The Happiest Race on Earth Weekend [Part Two]

September 5, 2012 by · 7 Comments

Like we mentioned in our post yesterday, Disneyland Half started bright and early at 5:45 a.m., and we had about a twenty to twenty-five minute drive into Anaheim that morning. We made it out the door by 4:10 a.m. – if only we’d asked Chris to refresh our memories of the directions he gave us last year to get to Disneyland. We did not get there, parked and in the corral with that much time to spare, but thankfully we did make it into the corral before the race started. We were actually able to make a quick port-a-pottie trip and even able to snap a picture. Kind of laughing because this guy had just offered to take a picture of the lady taking our picture with us then he realized “ohh, you aren’t wearing a matching outfit like them!”

That guy and his two buddies with him all had on matching knee high yellow socks. They started being all chatting and the main thing that stuck with us was one of them saying “what’s your goal for today? 1:45? 1:30?” We responded with “we’ve kind of been slacking because we are starting marathon training soon so…..no, not a 1:45 or 1:30” Not to mention neither of us has ever run a half anywhere near that fast! We then overheard them talking out a plan for the race ” let’s start out at an 8:45 pace til mile….then at mile…we’ll go down to a 8:15” And next thing we know the announcers are sending us on our way!

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We had really been hoping to see Lisa before the race since we were all in corral A, but we had just gotten there too late for that to happen! We would have held out hope to see her at the end, but we didn’t need to as she found us very quickly after the start! From here we give our race recap from our own perspectives –

Miles 1-3

Teal: I was overall very scared of what would happen during this race given that 2 weeks earlier I wanted to die after 4 miles and really had one of the worst races ever. I do not feel in shape right now so I worried big time. Running in California and the weather there proves to be the biggest God send in racing! It’s SOOOO much different than Texas madness and my body just does a complete 180 in terms of how it feels. Miles 1-3 felt awesome! The crowd is amazing; going through the park is so fun. We had a few changes this year at the beginning! The colored lights in the water and a run through cars world made it awesome. I think at one point I looked at Beth and said “yea this race is soo much better than Disneyworld” and really I mean so much better than most races period. It’s just so different in terms of the atmosphere, the Disney staff really comes out to support and there is never a dull moment.

Beth: I had not set any goals for this race and last year we had both run it at the 2:00-ish mark, so that and my want to run more sub 2:00 halfs than not in 2012 was all lingering in the back of my mind. BUT my performance at Hottest Half and just running this summer didn’t give me that faith in myself to pull through this race with a satisfying to me time. The first few miles of this race were really fun! We ran through California Adventures and got to see the cool water/light show at Paradise Pier (wish I could have snapped a not blurry picture there) and see the new Cars area of the park! I knew my nephew Wesley would LOVE it if I had taken a picture with Tow-Mater and/or Lightning McQueen and shown it to him, but no, I didn’t want to stop. 🙂 Sorry, Wesley! Plus, I didn’t want to lose Teal and Lisa so early on in the race!

photo by Michael Huey

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Miles 4-8

Teal: I am still doing really well body wise here. I just keep giving myself a mile goal every time I hit the Disney sign. I knew my runkeeper was off because I started it too early. I just kept saying, one mile at a time and get there under X time frame. This worked well and I really felt good. I think I slowed down slightly from Beth and Lisa around 6.5 or 7 but I still felt ok, just not like I could keep that pace up for the entire race. I knew once I got to 8 it would be ok, but closer to mile 8 I really got that “ I’m not in shape chest pressure feel” if anyone knows what that really is, it was just hard to breathe for no other reason than I was tiring. I knew Angel’s stadium was around 9 miles from last year and really focused on getting there! I should also add that this stretch of the race was lame because the sun was literally right in your eyes and you could almost not even see all the things they had lining the streets! This section had tons of both vintage and modern cars that you just couldn’t see because of the glare.

Beth: We’ve just left Disneyland and are out running on the streets of Anaheim. This is the part where Disney does a fabulous job of not leaving us all our there alone. With all the cheer squads, bands and different dancers (Hawaiian and mariachi) you can’t help but stay pumped up. I was trying to take it mile by mile and see how I felt. The beginning of this section, I believe, was where there is the on big incline (bridge) to run over and I was excited when it didn’t take a whole lot out of me.  It was somewhere between mile 6 and 7 that I kind of evaluated how I felt as I had been waiting to reach the halfway-ish point for that.  I giggled a little when I heard to other runners discussing where the half way point was and that it would be at 6.55 miles.  I knew we’d kept our pace under 9:30/mile, so I decided to just go for it.  See what all I had to give.  It was also at this point the sun was in my eyes, so I just put my head down and went for it.  I knew that exciting times were ahead of me based on running this race last year and reaching the Honda Center in mile.  So I knew that Angels Stadium was up after that and I just kept thinking “did they change it this year? Do we still get to go through the stadium?! Please let us still go through the stadium!!”

Miles 9-13.1

Teal: Home stretch!! Thank god. I also love everyone’s reaction going into the stadium. This women next to me literally starting yelling “ This is so cool, this is amazing, are we really going in there!?” It’s just so freaking cool. I wish Dallas ( wink wink ) would do something like that! Hello, both Rangers and the Dallas Cowboys Stadium are right next to each other! The last 5 miles of this race were a test. I was very tired but I knew I wanted to just keep running and get it over with. After running through Angel’s stadium you really get a burst of energy. At about 10 miles my true test came. I don’t know if I was running very tight in my upper body or what, but my entire chest from like mid chest all the way to mid back felt strained, like muscle strained (it actually still hurts now, 4 days later) so something was up. That coupled with my “out of shape feeling” from before was extremely painful. I just kept taking deeper breathes and kept going. At around 12 I ended up passing one of our yellow sock boys from the beginning. He was too far away for me to get the energy to run over to, but he was completely stopped stretching his calf muscles! It might be evil but in my head that made me so happy to beat him, given their predictions at the beginning of the race! Shortly after, around 12.5 this kid running in front of me literally lost his breakfast! I had to jump over it as to not run in it. I still was pretty close to him at the finish and he threw up again. I keep laughing because you can even see him do it in the Disney video of the finish!! Gross! That is the first time I have come that close to someone throwing up ON me.

Beth: As I got closer I knew we were in fact going into Angels Stadium again and I was SO excited!  The energy in there is incredible!  It was also going into the stadium that there was a Clif Station where they were passing out gels.  I was so glad because I’d actually forgotten to get my Hammer gel out of my purse that morning. Anyway, back to the stadium, the energy just came upon you immediately!  I did my best to high five as many boy scouts, girl scouts and other little kids that were front row. What a high!  I had kind of forgotten that just shortly after leaving the stadium we would hit the 10 mile mark!  And shortly after that was when I saw one of the yellow socks guys.  Pretty positive a grin probably spread across my face seeing him stopped and stretching his calf out. Evil? Yes, I probably am, especially since I went and hit him on the arm and said “let’s go yellow socks!”  He ran with me for a minute and I told him “We just have a 5K left let’s do this” and I might have followed that up with “you can’t let me beat you across the finish line!”  He said he accepted the challenge and then a minute later was stopped again. Another little burst of energy from knowing that they had been talking a big game in the corral, but I’d finish ahead of him.  From here until the end all I was thinking was “can I make this in under two hours?? Can I really pull this off?! It is going to be so freakin’ close if I do!”  Just kept digging deep and I’d also like to say that I really felt the impact of my bleacher Tuesday workouts through this race.  I feel like that really did have a huge part of my performance at this race!  I got to mile 12 and knew I needed to play it safe.  If I push too hard here I won’t make it across that finish line without throwing up, but I also didn’t want to play it too safe and regret not pushing a little bit harder.  I heard someone say to me as I was leaving Angels Stadium, “you’re still running this with a smile on your face!”  Yah, it totally disappeared in mile 12. Ha!  I got closer to the finish line and again knew I was teetering the two hour mark, tried to push a little harder, and no, there’s the need to vomit.  I held it in until I got to the trash can just on the other side of the finish line (my video at the finish line you can actually see me throw up – ha!). Done! But did I make it in under 2 hours? I didn’t think so, I was pretty convinced I had run a 2:00:10 half.  The official race photographers actually captured a picture of me where I have the I am going to vomit look on my face ! Ha.

We also think it is cool to see what a difference even 2 weeks makes! Just look at these splits (even though they are slightly embarrassing) This is improvement and we totally feel like progress is being made from this slump in running lately! Yea!

Teal:

Beth:

Regardless, we DID IT!!  We completed our two Disney races and earned our Coast to Coast Challenge medal!  Teal actually overheard someone after receiving their Coast to Coast medal say “this cost me $2,000.”  Which is why we need to say a BIG thank you to Chris for allowing us to stay with him and drive his car this past weekend!  We canNOT thank you enough and we both look forward to seeing you next month at Beth’s wedding!! 🙂 It is such a pretty, shiny medal though!

If we did not express it enough earlier, we would like to take the opportunity to say this is a fabulous race!  The course is awesome for multiple reasons – the water stations are fabulous, wonderful volunteers, so much course entertainment and so many awesome course sights to see!  We highly, HIGHLY recommend you take the opportunity to plan a trip to Disneyland over Labor Day weekend and experience this awesome race!  This race might not see us again for awhile or at all, but it truly is a once in a lifetime experience (we were just lucky enough to experience it twice).  We hope to hear of more running friends going out to Anaheim and enjoying it!  We wanna read your recaps and live vicariously through you!! 🙂

Overall Results

Teal: 2:08:12, finished 2,720th out of 14,829 finishers, 1,053rd female and 198th in age group

Beth: 1:59:58, finished 1,779th out of 14,829 finishers, 585th female and 97th in age group

To see more pictures from our Disneyland Half race weekend please checkout the Life is a Run Facebook Page

What is your absolute favorite race you’ve run so far??

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Wounded Warrior 10K

June 11, 2012 by · 8 Comments

This weekend was another solo race weekend….well, kind of!  Teal was off at a friend’s wedding in the Dominican Republic and I was still here in Tejas! 🙂  I might have driven to the Wounded Warrior race alone, but managed to see some friends out there!  Before I could even get out of my car I saw my friends Ashley & Jason walk by.  Somehow I always miss them at races so I jumped out of my car as fast as I could to catch up with them.  I’d also planned on meeting up with a few other twitter ladies, but sadly we didn’t all see each other! :-/  We’ll have to work on that again for another race, Caron & Kyra!!  But it was SO good to meet Shannon as well as your mom and Cory!

Totally stole this picture from Shannon! 🙂

The half marathon started 15 minutes before the 10k, so we all parted ways.  I walked up to see the half marathoners take off and chatted with a mom and her daughter who were also doing the 10K.  Loved hearing about how her other daughter was running the half and she had gotten them into doing races.  They’d driven up from Katy (Houston area) to participate in the Wounded Warrior race.  The mom told me she would probably be the last person finished.  I quickly told her I doubted it and with her run walk method she had she would be ahead of others.  I was proud of her when I saw her on the back part of my race and there were plenty of people behind her.  I quickly gave her a high five and told her good job and to keep it up!

Anyways, back to the start of this race, I had run this same race last year and kind of knew what I was getting into.  I just kept thinking let’s get this done and over with before it’s reeeally hot out there.  Off we were!  Within the first half of a mile I realized they had made the course different this year which was nice because it created less direct sunlight as a lot of it was on the Campion Trail in Irving.  I ran without any sort of water on me, but grabbed some at each water stop.

Thanks to my Runkeeper app I knew I was coming up on the 3.1 mark and therefore the turnaround because I might have missed it.  I didn’t need to make this a longer race than it was suppose to be like I did Too Hot to Handle last year! Ha, but there was only a small sign that said turn around.  Not a human being there to reassure you that you do in fact need to turn around.  Turn around here? Or like this is my warning sign that it’s coming up??  A barefoot man in front of me yelled TURN AROUND and I then said this is really the turn around??  But I followed his lead and figured if I needed to I could just admit to all of you I accidentally cut my run short.  That is probably my one and only complaint about the race, but I think the Race Director does such a good job with this one that I can let it slide. 🙂

Once I turned around I kind of had a need to vomit feeling hanging around me for the last three miles.  I just wanted to be finished with the heat.  I drank water, dumped water on myself, took cold towels from the awesome volunteers and kept chugging along.  When I got off the Campion Trail I was in the home stretch for the finish line.  I kept telling myself to push but not so hard that you do in fact vomit.  Well, guess I did push too hard bc in the last .1 of a mile I had to pull over to the side and you know…vomit not once, not twice, but three times. Ha.  See I knew my pace had a potential for a new PR, so I was having an inner struggle of get that PR yet don’t kill yourself.

I didn’t get a PR yesterday and I’m completely OK with that.  I crossed the finished line running with 2 minutes and some change until the hour mark and I’m proud of that.  If you look at my results online I finished 10th in my age group and 170th overall and I’m proud of that!  If you look at the ladies who finished 8th and 9th in my age group even if I hadn’t have had to make my little stop before the finish line I wouldn’t have gotten there faster than them and would have still been 10th in my age group.

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Thanks to April who got to see my fun incident right before the finish for checking on me!  I got some water, powerade and pop ice in me and was feeling MUCH better!  I absolutely love that they provide pop ice at the end of this race!  Love it so much I ate three of them!

After that I hung around to see if I might see anyone else that I know plus I knew Ashley was around somewhere with their cute dog, Atlas, since she’s sidelined from running right now. 🙁  Hoping your recovery time heals you up all the way, lady!  Overall, it was fun just sitting and watching people finish and the soliders that were out there.  Love this race! It is for such a good cause that even though it’s freakin’ hot in Texas in June it still draws a crowd!  This was the Wounded Warrior Half Marathon & 10K’s third year and drew in over 3,000 runners and doubled their fundraising this year from last to over $50,000 raised for the Semper Fi fund.

I ran into Jason, Ashley & Atlas again after Jason completed his half.  Congrats to you on a new PR and completing a half in that heat!  So impressed with everyone that goes out there and runs the half in that toasty weather!

If you are in the Dallas area you should really consider adding this race to your schedule for next year!  Like I said it’s for a great cause, but it is also a race that is put on really well!

Do you have a race that you go back to every year that despite everything else the cause gets you signed up again and again?

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Princesses for a Day: Race Recap

February 28, 2012 by · 19 Comments

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Our alarm clock went off at 3:00 a.m.! Holy cow, Disney! We get it – you want everyone to get through and out of your parks before they open, but that is one early wake up call for a 5:45 a.m. race not to mention you HAD to be in your corral by 5:00 a.m. or ELSE! Ha (Guess who wasn’t in their corral by 5:00 a.m.??) We got dressed in our princess costumes and were out the door of Sheraton Safari by 3:40 a.m. ready to face race traffic.  Pretty sure we in the car for an hour which gave us time to make peanut butter sandwiches to keep us fueled.

Yummy - peanut butter sandwiches made with Beth's finger! Ha

Once we parked we had a good 20 minute walk to our corral, so we decided to not stop to use the rest room because it was slight madness. Plus we were running late at this point to get into the corral on time.  When we got to the corral area we knew that Heidi was in corral B so we began looking for her just knowing we would see her at the front of that corral.  Good thing we started looking early because there were Heidi & Brian at the front of corral C. Apparently if you are a Prince running this race you can’t go any higher up than corral C.

such a colorful picture!

We are not quite sure how it happened but we both were assigned the same corral for like the first time EVER and we were in corral A! It was awesome to be up front in a line of 20,000 people!

see how close we were to the start line?

We started right on time! Way to go Disney and since we had made getting to our corral a priority over anything else we both decided to make an immediate stop at the first port-o-potties we spotted on the course!  The whole first of half of the race flew by so it’s hard to remember everything by miles totally.  Our plan was to run together, treat it as a training run and take pictures with characters when we wanted to do so.  The competitive side to both of us still lives on a bit in that we still wanted a decent time despite the stops, but again we were fortunate to be in corral A because this gave us the advantage of being in front of thousands of people who would want to stop as well.  We did stop at the first group of characters that we saw….

We loved how real looking the step sisters and Cruella Deville were!

Cinderella's Castle was the half way point of the race

The volunteers out there were awesome!!  We didn’t even have to ask someone to take that picture, the volunteer noticed us stop and she just came up to us and asked if she could take the picture for us!

We really didn’t have a plan at who to stop at or what we wanted to do we just knew that we wanted to see our princesses! We ended up stopping at Buzz Lightyear who of course is a favorite not only to us but our little nephews!   As you will find out through our pictures it’s a good thing we stopped because Princess Ariel ended up not being on the course! 🙁

the other side of Cinderella's castle

Somewhere in the mile 7 part of the course we found Beth’s character – Belle!  Wonder what all the characters came up with to say to people as they were having their picture taken because Belle said to Beth “it looks like you’ve been in my closet!”

Speaking of mile markers! We loved the signs for each mile!  At mile 8 we finally snapped a picture of one:

There were a couple of hills in the last few miles and thanks to one of the toy soldiers from Toy Story for the encouragement to conquer the hill in  mile 10.  It was amazing how his voice was exactly like the movie!  We’ve said before we aren’t really big on stopping and starting on a run which is completely a personal preference we both share.  The picture breaks were hard on our bodies, but we pressed on despite that.  In hindsight it might have been a blessing in disguise that Ariel was not seen out there because our last stop at Belle was rough!  Our bodies might have been hurting but  with the kick we gave it at the end you never would have known!  If you look at our runkeeper entries for this race Teal finished her last .1 in a 6:20 pace and Beth finished in her last .1 in a 8:03 pace.  Perhaps this speaks to how it’s hard to have a GPS device be completely accurate as we crossed the finish line right next to each other.  A more accurate pace would probably be an average of the two times something more in the 7 minute range.  We were hauling!  We are really good at keep training runs JUST training runs. 🙂

Half Marathon number eight is in the bag!  We did and our very proud of ourselves!  Our official time was 2:13:35 exactly for both of us, and we tried to stop and start our runkeeper when would take picture breaks because we wanted to know the difference :), so that time was 2:03:49.  By the time we were finished both of us had A LOT of our fuel for the race leftover – swedish fish.  Once Teal got some ice on her foot and knee and Beth put biofreeze on her knees and calves we grabbed our checked bag and were out of there to find food. We were staaaarving!

Isn't it purdy?

So now we have 1/2 of the Coast to Coast challenge finished and just need to complete Disneyland Half Marathon in September which we thankfully got signed up in time as it was sold out before we left for the Princess Half!  Check back with us tomorrow to see what all we did in the non racing parts of the weekend! 🙂

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Austin, 3M Volunteering & Weekend of Good People!

January 31, 2012 by · 4 Comments

Ok, so we left you with our “Seven Things Friday” and we figured to recap our weekend we’d let you see how we did on those seven things, so here goes.

1. We are going to AUSTIN today after work!! Wheee!

Well we did and we made it back safe & sound!  Though we are still trying to work on the whole teleportation thing so we don’t have to endure the hours in the car!

2.  So that we can volunteer at the 3M Half Marathon!

We had two volunteer shifts over the weekend and our first was Saturday working packet pickup.  We walked in and were immediately put behind computers next to each other to help check people in.  Those 4 hours fa-lew by!  So many happy runners coming to pickup their bib, chip and awesome swag bag!

It was so sad hearing stories of people who thought they were registered for the race, but their registration really did not go through or they thought they’d still be able to get a spot, but it was sold out.  Definitely a lesson in registering ASAP and double checking your confirmation!

Then we were up bright & early race day morning to help pass out medals.  Along with other volunteers, we unwrapped 6,000 medals for the half & half relay which took about an hour and a half or so.

We had good timing because the first person to finish came in completing his half right around 1:07.  The 1:40 to 2:15 finish time frame was the when the BIG rush came in.  It was awesome!  Seeing the finishers’ faces and being able to congratulate them!  Some people were so excited that they even asked Teal if it was time for a smooch.  Then there were tamer moments like when Beth put a medal around a man’s neck and he wrapped his arms (stinky, sweaty and all) around her for a hug.

The whole time we were looking for our friends who were out there running to finish.  Our first familiar face was from C-Stand [we can’t stop calling you that :)]!!

Pretty positive it was those crazy pants that gave her a kick ass (sorry mom, we used the a word) PR!! Way to go lady! 😉  But really, Courtney, you killed it out there WAY TO GO for real!

Just a few minutes later in came Courtney a.k.a. @cisforcourtney who was easily spotted by us in her purple tank, Teal  yelled out to her and she came running over to us!  It was so cool to put that shiny medal around her neck!  You’ll have to check out her bloggy blog to see how awesome her PR was!

We also got to see and medal Lesley (@RacingItOff) and Tricia (@TriciaRunning) after their beer race 🙂  You ladies awesome! We have managed to see Lesley at a handful of races in Dallas, but it’s never for thaaat long. We have got to fix that!

We should mention we saw a couple of familiar faces from New Years Double out there too! Each of us spoke to one of them briefly – other NYD runners would know him as the marathon winner of New Year’s Eve and her as the half marathon winner of both days!

It was neat to be there and see the entire spectrum of runners out there from an 11 year old boy running his first half to a 62 year old woman crossing off “run a half marathon” from her bucket list.  She was so proud of herself, as she should be, because she could tell her kids that run marathons she had completed a half marathon. LOVED that!  We were there to see the 30 year old first finisher cross the finish line to the 69 year old who was the person to run across that finish line and regardless of their time each of them had such a sense of accomplishment to them!  Just further proving running is really for anyone with a goal!  Such. A. Great. Experience!

3. We are SO excited to get to meet Courtney & Luke!

Obviously you know we saw Courtney at the end of her race, but we first got to FINALLY meet her and Luke during our packet pickup shift! Who doesn’t love meeting someone and being handed over de-licious goodness in the form of a s’mores cupcake??  We also got to hangout with them for a little bit Saturday night too at this cute bar – Dive Bar.  While it was fun to hang with them that night it was at a bar where it was hard to talk and all hear each other, so we were grateful for the opportunity to see them Sunday afternoon too at Austin Java!  Courtney & Luke, you two are awesome!  We loved getting to see you, spend time with you and we can’t wait for the next time!! 🙂

You two are wonderful and we WISH we lived in the same city as you guys!

4.  We are officially signed up for the ZOOMA Austin Half on March 31, 2012!!

Yep, we still are!! 🙂  THAT didn’t change over the weekend, so you should sign up if you STILL have not…AND we still have a coupon code good through TODAY!  You know you wanna!!

5.  Neither of us have actually run in Austin and you know what? We are going to change that this weekend!

OOPS!! Yah, we didn’t!! Wait, we saw a bunch of runners, does that count?? Guess we’ll change that when we run ZOOMA!

6.  We canNOT wait to get coffee at The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf – have been dreaming about it since our last trip to Austin!

Yep, we went there! TWICE!  One trip there we might have gotten more than one drink! 🙂  It is safe to say that we are also a fan of their breakfast food there! We would have made a third trip there but we cheated and went to Austin Java.  Brigid to answer you question the other day – when we go there Teal gets either a sugar free caramel latte or vanilla latte and Beth tends to stick with Hazelnut.  If we are remembering correcting all of their drinks with milk are made with non fat milk.  And now we are dreaming about them again…..

7.  We really wanted to post 27 things…

Aren’t you glad we didn’t post 27 things this time either?? 🙂

We also would like to say thank you to Mary Alice for once again letting us crash with you!  And thanks to Mandy & her cute little munchkin, Meranda for meeting us for dinner Saturday night!

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