Tour des Fleurs 10K

By now you’ve probably learned that with some of our weekends we really like to go big or go home and by that we mean fit ALL of the things into one weekend. 🙂  Our Wordless Wednesday post was a glimpse into everything we had going on this past weekend.

We kicked it off Saturday morning by running the Tour des Fleurs 10K at the Arboretum just like we’ve done every September for the last 5 and 6 years.  And per usual our friend Bitner also participated in the race with us, but this year we also made Catherine join in the fun as well!

You can probably tell from the picture that Bitner was a little cold that morning – ha!  A “cold” front had come through and we woke up in Dallas to temperatures in the 60’s.  It was woooonderful and a big change from the heat!  By the time we catch a shuttle bus from the parking lot to the Arboretum and walk through the Arboretum to the race area we aren’t really there that early and it’s time to start the race.  Off we all go on our merry way.

Running along White Rock Lake as we have done every year at this race.  We make it to the one “major” hill on the course that’s almost at the halfway mark.  Beth encounters a runner that’s running a zig zag pattern up the hill with her fingers out dancing along to her music.  We turn the corner and the hill is over! There’s a 3 mile marker sign. Huh? Where was the 2 mile marker sign?  Oh, well surely someone just messed up. Running, running.  Hey 5 mile marker sign.  Ok, this is just messed up!  We are a little over a mile off from these mile markers.  Beth opted to go music-less for this race and no one else around her was commenting about the markers so she kind of assumed maybe she just took a wrong turn because it wouldn’t have been the first time (hello, Too Hot to Handle 2011!).  Teal right away knew something was wrong with the course and reaffirmed that with other runners around here.

It turned out that the lead officer took that right turn onto the “big” hill instead of going straight a little bit further and us coming back to the hill.   And then there really wasn’t a person out there to direct racers either, so we all ended up running a 5.15 mile race. PR’s for everyone! 🙂

When the race was over we each grabbed our finisher’s hats (THANKS for bringing those back, TDF!!) and made our way to the after party.  They do throw a darn good after party with beer, lots of different food options and some free schtuff.

see the free schutff in our hands?

One of the best parts about this race is getting to walk around the Arboretum afterwards and see all the pumpkins and gourds out all over the place.  The majority of the time it doesn’t feel like Fall is even that close when we do this race, but we absolutely love getting to see the Arboretum all done up for Fall.

There were a lot of racers whose family came with them and were taking their children out of strollers to have their pictures taken amongst the pumpkins.  As you know we don’t have kids so we opted to put Bitner in the pumpkins and take his picture. 🙂  He loves of us, clearly, because he puts up with us doing these things!

It is sad that the race wasn’t a true 10K, but we love this race!  We can still remember the feelings of nervousness when we were running our first 10Ks. So far!  It’s a bit pricey, but considering the great after party, the finisher’s hat (though they were gone for two years) and the free entry into the Arboretum it’s a good deal! We’ll be back!

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Wordless Wednesday 39

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September Goals

Oh, good! We are getting our goals for the month up before it’s officially the half way mark. 🙂

Teal –

1. Clean out the back bedroom. Just look at this mess. Enough said and now I am sufficiently embarrassed!

2.  Join Soul Motivation yoga and go 2 times per week. I used to do yoga at 24 Hour Fitness with the guy (Joseph) who now owns Soul Motivation. He left 24 Hour obviously but I have so missed him. It’s pretty far from my house but it’s worth it. Just need to get my butt up there.

3. Make healthy popsicles! I am in a search for healthy popsicle recipes! I know summer is basically over but its Texas so I still have awhile! I bought super cool Popsicle molds like a month ago and have not even attempted to use them. This must change!

Beth – 

Don’t kill me if my goals are pretty much the same as last month! Still working perfecting them.

1. Our house is still a work in progress obviously and I’m pretty positive every month for awhile I could work on a new house project.  This month my house project is to actually make window treatments for at least one window.  I have fabric for two and then remember I wanted to make some for a third window as well.  So I’m starting small with one window and hope I actually accomplish more.

2. Read two books.  On goodreads I set a challenge of reading 26 books this year and have been on track or ahead by just a liiiittle bit all year long.  Need to keep that up. I also joined a book club a couple of months ago, so I’ll be reading Serena by Ron Rash as one of my books to be ready for our next meeting!

3. YOGA!!  Still with the goals and needing to get them done!

Here’s to hoping we’ve been working on these for the past 12 days already if not we’ve got a lot of work to do! 😉  Hope your September is going great!

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August Report Card

Here’s how we measured up for the month of August!

Teal –

1.  I HATE doing weight lose goals because I always disappoint myself because my body clearly loves all of its fat (and you probably roll your eyes that this is another stupid weight goal), BUT this month is the month before my birthday and  IF I lost 5 pounds I would weigh what my goal was for 30. So it would have taken me until 31 and a rather roller coaster year for my weight but it would be off! SOOOOO there you go, lose 5 pounds and make my 30 year old goal weight (not really what I want in life just what I wanted at 30) but really do it at 31!

C- : I ultimately lost like 2.5 pounds if I get to count the morning weight! Hahaha.  We shall keep working on the forever struggle of being consistent, healthy, and fighting the fat gene!

2.  I changed my half marathon training plan slightly from Beth’s because I don’t want to burn myself out like I did last time so my goal is to make my runs! This is totally doable because I have basically started an “I am a newbie and haven’t run” training plan to not destroy my love of running again!

B: I have missed a few “short” runs but have been getting the longer ones in and loving my plan. I do not feel discouraged, slow, or overwhelmed by the plan. I know my next half marathons will not be my “fastest” but I am 100% ok with just enjoying the run!

Beth – 

1.  To get up once a week and do a workout before work.  If you follow me on twitter you pretty much know that usually on Tuesday & Thursday mornings I am up at Private Training Zone by 6:00 a.m. to get in an hour of weights with Johnny and the other ladies in my workout group.  This goal would mean I have to get up an additional morning to do a workout on my own.  There was a time when I would do this with yoga, but that has been awhile and I know I just need to transition into this type of routine.  Let’s hope this makes a habit of it!

F: Haha, this one is gonna take a lot of work on my part.  I’ve reverted back lately to even having a hard time wanting to get out of bed for my Tuesday & Thursday mornings, but I do!  I did get up early in the first week of August, but it was to try and get a bunch of reading done for my book club. lol

2. Finish yet another project at our house.

A+: There are now two walls in my house that are no longer blank! Hooray!  I even bought some fabric for a window decoration project, but still have a few more supplies to get for that one!

now to finish accessorizing the shelves 🙂

3. YOGA! Haha, my goals are back and the idea for this month is to get in at least 3 yoga classes a week. 

C-: Ok, so there were two weeks where I didn’t go, BUT I still went to yoga 10 times throughout the month of August so that’s why I’m still giving myself a C range grade.  All things considered with Birthday celebrations and work picking up steam with busyness I’m proud of those 10.  I love me some yoga and glad I’m making it a priority during this marathon training cycle!

this was before I missed a week…then another….

 

See you tomorrow when we lay out all of our hopes and dreams for the month of September! 😉

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Happy National Teal Day!!

(Top left: Girls Beach Trip to Cancun 2006, top right: Marge & Homer a.k.a. Teal & Michael – Halloween 2007, bottom left: Rebekah & Zac’s wedding September 2007, and bottom right: Rebekah’s Birthday March 2007 [Beth, Teal & Rebekah])

(Left: Teal & Beth dancing at Teal & Michael’s wedding November 2008 – obvs, top right: the night before Teal’s wedding! and bottom right: Teal and her sweet MIL)

(Top left: Girls Beach Trip to the Dominican Republic and Teal being awesome :), top right: riding the catamaran on our excursion on DR beach trip [Mandy, Beth & Teal], bottom left: Girls Beach Trip 2009 – Kaua’i, Hawaii, and bottom right: shave ice at Matsumoto on the North Shore of Honolulu)

(Top left: Teal’s 28th Birthday, top right: Michael & Teal as Bacon & Eggs for Halloween, bottom left: Teal & Brent, and bottom right: Beth, Teal and Mary Alice before White Rock Marathon [our first half])

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Liberty by the Lake 5K

pre-race car pic!

Sooooo July 4th a bunch of our running friends were doing Liberty by the Lake 5K/10K and if they were doing it we had to do it too.  Right? That’s how it works?  The internets also had a special so we got this race for pretty cheap!

We didn’t have big hopes and dreams for this race because, come on, it’s July in Texas. Hot!  But being the weird summer that it is the temperature that morning wasn’t really as bad as it could have been, but don’t worry the humidity was still there. Blah!

Frunners!
(pic stolen from Mama C)

NTX Runners!
Look at Ninja representin’ w/his tank

We should also note how pumped we were to wear our latest purchase from Compete Every Day with our Texas Strong shirts!  We loooooove them!!  We did see a few other runners out there sporting different CED shirts as well.  If you haven’t checked them out you really should, especially if you are a Dallasite, as they are a local business!  And no we weren’t paid or rewarded with free things by that mention we just really love their stuff and awesome customer service!

Then at some point it was time to do what we we went to The Colony for and that is run a 5K.  So run a 5K we did.  Not a lot of shade out there and we hear the 10K-ers have it even worse.  We stuck together and ran the whole thing together.  This was also our first race back in the same age group since Beth fiiiinally turned 30.  We crossed that finish line together at 28 minutes flat!

Several in our group that day won age group awards, but only a couple of them won the privilege of a LiAR photobomb.  Way to go Brian & Jesse!!

Another thing we should point out which you can’t see from the above pic, but we totally love Jesse’s method of keeping cool in the Texas heat:

Step 1: wear a hat

Step 2: insert ice in hat

Step 3: put your ice hat on your head

Step 4: repeat as necessary (if you have a cooler full of ice w/you which he normally does somewhere close by)

It ended up being a fun time, but the fun did not stop there! We made our way over to Team K’s house for some 4th of July waffles and mimosas!

Fun times were had by all!  We are so blessed to have made such awesome friends in the running community! It really is incredible all the greatness that running can bring to ones life! 🙂

Again the fun did NOT end there because after this we went and met up with our husbands who were drinking some beers to get thaaat much closer to reaching their plates at Flying Saucer.

So here we are – officially caught up on our race posts! 🙂  We don’t have any races scheduled for August though so unless something happens no more race recaps until September!

Also, shout out to all the people whose pictures we stole without telling them to make this post that much more fun (a.k.a. Mama C, MK, Jesse and Alison P.)!

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Tie Dye Party

We spent last Saturday night tie dying. Yep, that’s right, we channeled our inner hippy and joined the amazingly sweet yogis from Sunstone Yoga (North Dallas/Addison location) for a tie dye party. One of the instructors at Sunstone along with her husband would be leading the entire workshop. We debated if this was weird and decide it wasn’t in the slightest, and even if it is we WANTED to do it so that then takes it back to not weird. 🙂  See how that works?

We left our boys at Flying Saucer to hang out and drink beer while we headed over there. Pretty sure both of them asked us how long it was going to take because we would be holding up dinner. We both responded with “ it most likely wont be the entire time so chill.”

The tie dye party was from 6-8 and we both thought back to our childhood tie dying and thought, No way can you dye a shirt for 2 hours. WRONG! Not only did we stay the entire time, we probably could have stayed for 2 more hours! We quickly learned that tie dying is in fact a true art. We have never met anyone more passionate about the art of tie dying then Jeremy.  He has been tie dying since the 80’s and basically is a walking encyclopedia of how to tie dye. We are not kidding and we had no idea this was actually the case. You have to check out his website if you don’t believe us – Tie Dye Guide. 

We spent the first 30 or so minutes getting the basics like how to fold your clothing item, how to decide colors, what the different folds are and insider tricks to making it look good. He can relate everything back to Davinci or the meaning of the swirl in life, which is actually very impressive and interesting!  We can only hope we retained all the information Jeremy and Jen shared with us!

When we tie dyed as children we just stuck rubber bands on a shirt and dunked it in dye, not giving a flip as to what would actually happen.  We decided to do the spiral method because Jeremy told us that was the easiest one to start with and since at this point we felt a little scared of what would happen we went with it.

Here is what our process looked like! The spiral twirling part is a little hard since your shirt has a mind of its own. Turns out that in the end it doesn’t so much matter (at least to us newbies) You couldn’t tell our swirls where lopsided or raised!

The actual dye part is somewhat complicated especially if you forgot the color wheel from like elementary Art class. We all pretty much know yellow and blue make green and what not, but trying to figure out secondary colors on tie dye made us worried we would end up with brown shirts. Jeremy and Jen basically helped us make sure that didn’t happen and we both stayed with colors that would not allow any poop brown to show up!

See picture of us intently working. Ha

We took our shirts home at the end of the night and washed them out in the morning. Voila! This is what we got! We love them and they turned out WAY better than expected.

Just as a reference of how awesome the real tie dying was to the tie dying we are used to. Here is a picture of a recent tie dye job one of us did… yea…. Spray tie dye…. Not so much!

We do want to say a BIG THANK YOU to Jeremy & Jen!  We loved the tie dye workshop and are SO glad we made it into yoga to hear about the workshop at the end of class! Our shirts are also displayed on the Sunstone Yoga North Dallas facebook page which is fun! AND we heard that Jeremy & Jen will be leading more tie dye workshops in the Dallas area in the next few months! Be sure to check Jeremy’s page for updates!

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Wounded Warrior

Something crazy has been going on in Texas this summer and more specifically in Dallas as I can’t really speak for the rest of the state. 🙂  It’s called rain.

I was in top 500 or something like that so I also got a hat with my registration and every year they give you a pair of socks in addition to your race shirt.

I woke up race morning and this race really isn’t that far from my house though I was running behind and my fellow NTX Runners who were also running Wounded Warrior had planned a meet up for a pre-race picture.  Just a few minutes behind I was making my way over to packet pickup and juust made it under the awning of the building when all of the water from the sky began to pour down. All of it. Luckily, I’d found some of my NTX people so I wasn’t just standing their by myself since Teal wasn’t able to run this race with me due to high school graduation where she works.  We got a couple updates from a human being that the race was delayed 15 minutes and then another 15 minutes as there was just a massive crowd gathered together trying to stay dry.

For this race they have two distances, a half and a 10K, and per usual I was sticking with the 10K which started after the half did.  It’s too darn hot to be doing a half in June, amiright?  Except for this rainy race day.  I also began tweeting with some other local runners who were hearing the delay was even longer than what I had heard.  Eventually I knew I had 5-10 minutes before my race was to begin so I made my way to the start line in the rain.  I’d already made the executive decision that I was not going to even begin to mess with my phone and Runkeeper for this race.  The life of my phone was more important than music and having exact info on my race.

It rained for half if not more of my race.  They actually had to do a detour on one part of the race that runs on the Campion Trail because it wasn’t just kind of flooded over it was REEEEALLY flooded over.  As in if I ran through that I think the water would have been up to my hips, but I’m also short if you have noticed from all the pictures where I stand next to Teal. 🙂

Throughout the race I didn’t really know how I was doing and was just excited every time I passed a mile marker.  With less than a mile to go I spotted some friends on the course, Lisa & Lucy (who I still had not meet IRL until that moment).  That was  nice little boost at the end.  And then the race was over.  I was drenched and had no clue how I did, but was excited to have my 10K bling! 🙂

 

 

I absolutely love this race!  It’s for an awesome cause, it’s close to home and I get a medal for running a 10K!  I didn’t get to stick around too long after the race as some friends of Brent’s were in town and I need to get to brunch. Priorities, people!  But I did get to see quite a few people at the end which was very fun!

Julie and me

 

Jesse & me – love his shirt!

I was pleasantly surprised to find out later that day that my naked run at Wounded Warrior was only 15 seconds behind my 10K PR!  I finished in 54:46 which was 9th in my age group.  Not too shabby!

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Ironman Texas Volunteering

Two months ago today we were in  Houston for a weekend of volunteering, frunners, cheering and spectating greatness!  We made the four hour trek from Houston the night before with Beth’s sister, Kate.

None of us left work early and then we decided to all sit down to eat dinner instead of making Teal have to eat and drive at the same time, so we were really setting ourselves up for a late arrival into Houston.  By the time our heads hit the pillow that night we knew that alarm clock was right around the corner. 😦

But it was so worth it.  We met up with the DFW Crew that was volunteering and the rest of our volunteer group for wetsuit peeling (but let’s call it what it really is wetsuit stripping).  All of us volunteers watched the elites start the swim and then made our way over to where we’d be stripping athletes. 🙂  The worst part of the day was being present at the swim finish when people didn’t complete it in time and were stripped of their tag and done for the day.  Talk about heartbreaking!

The crew with Mike Reilly

Once our stripping duties were over we got second breakfast/super early lunch, whatever you want to call it, before making our way over to the canal area to find the perfect spot to hangout and later cheer for the athletes.  We were there before the elites had started their marathon portion and man was it amazing to see all of them.  Where we were spectating enabled us to see the athletes 3 times on the run part.

oh, race signs!

Or really since they ran along the other side of the canal you could say we saw runners 6 times…

We had a lot of time out on this portion of the race and some time to kill, so we ate a lot of goldfish (shocking), maybe had a couple adult beverages and enjoyed the company of our frunners. 🙂

A part from the people our group knew racing that day Teal had a friend Derek out there that she also got to cheer for – if only this picture of Derek wasn’t blurry!

Thanks to the one company that had people passing out cowbells for spectators and a couple of the awesome ladies with us we had tons of stuff to cheer with and/or entertain us.

We were both so excited and pumped to get to cheer on the power couple of Heidi & Brian. 🙂 These two worked their butts off for months preparing for this day, their hard work showed and paid off!

Heidi minutes away from being called an Ironman!

Brian minutes away from being called an Ironman!

The accomplishment of all of the athletes we encountered that day was inspiring!  You won’t catch us doing an Ironman, but man what a feat and such a neat thing for us to be a part of as volunteers and cheerleaders!

A none blurry picture of Team Leub after they rocked their first Ironman!  Congrats to you both….two months later! You two impress us with your dedication, strength and accomplishment!

Apparently this is what you look like after covering 140.6 miles each!

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Beth’s the Big 3-Oh!

In honor of Beth’s 30th birthday we just wanted to remind her of we loved having her around the last 30 years.  Here’s a little bit from your closest friends and family:

Beth (not Beeper)- Congrats on turning 30! I look forward to more Stars, Rangers & Aggie games, sake bombs, Jurassic Park watchings, BYOB Thai & Greek places and our standard Thursday nights. Keep on truckin! Love, Brent

Thirty years of memories: thankful God knew best our family expansion should not stop without Elizabeth Anne . . . that He wanted there to be “Beth”; destiny . . . a lady of many nicknames: “Beeper” . . . the giving of that nickname . . . youngest of the cousins . . . “The Beep” . . . precious drawings, especially the one of the person with king things in her hair . . . dress-up times with big sister  . . . “Wumpus McDougal” – where did that one come from? . . . at 5 years old sitting on a cooler in the kitchen at the farm asking “Mommy, how does Jesus come live in my heart?” . . . “Beeper Sue” . . . The threesome: Granny, Beeper and Lauren – poor Lauren, no nickname! . . .  softball – so focused and intent; awesome first baseman . . . Sky Ranch with Scott, almost not . . . “Beepster” . . .The blessing of being/having siblings . . . Wilderness with Kate . . . “If ever I win a certain award/honor I want it to be for having compassion – He answered . . . times of worship . . . brief time wanting no nicknames L . . . “Dizzy Daisy” . . . Fish Camp Director – ER survival . . . a beautiful bride gifted with a very good man for a husband . . . the Wonderful , Amazing bridesmaids/friends . . . an “Esther” . . . and now so many more memories to come . . . I am a blessed mom . . . love you much, “Elizabeth Annie” . . . oh, how many nicknames did I leave out, “Squeaky Beepy”? How many are yet to be added? . . .

Love you, Mom

When I think of Beth, I always laugh because she will tell people that we didn’t get along when we were younger. I think this is probably because I was the uncool younger cousin, and until my brother came along, I stole the thunder as the youngest cousin on the Lynch side of the family. I think this all changed when we decided we were going to be cousin/friends because we’re not just cousins, but we’re friends too. Cousins nor friends teach you to drive a car with your knees, only cousin/friends do that (I hope my mom didn’t read this). Beth has always been a great cousin/friend… even one time driving from College Station to Austin just to pick me up to go to dinner with her and her dad. I can’t imagine anyone else who I would want to be my cousin/friend! Happy birthday!

Happiest Birthday Seester!  I have been blessed to have a younger sister that is also a best friend.  We may not see each other every day now, but I don’t feel like we ever skip a beat.  I can’t believe my little sister is finally 30!  I promise Beeper,  it isn’t that bad. I can’t wait for 30 more years of traveling, family gatherings, wine drinking and fun.  I wonder if everyone will still think you’re my older sister now?  Love you; mean it!

Katers

Since Wesley & Easton aren’t quite old enough to write out their own message they wanted to make you a video:

Happy Birthday EA.  I took 30 pretty tough so as a way of saving you the Google crying session I figured I would tell you things you should not Google when turning 30.

1.      What happens to your body when you turn 30

2.      30 things everyone should do by 30

3.      Is there really a biological clock and when does it start ticking?

4.      Am I allowed to still act like I am 20 when I am 30?

5.      Do you suddenly become and old person when you turn 30?

6.      Can I still buy clothes in the Jr’s section?

7.      How do you stop the wrinkles?

There. You’re welcome. I promise you don’t want to know the answer to any of that. Happy Birthday Beth. Live it up and I can’t wait to see what the next 30 brings. Hopefully more miles, more laughs, more wine, and more friendship!

Love you to my favorite running buddy and friend, Teal

Happy Birthday Beth Lynch Holland.   As the years pass by and we grow older our memory starts to falter I will always be there for you when you “lose” your car in a parking garage.  So happy that you have been in my life the last 10 years.  Can’t wait to see where the next 10, 20, 30 years leads us and the fun adventures we will have.  Let’s never forget the best lesson we ever learned in college from a very wise woman in the bathroom of a bar, “sometimes you just got to sh*t it out :-)”

Love you! Mandy

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BETH! I am so blessed to have you as a best friend, and I wanted the blogosphere to get a sneak peek at just a FEW of the pictures of some of our fun times together! Enjoy your 10,950th day of life, and just remember how hard I resisted using the song “Friends Are Friends Forever” by MWS. You’re welcome. Here’s to many, many more memories. LOVE YOU.

RAWE

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