Pickle goes wild.

I am sitting outside right now, yeah working from home, with Pickle. He's running all over the place chasing bugs. This has been his first few times outside and he loves it.

My foot is getting a little better. We have been running on the track at his old high school to help my foot. The track is softer than pavement and flat so I don't over-stretch my foot. Running on a track is kind of boring but at least i have someone with me running.
This week has been... M Rest T 3m W 4m Th 3m F Rest S-we will run 5 miles, S XT. Not too bad. Next week will be a killer... we run 9 miles on Saturday.

Allergies are BAD here. I read an article online yesterday that said the top 3 places with the most pollen for yesterday and this week are all in the Willamette Valley.. Salem, Eugene, Portland. Lame. I haven't been able to breathe the last few mornings waking up. http://www.katu.com/news/local/20085074.html

Tonight is a Young Adults Meeting. I'm not sure how many people are going to attend. We didn't hand out fliers at all because we didn't know if our speaker was going to be avalible. So we didn't want to advertise too much if we didn't have a speaker. Oh well. I know they'll be 4 people for sure. Our speakers are going to talk about Natural Family Planning and why the Church is against contraception. It should be really interesting because of course that's one of my favorite topics. http://sharp.cassandra.googlepages.com/home

Then, Friday night Jesse Ramero http://www.jesseromero.com/ is going to speak at our church! I had never heard of him before but he was on Catholic radio yesterday and I have a feeling the talk will be amazing.

7 miles

Well... Our first week of Marathon training is over. We ran...
Monday Rest
3 miles Tuesday
3 miles Wednesday
3 miles Thursday
Rest Friday
7 miles Saturday
Swimming Sunday ( Sunday is cross training)

It wasn't hard to do the first three days of running since I normally do about 3 miles. Saturday was a little bit more challenging though especially since the first 3 and 1/2 miles were uphill.
We ran in Forest Park in NW. It was such a great place to go running... not only did we think so, but the other 100 people or so that were there also did. That is a well traveled running trail.
My right foot hurts a little and did the last mile and a half. I think it's just a little stiff from the week. I did get new running shoes, Wed, which helped a lot. They are so incredibly comfortable. I would recommend them to anyone. (Picture shown on the top of the blog)
What a great weekend. I'm really looking forward to all the running we have left to do... It's been so long since I've run over 5-6 miles. It has probably been 4 years since I ran that far before. But I will soon pass that, in two Saturdays we will be running 9 miles! Ahh!

Marathon training schedule - http://www.halhigdon.com/marathon/Mar00novice.htm

Portland Marathon- http://portlandmarathon.org/

The store I got my shoes - http://portlandrunningcompany.com/

Paper Towels SUCK

I'm sick of the cheap paper towels. I know that's such a stupid complaint but just listen to this.

A typical person probably uses 3-4 towels (on average) per hand wash. You have to use that many papers because the paper doesn't collect ANY of the water on your hand. It's always that brown fake recycled paper that is more like writing paper than a hand towel.

Now think... if they just made a little higher quality paper towel that soaked up the water on your hands you would probably only need one. I think the cost and resources would be exactly equal. The amount of paper used would be the same since you would only use one high quality.

It also makes me mad when those motion detection paper towel machines dispense a little small paper towel. Then you always have to get two. You really don't need two. You just need 1 and 1/2. But I'm sure the restroom of business sets the paper to only dispense a small amount so they will save money on paper towel purchases. They don't know how stupid that is because they probably waste more money because people use 2 instead of one slightly bigger one.

People just don't think. Save the environment.

A great Hummus Recipe

I was starving when I got home today. So here we have it...

Tomato Basil Hummus

1 Can of Garbonzo Beans
1 T of Tahini
3-4 cloves of fresh garlic
1/2 of a tomato
1 tsp Salt
1/2 tsp dried basil (fresh would be better, but I didn't have it)
1/2 tsp pepper
1 T of water
1 T or so of Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Put in a food processor and mix.

I can't guarantee that this will be a perfect recipe because I don't really measure when I cook. But you can tweak it to your own taste :) Enjoy!