Double Trouble

So us sisters went ahead and did something totally crazy this weekend!  I guess you can call it our own little Valentine's gift to ourselves...Or we can think of it this way which is a lot more fun and creative...We got a serious and acute, case of race sign-up frenzyitis.  It is a condition that can become chronic if left untreated whereby runners lose control over their common sense and other faculties and sign up for races without really thinking about it cerebrally, or with a shred of common sense. This condition is often found in combination with a drinking binge or with drug use but in our most recent case we were not under the influence.  However, we signed up for 3 races over St Patty's Day Weekend (March 19&20) in the matter of about five minutes time!  That might be some kind of record, but I am not sure.

So this St Patty's Day forget about us being lucky, we will be super fit and super having fun at a bunch 'o races!  You will see us out at the Claire Festival of Races 10k on Saturday and the Bay City Double Challenge (which consists of an 8k followed by a 5K race) on Sunday.  Isn't it awesome baby!?  23 kilometers in 26 hours time!  It makes me feel like this!

Vern and Mird looked a lot like this after they signed up for all this craziness!

or maybe they looked more like this:

Either way we are just a couple of happy dawgs gearing up for some fun running adventures!  And we just wanted to let everyone know in case they feel like joining the sisterhood for any of these upcoming adventures.  Or maybe just coming out to cheer for us that would be cool too!!!  Here are the registration links for both races:

Clare Registration March 19, 2016

Bay City St Patty's Day Double Challenge March 20, 2016

Hope to see some of our fans, or fellow running addicts, out at these wonderful events.

PS special thanks to my mom for helping with childcare for the weekend so that I can get away for this adventure!

PPS

Vern and Mird Out... on a training run most likely!  Now that we signed up for all these crazy 23 kilometers of races next month, we better get into shape!

The Lone Star State

This is long past due, but in my defense I have been gone a lot in 2016; Our laundry actually has a zip code of its own, work is really busy and remember I have 3 kids and a husband.  The good news.... along the way we somehow fit in a sisterhood race!!!

Anyhow, the whole Texas thing was last minute and was the result of our Spartans playing AWESOME football the last few weeks of the season and landing themselves in the Cotton Bowl in Arlington, Texas! Yeah!  Arlington just happens to be a mere 6 hours from our Granny's house where we would be that very same week...I think you see where the story is heading...

That's right, TEXAS and The COTTON BOWL!  

This was before the game so Jeff was still smiling!

Mird and I being the excellent wives that we are bought our husbands tickets to the game!  And then, of course, we signed up for a trail run the following morning so that we could get Texas off our list.  We recognize a great opportunity when we see one!

If there is one thing you take away from this story it is this; You must understand, the Lone Star State was not kind to us: it kind of chewed us up, swished us around for a bit in a nasty smoker's mouth and then spit us out, dirty, exhausted and beaten down.  Not kind at all, but through it all we kept our heads held high, our spirits in check (for the most part) and most importantly we finished the damn race.

Here's what "chewed up and spit out" meant for this trip:

• The Cotton Bowl was a big part of it; 38-0 is just painful 
• Driving 6 hours with 5 kids to be blanked... in Cotton Bowl... by Alabama
• Hotel evacuation: 5 kids, pajamas clothed, 12 flights of stairs, without beer 
• Our beer got warm during the evacuation
• Trail run modified to a road race because of wet trail conditions
• Texas temperatures colder than MI
• We hoped to visit Jeff's cousin and that didn't work out
• The Daniels detoured through Oklahoma accidentally
• Did I mention the Cotton Bowl!?

State Number #5 Texas Cedar Hill State Park

Post run picture with our medals (made of cedar!)

Despite all of the chewing, swishing and spitting during this trip, it was a great start to what is proving to be a great year!  We ran the race together just the two of us and while it sucked being on pavement instead of rugged trails, we started our new year together running so we can hardly complain.  We have more race adventures in the planning stages so stay tuned for our next running domination dream...State Number 6!

 Happy New Years 2016

GO GREEN!!!

Holiday frenzy

The sisters and our famous running shoes are all caught up in the holiday frenzy which means:

• We haven't updated our blog in awhile
• Our families are running around a lot, but we are not getting in our usual mileage 
• Responsibility lists are never ending for us which means we are tired
• We are probably less than cheerful at times because of our reduced physical activity
• Our shoes are anxious for our next running adventure
• Vern is anxious that she will forget something (Halloween 2014 style) 
•  Lord willing this will happen NEW YEARS DAY!

The sisters and our shoes as "fast food" at the Ithaca Halloween Trail Run 2014!

Super pumped about our Spartans! One more photo to offer them some positive mojo! GO GREEN!

Happy Holidays from the sisters
Vern and Mird 

Thankful for my sista

This Thanksgiving will be a tad sad because only half of the sisterhood will be represented at the Annual Pilgram's Prance at Coast Guard Park in Ferrysburg.  Mird was there last year, but this year Vern will be running and Mird, well Mird, is opting out... for more sleep I think.  Super lame.  Insert dramatic sigh.

Anyhow, Vern couldn't back out; she has to run clad as Sacajawea because last year, Praise the Lord, she actually won the 10k option of the dual 5k/10k event. Pretty sure there weren't many females runners for that one!  Anyhow, the Sacajawea costume is the fairly odd traveling trophy for the well known (for locals) event which offers no official prizes, but is also free to all and provides folks with an opportunity to burn off a lot of calories before consuming even more!  It is an honor to wear the costume, a real honor, and so wear it I shall!  Join me if you are looking for a Thanksgiving adventure of epic proportions! Here's the deets!

Thanksgiving Morning (like tomorrow)
8:00am )dont be late or you will be running alone)
Coast Guard Park
5k/10k Trail Runs
Free to all

PS  I am so very thankful for Mird!  She is the absolute best little sister a girl could ask for!


Vern out

Yes, Virginia, There is a Team AWESOME!

SO this past weekend the Traveling Running Shoes took their show on the road again.  I will provide two versions of this story.

Version One:  The abbreviated version of this story is as follows:

We drank beer. We flew to Virginia.  We drank beer.  We woke up and ran a race. We drank more beer.  We watched one of the most amazing MSU games of all time while drinking beer and then you guessed it, we drank more beer.   We ate an amazing dinner of Alaskan Salmon, Minnesota Wild Rice and roasted vegetables.  We drank more beer.  We slept.  We went for a recovery run.  We drank more beer.  We flew home.  THE END

Lessons learned on this trip.  Airport Beer is the absolute best; it enhances the flying experience by at least 33% although I believe more research needs to be done to support this theory.


Version Two:  The longer more exciting, less beer filled and more detailed version is as follows. 

For this one I am honing in on just the race experience so it doesn't get too long. We arrived at the race a few minutes later than planned because it was difficult to find the actual location of the start of the race.  Even with smart phones and GPS some remote places are still difficult to find and this was one of them!  So we arrived all jacked up from a somewhat stressful search for the trail.  Once we arrived, stress levels diminished and festive race mood filled our bodies and the surrounding air.  We quickly checked in, traded in our usual traveling shoes for a pair of test run Merrell shoes; At the Merrell table, they were giving out free sunglasses, if you were willing to run in their shoes and provide feedback about your experience in them.  We are suckers for free stuff so we totally signed up and we may have signed up for a raffle or two while we were at it!  Of course, we took a slew of pre-race pictures because we knew memories were being made and records broken.  In the span of about twenty minutes, we got ourselves completely prepared for the adventure...

The Substitute Traveling Running Shoes: faster than the average substitute teacher!

Pre race photo session!

Team Awesome Sally is taking the picture so she is not represented.
Left to right Miranda Daniels, Ivar Van Koten, Dominica Van Koten, Veronica Constantine.

OCtober 17, 2015  Willowsford, VA
State Number 4

After all that prep work we were exhausted possibly because of our prior day's beer consumption and lack of sleep, but we cared not.  We dragged our tired bodies to the starting line when we were directed to do so.  So the pre-race announcements were quite amazing.  The best pre-race announcements I have ever heard and I have stood through many a race day announcement so this is a HUGE compliment.  Generally I pay no attention to these announcements.  They tend to be boring and don't generally add much value to a race.  I generally zone out during such announcements and come to just in time to get trampled by a few people when the gun fires announcing the start of the race! However, this announcer was Australian. Man I am a sucker for an authentic accent so I was listening quite mesmerized actually as he said, "at about mile 4 you will travel through an active construction site so watch out for the bulldozer".

I totally thought he was joking until I got to mile four and saw for myself that he wasn't.  He followed up the construction site news with a safety warning to, "watch out for the low power lines shortly after the construction site".  He wasn't kidding about that one either.  The guy has a great accent, but he doesn't joke around!  Anyhow, the trail was a lot more challenging than we had anticipated which meant we were all slower than usual (except for the first mile when I tried to set a new trail record and ran an 8:04 mile!), but we still had three out of the five members on our team place in their respective ages groups and we were the first place overall team.  The Merrell shoes were quite comfortable and I think they may be magical. They singlehandedly (or double-footedly actually) saved me from biffing it at one point.  I had tripped over a rock and nearly went down, but then mysteriously I recovered before the anticipated impact of the ground.  It can only be explained by magic.  The shoes definitely were magical in that instance and somehow stuck to the trail. Mird wasn't so lucky she wiped out (twice) but she was okay just a little beat up and she said it had nothing to do with the shoes and everything to do with the "bloody hard trail full of rocks, dirt and roots".  We are hoping to find the Merrell shoes at a retailer near us so we can buy a pair.   The 10K was actually 6.82 miles so we got a little extra distance for our entry fee! And Merrell may come out to do the same shoe testing offer at Brainy Day next year which would be EPIC!


PS I also won a children's bike from one of the raffles I entered! And I never win anything.  Just goes to show you should never say never!
Vern Out

Porta....

I know they are called Portajohns and we've all frequented them at races from Maine to Alaska, Hawaii to Puerto Rico and presumably everywhere in between. Although we haven't run a race in any of those places yet, we know when we get there, the races will certainly provide portajohns!  The point is, I know their real name, porta-john, or outhouse, for the redneck or country folk like myself. Nonetheless, I have gone and renamed them porta"God"s and it is meant as a compliment, not as an inappropriate use of the Lord's name.  Here is how this came to be and I by no stretch of the imagination expect my other half (Mird) to support this! Today is all crazy Vern!   Mird is innocent and sane!


A couple weeks ago I was waiting in the frigid, windy, cold for the start of the  231 Race.  Dressed in nothing more than a tank top and shorts, I was possibly inappropriately dressed for the day's breezy, brisk, autumn weather. Many people expressed concern for the combination of my outfit and the ambient air temperature. They were concerned of the possibility of frost bite on my extremities on this particular outing. However, I felt pretty good about my attire because it was 44 degrees out and I always dress tank top and shorts for any temperatures above 40;  The way I figured it, I had 4 degrees to spare!

Anyhow given that I was dressed so scantily and the weather was so very bitter cold, I of course needed to go to the bathroom, pre-race style, so I waited in "the line" anxiously bouncing around until it was my turn.  When I was finally up, I sat there on a very unsanitary space, in a very unsanitary place, praying to God to help me get through my latest running commitment (23.1 Kilometers in cold, windy weather possibly inappropriately dressed) both alive and relatively unharmed.  And in that moment I had an epiphany.  Portajohns are my God place. I know it sounds crazy, but to me they are like Church.  I talk to God A LOT in portajohns oftentimes at races, but occasionally at other places as well. I TALK TO HIM A LOT PEOPLE. I probably pray more in portajohns than I do anywhere else on earth to be completely honest. And in these moments of prayer in disgusting portajohns across the great country, I do in fact feel supported and a sense of peace and tranquility come over me.  God shows up-- even in portajohns!  He shows up! And that is why I am going to start calling them PortaGods.  They are essentially gross little portals providing access to His great power and wisdom. It is AWESOME!  For me, PortaGods are the next best thing to dressing up and heading to church on Sunday.

After writing this I feel I should possibly do this...

throw on a portajohn and run a race. I'd be chasing down God in my God place!

PS I was totally warm enough so all you skeptics were wrong, Wrong,WRONG!

That is all,
Vern out

We owned the Windy City

From the Indiana Adventure, you already know we caught the 9:30 train and were in Chicago by eleven in the morning.  What you don't know is the rest of the story so here we go!

After our last post, you all realize we have issues with getting lost.  Our directional challenged-ness is a chronic, life-long, affliction, regardless here is a short lesson on the matter.  Mird once spent over two hours looking for Sleepy Hollow State Park which was less than 20 miles from where she started her journey. While Vern once spent several hours trying to find her way home from a race in Holland...Michigan, not the country and no she didn't live somewhere else. She lived in Nunica which is less than 30 miles from Holland.  It was pretty ugly.  Now these are not facts that either one of us really like to share.  We are not proud to be so clueless when it comes to navigating to new places (or home), but these are true stories.  And there are many other similar stories that illustrate our uncanny ability to get lost (or temporarily misplaced) along life's journey.  Now why does this matter to you!?  Well because... It is nothing short of a miracle that the two of us even made it out of the womb safely with such bad internal compasses and now we've committed to traveling to all 50 states often unaccompanied in order to run these races.  That fact makes the running shoes journey all that more challenging and for us!

When two farm girls who grew up in Fremont, Michigan and have spent the better part of their lives lost in one way, shape or form are suddenly plunked down in the big ole city of Chicago most would probably assume that we immediately panicked and became lost.  If I were you, I sure would. However, you would be wrong.  We actually made it to the McCormick Center to pick up our race packets and then navigated all the way to our hotel without so much as a wrong turn!  It really was impressive especially given our track record!

We caught lunch, rested a little, drank some beer and made it to T Swift with time to spare.  Once again without getting lost.  We did in fact "shake it off" at Taylor's concert and made it back to the hotel about 12:30 am in time to catch 4 hours of interrupted and poor quality shut eye before we were off to the start of Rock n Roll Half Marathon, which we once again found without any trouble!!!

Race Commentary by Vern:
This particular race was a bit of a bust and I have been to a LOT of races so I feel I am able to gauge a good race when I see one.  This wasn't a good one.  If it weren't for the fact that I ran it with my little sister (her first half marathon) and we got our picture taken with the Nestle Bunny at the end, I would have been very disappointed.

Here are my complaints I would write the race director too, but I did that last time I was disappointed with a race and didn't even receive a response which was very upsetting to me so I don't want to put myself out there that way again.

1.  The course was too long and 13.1 is plenty far enough. We didn't need to go for nearly14 miles
2.  The heat advisory was still on so the weather was HORRIBLE for running (I realize the race officials can't control the weather, but they can add additional water stations, or at least have water ready for us at the planned aid stations which they often did not)
 3.  The rock concert every other mile was a complete HOAX.  There were four musicalish shows for us.  FOUR and NONE of them were rock bands.  The first was two overweight men playing a tuba and a saxophone.  The second was a lady with a cello.  Yes just one lady and she was not playing rock music either.  The third was in my opinion the coolest band.  It was a bunch of diverse children playing various culturally diverse percussion instruments.  Again it was not Rock 'n Roll, but I was impressed that the kids:

A.  all played together without fighting
B. didn't pass out from heat exhaustion
C.  were well behaved (at least while we ran  by)

The final band was an actual band of middle aged men playing blues music, not rock and roll.

4.  The party at the end was ridiculous as well.  You would have had to wait hours to get your FREE BEER (we didn't), the band wasn't playing at all during the 45 minutes we hung out.  In fact, we never actually saw a band at the party. I suspect there was no actual ROCK BAND at the Rock n Roll Half Marathon and that is an outrage.

All complaints aside,  the traveling running shoes made the 14ish mile journey, we snapped pictures at the end, the race shirt is one I really like and of course it was another quality adventure of the sisterhood variety.

State Number 3 Illinois

 Chicago July 19, 2015 Rock n Roll Half Marathon 87 degrees and sunny

 and huddled up at the finish with the Nestle Bunny!