What are your go to running gear items when you travel?
Break? I Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Break….OK, Maybe I Do!
March 6, 2012 by · 15 Comments
On our March goals I mentioned that I wanted to survive my 2 week rest without cheating and we figured that that you might need a little more explanation. So here goes…
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Not too long ago I told you guys about my weight and my efforts to lose weight. I had been the heaviest in my life and not happy so I decided to do something about it. I managed to drop down quite a bit but have essentially been stuck at my current weight for a while now. At first I just had no loss or gain, and then all of a sudden an actual gain in fat for the first time in 2 years. To me, and many others this may seem odd, I work out basically everyday, run all the time, play basketball, swim, workout with a personal trainer, track my food, have very few cheat days…. you get the drift…an actual fat gain seems pretty impossible to me. So what is the problem?? It is calorically impossible in my opinion for this to happen.
I talked to my trainer, Will, about this a lot, he dug into what he knows and asked around as well and basically came to a consensus that I am overtraining and my body is in an adaptive mode all the time. So while I have fallen into a very healthy routine of exercise and eating right my body has too and has basically decided it is going to stay where it is. Thanks body – love you too!
Talk about motivation killer. I think I actually had a pitty party at the gym the day I was weighed and even broke down and decided exercise and everything I was doing was pointless and stupid, a waste of time.. blah blah blah. Ever feel like this??
I would say that this is similar to when people decide they have to make a change and come to a breaking point. Will asked me if it was feasible to take 2 weeks off from working out and move my body from adaptive mode and into recovery. I cringed of course. I have 2 half marathons in March, hence part of the problem, but I decided to do it. During this time I am going to do no running or cardio. I will weight train 2 times a week with Will and yoga 2 to 3 times a week. Getting my runner self to not run 3-4 weeks before a race is a little scary, but I am too frustrated to stay where I am and not try something new! I can’t help but think of the insanity definition here. Can’t keep doing the same thing and expecting something to change.
Also, Beth and I both joined MyFitnessPal this week. I have always tracked her food on myapex but I found that it is less convenient. Sorry 24 Hour Fitness! MyFitnessPal works super easy on the phone and has more food listed so it makes it much easier to track food better. So with the rest, I am also becoming more on point with food.
Anyone ever been through this madness before? Let us know! What did and did not work for you??
Trinity River Levee Run
March 5, 2012 by · 2 Comments
I woke up Friday morning with beginnings of a cold coming on. Ugh, not so perfect timing! But got to bed early for a 6 a.m. wake up call for the 10k. That seemed SO late considering how early Teal & I woke up for Princess Half!
First I should backup and say the packet pickup at Luke’s was pretty easy at Luke’s Locker especially since I heeded the advice from email to know my bib number before getting there. I walked up to the nice fireman, told him bib 962 and in under 30 seconds I was off and looking at the running clothes sale. 🙂 Kudos to this race for having firemen help with packet pickup! 🙂
I’d seen multiple things regarding driving directions to the race and I had every intention of following them until I found myself on the exact street it said to avoid. Oh, well! Quickly parked on the opposite side of the Margaret Hunt Hill bridge from where the race started, but ultimately I was glad because I got to walk across it twice in addition to running across it!
After crossing the bridge I found my friends Mary, Cory, Tom and Paige pretty quickly and in no time it seemed like we were off! Since Teal was on a field trip with her students I just assumed I’d be running this race by myself and I was totally wrong! Tom and I ended up running pretty much the whole race together. We chatted about anything and everything! Talking during races and even during training runs is not something I commonly do, so it was a nice change of pace. Tom kept me updated periodically on what our pace was. I knew I’d want to do another 6ish mile run later in the day so I was too concerned with pushing real hard in this race. Overall the course was fun, lots of awesome volunteers out passing out powerade and water. I don’t frequent that area of town all that much so it was fun seeing everything around there.
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Tom & I after the race - please enjoy the mess that is my hair!
The results for this race were a little tricky to find or maybe I’m just not that use to having to click on so many links to be taken to a word document containing a link that holds my results? My chip time was 57:41, 201st female to finish and 661st person to finish overall. The thing I was most proud of in this race was the kick I gave at the end. When I stopped my runkeeper at the end it said I had been running at a 7:14 pace! So excited to see the difference my hill and tempo workouts have given me in a short amount of time! Would also, like to give a shout out to Teal’s workout buddy, Cynthia I saw out there! Wish I would have seen you after the race!
After the race was over I made sure to take a picture of one of the three murals that Shepherd Fairey recently put up on Singleton Avenue in Dallas. Tons of people were having their picture taken with the murals so I got just this one with no one else in the picture before I headed out.
On my walk back to the car I took advantage of the time and snapped some more pictures of the Margaret Hunt Hill bridge or as I’ve already heard some referring to it as #largeMarge. I’m going to hold out and put one of my favorite pictures I took walking across the bridge to the race on Facebook only, so come find it on our Facebook page! And if you haven’t liked us on Facebook yet – why not??
Later that afternoon I headed out for a 6 mile run that I was hoping would include some hills. I set off on a bit of a new route for me, and to be honest in the beginning I wasn’t completely feeling this run. As I was nearing the halfway point of my run which also was the point where I was running down my soon to be monster hill to run up, I saw a police officer and contemplated asking him to give me a ride home if I wimped out on the hill. But let’s be honest – no matter how much I wanted to wimp out I wasn’t going to. The hill was hard, but once I did it and recovered from it I felt great! The whole last half of my run was fabulous! I get more of a high from running when I accomplish something hard out in the course than if it was just completely flat. Run #2 on Saturday felt like another victory for my tempo and hill workouts!
Hope everyone had a fabulous weekend! There were so many people out racing and Teal & I are both excited to see your race recaps! 🙂
Dr. Seuss, Levee Run & New Book
March 2, 2012 by · 5 Comments
So many things going on this Friday, but first of all – Happy Birthday to Dr. Seuss! So fun that we just got to visit Seuss Landing less than a week ago! Anyone going to see The Lorax this weekend? This is one movie that Teal will probably catch in the theaters despite not being a big movie person because The Lorax is her favorite Seuss book.
Tomorrow Beth will be running the Trinity River Levee Run 10k! Sadly, Teal being the good teacher that she is, will be on a field trip with her students and cannot participate in this run. 🙁
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The new Margaret Hunt Hill bridge is officially open in Dallas as of this weekend, and the 8th Annual Trinity River Levee Run is the kickoff to a day of celebrating. Part of the selling point for this year’s run is that this will be your only chance to run across the Margaret Hunt Hill bridge, well you know in a safe way were it’s blocked off for runners. It has also been a long time since either one of us has raced the 10k distance, so it’ll be good to get back out there and give it another go! But we’ll have to find another 10k to do so Teal can revisit that distance too! There isn’t really a goal for this race, but Beth’s 10k PR stands at 56:46. That PR was accomplished in the July Texas Heat, so guess there could always be hope of a new PR this weekend!
On a completely different note, perhaps aimed more at the people who are big readers – Beth’s sister Kate as of today is an author! About four years ago, Kate wrote a “chicklit” book, attempted to get publisher for it, and when that didn’t work she decided in today’s technology that she would self-publish! We are both really excited for her in this endeavor and so proud of her for following one of her dreams! The book is called Creative Chaos and will be available to purchase as an iBook & on your Nook today, and then to follow all you Kindle users will also be able to purchase it!
You can learn more about Kate over at her blog which also has some more details on the book! If you buy it you have got to let us know! And a big CONGRATS to Kate, the author! 🙂
Happy Friday to you all! What do you have in store for your weekend?
February Report Card & March Goals
March 1, 2012 by · 5 Comments
It’s that time! Here is how we did on our February goals…
Teal:
1. Let’s try this damn weight/fat loss thing again – I’ll keep it at 4lbs. Wish me luck, perseverance, and calmness through the frustration. I know this will fix itself eventually! F-: not sure how it is calorically possible but I have gained weight this month- that is all I can say about that. What fun.
2. Paint my bedroom and hang the pictures – I have had the paint and the frames for our prints since the end of December and they have tortured me ever since. I am actually going to give myself a B on this even though I didn’t do it BECAUSE – my brother moved out and I managed to get all that mess cleaned, the second bedroom organized and cleaned out, his room cleaned out and ready to be painted, the garage is free of his stuff, the laundry room was cleaned out from the dogs, and my house is generally in awesome condition. No paint yet but hey, that’s why we have March right?
3. Read about and become more knowledgeable about Clean Eating, general good nutrition and Gluten. I have purchased Wheat Belly by Dr. William Davis and Good Calories Bad Calories by Gary Taubes. The goal is to read both this month. B: Read and finished Wheat Belly- I’ll give you a recap later in the month. Very interesting! I am only half way through Good Calories Bad Calories because it is VERY hard to read. I almost feel dumb reading it because I have to keep re-reading pages to understand what I just read- if had I known how hard it was I would have just read it a different month but it is very informative so I will finish. God help me!
4. Make the foam roller my best friend and roll at least once a day, and complete ALL given Physical Therapy for my foot which includes stretching/tennis ball rolling at breakfast, lunch, and before bed and ice 1-2 times per day. A: I completed all therapy given and I am feeling better, although the 13.1 on Sunday did hurt, I still iced immediately! I did not ice 1-2 times a day but only because I felt like the therapy was working and ice was not as needed as before! I foam roll constantly and am making progress!
5. Oh and on a “Non- Actual goal thing listed” I did Pass my Counselor Certification Test that I took the day of the Hot Chocolate Run that I had to miss!! So A+++ on that!
Beth:
1. HILLS! Do them once a week – for real this time! D-: Haha, I did them twice! Y’all what is my deal? Maybe I should make this stop being a goal and just know that each month I’ll tell you what I did hill-wise?? What do you think?
2. Wedding Schtuff – Part A: Get outfits settled on (for both of us) & take engagement pictures! Part B: Finish two of my three registries! <—Just want those things done and over with! Ha, is that a bad way to phrase it? A-: well, going into this month I had most of my outfits already, but Brent did not. We spent two Saturdays shopping for him because in general he just needed some new clothes and shoes. He starts a new job next week which is part of the need but he just needed new pants and shirts to add to his work mix and we made it happen. We took engagement pictures!! My dad is a photographer as well as a freakin’ awesome lawyer and he spent almost 4 hours with us one Sunday taking our pictures all over Dallas. We also spent a few hours one Sunday starting and completing our registry at Crate & Barrel. That was the only registry we have complete, but I am still proud! Another wedding thing to check off is we have a Best Man! We had a planned dinner with Brent’s friend, his wife and their son and got our first person in Brent’s side of the wedding party! So I feel like I still deserve an A range grade because a lot of weekend days this month were taking up with wedding related items!
3. Lose 5 pounds! I’m taking engagement pictures this month, so a few pounds off and working towards a smaller weight for upcoming races needs to happen! F: Yah, I am at the exact same weight. Ha. In all honesty, I meant to go get a scale to be more conscious of this and to meet my goal, but uhhh, yah that never happened. Oopsie??
4. Clean the craft/guest/whatever room! My sister and I have a guest room at our house and we each kind of have half of it to ourselves and then a teeny tiny twin bed sits in the middle of it. Ha, we are both former, big-time scrapbookers so we have got crafts galore in there! This will be my next room I conquer! F: Nope, just did not have the time for this! 🙁 If I’m going to get something on this scale done it has to be on the weekend and all the weekends this month were FAR too full to make this happen.
Joint goal:
5. Both participate in #FabAbFeb Well, Teal finished the challenge even if some days she doubled up on days she still finished it! Beth on the other hand missed the last week of it.
And now it’s time for March’s goals…..dun dun dun!
Teal
1. Paint Bedroom and quest room for real this time. Spring break should make this possible!
2. Survive my 2 week break from running and cardio by not cheating. I am going to give my body a true rest. I think it is overworked and is partially to blame for the plateau of weight-loss, my injury and that it is not fully gone, and from being tired from having 2 jobs and grad school. The break will be hard because rest is really not part of my vocabulary but it’s a needed part of life. Must get better.
3. Yoga 12 times this month. This will be how I survive the “rest” from running/cardio. Low impact, restorative, and a good way to focus on flexibility.
4. Finish Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes
Beth
1. Run a sub 2:00 hour half marathon at Rock ‘n’ Roll Dallas!
2. Lose 5 pounds. Seriously, y’all!! I need to get SERIOUS about take some pounds off for my wedding!
3. Get a caterer for the wedding. You thought this one went away didn’t you? Well, I was all on track, got one approved by my venue and haven’t heard back from him after our initial phone call about my homes and dreams of wedding food. I’ve chosen to take that as a sign and look elsewhere just need to setup tastings!
4. Attend 3 to 4 yoga classes a week. You’re probably like whaa?? You yoga all the time! Well, technically I don’t totally have yoga goals like I did for all of 2011 and I took 2 weeks off when I hit my 200 and let me tell you my body knew it! So I want to see how I do with 3-4 times a week for a month where this blog holds me accountable!
5. Update my handwriting/calligraphy website. It needs a MAJOR change starting with a new theme that allows for a real blog inside the website. Change is a coming!
It should also be noted that I haven’t given up on my hills every week, but I feel like that’s annoying to keep putting it as a goal and not mastering it. And another note would be at the beginning of the year I gave myself a goal of reading 24 books this year which this has really been a goal of mine for a couple years now. I got close one year with 20. This are two things I kind of want to keep up to date with in these posts but make them different from the things I try to achieve that vary each month. Does that make sense? Can you handle that? I’m going to be busy this month!
We will see you guys on the flip side of this month with how we did! 🙂 Wish us luck!
The Rest of Our Princess Weekend
February 29, 2012 by · 6 Comments
We both took off Friday from work, woke up bright & early to get our pack on before we headed to the airport. When we were booking our flights we KEPT seeing that flights were cheaper into Tampa than into Orlando which we discovered was perfect because we could go to the beach!!!
We boarded our plane and literally talked to each other non stop for the 2ish hour flight. Once we got off the plane and got our bags on the advice of our friend Robbie, we headed off to Clearwater Beach!
It was actually pretty chilly out at the beach, so we didn’t last that long out there. We ate dinner at Frenchy’s South Beach Cafe which was pretty much across the street from the part of the beach we had settled down on, so we had a beautiful view at dinner. After that we figured it was time to make the drive to Orlando, which wasn’t too bad we both were just really tired. After getting checked in we pretty much got in our beds with our books and read until we fell asleep. We had to make sure the sleep two nights before the race was decent as we knew there was a good chance the night before would not be!
Saturday morning we woke up, read, and worked on our Fab Ab Feb goal before we headed down to the hotel gym to get in a few miles on the treadmill. We showered and off we went to try a restaurant that was new to us – Cafe Tu Tu Tango.
While Beth drank her Matisse Margarita and Teal drank her Michelangelo Mojito, we decide to claim carb loading with our meal selections. Ha, this is a tapas restaurant so we shared everything which meant the White Bean, Sun Dried Tomato& Artichoke Spread, Cajun Chicken Egg Rolls, Prosciutto & Mango Flatbread, Langostino Mac & Cheese and Oriental Marinated Steak Skewers. It was all dee-licious! After lunch it was off to Wide World of Sports Complex to hit up the expo and get our bibs!
We didn’t stay too terribly long at the expo, but we both made sure to pick up a couple things of Nuun [grape for Teal & tri-berry for Beth]. How can you beat the price of $5 a tube? Yah, exactly. Beth got herself some new TOMS 🙂 We met Heidi & Brian for dinner at Portobello in Downtown Disney. Those two weren’t lying when they said that place was gooood! We may or may not have hit up Ghirardelli after dinner for a treat before checking out the largest Disney store ever and people watching.
We called it a night pretty early as we all had to get back to our hotels and clearly we had a race to run the next day which you read allll about yesterday!
After the race was over we found ourselves an Einstein’s and got bagels, went back to the hotel and began being lazy for a little bit. Beth started tweet talking with some friends about how we reeeally wanted to go see Harry Potter World. One of the ladies had been before and told us to quit dilly dallying as Harry Potter fans are crazy and the park would be crazy! How does she know this? Because she’s one of those people! Her words! Ha. So @lastgoodnerve thanks for the push to go! We bought tickets to Islands of Adventure at Universal in our hotel lobby and made our way there. Harry Potter here we come!
We got in the park and we could see it!
HOGWARTS!
This is the part of the blog were you get an excessive amount of pictures so, um, ENJOY! What you see as you walk up to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter …can you spot Teal in the picture?
the sign says "Please Respect the Spell Limits"
We were in HEAVEN for real! Our first stop was at the Hogwarts Express and we had our picture taken with the conductor. He was so fun! He thanked us for coming from the country of Texas to visit him. 🙂
At this point we hadn’t had lunch so we were anxious to eat some sort of food so off we went to Three Broomsticks for a feast of roasted chicken, potatoes and corn. Then we went to checkout Zonko’s and Honeyduke’s!
At this point it actually started to rain a little bit so we took that as an opportunity to go into Hog’s Head and try Butterbeer for the first time. We opted for sharing one instead of us both getting one and not finishing them….yah, we didn’t even finish the one we were sharing. It was good, different, but good!
Teal buying the Butterbeer in Hog's Head
Then we made our way up to Hogwart’s itself! If we are being honest neither one of us is really that big on rides, but we went ahead and rode the Harry Potter and the Forbbiden Journey ride. Which is where we got to see the sorting hat while we were in line for the ride! We should also take a break to mention that there is a bathroom that has Moaning Myrtle in it…..loved how much they put into this place! Don’t worry we both made sure to check into Moaning Myrtle’s Bathroom on Foursquare. 🙂
We walked around in Dervish and Banges and the Owl Post. We looked pretty much at anything and everything we could while we were there. Since we weren’t willing to shell out $100 each for a cape we decided to trythem on and simply having our picture taken in them. 🙂
The ticket price into the park was totally worth it to both of us solely so we could see the Wizarding World of Harry Potter! It was awesome and something we’ll always remember, BUT since there were technically some other parts of the park we decided to explore them too. We had our pictures taken with character’s in Seuss Landing.
We checked out Jurassic Park. Beth was excited about this because Jurassic Park is one of those movies for her fiance that when it is on TV he has to watch it which means she watches it or at least bits and pieces a lot.
run for your liiiife!
We walked through Marvel Super Hero Island just as Wolverine, Captain America, Spiderman, Storm & Rogue were making their grand entrance. We made our way through the Lost Continent, but didn’t really do much there. We did stop for a cheesy photo opp in Toon Town and sent pictures to the boys at home. 🙂
And then we found Popeye and Olive Oil!
We spent a little over four hours walking around Universal’s Islands of Adventure and by that time we’d seen pretty much everything. Our legs and feet were killing us. Yah, for the walking back to the car part of getting out of there. We opted to order room service because we just didn’t want to be getting in and out of the car. Thanks Zest restaurant at Sheraton Safari for having delish food for us to eat while we chit chatted, watched the Oscars, tweeted, and read. We like to multi-task! The next morning we read some more, packed up our suitcases and got on the road to Tampa.
We prepaid for gas when we got our rent car and we were bound and determined to use up that tank! Hope they were able to drive our little Ford Focus to their gas pumps because it was seriously teetering a fine line of being completely out of gas. We are awwesome! We checked into our flights and were kind of freaking out that our boarding passes printed out with no assigned seats – uhh, did you overbook and we aren’t going to really be on this flight?? All was fine until we got on the flight and had lots of turbulence. Pretty sure we’ve mentioned it before but we had a bad flight together in 2006 that Beth has blocked out and Teal remembers very clearly hitting a patch of dead air and a drop. Needless to say Teal has reservations with every plane ride, but she handled the turbulence on this flight like a champ! We got back to Dallas and were ready to get our butts home except for when we got to Teal’s car it was uhhh, dead. Thank you Airport Support for coming to our rescue and giving us a jump! It really was a wonderful weekend full of so much fun stuff!
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! 🙂
Florida Bound!
February 24, 2012 by · 6 Comments
We are leaving for the great state of….
Which will push our grand total of states we have raced into THREE by the time the weekend is over! Ha. 1. Texas 2. California 3. Florida
A lot of the races we ran in 2011 we had clear goals we wanted to accomplish, but for the Princess Half we have a handful of goals:
1. complete this race so that race 1 of 2 is done to earn the Coast to Coast medal
2. treat this as a training run
3. stay together and have our picture taken together out there on the course
4. have fun!
We have some other fun stuff planned for while we are there and we’ll tell you ALL about it next week! 🙂 See you Monday!
10 Reasons We Love to Run
February 14, 2012 by · 7 Comments
So we love all things #runchat which means we HAD to participate in their blog challenge to list 10 things we love about running keeping in mind if we were never going to run again.
1. All the fun gear – shoes, jackets, socks you know….ALL of it! 🙂
2. FRUNNERS!!! [we stole this term from our Dallas area running friends] We have met so many people since we started blogging and our twitter account. We are SO thankful to them for the advice, support, encouragement, motivation and so much more!
(pictures courtesy of Mama C)
3. Bling Bling! Who doesn’t love being rewarded at the end of a race with shiny medal? And who doesn’t love being reminded of the things they’ve accomplished by looking back at a shiny medal?
4. Getting a break! Love being able to get out on the road and be free of the stresses and concerns of the day! It’s so liberating to free your mind of all of that!
5. Testing your limits and realizing you are a whole heck of a lot stronger than you even knew you were!
6. That we each have a an awesome running buddy! 🙂
Running through Angels Stadium
7. Those mornings when you don’t want to get out of bed and run because you just don’t feel like, and then you go anyways and the run is freakin’ fantastic!
8. Feeling healthy on a daily basis because we are active and watch what we eat so that we can be better runs.
9. Travel to races! While we have only left the great state of Texas once so far for a race we LOVED having that opportunity to travel to California and experience new things there as well as a new course. At the end of this month our racing will take us to Florida, and we are looking into other states for our next marathon! There are plenty of races in cities that we might not experience or we might just experience in a new way because we came there to run!
10. Eating! There are so many calories and so many food items we would have to cut back on if we just flat out stopped running. We aren’t talking we run and then go eat the greasiest hamburger and largest order of fries ever, but there are a lot of foods we get to partake in because we are so active with running!
As a side note it was fun seeing our picture on the #runchat website this morning!
Did we leave out something that is key to your running? Let us know – we want to hear what you love about running!