A Pink Donation Raffle

We are NINE days away from running Rock ‘n’ Roll San Antonio!! Nine, people, NINE!!  This is the race we are running and raising money for breast cancer in honor of Team Cindy a.k.a. Cindy Marshall-Death!!  Sadly we have NOT yet met our fundraising goal for the race of $1,200.00 🙁

Cindy & Jimmy on her 50th Birthday in 2007

We need YOUR help and as an added bonus to donating you will be entered in our raffle to win one of two prizes —

 

First Prize

– a $30 gift certificate to Go Sport ID

– a pair of Tommie Copper Compression Sleeves

– a six pack of GU Energy Gels that we are throwing in to the mix

Second Prize

– a $30 gift certificate to Go Sport ID

– your choice of a Tommie Copper Hat or Beanie


How to Win

For every $5 you donate to Team Cindy your name will be entered into our raffle!

If you go and LIKE Go Sport ID and Tommie Copper on Facebook that will give you an additional entry into the raffle when you have donated.  So if you donate $20 and like Go Sport ID & Tommie Copper then your name will be entered five times to win these awesome prizes!

 

We could not be more excited for the generosity of Tommie Copper and Go Sport ID in helping us with this raffle! Not only is it great to have two companies help us, but two companies that we absolutely LOVE means so much to us!   Multiple times a week you could find either of us at home wearing our Tommie Copper calf sleeves after a long run or even the day after at work under a pair of jeans!  They have been a great product to have in terms of recovery from long runs and being preventive in running injuries!  Each and every day you can find the two of us wearing our Go Sport ID bracelets!  We love them so much we never take them off!  So these are all items that if you don’t already have them, you need to get on that and what better way to do so than by entering our raffle and winning them!

To donate please go to our Team Cindy/Life is a Run page here — DONATE

Let’s Move our 4th Half Up a Week!

So we gave into twitter pressure – ahem, Heidi! 🙂  And instead of JUST running 22 miles this weekend we are going to run DRC Half plus 8.9 more miles! Whee!

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So come Sunday we will be out at White Rock Lake getting in a good training run for White Rock Marathon in December!  Which is as of today THIRTY DAYS away! We might have just freaked out, then gotten all excited and then gone back to freaked out again typing that. 🙂   Both of us need to run this like it is one of our training runs so we can put in the extra mileage afterwards unless something changes between the typing of this post and the start of the half on Sunday morning.

Weather

Low:  56*

High: 70*

Wind:  9MPH

Precip.: 10%

Twenty Miles: Check

As you can see we’ve had an interesting few days here with Beth’s engagement 🙂 and the event of the rangers in the World Series! 🙁 Seems like a whirlwind around here really. Originally we both were supposed to be in College Station this weekend but a bunch of stuff came up with Teal at work at her Dad’s and teaching so she stayed in Dallas. Beth went to College Station with her new fiancé and we decided to do our long run on Sunday night. This is the first long night run I think we have ever done. Because we ran at night we had all day to think about it and believe me we did! I was back and forth in my head about if my legs were going to be tired and refused to stand up just about everywhere I went. My husband, Michael and I had to get laundry done so I just sat around in the cart at the laundromat to not wear myself out. Beth had many errands to run as people wanted to see her and her ring so we didn’t start until about 5:15 p.m. Both of us where nervous and we prepped Beth’s sister, Kate on where she would be just in case we needed a rescue…

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No rescue was needed! We headed out on our usual route and ran at a pretty good training pace for the rest of the time! Its seemed, honestly if as if the traffic world was on our side. We hit the right lights basically every time and did not have to deal with moving around traffic much which is seriously awesome! People were very happy it seemed like- for example no one half stopped on right turns, they waited at stops signs for us, moved over to the middle lane- It was awesome. At one point this kid leaned out of his car and screamed “I love your camelbaks” at us and gave us a thumbs up. That boost of friendliness always helps!! I think at around mile 8 we both felt really good. In our heads I’m sure we were both like 12 more- that’s nothing! Beth even looked over at one point and was like, “See we can totally do this.” Neither of us felt really winded or tired at that point. We had both fueled with GU and Swedish Fish and we both kept our Camelbaks this time ( I learned my lesson- don’t leave home without it).

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We both ended at the same time, walked into the house and just laid down and stretched. I am not sure how we ever actually got up. Our legs actually felt much better than other long run days, but for me the pain of sitting sets in. We talked about sleeping in our Tommie Cooper calf sleeves and worried about waking up starving in the middle of the night. Both of which happened on my end. I also kept waking up with weird pains that felt like growing pains all night but it has been much better than expected.

We both ended up with some weird chaffing again- dang running and Beth has moved onto a second runners toe! Battle scars galore but we love it!

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All and all this was an awesome run together. This is some insane mileage and it’s hard to honestly believe we can do it. We are a little over a month away from our goal this year and couldn’t be more excited.

I’m Not Moving to Holland, I’m Becoming a Holland

Pretty much every Thursday night since January 25, 2007 I’ve spent that week night hanging out with the same man. Last night we returned to the scene of our first date at BJ’s Brew House in Lewisville…

an actual picture from the night we met

But first we have got to back up just a little bit! Right now I’m in the middle of a self imposed yoga deadline. Ha I have to complete 150 yoga classes by October 31st and as of this morning I am at 148. 🙂 With that being said I informed Brent that I HAD to go to yoga after work before I could head over to his house for our usual Thursday night. Brent has been off from work all week doing projects around his house and making sure none of the vacation time he has saved up gets wasted, so when he told me he wanted us to go sit down and eat dinner I didn’t really think anything of it. Plus we had done a lot of grabbing to go food and eating at home lately, so it really all made perfect sense to me. I was also completely clueless when my awesome sister was trying to encourage me to repaint my finger nails Wednesday night, and I fully intended too but then sleep sounded way better. 🙂
When we started driving to BJ’s I was so confused because I thought that this other location was closer and made more sense to go to, but Brent just said “I thought we’d return to our old stomping grounds.” (The first few years of our relationship he lived in Lewisville hence that comment) We make to the restaurant and just as we are getting out of the car the rain picks up. Ha I take off running to the front door, and we find that it is completely packed. We ate dinner in the bar with the big screen TV on the Rangers game. At this point it’s the 4th inning and the game is so awesome I keep asking why we are leaving to go home and watch the rest. Once the 4th innning is over we take off, but don’t worry I insisted that we stop at Tom Thumb on the way home because I NEED to make some brownies for this weekend! We run the errand and make it back and I walk through the garage door to the kitchen first and immediately stop in my tracks. What is happening? There are candles, rose petals, roses and champagne….OH MY GOSH!!! I turn around and Brent is down on one knee asking me if I’ll marry him. I say “OH MY GOSH” at least five more times before finally telling him yes!

Us at the Rangers game in 2009 when Kinsler hit for a cycle (thought it was appropriate since they played last night)

We have some champagne and Brent tells me I should probably go ahead and call my mom to let her know. Since I’d already been texting her to let her know that Tom Thumb had the brownie mix we use for a cupcake recipe buy 1 get 1 free. 🙂 And from there begins the slew of text messages and phone calls. Somewhere in the middle of that he tells me the couple lies he had to tell me in the past week. The moments I had him worried like when I told him there was Thursday night coming up we wouldn’t be able to hangout because I had a White Rock Marathon Happy Hour I helped plan and needed to attend. Haha And to top everything else off, Brent and I had planned for months to go to College Station this weekend to see A&M play Mizzou, so we get to see a bunch of our friends!!

New Years Eve 2009

For those of you that do not know the Beth & Brent history – We both were born & raised here in Dallas. At one point when I was under the age of 6 years old we lived maybe five minutes away from each other. We both attended Texas A&M and made it out of there without ever meeting each other but have since learned of mutual friends and connections that we had there. And we both just happened to be in the same bar at the same time on January 19, 2007 and the rest is history!

We had just finished running the Dash Down Greenville 5k & changed into regular clothes for the St. Patty's Day Parade in 2008

I am sad that this weekend Teal won’t be down in College Station with me, but don’t worry Teal on a stick will be!! 🙂
I can’t get my work computer to upload pictures from my camera right now so I’ll add a few from last night in a bit if you want to check back! 🙂

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Commuting by Foot

A month or so back after chatting with Lisa on twitter and learning she bikes for her work commute, I decided it would be cool if I ran home from work! So I immediately go to google maps to see just how many miles it is – 8. Perfect!

See my sister actually works in the same building as me just for a different company AND we live together! We can totally just ride into work together and when the end of the day comes I’ll hand over my purse and work clothes for her to take home!

I figured this would be an awesome way for me to get in one of my weekday lengthier runs aaannd then I forgot ALL about this idea! It’s either that OR I thought I had all the time in the world to make it more than an idea! 🙂 Until last Thursday I went for a short run around my office which I declared my scouting run. Yah, I learned I was totally wrong about there being sidewalks on the majority of the route because right by my office they’re kind of non-existent. Then I remembered Daylight Savings! When is that? Will that mess up my plan? If it does I’ll be so pissed AT myself! Oh good, it’s not until November 6th (if ya were wondering -now ya know!)

So anyways, last night was the night! And when I left my office I was the only person there so there would be no turning back. A run can be kind of different when if you don’t do it you won’t make it home. All day long I had the I’m running home from work – no big deal attitude – then when everyone was gone and it was time, I was nervous!

Had everything I needed - camelbak, Go Sport ID, my iphone and a house key

Nervous because one, I’d have to run under George Bush Tollroad and two, there are some sketch areas I’d be running through.

The run started off fine, I actually ran by my friend Kim as she was leaving a gas station! Then I found it hilarious when I was almost run into by another runner. She wasn’t paying attention until we were right up on each other. I was on the right side of the sidewalk – what else does one due to avoid being hit by another runner coming at you? I might have been a little freaked out when I ran by the dude with a tatt under each one of his eyes walking down the sidewalk towards me. I’ve decided the drivers who freak me out the most are the ones turning right that never actually look right and/or those turning who are looking at their phone so you’ll never know if they’ll see you in time.

I survived the sketch areas and believe it or not running under George Bush Tollroad really wasn’t bad at all. Throughout the entire 8 miles I hit most of the lights JUST at the right time!  There were two instances where I did a loop around a building to hopefully come back to the light when it was green and that worked.  Under George Bush I did one loop around all the pillars that hold it up and made it back just in time to make it across.  Right after that I was coming up on a small area where I not only ran out of sidewalk I also ran out of ground to run on – bridge.  Also, in case you are wondering why I am crazy to run through some sketchy areas, I felt it was fine because I was running during traffic times and at all times there would be cars on the road that could see me should someone try and kidnap me, steal my iphone, etc.

The two things I dislike about outdoor running are:

1. Having to stop because of lights as I really lose momentum and jogging in place does NOT do it for me!

2. Not knowing what kind of ground you’ll be running on if there’s a not sidewalk.  I don’t have to have a sidewalk, but it kills my feet if I’m ever running on a patch of grass that has a side incline.  Do you know what I mean? My left foot has had some slight pain underneath the big toe ever since I killed my feet in a pair of shoes in college and those side inclines just bring that pain back.

So at the end of the run was it much different than what I normally do when I got out running? No, not entirely, but I couldn’t exactly just stop and go home if hit a wall – I HAD to cover those 8 miles on my own.  Less than 2 miles of my whole route was an actual part of other runs I’ll go out and do, but it was something different and I’m glad I tried.  My dad and Bossman called me just as I was walking up to my front door to make sure I made it home ok.  Everything considering, I felt good during the whole run even when I was running up the hills! Happy running!

This probably isn’t the most exciting post, but it’s something I’m glad I did and probably not something I’m going to do regularly. 🙂

Do you have some sort of out of the ordinary running goal for yourself that you’d like to accomplish and just haven’t done it yet? What is it?  And how are you going to make sure you get it done?

[Not So] Wordless Wednesday No. 10


Cindy on her wedding day

Jimmy & Cindy in 1982, pregnant with their first daughter Julie

Cindy & Jimmy on family vacation in 2006

This photo the girls use a lot for posters at races where they are walking in memory of their mom. This was taken in March 2007

Cindy & Jimmy on her 50th Birthday in 2007

Cindy with her girls on her 50th Birthay. They all look like they should be sisters in this photograph!

Julie's Wedding Day - November 15, 2008

The day Cynthia got engaged - October 2009

Cindy & Jimmy on their last family vacation with Cindy in January 2010

Cynthia's wedding day at Cindy's hospital in February 2010

Jimmy & Cindy on Cynthia' s wedding day

If you would like to donate to our fundraising efforts in memory of Cindy please go here

Running in Wine Country

So based on Beth’s post yesterday you have probably gathered that Beth and I ran our long runs separately this week, but no fear, our running duo is still together! Thank God! Also if you have been following for a while you might have known that I am still in grad school- 3 yrs to be exact, and I have become really good friends with my fellow grad student, Susan. She had a milestone birthday this year- 40 – she really does not look or act a day over 30! After long deliberations in our ridiculous drives together to and from Denton during the week we settled to travel to wine country and San Fran to celebrate, so Thursday we headed out. I was of course nervous to fly as usual and have never flown with Susan before. We lived!! I also worried about how I would fit the long run it as it was going to take at least 2 hours, but based on our plans for the weekend I decided the best day to do it would be Friday morning before we got into anything in wine country.

Friday I woke up and checked the weather – 46 and heavy fog. Had I been in Texas I would have wanted to stay in bed, but nevertheless I got up and got going. Here is a shot of what I first saw across the street.

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I headed down not knowing anything about the area and was just hoping to find a route. I ran all through the town of Windsor which is gorgeous! The streets are lined with farms and wine vineyards. Here are just a few shots from my run. It was probably the prettiest run I have ever taken and am so glad I decided to get up and brave the fog!

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I have had a lot of pain and a lot of trouble running for the past few weeks. I have had to change shoes, alter my stride, walk, and just overall beat myself up about how bad I had been running. This run kind of made me feel a lot better! I ended up running 12.71 which was close to a mile more than planned- I really wanted 14, but worried about how long everyone on the trip had been awake and didn’t want people to have to keep waiting for me. I was glad to get it over with and also proud of the fact that I made it that far alone – that does not happen very often.

The rest of the day was dedicated to WINE!! We traveled about 15 minutes to Healdsburg and decided to stay there for the day. We went to 4 tasting rooms and a champagne bar. The first was by far our favorite so I will give them a little shout out. We went to Williamson Wines which gave a complimentary wine tasting with complementary food pairings, which was unheard of anywhere else, and they were awesome people. They had an Australian accent so for me I could have listened to them all day! I ended up buying there Meritage Red – SOOO GOOD!

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After literally 5 hours of tasting we made our last stop at the Champagne bar for big cheers to 40! One of the girls on the trip ended up becoming a member there so we had free champagne for the morning and of course had to have mimosas!

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Saturday we headed back to San Fran and for the sake of your time and reading pleasure I will just show you some pictures and leave you with the fact that I have NO CLUE how anyone runs the San Fran Marathon! San Francisco is INSANE with the hills and I was literally winded walking around. We did make it down Lombard (the crooked road) which was probably my favorite part! I was the driver for the weekend and am so glad I got to drive down that road! I have always wanted to!

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Overall this trip was awesome! I am glad my run went well and am excited/nervous for us to run our 20 miles this coming weekend.

Do you have a scenic run you’ve done that you’ll never forget? Where was it?

Lazy Solo Running Weekend

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 thatWhat’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?

Fill Me Up!

…with inspiration!  We were looking for  a dose of it today and decided to not be greedy and share some with YOU! 🙂

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The third image is hard to read the fine print, but it says – starting is the hardest part, the rest will follow

Has there been a quote or image that’s been your inspiration lately? What is it?

Thirteen Miles & Feet Problems

Because we ran/walked Susan G. Komen 5k on Saturday, we both set out for our long training run Sunday morning. Not sure that either one of us was really in the mood to run. Our plan was to start at around 7:00 a.m., but Beth sent a tweet about 7 that said –
“I am trying to use mind control to tell @Likethecolor she should come over at 8am and we’ll run our 13 miles. Haha.” 
It worked and we really didn’t set out until after 8:15.  Luckily the weather is much better now so starting later isn’t as big of a deal. Thank God!

Teal decided to try running without her camelbak for this long run. She has this thing where once she feels tired she doesn’t want anything to touch her and starts to blame being tired on crap touching her. Lately it has been getting worse, all though about half way in the run, Teal wished she had it based on thirst alone. We started out fairly fast given our prior training runs, but really we both still feel kind of slow. Beth felt pretty good body wise but just lacking in speed for this run. Teal was actually hoping to feel the same, but that didn’t happen.

We both had a rather scattered training week all together. According to our marathon training plan, we were supposed to run 5 on Tuesday, 8 Wednesday, and 5 Thursday and basically that didn’t happen. Beth ended up with 4.71 on the treadmill which is not bad considering it was the treadmill without music. Teal made it 4.47 but literally stopped twice to walk. Then the 8 was interesting too, Beth made it 3 of 8, she said her mind was just checked out from her crazy week, and Teal made it 7.72 but it was not pretty, it took her 1:22 minutes and she walked, her mind was all over the place too. Neither one of us made the 5 and then really we walked the 5k so we lacked some miles this week. You would have figured our legs were pretty rested, but thus they were not. Beth was sore from Johnny’s and as soon as Teal started running her knee kept popping out of place. She figured it would go away but it literally never really did. We are worried about this knee. Teal ended up stopping at about 10 miles, (shoe issues) then had to run/walk that last 3. Beth ran some circles around to stay close and asked Teal if she wanted to stop but really was like- you keep going- I’ll eventually keep moving.  Teal decided to walk up the hills (really there was one left) because that hurts the most. Teal made it 12.54, Beth made it 13.1. Slow but done, we guess that’s what counts- or at least we hope??!!

We both went to brunch after the run with a bunch of friends and both of our significant others joined for the first time. We were both surprised they came! They usually avoid the social brunch thing, typically make fun of us in their loving way but they came! We actually think they ended up enjoying brunch more than either of us expected.

Teal’s foot was bothering her so much she could barely touch it and her hubby had to carry her to the car. Teal also b-lined it back to Luke’s Locker who graciously helped her change shoes as well. They are so much better than buying shoes at like Academy or other places – very helpful.

 

 We both decided we needed some stretching and went to Yoga that night as well to stretch out and de-stress! Yoga actually felt really good on our sore muscles.  Teal had been contemplating the yoga thing again due to price, but decided it might actually be much better for my body then what she was currently doing — maybe save her from muscle issues. We shall see! Beth goes a lot and it seems like she has way less issues- she has some feet and knee problems, but is usually able to recover quickly.

We are hoping that this week brings a better training week altogether. I am sure you saw Beth’s post a couple weeks ago about what was happening with her work outs and Teal’s has been fairly similar. We need out of the funk!! This week we are supposed to run 5, 8, and 5 again and we had to change our long run around because Teal is leaving for San Fran Thursday and Beth to Austin so the plan is to run 12 miles alone and then 19 miles the next week Sunday night (10/30). We are actually going to make our planned 19, a 20 miler possibly inspired by fear and also reading one of our Twitter Friend’s blogs— Courtney actually ran two 20 milers, a 22 and a 24 before her first marathon. We are slightly worried about the fact that training to 20 miles is all we have; there are still 6 more miles to cover!  Surely some of that is newbie worries – right??