Texas Doesn’t Really Have Four Seasons Anyway!

Happy Monday, friends!  Thank you to everyone who is bearing with us as we are in the last couple of weeks before THE wedding and trying to get everything accomplished!  Speaking of the wedding…this weekend we kicked off our Saturday with a wedding shower for Beth thrown by her mom’s close friends.

photo courtesy of Kate O. Lynch

We don’t actually have a picture of us there together. Sad day! But there were mimosas there – yum!

In our Taco Run recap Teal mentioned that she’d strained her groin muscle and the reality of that strain was the potential need to take an entire week off from running.  BUT race 3 out of 4 in our four season challenge was scheduled for this Sunday!?  We discussed how this was possibly sign #2 that we weren’t meant to do this challenge right now.  The day before the Hottest Half in August Teal had a calf injury due to some fun tubing on the lake.  We both said that no matter what training for our marathon was more important than running Tyler Rose and to worsen the muscle strain on Teal was not an option for us.  Turns out she was getting back to normal by the end of the week, so we could run Tyler Rose!

BUT that didn’t mean we ready to spend the four hours in the car for the round trip out to Tyler.  We might have been a little ambitious back in March when we thought doing a race 21 days before Beth’s wedding would be a good idea.  Well, not just a race, but a race where we would be getting up at 4:00 a.m., driving two hours to the race, running two-ish hours and then driving back to Dallas for two hours.

Beth’s sister, Kate, made the executive decision for us (because neither one of us wanted to actually make it) that we would stay put in Dallas. Thank you,Kate! So Sunday morning we met up for our first long run of marathon training – 13.1 miles. We’re coming for you Louisiana Marathon!

We had a cold front come through Friday night so the chilly weather was still there Sunday morning.  For the first time in a long time we went outside to 48 degree weather!  Of course you know it’s always hard to remember what exactly you want to wear in that type of weather, but we were both content with our choices and neither one of us got overly hot out on the run.  Details you really wanted to know about, right??

Teal’s fancy new garmin!

Of course at this stage in the game a half is something we have done a lot of, so we both felt good out there.  This weekend does mark a first for us – DNS.  We’ve run a lot of races and had yet to DNS, but we did and we don’t regret it. We needed to for our own sanity.  We will still race the 4th half in our four seasons challenge come February, but we won’t actually receive that four seasons medal. 🙁

 

A couple of the other benefits of us staying tight in Dallas instead of going to Tyler was Beth got to be on time to Birthday brunch for her dad, and we both had the opportunity to grocery shop and prepare for our 10 day cleanse.  That’s right – we are advocare cleansing again! 🙂  When we’ve done this in the past we have had quite a few questions about it which also includes Beth asking Teal eleventy billion questions each time, so we’ve decided to share more details of our cleanse throughout this week and maybe a little of next week with you too. 🙂  Hope at least one or two of you out there are interested in knowing more.

What was your first race DNS? Do you regret?

September Recap & October Goals

Ahh yah! Look at us, we are posting our goals ON October 1st!  We aren’t complete slackers……well, read on and decide for yourselves! 🙂

Teal:

1. Make Bridesmaid dress fit!

F-: I have no clue, I haven’t tried it on again. Maybe I should do that??

2. Read my book club book before September 23rd without having to cram, but hopefully Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult will hold my interest (I am not a big fiction book person and the club turned down my 100 Year Lie suggestion).

B: I finished and technically the night before so that is better than the last time where I was 15 minutes late and couldn’t shower because I was finishing it on the way out the door!

3. Log food within 100 calories of goal.

B+: I logged 21 days straight and for the most part those days were fairly close to this goal. That was for sure the best month I have had lately in logging food!

4. Not cry on my 30th Birthday!

A+++: I didn’t and now I am 30 and the world has not ended and no one has called me old. And PS: Thank you so everyone for all of the awesome birthday wishes, you made it so much easier to handle!

Beth:

1. Run 20 miles a week.

F: Only one week out of the whole month I actually made 20 miles and that was this last week. :-/ At least I did it once instead of not at all??

Daily Mile monthly log

2. Not kill anyone….haha, not trying to be morbid, but wedding planning is HARD!

A+: I didn’t! Everyone is still alive! I did cry a couple times, but again, everyone is still alive!

Joint:

1. Figure out and finalize our marathon training plan!

A+: We did and we even signed up for a few races to go along with it! Check out our Race Schedule page if you want to join us for some races.

2. Run a good, strong race at Tour des Fleurs since we will be basing our training times off of this 10k!

A+: We both PR’d at TDF, so we definitely count that as a good, strong race!!

***

This month since things will reeeeally be crazy since Beth & Brent’s wedding is only 26 days away we are joining forces and only having joint goals! They are:

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

2. Start marathon training!

3. Get Beth married!

photo courtesy of Jeffrey Lynch

When You’re Too Busy to Run Just Run for the Tacos

Ummmm how is it September 28th?  We know it has flown by and it is officially less than a month until Beth’s wedding! And yes we know we say that every month…maybe when the wedding is over we’ll stop saying it. 🙂 Maybe. Crunch time for everything and we are having a super hard time getting all of our running in soooooo we have therefore signed up for a last minute race just to make sure we get it in! On Wednesday we both signed up to run The Great Taco Run 10 miler! This ends up being perfect because right after we signed up a few things came up to get done over the weekend and now we at least have a paid excuse as to why we have to run first! You do what you gotta do, right?? This is a perfect distance for us this weekend given its only 1 week until the Tyler Rose half marathon, the 3rd of our four seasons challenge!  Neither one of us have gotten in a good long run in a while (raise your hand if you are not shocked by this trend!)

(source)

 

Apparently tacos are becoming the new post race eating trend and this Dallas race has decided to jump on that bandwagon. We totally don’t mind, and in fact we are pretty sure this will make Beth’s fiancé jealous! 13 different taco shops in Dallas will be at the after race portion to hand out tacos to the runners! The runners will get to try each taco and vote on the best! HELLO, we aren’t sure why we didn’t think of this first. The winner is apparently announced on October 4th, which just so happens to be National Taco Day, in case you didn’t know!

Bonus- this race supports Friends of the Katy Trail, one of the most popular running trails in North Texas, as well as the Trinity Strand Trail who is working super hard to organize a new 7.8 mile trail along the Trinity River waterway! So we totally don’t feel bad for “last minute signing up” for this race just to get in a long run.

Beth has actually run a 10 miler sans Teal at the White Rock ‘n’ Roll race in May. She finished with a time of 1:32:16 and Teal has never actually run a 10 miler before! Either way we should both be in for a good long run!

Will we see anyone there?  If so let us know because we, as usual, would totally love to meet/see/hang out with you!

How do you guys balance life’s madness with running? We like tips for sure. We are literally about to start training for our second marathon! This race will actually kick it off! Let us know how you keep on track!

C is for Crafts, Cake & Cocktails

This weekend both our guys were headed out of town for Brent’s bachelor party. Beth was planning on doing some wedding crafting with all of that free time! Wilson was sad to see Michael packing. He’s so smart and knew that meant Michael was going away. Look at that face!

Teal & Michael’s doggie, Wilson

The two of us and Beth’s sister, Kate, decided to get the crafting started on Friday night.  So we decided to get in some hill work on the gynormous Windhaven  hill in preparation for our Tyler Rose half marathon coming up.

Hill work done!

Also, a big thank you to, Kate for making us pulled pork tacos from the crockpot for dinner Friday night! Mmmmm! Saturday Teal of course at to work so Beth, Kate and our friend Mandy got to work on crafting that morning.  Mandy brought along the flower girl or you know Meranda, her daughter to the crafting adventure.

Sweet little Meranda turned 3 on Sunday so she got some Birthday goodies while at craft time.  She makes a good princess, don’t you think?

And then our running buddy, Bitner, turned 30 this past week so we went and enjoyed some wine at Times Ten Cellars with him to celebrate!!  It was such a nice day to sit on the patio and enjoy some vino!

Kate, Beth, Teal & Bit

Checkout the cake we had! Not only did it look beautiful, but it was dee-licious!

We actually did A LOT of crafting this past weekend and hopefully everything will actually be done by the time the wedding is here! 🙂