The Heat Wave

June. That was a hot one. it was record breaking hot for a sustained amount of time. I feel like we've already had summer and then some.  Fortunately we'd given our house a 90th birthday present last year (it was built in 1924) and that was a fancy new ceiling fan.  And wow has that made a difference. Yes, it's hot but with that new, extremely quiet and super controllable fan, we've been sleeping well even when it's been close to 90 in the house.  The raspberries were coming up all over and we were picking off a quart every few days. It was too hot to be out there picking though! I did try making raspberry jam and it was a great success. I cannot wait to do this again next year. I only have one small half pint left because i gave it all away.

We finished the month off with a fun trail race. Yes it was still hot but that was the first day it was below 80 (just) and it felt relatively cool. I got into a pissing contest with another woman on the hills in the first lap of this two lap race. That was dumb and I paid for it the second loop.  But that didn't matter because that woman was only doing the 1 loop course. Ha!  K even came out to run again as well. This was him finishing looking good even though he said he was "gassed."  Those trail races are pretty sneakily hard!

It'll pay off though. Ragnar relay is this week. Two team, 18 runners and a whole lot of stories. I cannot wait. 

Raspberries Galore!

The raspberry bushes we have in our front yard are just starting to produce. It looks to be a huge crop. There are a few reasons why this is a problem.

• We still have frozen raspberries from last summer.
• We'll be gone right at peak season for a week. That is great for the neighbors but in reality it does take a bit of effort to keep the raspberries picked. 
• I'm starting to snack on raspberries all day long!

So my plan is to pick pretty heavily the next couple weeks and take extras into work. Anybody want raspberries? Let me know and I can get you some or come pick!

Why do we still have frozen raspberries from last summer? I do use the frozen raspberries year round in smoothies but smoothie consumption drops off severely with winter. I've been going through a couple cups of frozen a week but we really did have a lot.

And why is it a problem to snack on raspberries all day long? I raced a half marathon two weeks ago and took a pretty severe cut back/recovery week. This week I've been upping my miles (45 miles this past week) plus ran a longer trail race mid-week which has increased intensity.  Plus trail running in general just requires more calories mile per mile.

And? I was pretty tired saturday on the trail run. That was fine as i was expecting to feel the uptick in running but I thought i was a little too tired. the issue? All this healthy snacking means I'm not eating enough calories and my weight is down.  It's too low of a weight for this point in training. Yes, i've seen a drop in body fat percentages overall which is great but losing weight too quickly can set me up for difficulty hitting workouts, poor recovery from workouts, a loss in muscle and basically mucking about with my metabolism.  I don't weigh myself very often as I tend to just rely on how my clothing fits. I knew I'd lost a little bit of weight which was fine but wasn't quite expecting that big of a drop. 

So what to do? I baked and used a recipe which required frozen raspberries. The rhubarb almond crumb cake i made a couple weeks ago worked fabulously with frozen raspberries. I've been having a slab of it for a mid morning snack. I'll admit this is a good problem to have.  It probably means going back to a calorie tracking app.  Why? If I'm running 6-10 miles per day, I get lazy about replacing those burned calories sometimes. Seeing the hard numbers helps me plan more food at work.  Baking is just fine!