Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Long Run Great Wide Open

Saturday we drove to central Iowa. The Mike had a gravel ride (about 65 miles) to bike and I had 18 miles to kick out.  . . . a little worried as we had snow on Thursday/Friday and wasn't sure if I was going to be heading to the Y in the city or able to run outside with fresh air. .  .  So glad to find out a) the trail was free of snow and b) it is PAVED!  Mostly asphalt, so it's not suppose to be as bad on joints as concrete, though I wondered if that's still the case when it's frozen.hmmmm. I missed the start of the race due to catching some zzzzzs. 

Here's the gorgeous clear trail and me. . . yes, the green hat is mine, figure I'm more visible to people with it--and it's a smartwool one.  Pink neck gaiter. The smartwool one I have would have been a little too much on a day like this.  

Mizuno thermal top, with Melanzana short sleeve shirt, Melanzana tights under Nike winter thermal/wind pants.  Started out with an overlayer that I dropped due to the fabulous weather temps (mid 30s and suNNY!).











Anything more beautiful than Black Angus against fresh snow (aside from beautiful Holsteins)? I think not.  One of the local bicycle team's members rolled past me at this point. He asked if I needed help. . . nope, just framing a photo ;-)




About halfway on the trail, and after a short climb to an intersection. . . looked left, right, left again at the farm and this fabulous FLAG design. 













Signs of the times. . . or times they are a'changing.  This is:


a) an old honey wagon
b) a relic of days gone by
c) a very narrow, small capacity honey wagon
d)  all of the above.

The only thing I was disappointed in for this route was that at the turnaround point for me, a town, had no convenience store near the trail!  



Trail:  out and back, about 9 miles each way.  "official" is 8.5 miles, but that isn't from trailhead to trailhead. . .so I went with what I got with mapmyrun . Elevation of the trail was a slight decline out, then steady across the flood plain of the rivers and up about 100 to 150 feet. .. didn't seem so bad on the map! Agh, my glutes and hamstrings were screaming at me by the time I got midway!


I also managed to miss Mike's race competion.  Just slightly over 4.5 hours for him. . . Fenders on the wheels +mushy gravel roads = gravel gunk filling the fender. 














And, we had a birthday in the house last week, I can't believe I didn't post pictures of the cake!  Chocolate torte with raspberry filling, chocolate ganache and slived almond decoration.   







Yes, it was QUITE yummy. The raspberries cut the richness of the dark chocolate.  

Recipe from America's Test Kitchen.  I don't feel I can post the recipe, especially since they do not advertising in their cooking magazine. It's all about things they cook, test, try.   If you have a membership, you can find the recipe here. If you don't have a membership, you can look at the "professional" photo of the recipe they have on their cite. 

Also, the membership for the online version is different than having a membership for the magazine.

And, in case you have wondered as I have, just heard on the news that there IS a debris field in the Pacific Ocean from the Japan Tsunami.  Parts of it will stay in the ocean current (forever it sounds like), part will find landshore on parts of Hawai'i and Oregon.   The devastation from the earthquake/tsunami continue.

[Edited for punctuation changes].

No comments:

Post a Comment