To Marathon or Not to Marathon?

Remember that goal I set… have an awesome race, gain some confidence going into the marathon, and don’t need a PR, just a good race? Yea, that didn’t happen.  Then immediately you start to reflect. Why did it not go well? Maybe it was because I did 15 on Sunday, 3miles of speed work Tuesday, and 10 miles at marathon pace Wednesday, and 2 weight training days? So 28 miles right before a ½. Probably not the best idea.  Or, blame it on the weather? It was hot, humid, and gross. My chaffed sports bra lines can show you that for sure.  My legs ached the entire time, even hinging on cramping, especially around miles 7-9. Or maybe it is because this isn’t fun for me right now? I’m more or less running scared. I had a lot of issues last year,Plantar Fasciitis, I have very little cartilage in my knees (thank you dad, he doesn’t either), I have a random hip issue stemming from no cushioning in my bottom two vertebrates (like what happens to 70% of people over the age of 65, except I have it now). I know… I may sound like a whiney excuse maker, but it’s the reality of the situation. So I hope this doesn’t cause your eyes to roll at me. So really I’m not sure… but either way, I should be happier about finishing a ½ marathon than I am.  Boooooo hiss on this attitude but I can’t shake it!!

I have tried everything. EVERYTHING!! Rereading race stories of people, looking over my plan, making changes, looking at the shiny medal I would get at Louisiana Marathon, positive self-talk, negative talk, self-bribery, sarcasm, rest, breaks, I even at this point would pay someone to run next to me the entire time. Takers?? Anyone? Bueller… Bueller?

As of right now, I am NOT going to run the Louisiana Marathon. My heart has also never really been in this race, which to me makes it wayyyy harder. I have refused to let myself get excited (revert back to running scared, White Rock Marathon memories, pain, disappointment). I say this, but I have not gone as far as to change my race, or really even stop training. I have looked at a few other plans, more “finish” a marathon type plans, instead of what we have been doing, that have a few less miles.

The main huge issue is I just truly don’t think my body likes anything over 13.1 miles. I have just now started to feel those issues pop up that kind of remain bearable running under 13. Really half training is not bad on my body, but upper mileage just starts to cause everything to freak out. I’m still sore on Thursday from Sunday long runs. Everything hurts, and every remedy doesn’t work, ice baths, foam rolling, stretching, adult beverages… ha. Nothing. It just feels like crap. This doesn’t happen for a half. I mean it does but NOT to the same level, and it requires way fewer miles per week to run. Duh, half!   So I am not sure if it is “worth it.” I can do it, but what will I feel like after, what will my body do? Can it handle the rest of training and the run? Maybe I’ll just play it on feel? Can you train like that?? UGH!

I could run another marathon… and finish… I think. But I don’t know how fast, how happy, how painful/painless it will be, what damage will be done… etc? Am I supposed to drop to a half and not ever attempt the distance again to “save” my body/mind, so that I’ll actually keep running.

Am I a weenie?

Then to add further confusion to this madness. I am not a lone runner. I have a race buddy. A badass race buddy. I don’t want to not do it and her do it alone, train alone, be out there alone. Not that she wouldn’t be anyways… I’m slower (and ps I’ve known this forever, check out the about us page, so this is not it either) Don’t worry I have run that option through my mind as being a “mental” reason for this. It’s not.  But you get the point. Also that jealous streak sets in of “I’m so close to this person, and she can do it, and I don’t feel I can.” (race distance not speed) Ouch… but it’s true, and you all know what I am talking about. We are human. So yea… I don’t know what to do.

Do I just need to become a bike rider?

So there you have it. My sad whiney, god only knows what rant.

What would YOU do?

Read Full Post »

Happy Half-a-versary to LiAR

Let’s just start by saying good Lord this was an early and long morning. Ok, fine, we’ve gotten up earlier for Disney races, but still. Everything said you should NOT be in downtown Dallas later than 6 a.m. Fiiine, cue alarm clocks going off in the 4 o’clock hour. Beth picked up Teal at 5 a.m. and we were in a parking spot by 5:30 a.m. So there we were with 2.5 hours to kill before the start of the race. Our early arrival insured us an awesome parking spot and first use of port-a-potties!

The corrals and port-a-potties all to ourselves!

It’s normal to be this excited about a port-a-potty, right?!

Thankfully we realized the Luebs were down there just as early as us. More people to entertain ourselves! Then of course it was time to head to our corral where we found even more frunners to hang with before the official start.

LiAR before the race!

Frunners in Corral A!! Photo courtesy of Heidi

Teal: I, for the first time in a while, prepared for this race in terms of, eating right the few days before, getting enough sleep before, laid out my clothes, painted my finger nails, downloaded a new playlist…etc. I reallllly wanted this race to go well. I said I didn’t need to PR and I still say that, but I did want it to feel good. You know like, those runs that almost feel effortless. I haven’t had a single one since the marathon. I wanted one just as a boost of confidence. NOPE. Fail, giant zero. This didn’t feel good. It felt like work, and I did work.

I really had debated this week’s training runs. We were scheduled for 10 at Marathon pace on Thursday. I decided to still do the run, thinking more long term to the marathon, and decided to run it a day earlier, and then rest my legs until Sunday. I figured it would be ok, but I didn’t know. Running a half marathon with 28 miles on your legs that week was probably not the best idea. I really didn’t think much of it, apparently I have more faith in my legs than they have in themselves, I thought they would recover. I don’t think they did.

Beth: So it was kind of important to me to do all that I could to make a potential PR happen at this race. This means I skipped my 10 mile run at marathon pace on Thursday. A big oops there since it goes against one of my December goals. Brent and I actually had two Birthday parties we wanted to go to the night before which had me eating a sushi dinner – not my norm, but at this point with food I don’t really have tons of issues. *knock on wood* Something I don’t take for granted, trust me! When I didn’t get full from sushi I ate goldfish on the way to the next Birthday party.  I made Brent take the bag of goldfish away so I wouldn’t eat them all, but I was still hungry. Which resulted in me stealing part of someone’s spinach quesadilla. Haha. Not my typical night before a race! Oh and not to mention we hit traffic going home, so I definitely got to bed later than I had anticipated.

Miles 1-4

Teal: These actually felt good, my pace was good, I felt like I could keep it, my legs didn’t feel bad. It was super super humid 90% and even on some accounts I saw 100% humidity and close to 70 degrees. And huge eye roll to those who say perfect running conditions. Nope. They are not; try 50 degrees, no humidity. I’ll take that. I was drenched by mile 4 and my hair was sticking to me. LOVED running over Large Marge (also known as the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge). Love that bridge and it’s a great addition to Dallas. Brian L. was at 4 to cheer us on with Mama C, Fiona and Dat! Boost of energy!!

photo courtesy of Mama C which means she’s not in it 😦 Dat, Fiona & Brian L.

photo courtesy of Mama C

Beth: Back to my goals again, I said I wanted to run a strong race and I knew that had to start from the beginning. I told myself this wasn’t the Turkey Trot and I’m not about to start being a crazy people dodger. I did the bare minimum to go by people slower than me. I kept making a conscious effort to see how I felt and slow down if necessary. My mind was also all, look! Old Red where I got married. Look! Belmont Hotel where your Bachelorette Party was and the Shepard Fairey mural you took some engagement pictures in front of that! I knew after I crossed Large Marge I’d see my first set of familiar faces and was ready to see them too!  And I looooved hearing Mama C call me Beeper at this point! Pumped me up!

photo courtesy of Mama C

Miles 5-8

Teal: Love, loved, loved running passed Scottish Rite. I love that hospital and spent a ton of time there in High school. I volunteered in Child Life my senior year, and in other areas of the hospital my Junior year. Patients and parents were outside cheering us all on. This was new and a totally good addition.

I start to feel more pain in my legs at this point. I feel labored and pretty stiff. My calf muscles were really tight and my quads ached. I just wanted to stay steady. I saw my husband and Brent around 6 and high 5’ed them. Wasn’t expected to actually see them so that was super awesome! I ended up getting super tied up at the water station around 7. I actually just stopped. It was a cluster. I think I probably spent 2 minutes here dealing with the madness. My music stopped playing and it was in my skirt zip pouch in the back. I couldn’t get it out or then back in. I asked a spectator to help me get it fixed. I think she was like “what in the world do you want me to do?” I was annoyed here and the stop made me stiffer. BONUS!!

Beth: Parts of this section of the course were similar to the past two years. Um, so I kind of just blew by Scottish Rite without paying attention.  Oops? I think I was just really determined and focused that I really kept to myself a lot this race and I might not have survived had I not done so.  I only really expended extra energy 3 times and it was each of the 3 times I saw familiar faces. Well, I guess, I expended energy in trying to see my husband which I never did. But gah, that looking for him in the crowds was tiring me out.  That’s probably just the weather factor right there. I kept thinking in this stretch, why didn’t I ask him w hat he’d be wearing? Why didn’t we figure out a mile for him to be in? I did know that Rebekah would be right around the split of the half and the full, so I kept looking for her father-in-law since he’s much taller than her. 🙂  Loved getting that high five from her at that point it totally pumped me up. Also, the wind that was occurring in random bouts during this part pumped me up as well!

Miles 8-10

Teal: I was looking everywhere for people. I thought Rebekah would be here and she was but I missed her. It really does kind of make you dizzy to find people while you are running. Which leads me to another weird thing about this race, it NEVER thinned out. It was seriously thick with people the entire time. This surprised me and it almost felt like maybe the streets were skinnier this year. I’m feeling very labored at this point and I really just wanted to stop. My legs are tight, super tight, and this is affecting the way my knee works. It always has affected it, and I have had some issues recently with the longer runs. Post runs it will hurt to even touch. This is what is happening now around 9ish. I really just want to get done and it was somewhere around this point I see the 2:10 pacer on the loop around and just said, stay in front of him and I’ll be happy.

Beth: I had known where the mile 8 sign was because we had already run by it and the split was really us running down the other side of part of the street we had just run up.  In my mind I was just trying to get to the last 5K get there and you go this.  I was going back and forth between you could PR!! It’s not happening today! Either way I knew I just need to keep going. Then I saw Brian E. in here, yelled at him but you know just to get his attention not in angry way and was glad to see a familiar face right then and there! Thanks for being out there Brian!

Miles 11-13

Teal: Just really wanted to be done. I really had no desire to keep going except I just wanted to be done. I think my shoes are too big too… I’m running this stretch just thinking of stupid things like “ I want to eat at El Fenix, can I actually ride the escalator at Ross Perot, can I have a mimosa when I’m done, how close are we, if I was a snake my feet wouldn’t hurt, why am I not Harry Potter or Meb, or a super speedy runner, what am I going to eat for lunch next week.” I just kept thinking of the dumbest stuff to make the time go. Also, while I do *think* I like this course, it has a lot of uphill, I clearly was on another planet for the down hills because I don’t remember them. Dallas is a big city, I hated the little loopy out and back thing we did between 12 and 13, there is plenty of room to not do that, it was such a tease too, because you could see the finish line and you still had to run up and around for about .70 of a mile. Lame.

photo courtesy of Brian L.

Beth: It should also be noted that my thought process was kind of similar to Teal’s here – what is this new restaurant next to El Fenix? I wonder if it’s good?? We should try it sometime! Anyway, and then here’s where we make our back into downtown.  Here’s where I start thinking, man, I didn’t actually give the course map a good lookin’ at, did I? Surely they wouldn’t give us a hill right here before the mile 12 marker? But we are coming into downtown from this side it’s pretty much inevitable there WILL be a hill right here. And I’m kind of glad I figured that out so I could back off my pace a little and make it to the top of that hill alive. The out and back thing was miserable and I kept wondering if people would just cut it? Haha. It was also in this stretch I saw a runner laying on the ground and being worked on by EMTs.  I have no idea what the outcome of that was but in that moment it made my heart heavy for sure!

13.1

Teal: Done and I stayed under 2:10. Not bad and really in retrospect pretty good for my week’s work itself. Not disappointed in time because that is about average for me. I am more disappointed in the feel of it, how labored it was, and the fact that my knee proceeded to be in throbbing pain for well over an hour after and then just dull pain even as I type this a day later. Damn knee…. Anyone want to trade??

Beth: Somehow, someway I had a last little kick to give at the end. You better believe I crossed that finish line with my arms up in the air.  I knew I was teetering the line because I’d heard my Runkeeper tell me I’d hit the 1:55 mark however many yards back.  So I immediately got out my phone, got on twitter to look up Brent’s twitter (I’d set his to tweet my time) and saw that I had PR’d by 11 seconds!!!! Holy crap!  Later that day I looked online at the official results which put my time at a 12 second PR. WHOOP! I had opted to wear my Aggie ring to this race and try and take some of good juju that was out there from Johnny Football winning the Heisman! 🙂

We did it! Half marathon no. 15 for the two of us and two years of racing under out belts!

with MK! We are so awesome that we are standing in number and height order!

Us with Melvin! We can’t even tell you how much his encouragement and support means to us!

Read Full Post »

Going Back to Where it All Started

This weekend we will be running the race that started it all for us as Life is a Run…well, kinda.  We say kinda because they changed the name on us from White Rock Marathon to Dallas Marathon and the race course is very different.  Not to mention the starting line is no longer in Fair Park, but that’s been the case in years past since this race did start in 1971 and this wouldn’t be the first time the start is actually in downtown Dallas.

Excuse us while we steal a couple words from some of our frunners (stolen word #1 – credit to Mama C), but there’s one frunner in particular, Michelle, who just had her half-a-versary (stolen word #2) and we are about to have our’s!  Hearing that phrase from MK really puts this coming weekend into perspective.  Because really this weekend is kind of a big deal in our world or at least a reflection on where we started and just how far we have come since 2010.

2010 when we became half marathoners!

We both had been runners in different times of our lives, but 2010 was when Teal asked Beth if she wanted to run a half with her, a distance neither one of us had come close to running.  It’s cute to think now how we use to run for time not for distance, you know like, long run this weekend is running for an hour and a half – oh my!  It’s also cute to think how neither one of us ran with a phone or any device with GPS.  We ran on feel alone. Ohhhh how the times have changed!  And who would have thought in 2011 we’d come back to run White Rock Marathon as our first marathon!? By the time we come back this year to toe the line at the half marathon distance it will be our 15th half marathon upon it’s completion.

In 2010, we had pretty much the perfect weather and little did we know that we were actually going to be spoiled by that.  We would like to pat ourselves on the pack for actually starting our first ever half in very appropriate running gear.  Yes, in the above picture we have fleeces on but we had Michael, Brent & Kate holding onto all of that for us while we ran.  Then 2011, for this very week leading up to the marathon we were both panicked.  WHAT?! Rain on marathon day??  What will we wear? What do we need?  Well, we learned lessons from that one. You could read about them here.

Teal becoming a Marathoner!

Beth becoming a Marathoner!

It’s race week once again for White Rock/Dallas Marathon and per usual we have no idea what we are going to wear because we are pretty sure the projected forecast for Sunday has changed in some form or fashion each day this week. We mentioned in our weekend post how we’d hit a record high last Sunday in the 80’s. Well, we’ve had chances of a cold front coming through Sunday and we’ve had highs of 77 or something like that, so we’ll just have to see how it all plays out. As long as there isn’t rain we should be good! 🙂

In pre-race posts of the past we’ve given you a goal and we are going to kind of do that for you here.  Our individual thoughts, expectations and what not going into Dallas Marathon this weekend –

Teal: I am actually for the first time in a while nervous about a race. I usually just go and run and that is that. I know for a fact that I can make 13.1, clearly!  I haven’t set goals for a while because they started to have the opposite effect on me and they weren’t motivating. I am nervous because I do really want/need this race to go well. It is the last one before the Marathon… dun dun dun. AND I seriously, as dumb as it sounds, am still stuck on how completely and totally crappy last year was for this race (i know it was the full), but still and that has carried over into my marathon training. Sooo really if I was goal setting, my goal is to have an awesome race and to gain some confidence going into the Marathon, confidence that I pretty much do not have right now. I don’t even need a PR, I just want my race to feel good. How to make that happen?? I don’t know. So there goal set. Wish me luck.

Beth: White Rock Half 2010 holds my half marathon PR.  The closest I’ve come to my 1:56:39 PR was at Big D this past April, but I was still 34 seconds away from my PR.  I want so bad to beat that and I want to say that I could do it this weekend, but I just don’t know if I can. I’d like to run a smart race where I definitely do not start out too fast and have enough left in me to speed across that finish line.  I’m afraid of making “get a new PR this weekend” a goal because I’m not fully sure I can do it.  All year I though I’d come back to this race and conquer it with a new PR, but when I heard about them changing up the course it kind of changed things for me a little bit. So just like Teal is nervous, this goal I so want is making me nervous for race day Sunday.

So there you have it some of our reflections as we run our Half-a-versary race this weekend and what we think going into it.  Bring on half marathon no. 15 for #LiAR!  May the speed be with us!

Read Full Post »

November Report Card & December Goals

Happy  December to you!  What a year! Here’s to hoping that everyone has a fabulous last month! Let’s all make it great….us included!

The Report:

Teal –

1. Get my house in order without losing it! I am too routine and orderly for this mess. 

A: Done and Done and I didn’t totally lose it but I NEVER want to deal with that again. It was madness for three straight weeks! I only took this picture to send to a friend because really it hasn’t totally even been clean since the finish. Put you can see the floor and the bar change!

new orange door

before

and after!

2. Get my butt/mind in gear for marathon training. I feel so blah about it right now. It doesn’t feel right or like it is supposed to happen and I need to figure out how to get excited about it!

B: Better, I have not missed a run but have cut a couple short ie: this weekend I ran 15 instead of 18 and I have not done a couple of the “warm-up” miles. Still trying to get excited womp womp.

3.  Send out Christmas cards by the end of the month! We have only done this once and I want to make it a tradition.

F: yea nope, but I blame living socials, there was a problem with my paypal and I tried to fix it 3 times and they never got back to me thus no cards have been ordered. This might not happen! Oh well it will be totally fine!

4. Successfully host Thanksgiving at my house for the first time (ties to number 1 big time). Pressure is on for number 1 for sure!

B: I mean this went fairly well. You could have probably told from the Turkey Trot post recap that the turkey was slightly a mess, it was a little dry but everyone ate! My nephew had a great time with the bounce house, and everyone left full! I’d say that’s not a bad Thanksgiving!

my nephew Caleob

Hanging out in the bounce house with Elijah on Thanksgiving

Beth –

1. Get my house in order!  I didn’t get ALL of my stuff moved out of my sister’s house before the wedding and with wedding presents there are A LOT of boxes over at my new house with my husband.   We both don’t like messes so this is hard to look at right now until we get it all organized and into place.

B+: There is still a lot to be organized, but we are definitely in WAY better shape than when this month started. Plus Christmas decorating didn’t exactly help the organizing part out.

our kitchen looks SO much better!

2. Get in the game with marathon training!

A: I missed one tempo run in November, but I honestly think it worked out for the better.  It was the last week when I was about to do my 2nd 18 mile long run of this training cycle and kept having a slightly annoyed pain in one leg.  By long run day it had gone away, so I count this all as successfully getting my butt into gear.

3. Have all Christmas cards addressed and ready to be sent out by December 1st!  I’m so excited to send out Christmas cards this year!   I have them already to order, so this goal shouldn’t be too hard to tackle!

A+: I just have to put them in the mail!! I didn’t say actually mail them so I count this as an A+!

4. I’m bringing back my yoga goals, and in baby steps. Yoga once a week!  If I don’t start doing this I’m going to need to either cancel my membership or freeze it to save some moolah.

F: I didn’t go at all. I failed.  The thing is my body craves yoga it’s just like there’s some disconnect in actually getting my butt there….I don’t know what my deal is at all.

The Goals:

Teal-

1. Complete all marathon training runs.

2. Go to the Ross Perot Museum.  This place looks awesome and just opened on December 1st!

3. Not last minute Christmas shop although I may already be setting myself up for failure.

4. Don’t be a scrooge and actually put up the Christmas tree this year

Beth-

1. Complete all marathon training runs.

2. Get another room in my house organized this month!

3. In addition to organizing there are a couple of crafty projects I want to do around our house, so I’m going to commit to complete one of them this month!

4. Run a smart race at Dallas Marathon (only the half though).

5. Actually make use of my handy dandy Kitchenaid stand mixer and make Christmas cookies!

And here go, time to make these goals happen! Have a wonderful December! What are you wanting to accomplish this month?

Read Full Post »

Oh, Marathon Training Weekends!

We had a good weekend full of lots of time together which included some fun, some productivity and some running! A little bit of everything and maybe a rare weekend of finding balance with it all?

Friday: 

We drove to Ft. Worth to hang out with our friend Mandy! For anyone who doesn’t live in the DFW area you might not know that these two places are not exactly as close and one would think. We left Brent & Beth’s house around 6 and after dealing with traffic the ENTIRE time, we finally made it to dinner around 7:30, but it was totally worth the wait.

We ate at Winslow’s Wine Café, which was an old gas station converted to a nursery, then later this awesome wine bar! If you ever go we recommend the pita bread and hummus. There is something secretly amazing about their pita! Just trust us and get it.

 

(source)

We headed to Gingerman afterwards to hang out some more! Duh, plus why would we waste a trip to Ft. Worth to only staying like 2 hours?

We closed that place down, well sorta, our oldness and the fact that we were up early, and just the fact that we were at the end of a long week, we left….around 1 a.m.!  We did last awhile considering we did have to make the trek back to the Dallas side of the metroplex upon leaving.

We decided to make a short stop by the Ft. Worth Museum of Modern art because this cool guy, Companion, is still displayed outside. What he is we aren’t really sure, Teal & Michael even went to the artist’s lecture about him and, yea not sure. Giant under 21 crazy Mickey Mouse? Perhaps we need Michael’s input on this one?

See Beth mimicking him!

Saturday: Rest? Recover, Errands!

Teal headed to Luke’s Locker to solve her shoe crisis. The poor guy there had to suffer as she tried on like every shoe in the store. She ended up with these bad boys. Please God make them work better!

Saucony Ride 5

 

 

(source)

Beth finally got her birthday present! What’d she get? You guessed it! A bathroom cabinet, duh! Who doesn’t get one for these for their birthday?! We don’t have a picture of it,but it’s a lovely white cabinet that Brent and maybe his dad can put up over the master bathroom toilet. Hooray more storage space!

Sunday: Long Run

We headed to White Rock earlier than we have been lately. Last marathon training we got up early every Saturday and ran early. This time we have spoiled ourselves with later runs. Beth grabbed Teal at 7 and we headed to the lake. It was a nice day, overcast mostly, but still warm for Texas. We actually hit a record warm Sunday if that tells you anything.  This is a nice place to break up an 18 mile run since each lap is right at 9 miles.

We actually saw a bunch of people we know to keep it entertaining. Katie (you might remember her from this blog or even from here), Catherine from North Texas Runners and The Kennemers a.k.a. #TeamK!!

We also have a PSA to all the bikers out there. We highly HIGHLY recommend that you steer clear of the white race kits. We got to experience the not so pretty butt crack of a rather larger biker. Trust us on this on bikers, stick to the darker colors.

The birds were seriously crazy! It was right at this part of the lake that Mr. K ran up behind Teal and was like “looks like a harbor” it was awesome. Huge white birds everywhere. This pictures doesn’t really do it justice but it was awesome.

Teal decided to call it over at 15 and Beth made it the full 18! Then we headed for brunch at Campisi’s where we got to enjoy a couple of these!

Mimosa reward!

I’d say we were super busy and productive! Next up? Week 10 of marathon training! And looking forward to Dallas Marathon (but just the half) this weekend!

How was YOUR weekend??

Read Full Post »