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Wow. As I clicked on "New Post" just now, I see that I've posted 717 times already. Time flies ...

So tomorrow is another race day. Spring Classic 15K. I can be so not with it. I went down to Running Room this evening to register

 and ... didn't have my checkbook. Oh, bother. Didn't have enough cash. And credit cards don't work with the RTC. So ... Karla gave me my number anyway, but I owe them $16 in the morning. My bad. Check book was in another purse.

While down there, I delivered peanut butter cookies ...

to Paul, Tom and Tom for the trip to Eau Claire for the marathon this weekend.

AND ... the XS Team R.E.D. shirts have arrived. Hoo yah!! So I got that too.

This afternoon I made a blueberry Bundt cake for tomorrow for after the race. We're going to Brother's for breakfast/brunch after the race, whether we're running or volunteering. All are welcome! Please join us.

Spent the day at home today ... working on the RTC newsletter, vacuuming, washing floors, cleaned my car, swept the garage floor. Fun stuff. :-)

My friend Kathryn passed along her recipe for Rhubarb Cheesecake. It sounds wonderful and she really likes it. I'll share it here. It's been a while since I've posted a recipe.

Crust:
1 c. flour
1/2 c. butter (use 1/4 - 1/3 c.)
1/4 c. sugar

Rhubarb layer:
3 c. rhubarb
1/2 c. sugar
1 Tbsp. flour

Cream layer:
1/2 c. sugar
12 oz. cream cheese
2 eggs

Topping:
8 oz. sour cream
2 Tbsp. sugar
1 tsp. vanilla

For crust: Mix flour, sugar and butter. Pat into sprayed 10" pie plate or 9" springform pan.
For rhubarb layer: Combine rhubarb, sugar and flour; toss lightly and spoon into crust. Bake at 375 for 15 minutes.
For cream layer: With electric mixer, beat cream cheese with sugar until fluffy. Beat in eggs one at a time, them pour over hot rhubarb layer. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes until set. Combine topping ingredients; spread over hot cheesecake. Chill.

12 servings. (From Chickadee Cottage cookbook via Jill via Kathryn)

Time for bed. Good night. ;-)

On the Air

This morning, I did my little PSA for The Fox, 102.5. I met Brenda Kulow-King from the Y at the station.

Me, Brenda, Dave

 We did it in one take. Dave will, of course, do a little editing on it before it goes on the air.

 Those "pregnant pauses" and "um"s just won't cut it! But ... I think we did good! It was fun and just took about 10 minutes. So stay tuned on Sunday morning, and throughout the coming weeks before the marathon for Brenda and I dishing on the Med-City marathon. :-)

Last night for book club we gathered at Jill's house. She lives up near Elgin.

Paula, Carol, Jill

The book for April was Gourmet Rhapsody by Muriel Barbery, who is also the author of Elegance of the Hedgehog. We had a small group, but it was a lovely evening nevertheless. I hadn't read the book. My bad. But we don't have a rule against attending without having read the book, so ... all good. :-) I enjoyed all the good food ...

and conversation with good friends.

Margo, Nancy, Kathryn

Thursday evening brought a run at Brother's for a few of us.

We ran up to Quarry Hill and ran the ski trails.

It's pretty in the woods, but there is a sewer construction/pond enlargement project going on so it's a bit torn up out there.

But we still had a nice run.

I'm not quite sure what I'm doing here...

Or here. :-)

Then it was back to Brothers ...

for the food 'n fun.

And our server Tina. She's a doll. :-)

It'll be a busy few days coming up. Saturday morning bring's the Spring Classic 15K. The weather sounds great for racing my favorite distance. Nice and cool. Hope to see LOTS of you there. Jean has made hundreds of monster cookies ... and they need to be consumed!! Thanks in advance to everyone who's volunteering. We wouldn't have anything on the race calendar were it not for volunteers.

Sunday morning, Andy, Trevor, Roger and I are taking a little road trip up to Avon/St. Joe to run the last 10 miles of the Lake Wobegon marathon. They want to see what they've gotten themselves into. I've told them it's paved, flat, and fast. But they want to see it for themselves. So ... I'm tagging along. :-) It'll be great fun. PS: Carlo Biondolillo is going to be running Wobegon too. Hip, hip, hooray!!

Well, it's definitely time to turn in. More tomorrow.

G'night all!

Fun, fun, fun!!

There's never a lack of laughs when we all get together! And last night was no exception. We met at 5:30 at S.F. to run hills. Well, some of us ran hills. I did 4. Some just ran the flats. Anyway, after we ran, we sampled the 2 Whoopie Pies I brought back from Maine. Tom Woo said they looked like a giant Ding Dong. That brought out a few yucks!! But they tasted OK. Then ... Randy had this old chair in back of his truck that he's going to dispose of. So a couple of them got the idea to unload it ... right into the back end of Marv's truck as a joke. Pretty funny. I also delivered Noah his blueberry pie. He was a volunteer extraordinaire at Fetzer, so he got a pie for his efforts. :-) And ... he said he'd join us for hills next Tuesday. Sweet!! Then, it was off to Brother's for more fun. And guess what? Mike and Jessica Schmitt are going to have a baby girl!! Yippee!! It's the first girl in the family in quite some time. They're not going to share the name yet, though. Something has to be kept secret! More run 'n fun on Thursday at 5:30 pm at Brother's. 6 miles or so. Or meet at Bear's Den in Byron at 7 pm for 6 or less miles.

Yesterday I got caught up on a few week's worth of Post-Bulletins. I  noticed that they published one of my recipes on 4/13. It's for a salad, the one that I brought to Lace-Up Against Breast Cancer on Sunday. Here's the link. There was also a very nice article about Mike Torchia who runs for the U of M and is a really nice, bright young man.

This morning, an early morning 9 miler with Lisa, Bruce and Mark. Brrrr ... it was flippin' freezin' out there. I was totally underdressed and never warmed up. Even going up Viola hill. Today, a haircut is on tap. It's so relaxing to have someone else shampoo my hair. :-) Tonight, book club up by Elgin. Tomorrow at 8:30 am, I do the radio PSA for Med-City Marathon. I've never done a radio interview before. A few TV ... but this will be a first. I think it'll be interesting to see the process. Not nervous at all.

I guess I better get ready for work. Enjoy the sunshine. It's a beautiful day!

Monday Musings

Well. I've made my decision. My legs feel great. I feel great. I'm going to run the Spring Classic 15K on Saturday. It's my favorite race distance and it's part of the RTC Grand Prix. I'm running Wobegon for fun (and for a fun road trip with my peeps ... Andy, Trevor and Roger!). So ... all good. :-) One decision out of the way.

This morning I ran early. Left the house about 6 AM. The sunrise was beautiful and there was a rainbow in the western sky. I ran my Monday course minus hill repeats. All was well until I got over by the Zumbro soccer fields. I was running against traffic, on the shoulder, and this grey truck moves about a foot closer to where I was running and guns his engine. Jerk. Made me jump off the shoulder. Jerk. I turned around and there was no one coming from the other direction. I don't know why people do that kind of stuff. I also decided that my current shoes feel really flat. No cush left. So I need to break in a new pair right quick. Before Wobegon.

A short time later Marie Boyd and I greeted each other. I also noticed some Virginia bluebells blooming. Which means that the Mayowood trail just might be spectacular on Saturday. :-) When I got to the top of Fox Valley Dr SW, Dr. Mulvagh, otherwise known as super-sweet Sharon :-), stopped to chat for a second. When I got home I saw 2 female wild turkeys wandering around. And 2 deer. A good day for sightings. Just a short time ago I saw Erin Carey running with the dog by the mall and then Matt and Sawra Maurer on Folwell. Matt was adjusting Sawra's derailleur cable. They obliged me with a pic.

Supper was a salad ...

and Creamy Asparagus Soup (a Cooking Light recipe).

Last night we had a Lace-Up Against Breast Cancer meeting at Laura's house. Lots of good discussion regarding the focus, mission, etc.

Angie, Kristin, Laura

Laura, Amy

Mike, Randy

John, Sarah

Lin, John

I still have some leftover clothing items from Fetzer. If anything looks familiar, give me a jingle.

Jim Mason gave me a really nice sweatshirt with his Chester Woods race logo on it. Runners will get the embroidered caps. The race is June 5, and it's a lot of fun and a really good workout. 5K and 10 mile options. Check out his blog: http://chesterwoodstrailrun.blogspot.com/

Well, gotta run! Toodles.

Sunday ... Already!

The weekend is flying by. And I don't feel I've made too much progress on my Things To Do list. Of course, that's nothing new. I pretty much always have more to do than the hours in the day will permit me to accomplish.

Let's start with Saturday's long run from the RAC. It was raining, so the number of runners was down significantly. But some of us die hards went out anyway. The course was 21'ish. I didn't really have a plan as to what I'd run. I'd just see how it went and decide at some point during the run when it was time to shut 'er down and head back. The course took us up to 52, down by Assissi Heights, around the lake to the NE, down to Bear Creek, Pinewood Road, Marion Road, Mayo H.S., Apache Mall, 2nd St SW, West Circle Drive. Well, I was feeling pretty darn good considering I'd run a marathon on Monday. So I just hung with it ... for 18.50 miles. Randy and I finished together in 2:31. Pretty good long run in the rain, I'd say. I felt great. Nothing hurt. Plenty of energy. And I feel great today. (5 mile run, 1 hour swim, lifted.) That means I had WAY to much left at the finish line in Beantown. Go figure. Well, I guess I'm good to go for Lake Wobegon. And I have to decide sometime this week whether I'm running Spring Classic 15K or volunteering ... It's my favorite race distance. :-)

Afterwards, Randy and Tom W. and I went to Brothers for breakfast. I figured I'd earned a walnut pancake, so that was brunch.

Randy and Tom had omelettes.

Kudos to Jeff Pasternak who also ran Boston on Monday (and was screaming through the course yesterday!). He ran a 3:11 marathon P.R. there ... incredible.

My friend Tim Wolfram from St. Cloud sent me this photo from New York, where he went after leaving Boston Tuesday. It's him with Meb Keflezghi who was the fifth finish at the BoMa. So he's met both Meb and Ryan in the past week. Wow!!

Well, after not baking for a week (yikes!) I got a chance to catch up on Saturday afternoon. My friend Leslie had asked me for a donation for a Rideability dessert auction. So I made a killer chocolate cake recipe from Cook's Illustrated which I spruced up a little (and gave her some cookies as well). I had to stop at HyVee on the way home from Brothers and get a dozen eggs, a pint of heavy cream and 16 oz. of semi-sweet chocolate. I asked the guy at the register if that was the most unhealthy order of the day so far. He thought it probably was. The gal in front of me laughed. :-)

Here are the goods on display :-)

Matt had a choir concert in Winona last night. It was very good. The second half was Baroque music with harsichord accompaniment which I really enjoy. Here's a photo of a guy playing an anvil. Comical.

 

Running options for Tuesday: SW Rochester hill run. Meet at 5:30 PM by the Soldier's Field Memorial. .66 mile warm-up and then you decide which hills you want to run, and the number of repeats. Option 2: Jim Mason is organizing a trail run around Willow Creek Reservoir (probably a couple laps). A map can be found on Jim's blog.

Well, we have a Lace-Up Against Breast Cancer meeting shortly so I better change. I'm bringing a berry/cream pie ...

and a salad.

Quote for the day: 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.' Acts 20:35

Toodles.

Saturday AM

I know it's late, but ... come on down to Brothers tomorrow for breakfast! I'm going to bring my laptop so I can share my Boston/Maine photos with you. Come even if you're not running! I'm guessing it'll be 9:30 or 10:00 or so...

See you in the AM. : )

A Tale of Five Cities

(As composed on the plane from Boston to Milwaukee)

A tale of 5 cities. Portland--Boston--Milwaukee--Minneapolis--Rochester. Lots of travel today. Shuttle--train--T--airplane--airplane--light rail--shuttle. Starting at the beginning ...


Friday dawned bright and early for me AGAIN! ... I just can't seem to sleep in, no matter what the circumstances. I'd found out that the diner I'd planned to eat breakfast at on Wednesday was just a hop, skip and a jump from the grocery store I'd been at. So I planned to take a circuitous route from the hotel to the Miss Portland Diner, staying close to the water's edge

 and taking in the park on the east end of the city. My GPS had low batteries and I didn't bring my charger along so I knew I wouldn't get through the whole run knowing my accumulated miles. No problem. I just wore my regular watch as well ... two watches are better than one. Or none. :-)

I headed down the hill from the hotel and toward the wharf. It was a pretty quiet morning. I found that there was a running/bike path

at the far end of the wharf which would take me around the point and up toward the Interstate. Perfect! Just where I needed and wanted to end up. There were lots of people out exercising and enjoying the unseasonably warm temps and crystal clear skies. A beautiful morning to be out and about. When I'd gotten around the point, I was just a couple of blocks from a new, HUGE Whole Foods grocery store so I stopped to look around. No purchases. It was by far the biggest W.F. I'd seen outside the flagship store in Austin, TX (which is W.F. Mecca).

I left the store and headed toward the Diner, just a few blocks away. It's an old railroad car transformed into an eating establishment and is cuter than cute inside. There's additional seating on the back side of the railcar, but I wanted to eat up front where the place had so much character. There were no booths available so I took a spot on a stool at the counter. I ordered my ubiquitous bowl of oatmeal and once again it was ENORMOUS. And I couldn't finish it. Or at least didn't want to knowing I'd be overly full and still had a little running to do in order to get back to the hotel. It was a very satisfying meal.

I got to chatting with my server, Susie.

Turns out she's from St. Paul and moved to Maine when she got married. We talked BoMa and running, dilects (the lack, and addition of, the "r" sound as in "bah" instead of "bar" and "idear" instead of "idea"), Target, ME climate and flowers, cookies and cakes (their baked goods looked AMAZING and I told Susie as much. She asked if I wanted some cake to go, but there was no way I was going to take anything. I've GOT to be a good girl diet-wise. I feel like I ate my way through New England.) I asked her if I could take her photo for my blog and she said sure, and also "thank you for that"! We said our goodbyes (we really hit it off ... I could see Susie being my fast friend. :-) and I was out the door. One thing I noticed on the menu at the cafe was Grape Nut pie. I'd also seen Grape Nut pudding and Grape Nut ice cream on various menus. Interesting. Must be another regional thing like the Whoopie Pie.

She'd asked me if I'd been out to the Back Cove, a little inland body of water. I had on Wednesday, but only to look around and ask another runner how far it was around (she said 3 miles). It was only 9:30 AM at this point and I still had some time to kill so I decided to run around the cove, hoping that the oatmeal sitting in my belly wouldn't give me any kind of distress (it didn't, but I felt full and heavy). It turns out that it's 3.5 miles around the Cove. All good. No issues running actually. The right hip issue I had going on Monday after the marathon was history as of Tuesday and I'm actually feeling very good. Still a little tightness in my calves where I cramped but other than that, no issues at all. I have to say that this is the earliest I've ever run after a marathon and the best I've ever felt post-race. I think the hill training did my body some good.

I made my way back up the hills (Portland is really hilly) and back to the hotel to clean up before catching the shuttle to the train (BTW the train is called the Downeaster not the Noreaster as I reported earlier.) I had an uneventful ride back to Beantown, where a doublle rainbow appeared ...

caught the greenline to Government Center where I transfered to the blueline to the airport. I'm now sitting on a completely full plane, composing this post. And looking forward to being back amongst my running buddies this weekend. For sure.

'Twas a very good trip. Totally enjoyed myself. By myself. All good.

Talk at you later!