CadesDad

This year we signed up for a CSA with Rock Spring Farm. We've really liked it although we've definitely not known what to do with the herbs.

Last week, amongst various root plants and leafy greens we had a zucchini! I'd guess if poled 85% of the populations first though upon hearing the word "zucchini" is something related to zucchini bread. As a kid I always loved zucchini bread and the other variations banana bread etc. However, I am now allergic to bananas and nuts which makes banana bread a huge allergic bomb.

However I still have zucchini bread!

I talked to Cade about it and he was in. The lil' guy loves to cook and especially loves it if the cooking/baking/roasting involves tools, fire and stirring. This was right up his alley. After assembling the ingredients and being pretty much ready to go, Cade and I went at grating the zucchini. It only took a minute and I could smell the cool, crisp fragrance of zucchini. I continued to grate and the semi transparent gratings were lying on the plate with a pool of zucchini juices.....

Wait. This is NOT a zucchini. This was a cucumber. Now, honestly, I'm not stupid. I knew looking at this thing that it was a cucumber. But for some reason I had it in my head that it was a zucchini and that was that.

I knew that the lil guys heart would be broken if we didn't continue with the recipe. I KNEW that if we didn't include the ingredient we'd be grating for the last few minutes he'd confused and heartbroken. So, we carried on. I did pose the question that perhaps we should call it something different, but Cade overruled. What do I care if our zucchini bread has no zucchini, but has 2 cups of grated cucumber?

That is the story of how we made Zucchini Bread! And as a public service, here they are below: The zucchini and the cucumber.

I love it when a plan comes together. This morning Shawn forwarded me a workout and this link to help me determine my paces. I put in a HUGE stretch goal and it resulted in this pace chart:

Equivalent race paces:



So I tried to do my workout with these paces. Making my plan look like:

1 mile warmup (at 10 min miles)

2 X 200's @ 6:22 min miles
1 X 400 @ 6:10 min miles
1 X 800 @ 5:22 min miles
1 X 400 @ 6:10 min miles
2 X 200's @ 6:22 min miles

1 mile cool down (starting at 10 min mile)

The 800 got a little speedy for me and with my first 400 done I slowed down to 5:5X. Otherwise I did this workout and at the end the 6:22 pace and 6:10 pace seemed slow! Again, I was sweating up a storm on the treadmill.

The only bummer of this workout is that I wore my new glasses, and they just don't stay up (anyone ever see that Steve Martin movie, "the jerk"? Anyway, so while I'm making my legs move just as fast as I can, my glasses are bouncing off my face. Had to have been a funny image for anyone else in the gym.

This Sunday we had a couple of kids Cades age over for a birthday thing, he had a great time and was a good guy. Kate, Bjorn, Eleanor and Erik gave him a trumpet that he's fallen in love with, see the picture.

Finally! Finally! Finally!

I've learned that being a runner means you have good days and bad days. More important, I've learned to relish the good days and accept the bad days. I don't get (as) down on myself on the bad days. They come and go, and I haven't been able to predict when they'll occur. I suppose if I was more diligent about logging my miles and diet I might find a correlation to say a Dr Pepper here, an extra bowl of cereal there, a bad run here. But I haven't, and I might just not even try.

Saturday morning I woke still tired and quite aching. The ache was from Fridays interval workout - - which was AWESOME. Some time had passed since my last interval workout and although I remembered how much I enjoyed a difficult hard work out that pushed me further than I thought I could go; there's never anything like being in the moment. Friday’s workout was 4x800 at 6:30 pace with a mile warm up and mile cool down. In total I covered 5 treadmill miles and coated my treadmill with sweat (and the edges of the treadmills on either side of me)! To anyone observing this workout it probably looked like a half grotesque freak torture show half gross out sweat-fest. For me, it was AWESOME.

So... Saturday I was a tad sore, had a sore throat and felt generally tired (An aside to any soon to be parents out there, when you buy kiddo a big kid bed, get a good mattress). I told Shawn, who also was not 100%, that I'd feel like an overachiever if we ran 7. She responded with 7 it is! So we started off slowly, hit the parkway and headed to Lake Harriet. At Harriet, we discussed if which way to go and I asked that we slow for the first half, and then speed up on the second half. We followed this plan pretty well, speeding up on the eastern side of the lake, cruising to finish the lake loop. Once back on the parkway, we continued to speed it up and stride out. It felt sooooo good. Shawn and I decided to stop at Caribou which is roughly a mile short of home. What a great way to end our run. We walked in the sunshine drinking coffee the last mile home.

What a great run. It’s nice to have one these once in a while to help on remember why I do this.