The Way Home

As I left you at the end of the last post, we were leaving St. Cloud and still giddy from the day's efforts and successes. Roger kindly let us all shower at his motel room. (THANK YOU Roger!) Next destination? The Nelson Bros. Restaurant & Bakery at the Clearwater truck stop for a sandwich and whatever else looked like it was worth the calories!

I had the same thing I had last week--a turkey sandwich on multi-grain bread with honey mustard, green peppers, red onions, cucumber, tomato, lettuce. YUM. And I had a coupon for a free bowl of soup so I got chicken wild rice. I brought home the soup and half the sandwich. I STILL haven't eaten the soup. Had the other half of the sandwich for lunch yesterday. (Actually, for some reason my appetite has been virtually nonexistant since Saturday evening, which is totally fine as I'd like to drop a few ...) And everybody got a loaf of Fritter Bread.

The boys have already devoured the loaf of Apple Fritter Bread I brought home. :-) I totally indulged and got an ice cream cone. It tasted sooooo good. I let myself eat pretty much whatever I want the rest of the day when I run a marathon. This was worth every last calorie.

We decided to get together Saturday evening to celebrate our day. Twelve of us gathered first at Catch 22 then at Green Mill when we discovered there was some kind of Ultimate Fighting deal-e-o going on at Catch 22. Green Mill would be much quieter. :-) In keeping with my "I never go anywhere without running into some I know", who should I meet up with in the ladies room, but Lisa Finstuen! She came over to the table for a photo op.

I had a chicken sandwich which hit the spot but left me feeling incredibly stuffed. So I had to have help eating the fries. :-)

There were some congratulatory hugs shared .... (that's Dan Strain on the left)

Trevor stopped by with his adorable daughter Melaina after they left the House of Bounce ...

She enjoyed her ice cream sundae.

The beer in the foreground is definitely NOT hers! Trevor enjoyed snitching some ice cream with a peanut butter cookie.

Some of us have qualified for Boston, and some not.

You can do it, guys!! That brings me to the end of marathon day. I awoke on Sunday feeling ... great!! Nothing hurt. I didn't even feel fatigue. Going down stairs? No problem. Calf soreness? None. Running? No problem. I ran 7.55 miles yesterday enjoying the beautiful sunshiny day. I have NEVER felt this good after a marathon. I think the combination of calf sleeves (thank you for the photo Rosa and Carlo--and I have my jacket tied around my waist) ...

flat course, cold weather, and who knows what all contributed to the lack of damage to my body. And I couldn't be happier about that as the TCM 1 mile down Nicollet Mall is Thursday evening. I think I'll be ready. I need to research and post my PR for a timed mile. I just did ... it's 6:26 in 2001 at the All Comers' Mile. I'm hoping I can beat that on Thursday. We'll see how fast my fast twitch muscles are firing come Thursday evening.

I think it's time to move past the marathon. To this evening, actually. It's our monthly Cooking Light supper club get together at Kathryn's home. And it's ALWAYS such a fun evening. I'm bringing asparagus. Here's the menu:

Wine: Diane
Flatbread with Pancetta, Mozzarella, and Asparagus (p. 208) Barbara
Champagne Limoncello Cocktails (p. 126) Margo
Fresh Coconut Cake (p. 170) Laura
Black Bean Burgers with Mango Salsa (p. 196) Kathryn
Spring Salad with Grapes and Pistachio-Crusted Goat Cheese (p. 114) Mary
Quick Skillet Asparagus (p. 146) Renee
Carrot Soup with Yogurt (p. 126) Pam

Tomorrow ... it's the monthly social get-together at Beetles anytime 6PM or after. I'll go run a few miles, maybe do a few hills, at Soldier's Field first. I'm going to bring some kind of special dessert to celebrate the accomplishments of Andy, Roger and Trevor on Saturday morning. Please join us. No running required.

Here's a link to a new indoor marathon shared by Johnny, who ran Wobegon and recognized me from Zoom!Yah!Yah! http://sandboxindoormarathon.com/

Yesterday I made some pasta before Eric left for the cities. It's a really easy recipe, and quite tasty. Spaghetti Rigate, olive oil, red pepper flakes, 8 cloves of garlic, a sweet red pepper, salt, and Italian parsley.

The recipe is in my recipe blog I believe.

My friend, fellow River Runner, and blogger Julie has a contest on her blog. Check it out! You could win some cool stuff. :-)

News on the home front: Matt was selected to be the chair of the Academic Affairs committee on the WSU student senate. Pretty cool. It's a paid position, too. And Eric has given notice for his job in the cities and will be heading to Costa Rica at the end of the month to brush up on his Spanish and experience life in a different part of the world for a little while.

That's it for today. I'll report in tomorrow on the faves and raves from tonight's meal.

Toodles.