Fall?

First of all, last hard, high mileage week complete. For my PR marathon in 2006 I had my highest mileage week ever then, of 63 miles. This morning I did 5 miles , and has been the case after every long run so far, ended up feeling really good and averaged an 8:41 pace. I tell you, Endurox R4 recovery drink works. I have had it after my long runs and feel good enough for a good run the next day. Even when the long runs are done harder!! Anyway, that 5 miles put my mileage for this week at 68. I ran everyday. And since I ran last Sunday, that's 8 days of running...I think my body is ready for a rest.

After my run yesterday I decided it was time for a quick stop at the farmers market because it's mid-September and my favorite apple had to be in season by now...Cortland's. A MN apple, the only thing I really look forward to in the fall...and no, they aren't quite ready. Maybe next weekend, but not even a guarantee on that. We did have a late spring after all. And when the person at the stand mentioned that, I remembered that too and was even more upset about the color changes we noticed in the leaves on our run today. Yes, we are experiencing normal conditions for this time of year in MN, but we had a cold winter last year, a crappy winter, and a very, very late spring...don't we deserve a bit longer summer??? Don't get me wrong, I don't want summer conditions marathon day, 3 weeks from today, but I don't want fall yet when we were cheated out of spring! But such is MN...and at least we are in football season right? And I was able to get a different apple, Zestar, a newly developed one, developed right here in MN at the University of Minnesota that are pretty good...so it wasn't a total loss at the farmer's market.

Another sign of fall...homework time.

The Smell of Autumn

Last weekend I did some shopping. I’m not a big shopper but I had a couple of coupons and needed a few new clothes so I went to the mall for a bit. One of the coupons I had was to Yankee Candle. I’m a candle freak really, it's a sickness. I have a TON of candles and I just keep buying more, I can't seem to burn some of the ones I have (some are scents that are no longer made and if I burn them they will be gone) AND I had just bought some candles from a friend that sells Partylite, but still I had this coupon and it was a good one, buy one get one free on the big jar candles…that never happens. They have buy one get one half off sometimes, but never buy one get one free on anything…so I had to go.

I tend toward the buying the “fresh” smelling candles, you know, anything with ocean, rain, sea, waterfall in the title or the very light floral scents (in particular rose, if it's a good classic rose scent). They did have one that was called Autumn Leaves and I really don’t have any “fall” scented candles, so I smelled it…and while it was a nice Autumn orange, and had colored leaves on the label…it just didn’t smell “fall”. It had a pine overtone, and that right away turned me from it so it kind of had me thinking about Autumn smells. Autumn is not about pine…when I walked outside for lunch yesterday, I took a deep breath and smelled…I don’t know what, but it is not pine. It's clean, the smell of the humidity gone from the air, the freshness of the leaves, the clean scent of the earth (we’ve had a lot of rain and you can smell it), maybe even smokey smells from bonfires, but it’s definitely not the pine overtones that were in that candle. I thought about this the whole time I was running, and I even brought my camera and took some pictures that I promise I’ll try to upload over the weekend. I was thinking about what kind of scent should’ve been the stronger one and I just couldn’t come up with it, it was there, I was smelling things, but nothing quite clicked…until I got home. I had my camera still and needed a couple of new pictures of my house, so I took them and walking around the building when the scent of apple cider came to me from somewhere (probably my mind, but you know, I still smelled it)…then it clicked. The overtones of the candle should be apple, along with everything else of course, but this is apple season. Leave the pine for the winter/Christmas scents, because that is what you think of at that time of year, fall is about apples, bonfires and earthy tones.