Wordless Wednesday No. 42

Wordless Wednesday No. 42

AugSep Collage v2

Oct Collage v2

 

Nov Collage v2

How the Ice Ate Dallas Marathon

How the Ice Ate Dallas Marathon

Just in case you didn’t know or somehow missed, we were supposed to run the Dallas Marathon this past Sunday (Beth the full and Teal the half), but Mother Nature had a completely different plan for us and the rest of the Dallas Marathon hopefuls. Thursday afternoon Dallas weather turned from what was a warm, high in the 70’s during the week to what we Dallasites refer to as the #Icepocalypse2013.

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Our favorite weatherman, Pete Delkus, basically told us on Thursday night that we were all about to be “entombed” by ice. We of course spent our evenings in denial and really just seemed worried about what the heck we would wear to run in this weather. Beth tweeted our Colorado friend Courtney for advice on what to wear since she is used to this sort of thing. We were not thinking at all that we actually not run this race at all, or at least if the thought was there we were trying to ignore it!

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Turns out Pete was right (and he’s apparently now a weather god) and when we woke up Friday Texas looked much like this…

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Roads were ridiculous and not drivable. We southerners are not prepared for this type of thing, it’s not just that people can’t drive or don’t know how to drive on it, we simply don’t have the road clearing equipment like they do in the north, and the little we have is not enough to clear the metroplex with any type of speed! We are always just stuck when this happens, entombed, if you will! Ugh! We still were pretty much in denial and thought the weather would get above freezing before Sunday and we could run. Surely it would, right?? We thought maybe they would just delay it. Dallas Marathon folks let us know what they could and instead of canceling the expo they delayed the opening until 2pm on Friday. That has to be a good sign right?

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Well, then Friday lunch time came around. Nothing was improving, and we were all trapped. Then it came. An email from Dallas Marathon at 12:50ish Friday afternoon, cancelling not only the expo but cancelling the race altogether. 🙁

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The worst email we’ve gotten in awhile! 🙁

There it was. Months of training seemingly wasted, especially for those who battled months of marathon training. Devastating really, without trying to be hugely dramatic, we get there are worse things in life, but for this, at this time, it is devastating. It was hard not to have a pity party. We did and started to Google. There has to be another marathon close that is open? We can drive (wait, can we??) Either way. We looked. The BCS marathon in College Station was the best bet but just still wasn’t feasible for us. :-/ We were out from running.

Commence eating all the carbs…

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We ate, slept, did puzzles, and talked with Catherine (we are positive all of our husband’s rolled their eyes on this one) all weekend, and continued to live in denial that this had actually happened.

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Come Sunday, we really hadn’t heard much about the details about the cancellation. We knew, having run a ton of races that we were not going to get a refund and we knew that and were not mad. We didn’t know about anything else.  Dallas Marathon again sent us another email…

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They are giving us our participant shirts!!

We think this was an awesome response and we took to Facebook to thank them for handling it so well.  We were pretty shocked to see some of the responses given to the race. Like “where is our refund”, or “ how could you do this”, or whatever other idiotic response you can think of. We knew, everyone knew, you had to click an agreement before you could complete your registration that there would be no refunds for the race. This is pretty much a standard in racing and SUPER rare that you would actually get money back due to weather or cancellation. We get it. Apparently many others do not.

This race is put on by RUNNERS for RUNNERS. It is not one of those races that travels all over the country making tons of money putting on races. We can point you in the direction of some of those if you would like. This is different and this should be a learning experience for all. We do not claim to know what all goes in to race directing but we do know that this race gives a medal, a participant shirt, a finisher’s shirt, fancy bibs, food for runners, water stations, Gatorade, safety, police, port-o-potties, and anything else you can think of that we left off! We know money comes from different places and there are donations, but we also know that Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children benefits directly from money raised by Dallas Marathon. Hopefully others know this now because to call them thieves we think is a little ridiculous!

Needless to say we vented and then thanked Dallas Marathon for making the decision. They did what was best for the safety of runners and also for the city already strapped for resources. They knew it is not a good idea to take resources from the city to clear a race course when thousands didn’t have power, the roads needed to be scraped and sand poured, and officers needed to help those in need. Thank you for that!

Also, if you haven’t met our friend Erik. You are about to. He, and his friends, have been a part of an unofficial, which should be official (wink, wink Dallas Marathon) cheering section at the Dolly Parton hills (more frequently referred to as “The Dollies”), one of the most challenging areas of the course. Erik dresses as a Dolly, and helps runners up and down those hills in style. He sent us these pictures to cheer us, and everyone else up.

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Pretty Sexy isn’t he? (sorry, he’s taken!) Who would want to miss this cheer section? Not us, and we didn’t have to this year either! He made our day and made the blow of the cancellation a little more bearable! Thank you for that, Erik!

Thanks again Dallas Marathon!! Mother Nature we are still pretty irritated at you, but we will be back in 2014!

Running for Two: Trimester One

Running for Two: Trimester One

Beth and I ran our first half marathon in 7 months yesterday and this was obviously the first while simultaneously growing a human. I am currently at 15 weeks just so you have a reference of time and how long I have actually been running pregnant.

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source

Running has been interesting and I have been asked tons of questions about how it is going, so we figured I could update you guys on how that is going and if anyone else is in the same boat or maybe will be in the same boat it might be helpful.  Also even though I have been a runner for a while now and run tons of races, I still had/have a lot of fear about running even though the doctor has cleared me to run, even at longer distances, and that I see women do it all the time. It’s almost like a switch changes when it’s your kid in your body. I went to Google and that just scared the crap out of me, so here is what I have experienced, and have done, and so far this baby is doing perfectly well and I have had no issues *now finds every piece of wood around to knock on*

Here is how the first trimester has gone:

  • I was scared to dehydrate so I only now run with water or where I know I can get water every other mile or so. I was NOT good at this before but also never had problems. We have pretty much taken all of our runs to White Rock where there is tons of water available.
  • I have avoided the heat as much as possible and am glad the majority of this pregnancy will be in the winter. I did not run when it was too hot and actually stopped all my hot yoga as well.
  • I eat during the run way more than I did before. Typically every 3-4 miles.
  • I wear out much faster, it’s harder to breathe in even though this baby is small there is a lot more blood to move around and it really does feel like it when you are running. At first it just felt like I was out of shape, which I knew was not possible and now I know why it’s like that and am pretty prepared for that to get worse.
  • I take more breaks and I don’t beat myself up for them. I have to stop and walk or stand even for just a minute or so or I won’t make it. During my ½ this weekend I walked every single water station and took water at all of them, which I never did before at all. I also walked about .5 of a mile to eat.
  • I was never one to be blessed in the boob area and never really thought twice about that ever being an issue. I thought that “those” came later in pregnancy and quickly learned that that is not the case AT all. This change happened around 8 weeks and that long run left me in so much pain. Invest in good bras!! I have not really had a problem since, but no one really told me about that so early and I never expected the pain that comes with not being prepared for that. I could barely roll over and I called my mom convinced I might be having a heart attack! Ha.  So far I have not had to wear anything around my stomach. That might change soon!
  • Exhaustion in the first couple of months is just stupid. It’s an exhaustion I have never really experienced before, and you can’t shake at all. I had to cut myself A LOT of slack when it came to running. I couldn’t stay awake passed like 7:30 at night, was napping all the time, and didn’t want to do ANYTHING.  My husband jokes that I haven’t lifted a finger… I didn’t want to move let alone but on shoes and run alone outside.  I cut running during the week for a while until that total exhaustion phase went away and now I rest when I need to.
  • I cannot do this without Beth. I wouldn’t run at all. She has been there for all my long runs and if she wasn’t I wouldn’t do it. You need a running buddy for sure, and one that won’t want to kill you when you have to do all the aforementioned things during your runs. She is training for a marathon and has stuck with me! I catch her on the last half of her run so hopefully she is worn out a little and it seems to be working!  I also do not run alone anymore unless it is like 3 or less miles in the daylight by my house.
  • My motivation level has changed more toward just being careful then getting a PR or running fast. I have not and will not push my stride speed at all passed what I have done this entire pregnancy. I have lowered my pace somewhere between thirty seconds to a minute and a half a mile, and am fully prepared to either not start a race based on how I feel or DNF if I need to.

I am running still because I love it and my pregnancy is healthy. I have been cleared from my doctor to run all the way up until I give birth. I am a super worry wart so this might seem like madness to some of you but I do have fear, so I am super careful and have more or less decided I will do this as long as it feels good. I want to stay healthy and in shape to prepare for delivery and carrying a baby all the way through. Running can help this and working out does as well.

I’ll keep you posted about how the second trimester goes with running. We do have Dallas Scheduled for December 8th and that race will hit at start of week 20, and also a race about 6 weeks after that.  Happy Running!

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

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.

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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

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!

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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? 🙂

Ironman Texas Volunteering

Two months ago today we were in  Houston for a weekend of volunteering, frunners, cheering and spectating greatness!  We made the four hour trek from Houston the night before with Beth’s sister, Kate.

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None of us left work early and then we decided to all sit down to eat dinner instead of making Teal have to eat and drive at the same time, so we were really setting ourselves up for a late arrival into Houston.  By the time our heads hit the pillow that night we knew that alarm clock was right around the corner. 🙁

But it was so worth it.  We met up with the DFW Crew that was volunteering and the rest of our volunteer group for wetsuit peeling (but let’s call it what it really is wetsuit stripping).  All of us volunteers watched the elites start the swim and then made our way over to where we’d be stripping athletes. 🙂  The worst part of the day was being present at the swim finish when people didn’t complete it in time and were stripped of their tag and done for the day.  Talk about heartbreaking!

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The crew with Mike Reilly

Once our stripping duties were over we got second breakfast/super early lunch, whatever you want to call it, before making our way over to the canal area to find the perfect spot to hangout and later cheer for the athletes.  We were there before the elites had started their marathon portion and man was it amazing to see all of them.  Where we were spectating enabled us to see the athletes 3 times on the run part.

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oh, race signs!

Or really since they ran along the other side of the canal you could say we saw runners 6 times…

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We had a lot of time out on this portion of the race and some time to kill, so we ate a lot of goldfish (shocking), maybe had a couple adult beverages and enjoyed the company of our frunners. 🙂

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A part from the people our group knew racing that day Teal had a friend Derek out there that she also got to cheer for – if only this picture of Derek wasn’t blurry!

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Thanks to the one company that had people passing out cowbells for spectators and a couple of the awesome ladies with us we had tons of stuff to cheer with and/or entertain us.

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We were both so excited and pumped to get to cheer on the power couple of Heidi & Brian. 🙂 These two worked their butts off for months preparing for this day, their hard work showed and paid off!

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Heidi minutes away from being called an Ironman!

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Brian minutes away from being called an Ironman!

The accomplishment of all of the athletes we encountered that day was inspiring!  You won’t catch us doing an Ironman, but man what a feat and such a neat thing for us to be a part of as volunteers and cheerleaders!

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A none blurry picture of Team Leub after they rocked their first Ironman!  Congrats to you both….two months later! You two impress us with your dedication, strength and accomplishment!

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Apparently this is what you look like after covering 140.6 miles each!

Goals: They’re Making a Come Back

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. 🙂  

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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 –

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??

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!

Fairview Half Marathon

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(source)

This year has been a little scattered with our running as you might have noticed. We are seriously behind on recapping races and really surprisingly enough we are currently only registered for a 5K and one half marathon that seems like forever away. When we get asked what we have done this year we seriously have to think about it. We both keep forgetting the fact that we have run 2 half marathons this year. We told you about Sugarland already so here is our “this is what we remember” recap from the Fairview Half. Get excited!

As you may know The Fairview Half is put on by the awesome Libby Jones who runs The Active Joe, and she is also the creator of our running group NTX Runners!  She is responsible for the New Year’s Double, Showdown Half, and her newest race, The Fairview Half. She gives awesome perks to repeat runners of her races and also those that volunteer. We were able to get in super early and for super cheap because we have both run and volunteered for one of her races!

This race is actually a very pretty race. It runs through some very fancy neighborhoods in Fairview, through what feels like the middle of the country, and it starts and ends at the Fairview Town hall. Our only disclaimer for this race is it is HILLY. Not as hilly as the ZOOMA race we ran last year (we don’t think anything is that bad hill-wise) but this one is a somewhat distant second. Really that is about all we remember! Great scenery, hills, and the BEST PART is tons of our fellow running friends were at this race. So we will just go ahead and skip to the fun part…Post race pics of all the fun people we got to see and some awesome race bling photography!

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We might add, we don’t have a picture of The Unlikely Runners but we saw them out there volunteering the crap out of this race! And also big props to Ninja for making it out to one of the steepest hills to cheer us on to the top! You were a great site on that hill around the mile 9-ish marker!

As soon as the race was over we booked it out of there to pick up Beth’s sister and then make a 4+ hour drive to San Antonio to see our friend Rebekah and hang out for the weekend! We clearly like to jam pack as much as possible into a race weekend.

December Goal Recap

Don’t worry we didn’t forget about our goals during our hiatus in the month of December. Yah, yah, it’s the 11th and we are just now posting them…oops?  Story of our lives?!  Here’s how we did during the crazy month that always is December:

Teal-

1. Complete all marathon training runs.

Um, I really don’t know how to give myself a grade for this since I am not actually doing the marathon now. But at the same time I really haven’t altogether been running consistently either. There are many reasons why this has happened, all I am sure you really do not want to hear about. The holiday season is just crazy anyways and if I was still running the marathon it would have taken a lot of discipline to not partake in holiday festivities at the extent that is SUPER fun!

2. Go to the Ross Perot Museum.  This place looks awesome and just opened on December 1st!

F-: I blame my mother for this because she told me that she was going to go with my cousins and so I waited to go with them and then they never went so yea.. I’ll try it in January.

3. Not last minute Christmas shop although I may already be setting myself up for failure.

B-: I finished 2 days early! Haha! This is actually not bad and I had to do no wrapping of the presents the day of which hasn’t happened in a while!

4. Don’t be a scrooge and actually put up the Christmas tree this year

A-: I have to thank my husband for this! We actually put up decorations and a tree. It was only 3 feet tall but it was up! Anyone have one of those tall skinny ones they want me to have? That is what I decided I would do next year because part of my problem is my house doesn’t have a good “Christmas tree” spot. Anyone else have this problem? It drives me nuts! So a tall skinny tree is my answer for next year!

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Beth-

1. Complete all marathon training runs.

C+: I haven’t completed them and some of that is due to a weird pain in my lower leg, so ummm yah…..we’ll see how this all works out for me in a little over a week at the Louisiana Marathon.

2. Get another room in my house organized this month!

A-:  Last month I got our office darn near close to organized and our guest room darn near close to organized.  They both look SOOOOOOO much better!  There’s still some work to be done, but I am proud of what I accomplished so far!  I even spent part of an afternoon organizing our pantry because it was driving me crazy!

Isn't it purdy?!

Isn’t it purdy?!

3. In addition to organizing there are a couple of crafty projects I want to do around our house, so I’m going to commit to complete one of them this month!

F:  The closest I came to accomplishing this was printing out something I needed in order to do said craft project.  No craft project was accomplished……

4. Run a smart race at Dallas Marathon (only the half though).

A+: I’d say getting a shiny new PR at Dallas Marathon (half) accomplishes this goal!

5. Actually make use of my handy dandy Kitchenaid stand mixer and make Christmas cookies!

A+: I made two batches of Grandmom Lynch’s ginger snaps. They are deeeeeelicious!

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There you have it! We are kind of toying with revamping the way we do our goals, so you aren’t going to find any January goals in this post.  We’ll let you know what we decided to do! 🙂

Until our next post – have a fun and safe weekend! Good luck to all of our friends who are racing this weekend! May the speed be with you. 🙂

Ft. Worth Marathon But You Know Only the Half

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

October Report & November Goals

There are just really not many clever ways to make the title of these blog posts more exciting….anyway!

The Report:

1. Complete the Tyler Rose half marathon for our 3rd race in the 4 seasons challenge. It’s coming up October 7th!

F: We bailed on this race because we decided it was the best life choice at the time in terms of getting to goal number 3 in one piece. Not to mention the fact that it was Beth’s dad’s birthday and it would have been madness to run the race in Tyler and get back to Dallas. We decided that Texas doesn’t really have 4 seasons anyways. 🙂

2. Start marathon training!

C: Sorta? We have done some of our running and have for sure missed 2 long runs so we shall see how the rest of this month goes. We hope it won’t kill us too much as they were “shorter long runs”

3. Get Beth married!

A++: Done! She is now a Holland! Recap of the wedding coming shortly!

This picture cracks me up!

It really was an an incredible night! Oh, and check out that ring – he’s really my husband now! 🙂

 

 

The Goals:

Teal –

1. Get my house in order without losing it! I am too routine and orderly for this mess. See this madness…

 

2. Get my butt/mind in gear for marathon training. I feel so blah about it right now. It doesn’t feel right or like it is supposed to happen and I need to figure out how to get excited about it!

3.  Send out Christmas cards by the end of the month! We have only done this once and I want to make it a tradition.

4. Successfully host Thanksgiving at my house for the first time (ties to number 1 big time). Pressure is on for number 1 for sure!

Beth –

Please be shocked and amazed that I find myself in sync with Teal and have almost all the same goals for this month! 🙂

1. Get my house in order!  I didn’t get ALL of my stuff moved out of my sister’s house before the wedding and with wedding presents there are A LOT of boxes over at my new house with my husband. 🙂 🙂 We both don’t like messes so this is hard to look at right now until we get it all organized and into place.

2. Get in the game with marathon training!

3. Have all Christmas cards addressed and ready to be sent out by December 1st!  I’m so excited to send out Christmas cards this year! 🙂  I have them already to order, so this goal shouldn’t be too hard to tackle!

4. I’m bringing back my yoga goals, and in baby steps. Yoga once a week!  If I don’t start doing this I’m going to need to either cancel my membership or freeze it to save some moolah.