Long Run/Pancake Saturday

One of the traditions that has become a part of my "New Normal" as a parent is that I get a large chunk of sleep on Friday night, and I'm able to get up Saturday and make breakfast while my wife dozes in bed.

Part of this is because on Friday when I come home, I'm able to relieve my wife and I'm often more useful because I have the energy heading into the weekend. If my wife wants to nap or shower, I can buy her some time but often we just spend time together as a family, have dinner, and head to bed. I get a large chunk of sleep, which leaves me feeling awesome for Saturday morning and my long run.

I get up in the morning, take the baby and wear her in the Boba wrap, and head to work in the kitchen cleaning, running the dishwasher and cooking. We usually listen to some old school music by the Ink Spots. Makes me feel like I'm in my grandfather's kitchen when I was a little boy, while he made pancake breakfasts. Usually he liked to listen to Benny Goodman (live at Carnegie Hall) but I like to mix it up from month to month.

I've tried a couple of pancake recipes (you can find them at all recipes or by googling) but the most frequent ones I make are banana chocolate chip, or pumpkin chocolate chip. I usually make some corned beef hash, or bacon for my wife. I make veggie sausage for myself. Once food is made I'll go wake my wife up (or let her sleep a bit more, if she wants) and then we all sit at the table for anywhere from a half hour to an hour and eat and have a great amount of family time. It is really awesome. On the plus side I usually have a few pancakes left over for breakfast on Sunday.

Planning on fourteen or fifteen miles today. I started to feel a cold coming on this week, so I cut my Wednesday and Thursday runs out. Should still end up with about 27-30 miles for this week, so I don't think it will hurt my training too much. I feel much better after all my rest and family time, and I'm looking forward to the long run today. This week was meant to be a slightly lower mileage week, so I don't feel as bad as if I had missed workouts during a quality/build week. Next week I'm back to build weeks though, so I'm going to do my best to stay healthy and take it run by run.

I've started some seedlings for my vegetable garden. I was surprised at how fast the cucumber seedlings really shot up. I'm going to need to put the plugs into some bigger pots with soil soon. Hopefully I can keep them healthy until they go into the ground (which is really supposed to be in May, but I may do that earlier if it looks like we'll be done having frosts in late April.) I'm also planning to grow Pepperoncinis, bell peppers, basil, lavender, zucchini, summer squash, and tomatoes. I'm going to need to open up some new beds for all of these plants, but I'm hoping to cut back on what we spend at the farmer's market this summer.

Travel plans are getting more solid for the trip out to California in April, and now this is starting to seem real. I'm really looking forward to this marathon. I can't even express my excitement. I'll be doing some writing about my training coming up in my Tuesday posts.

*****

I run with Orion
and Orion runs with me
I dream of Big Sur
and Orion dreams with me