Find Me in My Field of Grass

Three day weekends can be so wonderful. This Labor Day weekend was very, very hot...But still lovely. On Saturday, I decided to do my first trail run since the Spring. In this case it was the heat...AND the humidity.

I was getting pretty dizzy from the heat on my way home and I ran past a house with an older woman (older than me, even) standing on her porch asking me if she could get me a glass of water. How nice was that? Reason number 5.796 of why I love living in Iowa. I declined because I was embarrassingly sweaty and stinky and I was only about a mile from home, but I was definitely touched by her gesture.

I've been having lots of allergy symptoms lately. I didn't really have allergies  until I was in my late 30's or early 40's, but now they seem to be like a full-time, year-round job for me.

After my trail run, I looked down at my shins and realized they were all yellow and lousy with pollen. That explains a lot.

I've been trying to be better about not spending so much money going out to eat. I love to cook, but we get so busy with work-outs and races and so we default to eating out more often than we should. So, this weekend, I tried hard to cook at home and make leftovers for lunches. On Saturday, I made breakfast for lunch. I used the leftover food from Friday night to make eggs with salmon, asparagus, onion and parmesan cheese, sweet potato hash and toast.

John heading up Cyclocross Hill, right as he noticed he had dropped his chain.

After I hydrated like hell and took a little nap to shake-off the early afternoon heat stroke, John and I headed to the Sugarbottom trails to play mountain bikes. we had a lot of fun riding. At one point, I thought I might try to get the guts up to try to ride part way down Cyclocross hill. I walked down part of it and thought if I rode the second  half, it wouldn't be as scary, but I wasn't brave enough yet. Maybe next time...

We did go out to eat on Saturday night. I wanted to take John out and see what the Red Vespa in Solon was like. It is a beautiful restaurant. We sat at the bar and our bartender was very nice and efficient. they had a decent beer selection and they warm olives as an appetizer was amazing. The only problem, was that there weren't many veggie or seafood options. They will substitute what you want for pizzas, but there wasn't a list of the veggies they had for substitution. John ordered the one veggie pizza they had. They also had a Margherita, but almost every pizza place has that and we're both kind of tired of that. I got a pizza that had eggs on it. It was supposed to also have pancetta, so I asked for them to leave it off, but it made for a pretty bland pizza without it. I might have to have someone check on better veggie options when we go there in the future.