How often do you seek out new routes to run in your city? What keeps you from finding new areas to run?
Weekend Update!
May 15, 2012 by · 4 Comments
You might be wondering what we have been up to since we have taken a short break from running, kind of….well, OK, at least official ½ marathons every weekend 🙂
So here is a quick update of this weekend!!
Friday Teal graduated with her Master’s Degree from the University of North Texas- as you saw on Friday’s post but why not repeat it!?! Long time coming!!
Michael & Teal
Teal and her parents
Beth is trucking along in wedding planning, (How is it already the middle of May?) and has been super busy checking things off the to do list. This week she got to check off the WEDDING CAKE!! Can’t wait to eat that for sure! Then was able to also take advantage of the fact that one of our best friends, Rebekah, was in town. Rebekah is an awesome quilter/seamstress and Beth has a secret sewing project in her mind! As a bonus Beth was able to hang with Baby Eliza who you may remember from one of our Christmas posts! She is growing up SO fast!
Such a happy girl!
Because one picture just isn’t enough! See how cute she is?!
Saturday we were both able to meet up and have a graduation celebration and spend more time with Rebekah and of course our other close friends!! We ate at Coal Vines for dinner and had a blast, despite that fact that it took FOR. EV. ER. to get a seat. (you think we are kidding….nope it’s the truth!) Seating a party of 10 at a busy restrurant on a Saturday may have not been the best idea but we made it work! 🙂
Sunday was of course Mother’s day and who doesn’t want to celebrate Mom!! Teal at her Granny’s house for a cookout and Beth at Babe’s Chicken. SOOOO good!
Teal and her brothers – Trey and Brad
Beth & her oldest nephew, Wesley, on Mother’s Day! If you look close enough on the left you can see Beth’s Mom!
And you think that wasn’t enough?? We got in a little work out too!!
Beth headed out for a 6 plus mile run
And Teal to do some bleacher work at the local high school!
Let us know how your weekend was! We would also like to give a belated shout out to all of the Mother’s out there! You do more than anyone could ever know! Hope you had a fabulous weekend! 🙂
Today isn’t Just Friday, It’s….
May 11, 2012 by · 23 Comments
…..GRADUATION DAY!!! A big congrats to Teal and her husband, Michael, who will both be walking the stage at the University of North Texas today!!
Teal has been like a super woman the last few years being a full time teacher, attending grad school and working part time for her dad at Mower Medic! Enjoy the day, Teal!! Congrats!! 🙂
May not have totally Rocked it, but at least I didn’t Roll!!
May 7, 2012 by · 15 Comments
After spending a few hours Friday helping with packet pickup for White Rock ‘n’ Roll I was getting pretty excited to participate in the race. If you aren’t already excited all on your own for a race there’s no better way to get pumped than volunteering for a race. Or at least maybe that’s just my opinion?!
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I slept in until 6:00 a.m. Saturday morning and was thrilled that I got to do that. I was out the door by about 6:30 a.m. and immediately thought “man, it’s gonna be hot…wish this race was starting in 30-40 minutes from now Buuuuuttt I still liked sleeping in!” Then I realize that my plan of bringing both my camelbak and my armband for my iPhone to choose between running with or without water was no longer an option as my armband was still sitting on the counter in my kitchen. Pretty sure I was a big mess that morning as I also didn’t know where my headphones were but they magically appeared in my car. 🙂 Guess I should just be glad I made it to White Rock Lake period. Ha 😉
Before the race got started I got to see some familiar faces out there! Fellow NTX Runner, Jesse, and two tweeps I’d made friends before knowing we all had running in common, Tom & Matt. Great to see all of you out there!
The race got started and I’m pretty sure the whole time I was out there could be equated to me having hot flashes. One minute I’m thinking this isn’t so bad there’s a breeze here in the shade! The next minute the shade goes away and holy cow I’m HOT! This basically sums up how I felt the whole time. The course was an out and back so I kept thinking just get to 5 miles and you got this! A little bit before mile 5 I saw Jesse and was able to give him a little cheer since he was really one of the only people I knew running the 10 mile distance he was the only one I was looking for to see out there.
I know I started out fast which was not on purpose at all and I tried to keep it steady the rest of the way so I would survive in the heat. Plus if I was going to have a chance of kickin’ it up a notch at the end I knew I needed to keep it at a steady pace. My main goal out there on the course was to finish it without walking. Accomplished. Very early on I thought that I should try for finishing under 1:30, but then I realized I was forgetting it was 10 miles not 9 and altered that goal to finishing under 1:35.
Another nice surprise out on the course was a familiar face at a water stop along the course, Paul! He was giving out lots of encouraging and happy words to all the runners! His pep was just what I needed when I saw him again on the way back! Thank you for that, Paul!
Pretty sure I’ve mentioned before I usually run with music, but there’s a majority of the time that I’m actually lost in my own thoughts than the actual music. My ears did perk up though in the last mile as Beastie Boys – Fight for Your Right. Which helped push me to the end. I didn’t have enough in the tank to kick it up a notch in the last mile, but I did have enough to sprint it out at the very end.
sprintin’ it in!
(Thanks to Jose Vega posting this picture on Facebook – hope it’s ok I stole it :))
My official results were 10 miles in 1:32:16 and I finished 6th in my age group. Not too shabby! Which also means my goal of running under 1:35 was accomplished!
Overall it was a good race! Thank you DRC for putting on a great race and everything that y’all do! Once the race was over I parked it on the grass to catch my breath and was able to finally meet a twitter running friend slash fellow NTX Runner, Alicia! Just love getting to connect with people you spend time chatting with on the twitterverse!
Ready for the Weekend from This Weekend
May 4, 2012 by · 2 Comments
Does that make sense? It does in our minds! Ha, this weekend is full of busy, so we are ready for the weekend break from our busy weekend. Now does it make sense? 🙂 But keep in mind most of the busy is all stuff we will have a lot of fun doing!
You might know that we are kind of taking a break or maybe more accurately a step back from doing SO many races right now. Summer will be here in no time and everyone knows that summer is always busy, right? Teal is about to be graduating from grad school then wrapping up another school year with her students and this summer brings about a wedding for one of her best friends. Which means there are wedding events to attend!
- Bride-to-be, Sommer & Teal dressed up as Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs a couple Halloween’s ago
Beth is still trucking along at work, basically has a side job doing social media for a small local business and is trying to plan her wedding! There are so many things to be doing!
What does that mean for us this weekend?
Teal will be Bachelorette Partyin’ it up! See how that warrants a recovery weekend from the weekend?
Beth will be participating in the Dallas Running Club‘s White Rock ‘n’ Roll 10 mile race on Saturday! Need to burn those calories before she and Brent are off to do a cake tasting! Neither one of us have ever done a 10 mile race and honestly it’s starting to get HOT in Texas! Hopefully White Rock Lake can provide some sort of a breeze!
So there is no pre-existing goal for this race, but maybe one will be set out on the course! Otherwise hopefully there will be fun and happy running going on! 🙂 Oh, and should you be running White Rock ‘n’ Roll tomorrow and are still needing to pick up your race packet – Beth is working the 4-7pm packet pickup shift at Luke’s Locker Plano today! So be sure and say hi! Or you know if you need some new running gear stop by that time and say hi!
April Report Card…dun dun dun and May GOALS!
May 1, 2012 by · 12 Comments
We said this last month too, but seriously…May? How?
Ok, enough with that here’s how we did in April –
Teal:
1. Successfully complete the BluePrint Cleanse. This will start Monday April 2nd and end Tuesday April 10th. A+: This went very very well and I want to do it again. You can check out the recap here for more information. I honestly felt wonderful and I wish I could do if for life because I had almost no knee pain! I also managed to keep a total of 5lbs off this month which if you have been following is a huge success for me!
2. Complete one hill and one speed training per week, in place of regular runs or cardio. B+: I did 3 hill workouts, missed one week for some reason I can’t remember and also did speed intervals on the treadmill in the mornings! Other cardio included stairs and cardio classes at the gym (I’ve totally branched out!!)
3. I have one paper left for Grad School that is technically not due until the middle of May but I want to finish it and not procrastinate. Also I would like to finish up with all of my hours before the end of the month so I can order, submit, and file everything early to be ready for graduation! A++: DONE and DONE!! I actually submitted my paper on the 30th but it is done! T-minus 11 days until Graduation. I can’t wait!!
4. Earn my 75th class yoga band. F: Hey something has to give right?? I only went to yoga 5 times! Whoops.
Beth:
1. Please don’t hate me, but I’m going for lose 5lbs again. Third time is a charm right? F, I trimmed down the length of the goal this time around for the recapping. 🙂 But I was going to do the advocare cleanse. I did not do the advocare cleanse. I realized I had not factored in a wedding I would be at during the only Saturday of the month where the cleanse fit. You might be thinking, well, Beth just suck it up and eat clean at the wedding. Have you ever been to Babe’s? If not then think chicken fried steak, fried chicken, etc and that’s what we had. Anyways as to the weight lose…yah, I’m still at the same weight. Oops? At least it’s consistent?
2. Save the Dates – have them printed, addressed (myself) and sent off to wedding guests before this month is over! B- Ok, so I’ve only seen Save the Dates as a PDF, BUT I was at the mercy of couple other people’s time that are just giving me their free time. I had all my parts done (how I wanted them to look a.k.a. my own design and samples of my handwriting) and hopefully I will have them very, very soon! I can’t wait for people to see them!!!
3. Stadium workouts once a week. B+ I did 3 out 4 weeks of stadium workouts! I missed last week due to going out of town and trying to fit everything into my schedule before my long weekend out of Dallas. Excuse? Haha, yah…..
4. Prepare food for each week on Sunday nights this month. I’ll have to do this for at least the 10 day cleanse, but to help me get serious with my food and losing weight this has to be done every week! B+ This is another where I did 3 out of 4 weeks of this. Two of the weeks I made these tasty enchiladas which I’ll share with you in another post!
the colorful veggies for my latest pre-made food!
As far as the extra monthly goals (weekly hill runs & read two books a month) I have going on for myself! I attend the hill workouts every week in April with the NTX Runners! Makes them soo much better to run with company! As far as books I had some makeup work to do for my reading in March and I didn’t quite catch up! I did read The Paris Wife byPaula McLain and The Lucky One by Nicholas Sparks. I’m not ashamed – sometimes you gotta mix up the serious with some cheese! And I’m currently three-fourths of the way through The Girl in the Green Sweater: A Life in Holocaust’s Shadow by Krystyna Chiger.
Ok, and let’s look forward to our May goals –
Teal:
1. Lose 5 more lbs. I have tons of motivation right now because I will be on the beach June 6-11 for one of my best friend’s weddings in the Dominican Republic!
2. Ok, I’m just going to change this yoga goal. The goal is to go 3 times per week. After looking back on the last 2 months I think this is doable and still a stretch. I had a 6 time month and a 5 time month so hopefully just 3 a week will be a big enough push that is actually time possible!
3. Stop skipping my morning workouts. My gym buddy and I got a little off track due to crazy lives and schedules. The goal is to go all 5 mornings. I had done this for over a year so it’s doable, just need to get back in the routine! I have been going at night more, but it’s not as easy to do and gets in the way of my yoga goal! Domino effect-boooo!!
4. Be nicer! I am not evil, but stress has taken over this month with preparing for graduation, looking and interviewing for counseling jobs, planning showers and events, tax season at my dad’s, state testing for schools, blah blah blah. I have NOT been the picture of niceness at all and have become way more annoyed at things than normal. I am not sure how I am going to actually do this or prove it, but I’ll come up with something and let you know how it goes at the end of May!
Beth:
1. I’m still chasing those 5 pounds to lose! Ha, one day…one. freakin’. day. I will be able to say I did it so. This goal is sticking!
2. Survive my first 10 mile race! I’m currently freaked out by this distance since I’ve never raced it and it is getting hotter down here in Texas!
3. My wedding related goal is super vague, but the goal is to have at least 3 items on my checklist marked off and report back to you what I’ve accomplished them!
4. I want to continue on with my preparing food for the week on Sunday’s goal, but to make it different the goal here is to find two new recipes this month and make them! Must add variety to what I’ve been doing!
Joint Goal:
We will be participating in #runchat’s May challenge which is pretty much to run a different route, a new trail or try a race you have never done before. For more information please visit the #runchat site.
Do You Compete Every Day?
April 27, 2012 by · 2 Comments
As a follow up to our random Wordless Wednesday post the other day we thought we’d give those of you who do not know who or what Compete Every Day is some more background!
We found out about Compete Every Day first at Rock ‘n’ Roll Dallas expo and while standing in their booth Teal went “wait a minute! I know that model in the picture! She’s engaged to one of my co-workers!” Turns out one of her co-workers is also a model in some of the pictures! But really that’s besides the point. The point is Compete Every Day is a cool company based here in Dallas.
Ok, what are we competing for every day? might be what you are thinking right now! That’s what is cool about Compete Every Day….they don’t just mean compete for your fitness or to win race (even though that might be just what you are doing), but instead look at your life as a whole. What are the things you value most in your life? Family? Friends? Faith?
Or what is going on in life today that you are competing for?
And as a reminder to yourself you can purchase one of their comfy shirts, tanks, hoodies, shorts or even a wristband to remind you to Compete Every Day.
All the CED products we proudly own!
So why do we like Compete Every Day so much?
Well, you know now that we love what Compete Every Day means. We love local businesses with products that are worthwhile and unique. The connection was just a bonus. We have since then learned on our own that they have great customer service and super comfortable workout gear with a great message. We hope you’ll at the very least checkout Compete Every Day, but let us know if you do make a purchase!
Happy Friday!
Things We’ve Learned & Wished That We Knew Sooner
April 24, 2012 by · 13 Comments
As you may or may not know in 2010 was when we began our training to run our first half-marathon. Both of us had run in high school and/or college, but never to the distance we would hit in our half marathon training. The two of us and probably like a lot of people who train for their first half marathon followed Hal Higdon‘s guide.
Hal Higdon’s guides are great and perhaps there are some people out there who work their way through a number of his different plans. We, however, did not and kind of decided to start looking through different plans (one of which was definitely Hal Hidgon’s) and piecing them together. After all what works for one person might not work for another and it never hurts to try something to see if it works for you!
Throughout the not quite two years of us running together we’ve learned to appreciate aspects of our training, realized some things that needed to be added and why, so we shall share with you!
Weight Training
Both of us got personal trainers at a point where we each wanted to lose weight (You can read about Beth’s story here and Teal’s story here). Boy are we thankful to Will & Johnny for helping us to get into shape, get healthy and teaching us a lot! Weight training is very important as you need to build a base for yourself. If you only rely on running to build your muscles then you are missing out! Not every single race you might run will you actually feel yourself digging deep and using that core strength or pumping those arms hard to get to that finish line, but those are important parts of your body to work on strength so you have it when you need it. With that said it’s important to find a balance with your weight training and make sure you are working every part of your body. Build that strong foundation so you can be a stronger runner! It was well into us running together that we realized we were at an advantage by already having trainers and having those weekly weights session. We didn’t know where we would be in our running if we didn’t have them!
While yes, a trainer makes it so much easier to get your weights session in you don’t neeed to have one! Grab a friend that’s knowledgeable about weights and ask them to show you the ropes a few times or look into one of the many apps that’s how there and available to guide you through a workout!
If you would like more of an explanation of the benefits weight training please see this post from Runner’s World.
Tempo Runs
We just recently started to incorporate these into our workouts. What were we waiting for with these??
What? There is lots to read out there about tempo runs and sometimes it doesn’t seem to be written in layman’s terms, or is that just us? Part of why we probably did NOT do tempo runs for awhile was because we did not truly understand them. A tempo run normally consists of running at an easy pace to start, let’s say we are doing a 4 mile tempo run, so you may run your first mile at an easy pace then for miles 2 and 3 you kick it into a higher gear. This higher gear is a hard pace yet if you were rate levels of hard you might have comfortably hard, hard, and extremely hard. You want this higher gear to be at a comfortably hard pace so that you can sustain this level of intensity for the entirety of your two miles. Once you hit mile 4 take your speed back down to where you were in mile 1 for a nice recovery mile.
Importance. The idea behind a tempo run is to raise your lactate threshold. If you are at a point in your running where you are able to run the mileage you want in a long run but are ready to work on speed this is a workout you’ll want to add into your training schedule once a week to build speed and strength. The one thing that really helped us in determining how to do a tempo run was by using the McMillan Running Calculator not only did it help with tempo runs but also discovering what type of speed we needed for all sorts of runs.
Hill Workouts
What? While yes there are races out there that you might register that are flat, flat, flat! But that is simply not going to be the case for each and every race that you will ever run. Those hills in your runs/races continue to help challenge us as runners. The best workout we have found to make sure a hill does not defeat us in a race are hill repeats. We’ll be honest they aren’t the most fun type of workout, but believe us when you finish a race with hills you’ll be thankful for the time you spent on hill repeats. For us a hill repeat workout consists of:
1. Doing your homework and find a hill that will work. You might want a hill that is somewhere between .1 – .2 of a mile.
2. Get a little bit of mileage in before your hill repeats, i.e. run from your house out to the hill
3. When you reach your hill if it’s your first time maybe try 4 or 5 runs up the hill and back down (but have a goal of working up to 10 hill repeats)
4. Get in that last bit of mileage back to your house
Importance. We’ve recently heard a couple people say this and it is the absolute truth, “the difference between me continuing to run and the people walking up the hill in that race are these workouts.” Even if you are not specifically training for a race that has hills in them, this workout is beneficial! It’ll build muscle that running on a flat path does not, help with your endurance and help you to get faster! Throw this type of running workout into your weekly mix as well and you’ll feel a difference at your next race!
Tangents
Just for good measure we are throwing this one in this post. And no we aren’t taking you back to geometry class either! 🙂 Or is it basic algebra?? Ha, math is hard, y’all! 🙂 There were plenty of times that we can remember one of us saying “ugh! My Runkeeper says I ran 6.43 in that 10k race!” and there were times when we’d finish our long runs together that we were asked “why did Teal run a further distance than you Beth?” TANGENTS! It’s about tangents! We can honestly say we were taught this very valuable piece of information from reading katieRUNSthis’ blog!
The majority of races we have run together have a certified course so it has been measured and is exactly the distance the course claims it to be. When a course is measured it is done so on tangents, so when there is a curved portion of your course the person who measured it did so on the tangents. This is also why for instance when we go run our long runs or even if we run side by side during a race our mileage for that long run or race could be different because neither one of us is running the curves the exact same. For the visual people out there, let us show you the tangents in visual form.
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While you might have learned about tangents today know that at your next race you might do your best to run the tangents but still find that you have some extra mileage at the end, well, it’s hard to run the tangents EXACTLY. As you have to be looking ahead and plotting out exactly how to run the next curve not to mention that there are other runners out there with you on the course that might keep you from running that straight line exactly. All we can do is do our best!
We are no experts by any means! We read articles, blogs, etc. online in an effort to try and learn how we can improve our running. We wanted to share some information that opened up our eyes, helped us to understand running more and that we think everyone should have the benefit of knowing!
If you already knew all of this, well, thanks for bearing with us today! If you didn’t know all of this – are you going to be making some changes now to your weekly running? Glad to know why there is extra mileage on those races you’ve run before?