Week of February 26th, running plus a restaurant review

Sunday - Went out to the island with Britta, Bj, and Curtis.  Had planned on around 15-20, but I wasn't feeling the love.  The other three ran ahead and I pretty much ran by myself kinda slow.  It was a gorgeous day to be out there though.  Sunny, no breeze, warm sun, cool air.  Saw lots of other runners out there training for the Buffalo Run.  Miles - 13.75

Monday - I was just going to hit the trail north from Rainbow, but Breein said something about speedwork and I thought "sure, why not".  So she, Shawn and I met at Rainbow and ran up to the canal road.  We figured we'd do about four 1/2 mile repeats along the road.  Naturally, on the first one we all took off way too fast and by 1/8 mile we were ready to quit.  The last three weren't too bad.  I managed to hold a 6:22-6:25 pace for them.  Needless to say, I was a little sore the next day, even though I've been doing speedwork pretty regular on the t-mill.  It's a little different on the ground.  Miles - 5.25

Tuesday - Met with the usual crew for our Tuesday run north of Rainbow.  Went to the canal road and back.  I just kind of took it easy.  Miles - 7.75

Wednesday - Hit the gym for some mill work at lunch.  Nothing spectacular.  It started snowing ahrd just before I left for home, so Ithought I'd try a workout I saw in Scott Jaime's blog.  He calls it a Kenyan cutdown.  The premise is that you start with a two mile warmup, then set the mill at 7mph.  Every .25 miles you bump the speed up by 0.1mph until you can't go any further, then cool down for a couple miles.  Well, I did a one mile warmup at 6mph then set the mill for 7mph.  Every .25 mile I bumped it 0.1mph.  I got up to 8.6mph before I shut things down.  I think I could have gone further.  We'll see next time now that I know what it's like.  It was tough and I'm definitely feeling it.  Miles - 10.0

Thursday - Did the usual t-mill thing at lunch at the gym.  Met with a few at Rainbow after work and went for about five.  Snowed hard for a time, plus we were pushing thru about 4-5 inches of fresh snow.  Not too bad.  Actually kinda fun running in the snow.  Miles - 9.0

Friday - Managed to get some t-mill miles in before work.  I figure with the race this close, I can't really take time to run after work, so the plan is to get up at my regular time, well maybe a bit earlier, go feed critters like I do now then hit the mill before work.  Unfortunately I wasn't able to get my usual lunchtime mill run in.  Oh well.  Miles 4.0

Saturday - The last official training run before the Buffalo Run was today.  We had a great turnout.  There must have been 40 people out on the island today.  We ran the 25k course, threw in the Elephant Head trail, then ran over to and around the Lakeside trail.  Great run.  The weather wasn't too bad.  A little cool once in awhile.  Miles 26.0

Total miles for the week - 75.75  Not a bad week at all.

I'm going to try something a little different.  Karen and I go out for dinner just about every Friday.  It's our little date night and we've been doing it for years.  We generally like to hit local restaurants instead of national chains.  The food is usually better and not as generic.  So, I think I'm going to try posting a review.  Here it is.

Soul and Bones - Washington Ave. Ogden
They advertise as having bbq and cajun food.  So we thought this could be interesting.  We used to live in southern Arkansas in a small town, so we're pretty well aquainted with good southern cooking as well as some cajun food.  We ordered the bbq catfish on flatbread as an appetizer.  It was actually pretty good.  Just the right amount of spice, nice crunch to the flat bread, plus they threw on some candied lime slices.  Next came the entrees.  Karen ordered the etoufee.  This is a bed of rice with shrimp and such on top.  She said it was pretty good, good flavor and not real spicy.  I ordered the two meat and two side platter.  For my meats I had their brisket and pulled chicken.  For the sides I had their black-eyed peas and collard greens.  I figured the greens would be a good indicator of how "southern" this food really was since we used to get them all the time when living in Arkansas.  The brisket had good flavor, you could tell it was smoked rather than just cooked.  The sauce was good as well.  Authentic southern bbq?  Hmm, not really but it tasted good.  The chicken was kind of non-descript.  Not much flavor to it and what flavor there was, was overwhelmed by the sauce.  That's all you could taste.  It was good sauce, but let's have a little more chicken flavor.  Collard greens.  These were pretty bland.  I'm used to collard greens being cooked with bacon and plenty of salt.  These had neither.  Not impressed at all.  The black-eyed peas were probably the most true to the south.  Good flavor with just the right hint of heat.  We did order a side of hushpuppies just to see how those were.  Pretty bland here too.  Lots of onion flavor, but not much else in the way of seasoning.  For desert we had a slice of the key lime pie.  Not impressed, I've had way better key lime pie, and for six bucks the piece sure wasn't that big.  About three bites each and that was it. 
On to the service, or lack thereof.  We were seated at 7:40.  The place was not full, there were empty seats.  It took about 10 minutes to get the beers we had ordered.  It took 25 minutes to get our appetizer, and a full 50 minutes to get our entrees.  Unacceptable in my book.  There was plnty of help around.  So, when we hit a new place, we always ask each other, would we go back again?  We both agreed that the food was good enough to warrant another visit.  However, if the service is just as bad, that's it.