It's Nearly Indoor Time!

So in case you couldn't tell from the previous post, I'm pretty excited about our upcoming indoor 3,000m race this Saturday at the University of Houston. It's only going to be the fourth indoor race I've ever done (first for Jer) and the first time I've raced on an indoor track since 2009! Granted I still have yet to race on a banked track, but I'm super pumped.

They put the heat sheets up for the race last night and luckily Amy and I made into the fast heat (out of 3)! 41 girls signed up for this thing. Not bad. Half of our heat is comprised of unattached ladies, with most of them being from Rogue Elite, based out of Austin, along with the top-seeded runner, Betzy Jimenez, who used to run for UT. The collegiate athletes are primarily UT girls, who made it to DI Nationals in cross country this year, along with some Rice girls, which include recent All-American, Becky Wade. Needless to say the field will be STACKED! EEEK! I know there will be amazing times posted  just based on the number of high caliber athletes entered.

Training has also been looking pretty decent. Over the course of the last 12 days I've raced a 5k in 17:24, did an 8-mile steady run at 6:25 pace, did an alternating 400/200 workout where I basically fartleked my way to an 18:25 5k, did a 10-mile progressive run averaging 6:21 pace with the first mile being at 6:58 and the last 5:42, and lastly 10xhill sprints. I've been in the low 80's for mileage too, finally getting to a normal level again despite being sick for an entire week and random little aches before that. Woot.

Fun fact: exactly three years ago to this Saturday I raced the 3000m at the same meet and came in sixth behind a swarm of Rice girls with a 10:04. I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of shape I'm in for what is arguably my favorite track distance!

The start list and results can be found HERE for all those interested! Chass and Jer are in the second of three heats for the men's 3,000m.

I leave you with some pictures from my first indoor race...

Start line!

The crazy awesome Rice pack I got to latch onto for most of the race

Olympic Trials Watching and Getting Our Race On!

Last weekend was a really exciting one for us. It was filled with lots and lots of running related activities of course. Our original plan was to head down to Houston to race the indoor mile(Em)/5k(Jer) on Friday and then watch the US Olympic Marathon Trials on Saturday morning. The plans altered a little as we were still getting over our awful week long sickness that started New Year's weekend. While we were still coughing up gross mucus the week leading up to this one we figured running in a dry indoor race probably wasn't the best plan. We found out that are our teammates Rob and Caitlin were planning on running the 5k in conjunction with the Houston Half Marathon/Marathon on Sunday morning and decided to hop in that instead.

The Trials were absolutely amazing! Jer did a great job of finding the perfect spots to watch both the men's and women's race so we got to see each group roughly 7-8 times each. We had doubts about going to Houston right before we left on Friday, but I'm glad we stuck with our plan because it was sooooo much fun to watch. It was crazy knowing that girls so far back from the lead pack were still on sub 6:00min pace! In any other race they'd be much much slower, but getting to watch such a high quality race was very inspirational and of course made us look at the overall placings much differently compared to it being an ordinary race.

Hall and Keflezighi

Flanagan, Davila, and Goucher

We knew a good chunk of people racing too. A handful of D3 alums from across the nation that we had competed with in college took to the streets and did quite well. Ricky Flynn was in the South region with us and ended up finishing his FIRST marathon with a 2:13, 12th OVERALL. Lauren Philbrook, who I had the opportunity to race against quite a few times at DIII Nationals had an amazing PR and finished with a 2:39, for 39th place overall! We knew some other women racing, Wendy Terris and Melissa Rittenhouse both kicking butt and taking names!  And of course those that we've never actually met, but feel like we've known them forever since we read their running logs...the Ordway brothers.

Mr. Flynn

Josh and Jason Ordway

Lauren Philbrook

It was the perfect weather for running and watching that morning too! Afterwards Jer and I went to the convention center to sign up for the 5k. The next morning was time to race! The 5k was going off 30 minutes after the marathon, at 7:30am. We met up with Caitlin and Rob at the convention center and chilled out until it was warm-up time. The 5k ran throughout downtown. It was a super flat course, just had a bunch of turns. It was really neat getting to finish at the same line as the OT marathoners along with the Houston Marathon/Half Marathon. I was hoping to hit 17:40, but surprisingly came through in 17:24. I was happy with the time, especially with where my training was at. I didn't catch the first mile marker, but I came through 2 miles in 11:08 and mile 3 in 5:39. I ended up 2nd overall. My stomach was becoming acidic the last half mile and I ended up throwing up all of my breakfast after crossing the finish line. That was gross, but man, it felt so good to go fast again. Jer came in 3rd overall with a time of 15:40. His second fastest road 5k, just like me. Twinzies!! Rob and Caitlin also did amazing! They ran faster than where they left off the past season, so we were all pretty excited. We also ran into our collegiate coach, Lutzy, after the race, so we did a cool down and hung out around downtown Houston after that.

Post race photo with the hubs

If that wasn't enough Jer and I had enough energy to go bowling with his family after the race. It was a fun weekend. Next race up is the UH indoor 3000m on January 28th. I'm getting really excited about it too! The last and only time I raced an indoor 3000m was my senior year of college at UH in 10:03. Goal is to be under that this time around. It's also looking like there will be some really good competition!

The team post 5k!

Thanksgiving a Month Later

Finally things have calmed down just enough to catch up on some lost time! Unfortunately that means rewinding a whole month!! Jer and I spent Thanksgiving day with my family, but first we competed in the SARR Turkey Trot 4 Miler at McAllister park. It was a gorgeous day and luckily they had a HUGE turnout.

Jer trying to convince the kid it's not a good idea to be in the front

And we're off! Yep, I definitely took it out quicker than Jer.

I got to run with two speed demons pretty much the entire 4 miles, Dana Mecke and Emily Dunn. All three of us were coming from different places in our training, but fortunately we were all about the same level on race day. Dana was focusing on base training so she could be ready to kick some butt in the 800/1500 this spring, Miss Dunn was coming back from injury, and I was just coming back from some much needed time off of marathon training. I got second to Dana with a time of 23:29.

During the middle of the race, Dana and Emily are hiding.

 Jer was attempting to defend his title from last year, but ended up finishing 3rd to some pretty speedy dudes. He still ran 20:12, which was nearly 50 seconds faster than the previous year, so it's hard for me to feel too sorry for him. Especially considering the fact he ran a marathon just 11 days prior to the Trot de Turkey.  It was a really fun morning for both of us.

Blurry Jer

After wards we quickly showered and then headed to my parents house to celebrate Turkey day with the rest of the family. It was a lot of fun. Volleyball, food, football, and more food. It was delicious.

Just part of the awesome spread we had

Volleyball in the background and chit chat on the porch

The cousins on my Dad's side of the family. We're missing a couple too!

Later that evening my cousins decided that we needed some more quality family time so we headed to the bowling ally and got our bowl on!

Typical

Needless to say Thanksgiving day was full of fun and family time...and that wasn't it either! A couple days later we headed out to the farm to spend some time with Jer's family. It was a blast, we even found some old bones!! To be continued...  : )

It's a Big Weekend for Daum Photography!

So back in May I hit a little rough patch in my life. Solely because I had no idea what I was going to be doing for a job after May since my internship was ending and we didn't get approval for a new one. LAME. Or so I thought. The post I wrote...When One Door Closes...Break a Window went into detail what my plans were...picking up a camera and getting into the action photography a little more.

Luckily for me things are paying off! Trinity has been hiring me to shoot the majority of their games. I've also made my product available to parents, and other interested parties, on my website (www.daumphotography.com)  if they wanted to order prints or merchandise. It's been a really fun past couple of months to say the least.

This week I got some BIG news. D3soccer.com was looking around for a local photographer for all 6 games at the NCAA Men and Women's Championship Tournament and picked ME!!! Not only that, but a couple of schools are also interested in my services. I'm crazy nervous about tomorrow and Saturday, but I've gotten a lot of good opportunities to get practice in and am feeling a lot more comfortable knowing I'll have a second shooter helping me out. 100 billion thanks to Trinity's SID for putting my name out there too ; ) Let's hope I get some good shots!

Here's a little tribute to Trinity's men and women's soccer teams. They've had an amazing year and I'm definitely bummed I won't get to take any action shots of them tomorrow.

Rest and Relaxation

R&R is something all runners should take after a season of consistent training. Jer and I decided it’d be good to take a weekend to ourselves and get away from the city, the technology, the hustle and bustle of the day-to-day grind. We both took Friday off a couple weeks ago. We went out for a nice morning run, went grocery shopping for the weekend necessities, and stopped by Starbucks to make sure we were wide awake for the trip to the farm. The farm, or the cabin (it has a bunch of different names), is a piece of land on 40ish acres with a lovely little house on it that has all the basic needs. It faces a lovely little pond, which unfortunately was basically dried up when we were there.

Marzuki wondering when we're gonna get there

The 2.5hr trip went fairly well. After being on the road for a very short time I realized that I didn’t bring a single memory card for my camera!! What a dufus! I really wanted to spend some time getting more familiar with my camera, so we stopped by a Wal-Mart in La Grange, Texas and found one there. I’m so glad we did too! I had a good time messing around with different camera settings.

Dex showing his dad some love

One of the things Jer and I were really looking forward to was seeing how our two furry children would react to being unleashed in the “wild”. Would they run away and never come back? Would they be too scared and stay curled up by our side? If they saw a cow would they run in fear or try to play with it? Well, they had a blast to say the least. The first thing they did was sniff the cow poop that was scattered everywhere since the pond was completely dried up and there weren’t any barriers from keeping the cows away from the cabin. Marzuki and Dexter got a little adventurous, but they never went too far. They always came anytime we called for them. It was a very rare occurrence if they didn’t have smile plastered on their face when they were awake.

Happy Doogles to say the least

Jer and I spent time talking about life, sipping on coffee and mojitos on the porch, watching our doogles run their little hearts out, cooking delicious meals, playing multiple games of scrabble, starting camp fires, taking tons of pictures, going on mini-hikes, catching up on sleep, and just enjoying nature! It was great. We ended up staying Friday and Saturday night because we were having such a fun time. The one thing that we got from the weekend was realizing we definitely needed the break. It got us excited about the future and made us realize we love our dogs WAY TOO MUCH!! 

Here are some of my favorite pictures from the weekend : )

Dex ALWAYS took the short cut

Running through the trails

He's so fast

Dex chillin where the pond used to be

This photo makes me smile the most-he's such a goof!

The cows drinking what little water is left in the pond

Marzuki trying to get himself out of the mud he sunk into

And here we have him mid-shake attempting to get the mud off!