Motivation Monday- Marathon Style

Really what is more Motivating than watching someone totally abuse their body for 26.2 miles and then see the finish line, wipe away the tears, put on a huge smile, and give everything they have to cross that finish line! Track Coach and I watched it be done a lot yesterday, and it was so inspiring. One of my favorites was this young lady...

Ok, yes that is Stacie, but she was awesomeingly (what a word!) inspiring. I'll let her tell the story, but what determination! There is so much more I have to share about this whole weekend, but spoiler alert it ends with this...

Dear Tressa Morgan,

Congratulations! You are now registered for the 2011 Dodge Rock 'n' Roll Seattle - Half Marathon

Dear Jesse Morgan,

Congratulations! You are now registered for the 2011 Dodge Rock 'n' Roll Seattle - Marathon

What are you Motivated to Do?

We so have a winner!

Yes, the lucky winner of the Jessica's Gift's necklace has been selected. Again here is what you are winning...

And if you didn't win, never fear, you are allowed to buy stuff and ask, a lot, for it for Christmas and Birthdays and Thursdays, whatever! Check her site out HERE!

But anyways on to the winner, out of 117 comments the winner was #91,

91 Leah @ Chasing Atalanta said...

"Liked" Jessica's Gifts on facebook!

Congrats Leah! Thanks for following us, you are really going to love this necklace, it is beautiful, just email your address to tressaabe11 [at] hotmail [dot] com and I will send it out on Monday.

And in even better news, we now have our 100th follower! Yay for feldtphotography! You know what that means, a giveaway! Woo-hoo! Stay tuned!

If you would like your product reviewed or featured on Track Coach and Adorable Wife feel free to contact us at tressaabe11 [at] hotmail [dot] com

Friday Updates

Today is a day all about updates! Pay close attention as none of this may apply to you, but something just might!

• I love to decorate! Period, exclamation point, the end. Since moving in, and getting us all set up, I have been feeling the need for a new project. Our bedroom is the one room that is definitely lacking. Now I am eyeing some of the bed sets from CSN to help me spruce it up. We have had ours since we first got married and frankly they are falling apart! Now we have a chance to review something from them, my dream would be a bedroom set like this...

 but I think Jesse wants something a little more practical like a laptop bag...

We'll probably end up with something we really need like flatware...

But that is the great thing about CSN, no matter what you are looking for, they have it!

• Our super awesome giveaway going on HERE for a Jessica's Gifts "Heart" to run necklace, will now end around 9 pm Pacific time so I can pick the winner tonight in order to be able to post it for you all tomorrow before I leave super early for...
• Portland! I am so excited. I have been to the Marathon before, but never to the Expo. Oh, and don't kid yourselves I am not running, just a supportive, spectating friend. Stacie will be picking me up in the early am to head down for a day of shopping and eating and then Jesse will join me for a kidless night at his brothers, followed by a day of hollering and woo-hooing and more eating at the race! It should be great! And good luck to all the runners!

• I've ordered our trainer, just waiting for it to get here. I'm really hoping it will allow me some bike time and that it will result in helping my knees!
• No lyme news yet, still waiting on the blood tests. Did rapidly lose about 7lbs though, so if it isn't lymes disease I should probably head back in and figure out what is going on because my knees are messed up and isn't from running!
  
• We are now at 98 followers! How cool is that! 98 people, only 3 or 4 of which are related to me, have chosen to "Suit Up" with us! Thanks for Following guys. If I haven't gotten around to you yet, I want to but as you can tell from my times, I am just really slow! But that means we are only 2 followers away from a big, sockalicious giveaway!

Ok, think that is all the updates I have for you in Track Coach and Adorable Wife's World! If you are running this weekend, good luck. If you are just chilling watching Kona, even better luck that the system doesn't crash! I'll try to leave you with a most awesome video to make all of your weekends start out on the right, possum, I mean foot!

It was virtually a 10k!

This was my first experience with a virtual race (I was racing for both the Jog for JS 10k and Running Diva Mom's 10k). I gotta say, it was pretty fun. I signed up for my virtual races a couple of weeks ago, so even though my calf is still not 100%, I knew I was committed so I was going to have to suck it up. The plan was to come home from work, get suited up, and run a 10k planned out by Adorable Wife (I made her double check her route after the Jog for JS debacle). The original plan was for me to go on a route that would take me up a hill with about an 8% incline for about half a mile...fail. A bit of debate and one reroute later, I was ready to get my race on.



See what I mean about the Lederhosen!



Adorable Wife, being the adorable wife that she is, made me a wonderfully stylish race bib. The first idea I had when I learned I would be doing a 10k where the race bib had stylish implications, I wanted to go naked sandwich board style with big boards and rope and the whole bit. A little more thought and a little less material prompted a more conservative approach. Adorable wife was able to preserve the spirit of the sandwich board style race bib (although I think we ended up with an odd combination of bra strap and lederhosen). The straps on top got a little in the way so they had to go about 100 meters into the race, but the rest of the bib held up very well.



Now on to the race. It is a bit odd talking about a race that I was running by myself. I don't know that it felt like a race. I started pretty well, it took me a while to get into the run because it had been a while since I had run this far. It was about after the first couple miles that I was able to get into the run and hit my groove.



Tressa got Brady to do a cheerleader kick for me



The best part of the race by far was having my little cheering section follow me around on the course and give me little bits of encouragement on the way. It was especially great when Tressa would say something like "go hot legs" and then Peyton would echo "go hot legs," not necessarily something you want to hear from your 3 year old, but I'll take all the encouragement I can get.

Adorable Wife did a fantastic job of finding spots on the course so she could continually cheer me on. I don't think I went more than a mile at any one time without having a good "go Jesse" or "you got it honey" or "nice butt."

Overall the race felt much better than expected and I felt good enough to get a pretty good kick at the end of the race. My final time was 46:06, which happens to be a PR. It's going to have Barry Bond's esque asterisk next to it due to Adorable Wife and Daily Mile's questionable mapping skills.

  

Peyton... My biggest cheerleader



My first virtual race ended up being a lot of fun and I will definitely do it again. Certainly makes training runs a lot more interesting...



The Good, The Bad, and The So Ugly!

I have been sitting on these pictures for a little while, debating on whether or not to share. When everyone else posted their's I was all for this game, I figured I would have at least one GOOD picture from my first triathlon. That doesn't really seem to be the case but at least there are some funny ones! So in the name of good sportmanship I will share, just as I promised. But unfortunately, I can't for the life of me, figure out how to copy these suckers so all you get is a link. If you want to see the awfulness, you'll have to do a little work on your end!

The Good-
 http://www.chumpboyphotography.com/p768300550/h4017B4D#h4017b4d
Hey, I'm on the Bike and there are no ridiculous faces being made, I guess that makes it good!

The Bad-
http://www.chumpboyphotography.com/p711554283/h2442C64B#h2442c64b
Running, form. What running form? This is right after the bike and I already have chicken wings! Awesome!

The Super Ugly-
http://www.chumpboyphotography.com/p605304660/h2781F7F0#h2781f7f0
I believe the roll over the tri shorts says it all!

And My Overall Favorite-
http://www.chumpboyphotography.com/p1001030658/h216E05E#h216e05e
That's right Peyton got his own series of photos! If you scroll through there, he is actually in a ton of them! Woops, but he loves it so much!

So if you looked, good for you. If not, Thanks we can still be friends! And if you haven't yet, don't forget to enter my awesome giveaway for an even awesomer necklace HERE!

Hey, Where'd you get that?

Well, first you are probably wondering where Track Coach's recap is. Unfortuantely, good weather called and his inner man pulled him to finishing our fence first, which really gets him good hubby points in my book because I am dying for a fenced in back yard. Our littlest Track Star is quite the wanderer! So to cheer you up and ward off the dissapointment, I have an awesome review for you instead. Satisfied! Ok, now I want a Snickers. Stay focused!

When I got my first set of reflective gear I totally wanted more. Apparently they couldn't see me from space. Specifically I knew something for my head would be good, but I wasn't really down with a head lamp quite yet. Then I happened to be browsing Etsy for headbands when I came across a site that had several reflective ones. I was pumped and intrigued. Enter AC Designs!

She is a mother who began making headbands for her local running group (IronMommies, how cute is that?) when nothing else would stay put. Everyone loved them so much that she is now trying to get her business going to meet the demand. When I first looked not only did she have the normal styles, and the reflective ones, but she also had ones for kids! My sister has been looking for options for her daughter and I thought one of these might be perfect. So I contacted the lovely Aimee and she was nice enough to send me a reflective one to try and one for my niece too! Here are our initial try ons...

See, my other niece in the background is upset because she doesn't have one!

 We were able to test out the Madison's first. You can tell it is made for girls slightly older than her, but luckily she has a pretty big head so it actually fit her ok. The design was super cute and well constructed.  She never complained about it being on her head, and she usually does. To put it to the test we had her twirl around the room and climb up and down off the couch.

Getting ready for a big twirl!

 And as you can see, no slippage! Plus doesn't she look adorable. Since then she has chosen to wear that headband several times and everytime she does, Erica says she gets tons of compliments on it! AC Designs even has cute flowers you can get to attach to the headbands which would up the cute factor by like a million!

 Now to me. I have worn the reflective headband on several occasions and I haven't been hit once, plus number one. With some other bands, I have had actually had issues with slippage, maybe I have a small head, but not with this one, which I love! Whenever I do wear it, I get lots of compliments on it, as you can see it is really reflective, even indoors...

 and even more so outdoors! See here I am after our race, no movement at all. And another great thing is they are very affordable. Compared to some of the other brands, these ones are just $10 dollars!


Dang Snickers again, I'm so hungry!





I totally give these headbands and Aimee two thumbs way up! Head over and check out her site HERE. Even if she doesn't have what you want right now, just ask her. These reflective headbands should be a must have for all night and morning runners! Thanks again Aimee!

[If you would like your product featured or reviewed on Track Coach and Adorable Wife just email us at tressaabe11 [at] hotmail [dot] com]

Yea, I'm not a very good pacer (More Jog for JS results!)

My sister, Erica, was one of the unfortunates (well, maybe fortunates since the course was long) who didn't get to run with us the other night. So last night the two of us set out to get her 5k time. Of course, she refused to be in a picture because she wasn't looking cute enough so I had to do one solo to show you all my outfit...

Again with more Chrissy's knee high socks! I'm thinking this would be a great 100 follower celebration! Start following people!

all though, come to think of it, I don't think Erica has ever let me take her picture so for all you know I am making her up so I can pretend to have a running buddy! Well, then "Erica" and I set out, did our little .2 mile warm up, and took off. This was a route we had run many times before, so it seemed like any other night, but tonight I was trying to stay with her the whole time instead of running ahead and coming back. I wanted to be a real running companion tonight and help her the best I could. Well, I think I sucked at it. For the most part it consisted of me telling her she was doing a great job in a few places (which she was), asking how she was doing (I don't think you're supposed to do that), and then telling her to walk faster if she had to walk (which I think she hated me for).  But despite what I lacked, she did awesome and after having only done one real 5k before, she PR'd by 5 min! It's even better that she PR'd on the JOG for JS race. Today Jesse (Coach) is going to do his 10k after work so he'll have results for that tonight or tomorrow! Wish him luck, he has lots of girls to beat!

Don't be forgettin to enter our giveaway for a stunning "HEART" to run necklace from Jessica's Gifts HERE! You can also check out her other pieces HERE, remember if you buy something now it gets you 5 extra entries!