Hills for breakfast, hold the gnats

61F, sunny w/ breeze.  Recovery run, short & sweet. :)

This business of getting old is quite interesting when you don't take it too personally.  I got out of bed this morning feeling like I'd been run over by the proverbial bus, but when I got outside an hour later, I felt great.  I went from literally hobbling to a pleasant jog. I ask myself, what does this mean? Possible answer, you aren't getting any younger, but you are getting stronger.

I'm taking a scheduled day off tomorrow.  I don't know if I can handle three nights in a row of getting a good night's sleep, but I'm willing to try.  ;)  Cheers.

No running. Travel day!

Half hour of pool running at the Sleeping Lady Resort...  more later. :)

Full report in a few days when I can post pictures...

Coming home today; will post pictures, stories, etc. 

 Now that I'm home, telling stories and writing long descriptions isn't so appealing... so tired.  Well, I will get it started; maybe more later in the week.

The Sleeping Lady resort (named after a silhouette formed by the mountains) is an amazing place.  We first discovered it many years ago by going there for a concert in the Icicle Creek Chamber Music Festival series.  The lodging is what I call "eco-luxury cabins."   The meals are included, served buffet style in a large pine-decor dining hall.  The food is amazing, and definitely one of the best reasons to go there.  Their chef is world class and many of the ingredients come from their own organic garden.  The abundance is overwhelming. For example, dinner one night was curried pumpkin soup, french lentils, roasted carrots, salmon, roast (either or both), pizza, fresh baked bread, salads, cheeses, mounds of fresh berries and other local fruit, 3 kinds of dessert...  And you just take what you'd like, self serve except for the hot dishes.  It is all finer than the best restaurants I've ever been to.   Going on and on about the food -- you see, I need to go cook dinner...

We swam, walked, rode horses, went to an amazing concert by Mark O'Connor, and I had two nice runs in the surrounding rural area.  Pretty good for just two days away.  We spent zero time in the little tourist town of Leavenworth (Bavarian by law), but I mention it in case anyone is thinking of visiting this place because it's great if you like to shop.

Just a few pictures for now.  (Hope the pix come through ok - using photobucket for the first time.) Some of the grounds, the organic garden, the rock pool, Dale Chihuly Icicle sculpture...

58F w/ low clouds. Easy/moderate run.

What a change this weather is from my runs in Leavenworth.  (more about that below). A pleasant moderate paced run (~9:50) in the refreshing moist, cool air.

I had two runs on vacation, both begun before sunup to avoid the heat and to get back on time for the incredible breakfast.  Tuesday's was a fantastic 9.5 miles on highways and back roads around the town, much of it following the marathon route. (I ran that one a few years ago and it was pleasant to see the area again.)

The air over there is quite dry compared to here.  I don't consider Puget Sound to be excessively humid, especially compared to other parts of the country I have visited, but Eastern  Washington is really like a desert in its air quality. Very dry.  It made the heat later in the day a lot more tolerable (~95F in the shade).  The temperature while I was running was in the low to mid 60s. 

I saw tons of wildlife on both of my runs. Only one deer, mostly small creatures: many types of birds (finches, blue jays, a flock of Canada geese, and several whose names I don't know), rabbits, chipmunks, and a mama squirrel who was trying to stuff her baby into a bird house hole. Also saw lots of horses, sheep, 3 goats, cows and a longhorn steer.

On Wednesday, I had my second run, which was quite a bit shorter than I intended. I was going to run the same 9.5 mile loop and add mile repeats at half mar. pace, but I woke up feeling utterly tired.  It was no wonder... Tuesday had been an "easy" run, but I was actually within about 30 seconds of marathon pace for much of the run. Then we all went on a trail ride after breakfast. In the afternoon I spent over an hour swimming and jumping around in the pool with my daughter, and we were up late for our concert.  Sooooo, plan B for Wednesday morning: recovery run.  My whole body seemed to scream "slow please!"  But that was the run when I saw the most wildlife, so it was quite pleasant too. 

Later in the day (hence the sunlight) I took two pictures from the car of some interesting sights from my run. The first is some kind of tower - what can that be? It was even prettier in the pre-dawn light, as if I had stumbled into Scotland or something.  The second is this yard full of gnome statues -- many, many more than are pictured here. If you are going to have gnomes, you might as well go all out. 

The last picture is a little tiny ornamental grass that was in many of the potted plant mixtures by the doors to various buildings in the resort.  Those little white seed tufts were so soft, it was like having a cat in a plant.  Does anyone know the name of this little guy? Weed or ornamental grass, depending on your point of view, but I have forgotten what it's called.

59F & Cloudy. Easy run w/ hill sprints (only time for 4).  20 min. strength work.

I'm just one click above "rest day" here.  My legs were super springy and I had lots of energy this morning for some reason.  ??  "It's a good thing."  No one says that anymore since Martha got sent to jail it seems.  I hope I feel this good tomorrow for my long run. Hope the clouds stick around too.

Just a few more pictures from our trip... 

Mr. Sno and young Miss Sno at the edge of Icicle Creek, behind the dining hall. The creek was recently restored as a salmon spawning habitat. If you visit in September, the salmon are all over the creek, spawning, dying, flopping about in the shallow water, and you can see the eggs too.

And here is a picture of the mountain profile for which "Sleeping Lady Resort" is named, taken from the organic garden.

Warm morning. Started in the 60sF and ended w/ upper 70s.  Humidity in the 70s too. Mostly sunny.  Objective: endurance run + club run + Spirit Crusher Hill. 

I hope this really counts as an endurance workout even though I had two prolonged stops. First was the usual stop for the club meet-up (at 4.3 miles); we always talk a bit before we run.  I had running partners for only a half mile or so. No one in my pace group wanted to go long today (not many showed up today), so I peeled off at the Snoqualmie Valley Trail and ran alone after mile 5.  

My second stop occured because I reached the Mt. Si Rd. and had not run quite far enough to be turning back yet.  So I used my cell phone to call up my buddy who lives up that road and asked her if I could just nip up there and use her facilities and have some water.  I had run exactly 10 miles when I reached her home, and had about a 15 minute break while I visited with her and her family. She has the most adorable little boys, one of whom said he wanted to watch me "take off" when I left.  (He had been drawing rockets all morning.)  I hope I didn't disappoint him too badly.

On the way back down her canyon road, I passed the barn where Young Miss Sno rides horses and said hi to the owners, who were outside.  That was a very brief stop.  They insisted on giving me a bottle of cold water, probably because I was so covered in sweat. The humidity today was really hard for me and I had my usual heat nausea around mile 15. 

All in all, it was a fun & interesting run. There were too many rabbits to count on the SV Trail, and I almost stepped on a little garter snake.  Did you know they eat slugs? They are one of the few animals that will do so. Around here, we really appreciate that, as we have huge slugs here.