Running for a good cause

If you have seen some of our posts on twitter or Instagram you know that we are lab parents. We have rescued 2 beautiful black labs from the DFW Lab Rescue, a local non-profit rescue group in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. We rescued our first lab 6 years ago, a few months after we rescued her they were holding a 5k. A fundraiser to help with the costs of running the organization covering vet costs, and other cost associated with this great cause. What is best about it is that it was our first 5k. We knew we could run, simply signed up and maybe “trained” for a couple of weeks, running a few blocks around the house. Race day came up we were just happy to run with our new dog. She was so happy pulling me the whole time and she probably carried the heavy lifting a good 2 miles, but then we jogged back and finished our first 5K together.

Last year we had to put Anise down after finding out she had a spleen tumor that had metastasized in her lungs and heart. We found out after a race and before our Ironman. We waited until after that big race and we went ahead and rescued our JayJay. We fell in love with her, and she did the same with us, making her self comfortable on our bed when the foster mom came to our home visit.

DONE!!!!!

sprint to the finish line

Anyways we have done their 5K a few times, this year being the 3rd year and they had it two weekends ago. We ran it as usual, Felipe leaving us in the dust, he has gotten podiums before there so he likes it, and JayJay and I stayed in the back with the rest of the puppies. Once again Felipe got his podium and JayJay and I managed to finish it, she struggled a little but I gave her the motivation she knows now which is she will see her “papa” and she started running again looking for him. He was waiting for us at the finish line (as usual) and when she saw him she just started sprinting towards him.

Ice Bath anyone??? feels good...not sure why my parents complain so much when they do it

The funniest thing was when we were walking afterward JayJay saw a kiddie pool that was full of ice and water with water bottles and she didn’t think twice and got in it for a nice ice bath. I guess dogs need that too… She didn’t complain as much as I normally do when I get in one… She looked rather happy.

Scout wrapping up his first 5K

We also got to share it with a couple of of Tri-ing friends and their pups, most of us have that in common so we run with our 4 legged kids every once in a while, since we don’t have little humans to push around in strollers we let the 4-legged ones pull us around :).

So with that we did one more 5k, but is a 5k that holds a close place to our heart for many reasons. Like I said before is the very first one, the one that got us off the couch, our beloved Anise who crossed the rainbow and our JayJay who has been a great dog and we love her to death.

  

our Anise on her last road trip to Jersey

Marathon No. 2 - Ready - Set.... Let's finish it

Still proud of finishing

A few months ago, around late June (or before the prices went up) we decided to sign up for what would become our Marathon No. 2. They say you can claim your IM Marathon as your Marathon, however our IM Marathons were not that pretty, Res had a 6:00 marathon and Puli had a whooping 7:00 hour marathon, or walk-a-thon, We'll let you call it whatever you want. It didn't change the fact that we was still an IronCouple but heck... 7:00 hours walking was way too long.

So our IM recovery came and went and some girls from the team registered for the Dallas Marathon. We had tried to do it last year but having signed up for IM Texas and upon our return from 70.3 Austin we didn't really feel it was needed. This year was a bit different, for us it was a way not to sign up for anymore races, but yet doing something instead of just the bare minimum. Marathon training with the endurance that we had acquired through the year seemed appropriate for the occasion and to close the year with a good one close to home.

We embarked on the so called marathon training, it didn't really feel like marathon training, we had a few weeks of all 3 on our schedules and the mileage wasn't too high, we had Trifecta Oly in the middle, the Bourbon Chase and the No Limits Half as training runs leading to it, the max mileage we hit was maybe 50 on our peak week and then it kind of went back down to a max of maybe 30 all the way to the taper. Long runs felt great, the lower temperatures really helped to make it more pleasant. There were a few days of warm temperatures in October and November but other than that nothing too bad.

It all was going well, we were both doing our training together, until Res had work orders to leave to DC right after Thanksgiving. This meant Res wouldn't do the Marathon. She had trained for it and had all intention to do it, but our Country comes first and she loves serving it, just sucks when it gets in the way of a marathon.. c'mon Uncle Sam!!! Just Kidding :)

So anyways, Puli is flying (running) solo this weekend. The temperatures for those who have not checked are going to be COLD!!!! Brrrr

So if you want to follow Puli's endeavor through his first marathon on fresh legs, meaning he won't be swimming 2.4 miles nor riding 112 miles on his bike, here you can follow him here.

Stay tuned for his post race report as he thaws from the cold run :).

That elusive Marathon.... by Res

Some of you might think how come a marathon is elusive, you either sign up to do it or you don't. Well, here is a little story of my first full marathon on fresh legs (thats for another entry) that when I think is going to happen it doesn't.

It all started last year, we had finished our Austin 70.3 Ironman on October 28th, and after talking to our coach on the weeks prior to it (even prior to our crash) we had decided we were going to do the Dallas Marathon. What I didn't count with was that I was going to return from Austin with somewhat of an injury. My foot got swollen and really hurt, but after x-rays, dye CT-Scans and doctors nothing was wrong with it. By the it was already almost thanksgiving so there was no way for me to do that since the marathon was on early December. Felipe had thought of doing it but we had decided to wait to do it together as we always try to do things together. Even though we start together and 90% of the time don't finish together, just the fact of knowing he is around on the same course makes me feel like he is closer than if we was home or simply somewhere at the finish line waiting for me (it happens to him too). So we decided we weren't going to race after all.

Dallas Marathon Registration

A few months go by and we do our first ironman, yes it included a 26.2 mile run but since we seem to be doing things backwards, as we did a 70.3 half ironman before we did just the 13.1 run by itself, it seemed appropriate that we would do the 26.2 mile run after we did the 140.6 full ironman. We then signed up back in June or July (can't remember when) and we were all ready for our "running" season to start and be only running for a while. We started the training and I was called to serve our country with the Public Health Service in December. Guess what... The weekend of the marathon!!!. I love to serve our country don't get me wrong but thanks to our lovely shutdown a few weeks ago, they pushed my trip to December since November was out of the question. We were training, and to keep Felipe company on his long runs I continued training however was a bit bummed that I wasn't going to run it. Felipe will be running it while I keep track of him online and wait for him to tell me he finished his first full marathon. :(. It is a bittersweet feeling, while I'm proud of him for pushing his limits and wanting to do it alone, I am still sad I won't be able to do it with him, on top of losing the $100 registration fee.

Anyways... That's the story of my elusive marathon, not sure now when I will do it, next year we have to be smart with our training and racing since we are officially signed up for 2x140.6 distances, IronMan Arizona and Challenge USA (Atlantic City), don't want to be putting more than we need to as we know running a marathon will probably set us back on our progress since recovery probably take from our already busy training schedule.

Resisting the urge... not so much

Now that our Tri season has come to an end and we enter our last stretch of the year with a running season focus we've been Tri-ing really hard to resist our urges to sign up for another end of the year race (insert triathlon race here). We have pretty much our end of the year planned.... Here to the closing our year:

October: Bourbon chase 200 mile relay and No Limits Half Marathon

November: Turkey bike ride and maybe the turkey trot around the speedway

December: Dallas Marathon and double challenge 5k in New Years (running a 5k on 12/31/13 and a 5k on 1/1/14) with Pulis sister.

So that's why we've been resisting the urge, it's like we are on triathlon withdrawal. It's funny once you are hooked it's almost like an addiction. Anyways, to keep ourselves from signing up to more 213 races we've been looking at the 2014 season which is to some extend staring to pan out. Here is what we will call our rough draft of the 2014 season:

1. Fort Worth half marathon, not bad to see if we go for a PR, after running season, I think it will have a chance

2. St. Patty's tri... Always fun to have a Tri 10 minutes away from home yay to sleeping in! 

3. IMTX 70.3... Did it this year, loved the course. We might also have M and G convicted as well, I think they might go for it too.

4. Here is where the "resisting the urge" comes, well... We couldn't wait any longer, we have signed up for Challenge Atlantic City 2014, it is an inaugural race and also is going back home to where the Jersey girl grew up. It will be fun as we can have family and friends cheer and see what we do for "fun". 

5. Augusta 70.3 or another 70.3 around late September/early October time frame. It will potentially be on our IM training plan

6. November: Ironman Arizona.... So far we are planning to volunteer at this one, Res has some training for two weeks ending that weekend and we are trying to debate if we can actually make the trip. We are trying to make a desicion in the next week or so, since we need to let the volunteer teams know that they will be down two people. 

So that way we ended up not resisting the urge to sign for what would be our main journey of 2014. It is a race, and some call it the A race, for us this is a journey, it is another (yet exciting) chapter in our tri-ing life and another chance to push our bodies to the not so unknown now but still every event is different and  the distance deserves all the respect you can give it. 

For now, we will continue to enjoy out off season, focus on our running for our Dallas Marathon and work on our speed, strength, core and all the other bases that will make us stronger for next year. Oh... And also we will keep crossing our fingers that the government shutdown so we can continue to have a full household income to pay for our hobby :)

 

4 weeks and counting.... any motivation left???

These last couple of weeks have been pretty hard. In a sense, like we said after Galveston we think that we got a confidence boost after finishing it and knowing that we had plenty (well not really plenty) but that we had a bit left still that would probably be what we needed to take us to that 140.6 finish line. As we spent the week in Galveston, we had a hard time getting back to it, it was even worse when we got back home to a sick puppy which made it even tougher for us. Last weekend was full of emotions and an emotional roller coaster when we had to put her to sleep on Sunday afternoon after being diagnosed with the C-word on Thursday upon our return. So needless to say this past week has not been easy. It has been busy with work stuff for both of us and definitely emotional.

We were able to get 100+ miles in last Saturday, of which 80% were outside and the remainder was after we came back home to be with her, we were so glad we did. Sunday we were supposed to have a swim and a run (both long) neither of which we did.

This week was off to a rough start already, to top it all off, Monday was a sad day for the running community after the Boston Marathon bombs that really put a lot into perspective. We had people asked us if that was going to make us stop racing or even considering not doing our upcoming Ironman because of it, our responses were, no we're definitely going to swim, bike, run, no matter the circumstances.

We managed to get a few workouts in, about 50% of them. Considering it was a recovery week, we were actually glad with our workout rate. Don't think we could've done much more than that. Yesterday we went for an 80 minute run, we put in about 8miles which was pretty good, longest we've gone since Galveston, so it was a good one. Today we had a swim/bike brick... temperatures in the 40's in the morning, water probably in the 60's guess what... we skipped the swim, not a good time to push our luck and get sick by just going in ice water. Then we waited for some crazy ones (who didn't do Galveston) that were doing the swim and we headed off to a 56 mile bike ride. It was actually a good one, logged in 53 of the 56 by the end, in 3:11, winds of 12-15 mph didn't make it easy but we were pushing.

Talking to teammates we found out that the motivation is not there anymore. We all have been struggling our own battles with lack of motivation, injuries, plain ol' pain, too much work, and in our case grief. We know we are only 4 weeks out and definitely we all seem burned out with the training, pain and other issues that come from the crazy journey to be an Ironman. It definitely has been a journey, a learning experience. We've learned to know our bodies, trained our bodies to have the endurance needed for the long day but more importantly we are learning to train our mind. If the mind is OK, then the body will carry you. This past week was proof of it and we managed to still get some work done. We will continue and we will come out of this one and get to our final goal... all we need is that little push. It definitely is a mix of physical endurance but more importantly mental strength.

This week now is off to a good start, we are more motivated but it is more of a "let's get it over with" type of motivation. So with 4 weeks left let's get this over with.