[Not Entirely a] Marathon Running Weekend Part 1

January 23, 2012 by · 5 Comments

Twitter Road Race:

You got to love the weather in Texas! On Friday it was a warm almost 80 degrees and Teal woke up on Saturday morning to a chilly 36 degrees. Teal headed out early on Saturday before work and completed her #TwitterRoadRace early. The first mile was terrible. Her lungs were burning like crazy the entire time. She was kind of worried about running with a lot of speed- stupid foot, but ended up finishing in 28:38. Fairly slow considering but overall not too bad. For Teal this is the first time she had even attempted to run outside since the New Year’s Double. Had it not been for the road race she would have never set foot outside because of the cold. Yep—so glad we don’t live up north and have to deal with the snow. It was so encouraging to know that others in the running community were out doing the same thing and based on twitter many dealt with way worse conditions. Once finished her ears were ringing and she basically wanted to go back to bed. Is that bad??

Beth has a relatively new standing “date” with her trainer on Saturday morning’s at 10:00 a.m. and with a jammed back day of stuff to do decided to have the morning to do what she wanted before that workout. After workout she was off to meet a new client/Bride to pick up her wedding invitation envelopes to address, then pick up her Too Cold to Hold race packet and try and make it back home to run before yoga.  Beth made a first attempt at the #TwitterRoadRace but stopped because realistically it was cutting too close to her next thing to do.  She ended up doing her 5k AFTER we did our trail run at NorthShore.

 

Results of the Road Race:

Teal –

Finished 185th out of 347 runners!

Beth –

For whatever reason her results didn’t get counted. Boo! 🙁  Beth ran her 5k in 26:38 and would have tied @RunfosRunner for 122nd place.

 

Northshore Trail Run:

We both met at Sunstone Yoga at 1:30 to fit in a quick yoga session before heading out to the trail.  Neither of us really knew where we were going and ended up getting lost like 5 times before actually making it out there. We have both lived in Dallas forever, if not our entire lives, but were completely backwards in terms of where we were supposed to turn. 🙂

 

We ended up making it the trail with a little over an hour to run. We showed up at the gate and the man was like “you guys are ambitious.” Whoops… We started out the trail walking a little bit just to see how it would do and picked up running about a .25 mile in. The trail was not crowded, perhaps because it was so late in the day. It was very nice and open, much different from Erwin Park. We didn’t have to dodge as many trees and limbs like before. Here are a few pics of our route.

We changed it up a little and talked the entire run, totally not normal for us! Mostly about wedding stuff and just the weekend coming up and managed to make 2 miles in about 30 minutes. It’s crazy how much slower we are when running trails. We started heading back and both of us were kind of paying attention to time but not that well and apparently our talking made it hard for us to remember where we came from. Just like our drive in we had to turn around a couple of times. The sun was really starting to set by this time and we had again taken the wrong route back. Apparently we were having major directional problems Saturday. As we were running back on the shore you could see the park ranger man in his truck waiting around by our car. We ran the last stretch and managed to get to the car literally 2 minutes before the 5:40 cut off. 4 miles on the trail was very nice! We really liked this trail and seriously want to run it again, next time with more time of course!

 

Getting out there late and running until right up to the park closing gave us some gorgeous views of Grapevine Lake when the sun was setting! Completely worth it!  We’ll have the 2nd half of this weekend up in the next couple days! 🙂

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13 Things Friday

January 13, 2012 by · 8 Comments

In honor of Friday the 13th here are our thirteen things:

1.  Today is our LAST day of the Advocare cleanse! YAY!! Look for a recap next week.

2.  Two weeks from today we leave for Austin for our weekend of volunteering for the 3M Half Marathon. Our first volunteering experience together AND we can’t wait to meet Courtney & Luke…you know IRL!

3.  Tomorrow night we have a wine dinner at Beth’s house with friends both old and new – we can’t wait!

(source)

4.  This week Beth put a big check mark next to “pick Bridesmaid dresses” on her wedding to do list.  Extra bonus that the 4 BMs so far are happy with the dresses!

5.  In 4 weeks, Teal & Michael will be living alone for the first time in the history of their marriage. 🙂 No more roommates!

6.  Six weeks until we leave for our next big race weekend – Princess Half at Disney World!!!

7.  Since this month started Teal has attended 5 yoga classes and Beth has attended 10 yoga classes.  Will we meet our goals??

8.  Teal’s last semester of grad school starts Monday.

9.  We received some Celliant samples in the mail this week that we are anxious to try out!

10.  Teal is going to the doctor on Monday for her foot! Keep your fingers crossed for her pleeease!

11.  We got another NEW button on our blog! You can now buy Go Sport ID’s through us just by clicking the link on the right hand side of our blogy blog!

12.  We each have a secret goal of learning to swim in 2012 – you know as in be better swimmers because we know the absolute basics of swimming i.e. doggie paddling 😉

13.  We are not really superstitious.

13.1  Are you superstitious?  What race superstitions do you have?

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New Year, New Goals

January 2, 2012 by · 7 Comments

Last year [how is 2011 already last year??] we started out the year with a goal for the whole year and that really worked out for us!  That worked out for us for 2011, but if we are going to push ourselves and we are going to grow even more then we need to shake things up for 2012.  You might also see some minor changes to the look of the blog due to the new year and our new goals this month!

So to start 2012 we are going to try out monthly goals!

Teal:

1.  Attend a minimum of 10 yoga classes at Sunstone.  This is big time for me! I only had 25 classes last year. I took a huge break!

2.  Complete one extra day of weight training on my own.  I train with Will two days a week, but that is all the weight training I do.  I am scared of that side of the gym when I am alone, so I am going to buck up and start a progression of doing weights on my own.  Not that I am getting rid of Will, I just need to stop being a baby.

3.  Lose 4 pounds. I am stuck! I hate it and want to be unstuck!

4.  Read a book for pleasure!  Graduate school has killed any fun reading that I once did.  I have chosen to read Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger’s by John Elder Robison.

(source)

Beth:

1.  Complete 200 yoga classes.  The very end of January 2011 was when I started yoga and my goal all along was to complete 200 in one year.  I broke that goal into 50 classes every 3 months.  As of this morning I have 29 more classes to go!

2.  Do a hill workout every week.  If I blew off a day in my training schedule it was always hills, and I know I will benefit from doing them SO much.

3.  Organize my room! I love organization, but for the past year I feel like I’m running from one thing to the next.  All the organizing I once did has gone out the window, and it really makes me sad that I now resemble a messy person. 🙁

4.  Find a caterer for my wedding!  This is the next big item I want to get crossed of my wedding to do list!

We each have one last goal that we are both doing –

5. Complete a 10 day Advocare cleanse.

Teal is actually an Advocare distributor.  Checkout her website and/or order from her here.  She has done their 10 day cleanse two times before and saw weight lose results each time.  After all the eating over the holidays and as Teal mentioned before being stuck (not that Beth doesn’t feel the same way) we thought this would be the perfect way to jump start the new year.  Do a cleanse and start afresh.  As of Wednesday, January 4th we will start the cleanse and our last day will be Friday, January 13th.  We will go ahead and update you sooner than the end of the month on our cleanse, but these are our goals!  We’ll check back with you at the end of the month and go from there!

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New Year’s Double

December 30, 2011 by · 3 Comments

We are beyond excited for this weekend because it is officially time for the New Year’s Double! This race is seriously unique and amazing and comes to us via Libby Jones, who we absolutely love! For those of you who don’t know her she is also the director of North Texas Runners, a full time race director and mommy! She runs like a wild women and is truly amazing! We admire her for her work, organization and passion about running.  You can read all about the growth of this race since last year at here. It’s really incredible to see how this has taken shape.

This race is so amazing because it is a true double race. Runners could choose from a range of distances to run over a two day time from, either a 5K, ½ relay, ½ marathon or a full marathon and you could mix and match any way you choose to run one on New Year’s Eve Day and one on New Year’s Day. Brilliant huh?? What better way to start and end a year RIGHT! We decided that we would run two half marathons. So starting tomorrow morning we will head out and run our NYE half, marking the official end to what has been an awesome year. We felt that this was just so fitting to do and can not be more excited to end the Year of Running like this. After the race we will then go home, rest up, and get to watch a free screening for The Spirit of the Marathon courtesy of Cinemark Allen! Our boys will even go with us to this! 🙂

Then NYE we will spend with our significant others, eat and wake up NYD and do it all again! Seems nuts but this really is the best way to start out the year being active!

The race is located in Allen, Texas not far from us and is a a looped course.  We will complete 2 6.55 mile loops. It’s a very nice course and will all be on paved sidewalk!

We will update you on the cool perks and loot from this race in our recap, we don’t want to give that away now 😉  Let’s just say if we really have ever been excited about race bling its for this race!

We usually set goals for our races as you have seen from the past, but we are not going to set time goals for this race. Coming off of the White Rock Marathon and the training for that we have definitely needed some recuperation. As many of you know Teal has had a nagging foot problem since the race and has been working hard to heal that foot (read about her foot problems here). She is still having some pain and has literally only run 8 mile total since White Rock. Beth has been keeping busy with yoga, Johnny’s, spin and has run very little as well and just healing her body.

Our goals are to run smart, safe, and to not be stubborn. We have never run a double before and while we know we can make 26.2 WAHOO! We do not know how our bodies will feel this weekend given the amount of running compared to the lack of running this month. The goal is to come out of this race enjoying the experience of a small, local, well put together race! It really is, as cheesy as this might be, a good time to reflect on the past year and to think about the year to come! Wish us luck! We’ll tell you all about it next week 🙂

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Lazy Solo Running Weekend

October 24, 2011 by · 7 Comments

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 that ‘What’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?

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