My first 10K EVER!!!

So on May 1, 2011 I ran my very first 10k..... I was a little less nervous about this run because it was my second run, and I figured I had it all done and I would do fine. I was a little nervous because I did not have running pacer with me to help me through. But I had a goal in mind, and I was determined to reach that goal.                                                            

The night before I laid out all of my clothes, and made sure I had all my things ready to go. I looked at the weather before going to bed that night and things were not looking good and I was kinda sad about that. I laid there in bed for what seemed like FOREVER trying to go to sleep and it just wasn't happening. I tried everything I could to get to sleep. I finally fell asleep about 2am.... I was getting up at 4:30am to get ready to leave for the race. I got up and was very excited to start my day, even with just 2.5 hours of sleep! I drove over to Heather's house to meet up with her and Jenn at 5am and we headed to Irving. It's always an adventure with Heather so I have to tell you all about how we were RIGHT there, by where we were supposed to be, but we couldn't figure that out. We went about 20 minutes out of the way and we were pretty lost. It was kinda nerve racking at the time because we wanted to be there early. It started raining and the weather app was telling up thunderstorms all morning. NOT a way you want to start out a race. We finally made it and in time and with time to kill.

Heather, Jennifer and I put on our trash bags on to help keep us somewhat dry from the rain. Picture below.
We started out and we were doing really good keeping a good pace. It was raining, which was actually kinda discouraging for me. I always want everything to be perfect. I told Heather and Jennifer my new goal was to just finish. I was doubting myself that I'd actually finish in my goal that my awesome coach Lesley set before me. ;-)

We were doing good and we got through the first mile and I was feeling pretty good, passed a water stop and my stinking shoelace came untied.... at this point I was pretty sure the odds were just stacked against me for the day. I quickly tied my shoes and moved on and caught up with the girls. Throughout the race we kept telling each other, we are going pretty fast maybe we should slow it down. I don't think we ever really slowed down though. We kept asking each other if we were all ok and doing good. We felt good so we just kept going. We got to mile 3, and we were doing extremely well, so we just kept trucking it. We talked about walking it for a bit, but we didn't, we just kept going. We decided to stop and walk for a little bit at mile 4, but it wasn't long before we were back at it again.... we saw a water break coming up before we were about to approach a hill, so again we walked for a little bit to save some energy for the last mile and hill we coming up on. We started running and feeling pretty good, we had no idea what our time was, we were guessing through the entire thing. But we felt like we were doing pretty well. Finally, I see the finish line and I take off... Heather and Jenn right behind me. I crossed over and held in the tears, I didn't even look at the time when I finished because in that moment I thought oh my gosh I just ran 10k!!! Holly, the girl who HATES running!!!! We started asking those behind us what their time was so we could figure it out, we didn't want to wait to see if we had reached our goal or not. We took pictures and went to the car because it was starting to rain. After a little while we decided to get back out to go greet our friends running the half. While looking at our times, we found out they had been pulled off the track because a big hail storm was headed straight for us. That was rather disapointing for them.

We looked at our time.... Our goal was 1:11 and 11:30-11:45 minute
Our Actual time:

249 Holly Farrell Royse City  TX 29 49 F 25-29 1:10:46.7 11:25/M

Yeah, we beat our time by a minute.... our normal 10k time during training

was 1:15 WE DID IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Oh my gosh, that was one of the best feelings EVER!!!! 

Heather, Jennifer and I in our panchos and trash bags! lol!

Before the Trashbags and before the race!

Lesley (my awesome coach) Jennifer, Me, Heather, and Sherry

Lesley and I (SHE IS SO AWESOME!)

I soooo love RUNNING!!!!

Soccer Soccer Soccer!!

We are a Soccer family for sure. My husband played soccer when he was younger for many years and he loves the sport. Until last season I had never played a day of soccer in my life. 3 years ago my oldest daughter showed interest in playing so we signed her up. He opted out of signing up to be a coach but after the first game he asked her coach is she needed help coaching, and she said YES..... so that started his coaching career. He never thought he'd coach little girls, but he absoulutely loves it. Now three years and 6 seasons later he is now coaching our two oldest daughters. Our youngest daughter played her first season a year ago and cried the whole season. We didn't think it was for her. But since then she has been talking about playing. So we decided to try it again. She had her first practice last night and she is loving it so far. We'll see how she does at the games though! LOL!! I'm excited!

I played last season with my hubby and this season he talked me into playing for TWO teams..... Can you say CrAzY?!?!?!? So on top of running 3 days a week I will also be soccering two days a week!!!! Some of this weight better start to come off! LOL!!

So we soccer ALLLLL week long!!!! Fun times!

5K

I did it!!!! I ran 3.13 miles yesterday!!! It felt so good!!! I ran in my neighborhood, I will have to say running in my neighborhood is NOT fun at all.... I think I am going to see about running at our local High School's track. I'm not sure who all really reads this but if you are reading and you are a runner, where do you run?

I have a few friends here in RC that are going to start doing a few runs with me. I'm not sure how I feel about that yet. I am used to running on my own.

I am running my first 5k on March 12th and I am so super excited and nervous and READY!!!!!!

2 Miles Small Victory!!

The week I was supposed to start running it iced/snowed for 4 days!!!! That is our cRaZy Texas weather for ya! My kids were out of school for 4 days, I had never seen anything like it in all my life living here. So I didn't get to run. I don't have a treadmill and this Texas Girl was NOT about to run in the freezing temps we were having. I was itching to run though. 

The following week the weather was STILL not looking promising for my run on the day I had scheduled so I decided to run a day earlier. It was still stil freezing so my good friend let me come over and borrow her treadmill so I did turn into a popcicle! It was awesome! It felt so good! I felt like I could run more, so the next time I ran 1.5 miles straight! Oh my goodness it felt great!!!! I still felt like I could keep going so I decided with the approval of my coach to try for 2 miles. I was nervous but I knew I could do it.

The first time I tried 2 miles I failed. I have no idea what happened. I wasn't as hydrated as I needed to be and it was my first run outside w/o using a treadmill. I really beat myself up. I never questioned whether I could do it or not, because I knew I could, I was just disapointed in myself. But I got back up and dusted off my shoes and set my eyes on my goal... 2 miles......

The weather was perfect! It was about 68 or so, wind was blowing, perfect...... and I did it I ran 2 miles without stopping! My legs were hurting and I was sweating like crazy but I didn't care, I DID IT and I was so proud of myself.

Welcome!

Welcome to my running blog!!

First I will introduce myself. I'm Holly, 29 years old been married to the love of my life for almost 11 years. We have four awesome children together!

I first started running to help with getting all this baby weight from my four kids off. After I started I realized that I really enjoyed it. I had finally found something that I felt like I was good at, other than being a mom.

I started out in December 2010 doing Couch to 5K. Let me tell you that December is NOT a good month to start running. I have four kids and my December is jam packed with all kinds of Christmas parties, programs, ect. So I wasn't very successful. I picked it back up in January and did a little better. I needed some more motivation and time. When you have kids it's hard to figure out when you can run. It's still hard but I've got my groove down and somehow I make it work.

At the end of January my awesome friend got her coaching certificate, I immediately emailed her to let her know I wanted her to coach me! I was excited because I knew would be an awesome motivtaor for me and I liked knowing that I have someone to bounce my questions off of. I had a lot of questions when starting out. Plus, she is an awesome friend and runner!!

So there ya go, that is how I got started.