We set out Saturday morning with the goal of 18 miles. The weather was not bad although when we started running it turned out to be extremely windy. We started about 6 o’clock this time with our friend Mary Alice, who was in town this weekend for the baby shower (her sister is Rebekah who we were throwing a shower for Saturday afternoon, more about that later) and also to visit friends. Mary Alice actually ran White Rock half last year with us! Anyways, back to Saturday, we decided to keep with as close to the same route as we ran last week, knowing it was relatively flat and we are comfortable with the area since we trained there for most of White Rock half 2010. We had talked about adding a small portion to our course so we would run all the way up to the Shops at Legacy (where the Heroes for Children 5k was) because last time we were literally running laps around a mall to make sure we got all of the mileage in!

We seemed back to normal running routine, we mentioned last time that we talked a lot, this time I am not sure we said much to each other except for portions where we turned around. Also we didn’t have any restroom breaks this time. Mary Alice ran with us but for most of the time we didn’t see her, we kept turning around to make sure none of us lost each other but despite our best efforts it still seemed to happen anyways. At one point in our route we running down a winding road with no sidewalks, we know—safe right? We both saw Mary Alice (and hoped she saw us) and figured she would run the same way but when we got to the end we didn’t see her so we both decided to run back. If anything was ever going to happen to anyone surely it would happen there. Drivers really don’t see you and sometimes if they do they don’t move over even though there are 3 full lanes and hardly ever traffic…MOVE OVER people… it’s just nice. We would do it for you! Nevertheless we ran up and down that three times, finally deciding to just run up to the Shops at Legacy where we both heard “Teal-Beth!” Luckily we found Mary Alice and talked about where to go from there.

A lot of the turns and runs through the parking lot stuff kind of threw us a little off, and about the 13 mile mark Teal had mentioned to Beth that if she lost her she wasn’t going to make it. Unfortunately an annoying Achilles problem that started last week came back and Teal had to slow down, and Beth thankfully would run ahead and then turn around to stay close. It really is a million times better when your running partner is close! Teal had to stop and walk for about .25 of a mile and managed to start again.

We ran back into each other about 3 miles away from finishing. When we had about 2 miles left Beth said- “I am going to run until I hit 18 and I am going to Starbucks and going to have someone pick us up.” SWEET!! If we had kept running the normal way home we would have had to walk quite a bit. Beth finished up and Teal had to run a few more laps around the Target parking lot. Luckily Beth’s mom, Nancy a.k.a. Fancy Nancy, came to our rescue [Hi, Beth’s mom! Thanks for rescuing us!]! I am pretty sure both of us were in pain. Eighteen miles was rough. I know for me [Teal] this was much harder overall than even the 17. We ran faster last week. Beth said she felt pretty good the entire time so that is a plus.

Of course keeping with our madness- Teal went to work.  Beth got an ice bath, went to yoga before last minute prep for the baby shower.

We met up again around 2:00 p.m. and set up for the baby shower at Teal’s house. The shower went off wonderfully and was a lot of fun. We are super excited and cannot wait to meet baby Elliott!

We all kind of stayed around after and watched the A&M game [Whoop!] and the Rangers game. Beth even managed to make it all the way out to Dallas for a joint Birthday party for some friends born in September & October!

I was able to get some recovery in on Sunday. My knees were throbbing so here is my version of an “ice bath.”

This week brings more training of course. Below is our plan. Luckily our run this week is not as far and we are excited to run in another Susan G. Komen race on Saturday. We will for sure catch you up on that.