ribbon and wore them in our hair during the race –

 

So thank you for not only donating but also being a source of inspiration for us as we ran in memory of Cindy on Sunday!

THANK YOU!!!!

 

Now the moment you have been waiting for – who will be the winners of the following prizes??? —

First Prize

– a $30 gift certificate to Go Sport ID

– a pair of Tommie Copper Compression Sleeves

– a six pack of GU Energy Gels that we are throwing in to the mix

Second Prize

– a $30 gift certificate to Go Sport ID

– your choice of a Tommie Copper Hat or Beanie

 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1JRoBeJMZI]

CONGRATS to our WINNERS!! 🙂  We will be in contact with you soon so we can get your prizes to you!

 

 

Rock ‘n’ Roll San Antonio

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It’s here!! The race we signed up for and started fundraising for in June is FINALLY HERE!!

After work today we are headed out to Austin to spend the night with our friend, Mary Alice, who is also running the half with us on Sunday!  We’ll get up early Saturday morning and hit a yoga class before making our way down to San Antonio!  If you didn’t see our blog yesterday – we’ve thrown together a last minute lunch at noon at The Cove.  If you are going to be down in San Antonio for the race or just down there please come join us and RSVP here so we’ll know how many are coming!  We’ll be wearing our Go Sport ID shirts, so if you don’t feel like you’ll recognize us then here we are in them from our Disneyland Half earlier this year –

Maybe we’ll take a new picture in our Go Sport ID shirts that has less of the wind blown hair look!

Y’all!! We can’t tell you how excited we are for this weekend!! As of November 9th we hit our $1,200 fundraising for Team Cindy and breast cancer goal!! Thanks so much to every single one of you that have donated even those of you who have continued to donate past hitting our goal! We’ll just go ahead and say it again – it is SUCH an honor to be running in memory of Cindy Marshall-Death and each and everyone of you who have donated will be running in spirit with us if you are not actually running the race! We are so grateful to the generosity of real life friends, friends we’ve made on twitter, friends we’ve made on twitter and then met in real life! 🙂  With that said – we do still have our Pink Donation Raffle going for a chance to win wonderful products from the fabulous Tommie Copper and Go Sport ID companies! We will be announcing our winners on Monday! So don’t miss our Monday morning post!

This weekend while we are in San Antonio, Cindy’s youngest daughter, Cynthia who is pregnant with Baby Cindy is having a baby shower!  Beth is sad to missing out on that event, but if she has to miss it what better reason is there than to be running for Baby Cindy’s Mammy!

As far as the race goes here is what we are looking in elevation-

We are SO elevation spoiled in Texas!

Goals:

We are both very scared to even put down the true goals in our head for this weekend!  What if we can’t do it??  We both are looking for a sub 2 hour half this weekend!  There we said it!  Beth got on with her very first half and hasn’t seen one since.  Teal’s half PR sits SO close at a 2:01:36.  If all goes right with the start and our corrals hopefully we can achieve this goal.  I’m pretty sure you will all still be our friends even if we don’t go sub 2 hours, but we WANT IT!  This race means so much to us that it would just be the icing on the cake!

Weather:

Low:  61*

High: 76*

Wind:  6MPH

Precip.: 0%

November Race No. 1

Ok so we admit, we might have had ulterior motives for Sunday’s race, at least a little bit, and it seems more justified after our brief conversation with Racing it Off, but really, who doesn’t want a little race bling for completing long runs? As you know we both decided it would be an awesome idea to sign up for the DRC ½ on Sunday after a little convincing from Heidi. Beth’s convo to Teal was like –

“So, how do you feel about running the DRC Sunday?”

“Lets do it!”

“Great ok I’ll sign us up at lunch!”

Bling & a long run- not a bad deal not to mention good practice with running around the lake.!

So anyways, we’re sure you want some of the race recap! We set out Sunday at around 6:30- feeling well rested given the extra hour of sleep and headed to White Rock Lake. Neither of us had nerves for the race but rather nerves for the fact that we wanted to run 22 miles Sunday and make that our last official super long run for our training. Neither of us wanted to die and we had just come off a rather good 20 miler the week before! We got to the race and waited in the bathroom line forever – Caught up on race stuff, life and even tried to convince a lady and her hubby to sign up for the New Year’s Double!

Right before the race we met up with some fellow Twitter friends and wished our friend Heidi good luck – she wanted to PR! We got to meet a new twitter friend April! We lined up and we were off. The race started out almost exactly like Too Hot to Handle was and Teal had to remind Beth to not go the wrong way… see this post if you’re not sure what we are talking about.  😉  The beginning of the race was very tight, there were tons of us jumbled into to a fairly narrow space and it was like that for a good 3 miles. At one point you basically had to walk to get through parts, which is slightly a pain. We managed to stay at a good pace considering and stayed pretty much under 10 minutes a mile given we were going to run for 22. The rest of the race wasn’t bad. The hills were there a little bit between mile 4 and 7ish but it’s not THAT bad. The stations were awesome as usual and one guy was even handing out Oreos! We saw him too late and were both slightly bummed. Cookies sound really good during a race for some reason. We also had to keep a watch out for the dude in front of us who kept blowing snot rockets! Seriously??  It’s gross! We wondered if that just gets worse with the weather.

Teal, Heidi & Beth

We both kept counting down to each other with every mile we passed. Only 13 more, 12 more, 11 more..you get the point.  Both of us felt pretty good overall, Teal mentioned slight pain in her booty – stupid hills, but other than that not bad at all. We got down to about 1.5 miles left and separated a little bit. Teal wasn’t quite sure what was happening but Beth knew we were close and could finish the race under 2:10 so she picked it up a little. Teal was just in her own little world and was like —we’ve got 10 left – I am not moving any faster than I am now. We both finished and really did not want to keep running. We got our race bling and hung around to chat with Heidi and her hubby, Brian. Ran into Michelle again – love how many races we see you at!! We ate, sat for a while and decided we would pick up our extra 9 miles at home. We figured that we would be ok if we ran the rest on tired legs the same day given that we did already complete the longest run on our schedule.

 

New bling ....and checkout that Go Sport ID on the wrist!

After leaving we went home, charged our phones, ate a little more and then headed back out for 9 more miles. Sure enough it felt as if we hadn’t actually stopped. It got hotter outside which was annoying, we were both still in pants, tired and really our minds were kind of done with racing for the day. We had looked at wedding stuff and talked with Beth’s sister, Kate for a while and really we weren’t in the best run moods, but we knew we wanted to get this in! We set out at about the same pace and ran 4.5 out and then back around our normal training route. We managed to get in the full 22 and really after we started it wasn’t that bad. Our legs felt the extra miles but overall not too bad. Teal went home and soaked in the tub and had to switch off legs with her Tommie Cooper calf sleeves- it appears as if her dog, Wilson, has run off with one of them and Beth of course did the same but with both sleeves!  We feel prepared for White Rock and have a little more confidence that 26.2 is doable! It’s just 4 more? Right!!??

 

We set out this coming weekend for Rock ‘n’ Roll San Antonio and are super excited about that trip. More to come about that race this week!! We seriously are super excited!!

A Pink Donation Raffle

We are NINE days away from running Rock ‘n’ Roll San Antonio!! Nine, people, NINE!!  This is the race we are running and raising money for breast cancer in honor of Team Cindy a.k.a. Cindy Marshall-Death!!  Sadly we have NOT yet met our fundraising goal for the race of $1,200.00 🙁

Cindy & Jimmy on her 50th Birthday in 2007

We need YOUR help and as an added bonus to donating you will be entered in our raffle to win one of two prizes —

 

First Prize

– a $30 gift certificate to Go Sport ID

– a pair of Tommie Copper Compression Sleeves

– a six pack of GU Energy Gels that we are throwing in to the mix

Second Prize

– a $30 gift certificate to Go Sport ID

– your choice of a Tommie Copper Hat or Beanie


How to Win

For every $5 you donate to Team Cindy your name will be entered into our raffle!

If you go and LIKE Go Sport ID and Tommie Copper on Facebook that will give you an additional entry into the raffle when you have donated.  So if you donate $20 and like Go Sport ID & Tommie Copper then your name will be entered five times to win these awesome prizes!

 

We could not be more excited for the generosity of Tommie Copper and Go Sport ID in helping us with this raffle! Not only is it great to have two companies help us, but two companies that we absolutely LOVE means so much to us!   Multiple times a week you could find either of us at home wearing our Tommie Copper calf sleeves after a long run or even the day after at work under a pair of jeans!  They have been a great product to have in terms of recovery from long runs and being preventive in running injuries!  Each and every day you can find the two of us wearing our Go Sport ID bracelets!  We love them so much we never take them off!  So these are all items that if you don’t already have them, you need to get on that and what better way to do so than by entering our raffle and winning them!

To donate please go to our Team Cindy/Life is a Run page here — DONATE

Lazy Solo Running Weekend

Beth here with my running recap for the weekend! 🙂  My weekend turned out to be NOT what I was expecting, but exactly what I needed! After my long run Saturday morning I was suppose to be hitting the road to Austin with my sister for a wedding, but life happened and sister felt she needed to stay in town to be with a friend.  I took full advantage of this and slept in on Saturday morning!  And by slept in I mean until 7:30 a.m. Woohoo!  My favorite spin instructor at my L.A. Fitness had been out of town last Monday on my usual spin day, so I skipped it.  I decided spin class on Saturday morning [since favorite instructor would be back] made more sense than Sunday morning and then back to spin class Monday after work.  So I did spin, I did a 30 minute yoga class and then I spent hours with my littlest nephew!  It was a fabulous Saturday! Here’s what my sister and I did to our nephew on Saturday –

This was inspired by what Jack’s Mom did to him last week.  Jack being the first grandbaby of Cindy[#TeamCindy] who we are running Rock ‘n’ Roll San Antonio half in memory of and raising money for breast cancer.  And here’s me getting some good cuddle time in with Easton!

Sunday I slept in until 8 a.m.  That was some glorious sleep! I wrote thatWhat’s the Deal? post a few weeks ago and to be honest I still hadn’t fully snapped out of it! I’m pretty positive I was wearing myself out during the week and then just going, going and going on the weekends.  Pretty much since the weekend of August 20th I had been going on long runs then drinking tons of coffee in an effort to stay up and go out to celebrate things like: my sister’s birthday, my boyfriend’s birthday, being in California and running a half, celebrating one of my best friend’s birthdays, celebrating a 1 year old’s birthday, celebrating a 2 year old’s birthday, hosting a baby shower, celebrating my oldest nephew’s birthday and my sister in law’s birthday – see what I was doing to myself??

Anyways, I laid in bed Sunday morning catching up on my DVR until I had to get up and meet a friend at yoga at 1:00 p.m.  I ate a late lunch and decided to lay in bed longer while my food digested before I could go out for my long run.  And something happened that NEVER happens – I took  nap!  I am in no way a napper!  I just lack the ability to take a nap and wake up refreshed, so the only times I do it are if I’m sick or I’m apparently wearing myself out THAT much.

Shortly before 5:00 p.m. I was off on my long run for the weekend!  This run I decided to take with me a Clif gel I’d received while I was out on the Tour des Fleurs 20k race course in September.  Like I do every long run I stuck it in the hidden pocket inside my Nike shorts only problem was that the Clif gel packaging is wider than the GU gel packaging I usually take on my run.  I ran through the gel pack poking me for 4 miles then I had it, took it out and ran holding it for 4 more miles until I opened it.  Now I am a HUGE chocolate lover, but I am now not a fan of chocolate flavored gels which is what I had!   But don’t worry Clif! I have not given up on you just your chocolate flavored gel. 🙂

And there is my cut/chaffed area/what have you on the right in the picture above.  I’m not going to tell you where that is exactly, but if I put the pack in an inside pocket of my shorts I think you can use your imagination. 😉 [Sorry Mom if you are reading this and are shaking your head at me! Love you!]  Ok, back to long run – I didn’t know how this would go since I have never run more than 8 miles by myself and Teal had left me to go on an awesome trip to San Francisco!  SO jealous! But it went great! I was so proud of myself for keeping my pace under 10 minutes the WHOLE entire time!  I had a couple times where I wanted to stop more because I needed to use the facilities than being tired. 🙂  I guess that’s the downfall of running not at my usual time.   I explored a little bit and ran a slightly different area than Teal and I have ever run before and overall I felt great during this long running!

I ended my Sunday night with some #runchat, Chipotle, Rangers, wine and my Tommie Copper calf sleeves [if you don’t own any – what are you waiting for?? Seriously!]

Check back with us tomorrow for Teal’s San Francisco Running Weekend recap!

Are you a fan of Clif gels? What is YOUR favorite flavor?