Watching Races

My weekend is going be filled by checking for race results online. I watched most of the women's South Korean World Cup last night...they were racing mid-day Saturday in Tongyeong. I was thrilled to see my teammate, Jasmine Oeinck, kicking some arse...but then I had to go to sleep before the men started racing. Check out my favorite photo from the race footage:

I'm pretty sure that is K. Sweetland (CAN) in the middle, using her competitors as launching pads. Jasmine is the 'launching pad' on the right side.

Tomorrow is the St. Anthony's race over in St. Petersburg...I'm sad that I wont be racing, but I know that it's the best decision for me in the long-haul. I've still got some tender feet, sore muscles, and limited running training so why rush into races when the triathlon season goes all the way into November (and I've never made it past September)?? So, instead of racing, I will be doing my fair share of training, starting with a long run this morning and continuing with the Windermere ride tomorrow!

Yesterday was a lighter workout day, just swimming and strength, in preparation for the upcoming days of big training. I had most of the morning to just kick back, chill out, and find some way to entertain myself. First, I baked some 'garbage cookies' using whatever we had in the cupboards...raisins, craisins, peanut butter, sunflower seeds, honey, and about 1/4 cup of chocolate chips left over from previous cookies. Of course they turned out to be delicious and the whole batch will be gone in a few days!

After baking the cookies I was still in the spirit of using 'garbage' out of the pantry so I decided to give it a full cleaning:

The first task was to take everything off the shelves and give them a good cleaning. You will not believe some of the strange things I found in the back corners...the winner was a jar of dehydrated cooked turkey! If I ever hold a jar of meat and it rattles when I give it a shake...well, I'm just hoping that it never happens again!

Here are the kitchen counters filled with all the jars, cans, spices, tubs, bottles, and bags from the shelves. I tried my best to get rid of some...the easiest were the expired, doubles, empties and unusables. But I'm in an experimental 'cooking' mode, so I want to have all the ingredients for my creations handy and available (that is why there is a can of sweetened evaporated milk back on the shelves that might be from a few decades ago:)