Health & Fitness Giveaway Hop

Happy Holiday!!!!!

How are you guys doing? Sorry we haven't been posting lately. I started a new seasonal job and that takes up all my time. Lindsay is keeping our Facebook page updated. But we are planning on posting weekly very soon. Our next race is the Hot Chocolate 5k in January. We are getting ourselves pumped up for it.

In the spirited of the holiday we are joining a Holiday Giveaway Hop hosted by Runaway Bridal Planner.

For our giveaway, we giving out an Under Armour Fitted Active-wear Jacket size Medium in Black (with THUMB HOLES!)  and a Penguin Christmas Tumbler!


















Our giveaways is open to resident of the U.S. only. So get clicking and enter the Rafflecopter giveaway widget. The giveaway runs from December 9th to December 15th. The winner will be announced on the blog, Facebook page, and will also notified via email. You'll have 48 hours to respond before another winner is chosen.

Down below are all the blogger who also join in the giveaway hop so go enter their contest also. 

Happy Hopping!!!!! :)

Lisa

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Color in Motion 5k Race Recap and Giveaway Winner!

My race day attire

Race Prep

Wow the week has just flown by! So last week Lisa and I started to get all of the last minute prep done for the 5k race on Saturday. So we finally picked out what we were both wearing on Friday night. I decided on wearing an older pair of cheap shorts and the race t-shirt. I also brought a bandanna and my sunglasses. I ended up not using the sunglasses because it was really foggy and overcast but I LOVED the bandanna. I pulled it up to protect my face throughout the race.

Cleaning Supplies

I also brought a lot of things to help clean up after the race that came in really helpful. I brought two towels, one to cover my car seats on the way back home and one to use to wipe off the color powder. I also brought wipes, you can use baby wipes, active wipes, or face wipes (what I used because I had them on hand). Other than that I also brought a clean change of clothes and a grocery bag to put my dirty clothes.  With all of this prepped it was easy to contain the color powder to a small area that was easy to clean up.


Race Day!
So race day rolled around and we left our side of town to drive an hour to where the race location was at 6 that morning. Yup you read that right we left at 6 for a race that started at 9. We REALLY didn't want to be late and I worry a lot. IT worked out well because we stopped off at a CVS once we were close so that we could get a disposable camera to take some race pictures with.

Here we are waiting for the race to start

Once we got to the race location we started getting ready and preparing to get to the starting line. Since we were there so early we actually got to talk to other runners there. There was a great variety of runners out: people like us who were running their first race, high school track runners, people who had run marathons, and many more.

So we started lining up at 8:45 or so. The race administrators had musics going and everyone was just dancing waiting for the race to start. We ended up starting closer to 9:30 as opposed to 9 but it wasn't a big deal. At the starting line the powder started coming out and everyone was pretty covered in colored cornstarch before the race even started.

Pre and Post race pictures of me

Once the race started we just started running. Now here is the ting that I haven't told you yet, the race was on a TRAIL! Nowhere was this mentioned in the information about the race, thus Lisa and I were just training on pavement. That was surprising to say the least. We took it in stride and just kept on going. It was really refreshing to be in the "wilderness" and the view was great.

There were color stations located at every kilometer where the volunteers had buckets, literally buckets of a colored powder to throw at the runners as they pass the area. The volunteers had so much energy and everyone was just laughing and running. As first races go it was pretty amazing.

Pre and Post race pictures of Lisa

At the end of the race there was a "color party" with music and lots of cornstarch powder. As soon as the finish line was in sight and we were approaching it, I of course with my luck ended up falling in a small ditch. Yea I know, I am really klutzy. It is kinda ironic that I made it through a course with hills, sand, small rocks, and uneven ground but I fall in a small ditch/divot in the ground in sight of the finish line.  Thankfully all that happened was a small scrapped knee.

The race was such an amazing experience and I cannot wait until the Hot Chocolate 5k in January!



Giveaway Winner!!
So this is the moment you have all been waiting for! The winner of the Far End Gear Brite Buds is . . . Maryalicia Verdecchia! Maryalicia can you send us an email with your information and we will send you your prize! Thank you everyone for participating in our first giveaway, and we look forward to having our next one soon.

One Week Until Race Day!

There is officially one week exactly until our FIRST race! I can't believe that next weekend we will have finished our first 5k. So thought the week we will be doing all of out last minute prepping. So far we both have our clothes for the race picked out. Unfortunately we can't wear any of our nice workout gear like my compression socks or our nice activewear shorts or tops since it is a color run and we don't want to stain our nice gear.


Lisa and I haven't been working out together recently since our schedules haven't really synced up. Lisa has been walking on the treadmill and I was walking on our local trails. Due to my unfortunate spill off the ladder on Thursday I didn't workout on Thursday or Friday! It has been awful. I am hoping to take it easy and do some yoga tomorrow and get back to running on Monday though.

Other than our clothes, we will be getting all of our accessories together later this week (maybe a blog post to come about what we will bring!)


On the note of gear. Last week I won a pair of Far End Gear's Brite Buds Reflective earphones. Lisa and I both tried out the pair that I won and we LOVE them. With daylight savings time last weekend our workouts tend to happen after dark more and more. When running in the dark it is really important to have multiple points of reflective gear so that a person is more recognizable to drivers.I usually just run with a blinking LED attached to my shirt but now I have some earbuds to go with that. The ear phones have great quality sound to boot. To celebrate our first race we bought a pair to giveaway! This will be our first giveaway so we hope everyone enjoys it. We will pick a winner after our race on Saturday and post the winner on our blog next week.



a Rafflecopter giveaway

Morning Workout or Evening Workout?

This is my first solo blog post! *gasp* Lisa has been busy  with school this week so I figured that I would post about what I have been up to all week.

With Day Light Savings Time this past weekend the days are getting dark earlier and earlier. Usually I workout in the evening with Lisa at a local paved trail, but the trail closes at dark every evening. So this brought up the question of when and where am I going to run! I do have access to a treadmill but I prefer to run outside. None the less after missing two workouts on Monday and Tuesday I decided that something had to change.

Now I am not a morning person . . . at all. However, I got my butt up this morning and went down to the basement and did a 45 min interval walk/run on the treadmill and did my usual strength training circuit (written below). I didn’t want to get up but after I was up and working out it felt good! It put me in a good mood and as was on my way out the door for work I FELL DOWN THE STAIRS!  I couldn’t believe it! As soon as I got a plan of action for catching up the rest of the week I twist my ankle. Well I guess I will be focusing more on strength training and take it easy on the running part of my usual workout.

So here is my usual strength work out. I know it’s probably not perfect but it will probably change as I continue to grow and change my fitness.

50 Crunches

10 Pushups

20 Squats

10 Dumbbell Curls, 3 reps

10 Shoulder Press, 3 reps

10 Tricep Kickbacks, 3 reps

10 Dumbbell Cross Jabs, 3 reps

10 Reverse Fly, 3 reps

20 Squats

10 Pushups

50 Crunches

So yea this is my ‘usual’ strength training circuit. When I feel that it workout is getting easy I tend to just add weight. I started out using 3 lb weights but now I am at 10 lb dumbbells. I am actually thinking about taking up one of the Train Dirty Fitness’s workouts Iron Bombshell! What do you think? I have heard really great things about this strength training programs. 

--Lindsay 

Running on a budget!

The Weekly Update!

So last week it suddenly got very cold! Thus unfortunately we only got to go out twice to exercise. :( the two times that we went out we did our usual circuit of a 3.5 mile walk/run. Lisa and I started playing around with the idea of doing a yoga or cardio workout video inside once a week. We also made a trip to Target to get some long pants to run in. Hopefully next week we will be more use to the cold weather and get out our normal 5 times a week.

Running on a Budget!

So we all know how budgeting can be, and unfortunately since Lisa and I are both collage students it is a necessity for us to budget our running expenses. We thought this post would be a good time to share how we save money and get feedback from everyone on how they save.

Lindsay's purchases from Target 

So far to save the most money we usually look for great coupons. The local running store that we go to offers a membership for a 10% off purchases and they also have special events where they offer 20% off. Outside of that we also get gear from off-priced department stores such as Marshals, T.J. Maxx, and Target.

Lindsay got this resistance band workout for $5 at Marshal's 

Lisa's purchases from Target

For most of our races so far we have either taken advantage of early registration pricing, discount site registrations (like Living Social or Groupon), or giveaway entries. We got registrations for our Color Run from Living Social for 50% off which was great! And the Hot Chocolate 5k race I won an entry from a giveaway. Most races have a Facebook page where they giveaway entries or give out discount codes so we both 'liked' the races that we are interested in ahead of time so that we can keep an eye out for coupons and giveaways.

Speaking of giveaways . . . we LOVE them. It is such a good way to try new things! Which is why we want to start offering them as well. There are so many things that you can win from giveaways including but not limited to: RoadID, race entries, socks, clothes, inspirational jewelry, meal supplements, Gu's , protein bars, and many many others. In the spirit of saving we want to host a giveaway for everyone that has liked our Facebook page and reads our blog. Please let us know what you want for a giveaway! You can post a comment here and let us know.

Next time we will be talking more about our training and the training plan that we are following and why.

Our First Race Prep- Color in Motion

After we started running and working out on a regular basis the next logical step was to pick out some races to attend. So right off the bat we registered for three 5k's: Glotronika, Color in Motion, and the Hot Chocolate 5k.  Glotronika was scheduled to happen on October 26. This past weekend we got the unfortunate news that not enough people had registered and the 5k was CANCELED!

Well, we moved on and thus started to prepare for the next race, Color in Motion. Color in Motion is a fun run where the volunteers have packets of colored cornstarch and everyone throws the powder everywhere throughout the race. So this race is coming up on November 16th, so it was time to start our race day prep.

For anyone who hasn't seen/heard of a Color Run there is a rule stating that the participant must wear a white top and white pants. However, as Neon Princesses we needed some neon in our outfit. Then the idea came to mind of matching neon tutus for race day. After a quick trip to our local JoAnn's the creation of the tutus began.

So using basic neon colored tulle our race day tutus were completed.  Now all that is left to prepare in our outfits for race day are the clothes that we are running in. We didn't want to take a chance on ruining our nicer running clothes so we are planning on going to Target and getting some cheaper white running shorts for race day, and we are planning on wearing the provided race t-shirt, and old running shoes. 

Here are our completed tutus!  (FYI the glitter tulle is super messing Lindsay's boyfriend was not happy with finding glitter EVERYWHERE in their room. That's why I didn't want to make them in mine hehe --Lisa)

Lisa

Lindsay

So good pointers that we will be following for race day include:

• Bring a change of clothes
• Bring a clean towel 
• Bring wet wipes
• Bring a bandana or something to cover your face and/or eyes during the race

These are the tips that we found and thought of. Please chime in and let us know any other tips, and your experiences with color runs. Next time we will be talking more about how we budget.

Welcome!

Hey guys,

So this is the welcome post! EXCITING! We would like to take a moment to thank everyone for visiting the blog. This is really new for Lisa and I and we would love any feedback/advice/questions. We will be posting about our workouts, reviews of products, upcoming races, race experiences, and hopefully some giveaways too.  So lets get down to business . . . (to defeat the huns? Sorry I love Disney and I just couldn't help myself) We will be posting again tonight with upcoming races, race prep, and your first big disappointment.


--Lindsay & Lisa