Finally…a weekend at home: Pumpkins and Training

After more weeks of travel than I can realistically count, I landed into Washington National Airport late Thursday night, and finally got a complete and full weekend at home.  Woohoo!

And there’s no better way to kick-off a Friday night than doing a bit of cooking.  Unfortunately, I was somewhat lazy, so I ended up combining parts of the meal together doing some pieces from scratch, and some a bit more ‘assisted’ from the meat counter at whole foods.  Nonetheless, I made it look pretty:

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(Stuffed beef, with fresh green beans sautéed in orange juice, and a side of sweet potato soup)

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So, after sleeping in on Saturday, the very first item of note was picking out pumpkins.  Yes, pumpkins!  While I was running around all crazy on Friday trying to get visa applications filled out, and passports (The Girl’s and I) off to the required embassies for upcoming trips, I stumbled past a pumpkin patch just around the corner from me.

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We picked out our own individual pumpkins and loaded them into the wheelbarrow:

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Then we picked out one we’ll divide up for cooking.  Perhaps some sort Iron Chef Pumpkin style cook-off in the near future.

Of course, we had to get them all buckled in for the ride home:

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The rest of Saturday was spent knocking out things around the house and doing a pretty sweet run.  With the cooler weather, I was back sub-6 again pretty easily for the sets.  Nice!

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Oh, and The Girl created this absolutely crazy multi-level cake – like something you’d see on the Food Network.  Amazingly perfect…but…you’ll have to wait for her post on that.

And speaking of things worth taking pictures of…I got a new external flash for my camera.  Which, it turns out I should have picked up long ago.  Holy cow this makes taking product photos SO.MUCH.EASIER!  Plus, with the Canon 7D, I can do fully in-camera triggered wireless flash, so I can have the flash off-camera – such as across the room or providing backfill or more even lighting.  Pretty sweet.

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As for those product photos, I was busy working on a post on the new Garmin Chirp in Endurance Sports, which will be published Tuesday.

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I also got to take out the TuneBug system I was given at Interbike out for a spin:

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The Tunebug system uses Bluetooth to connect to your phone and wirelessly stream music to the Tunebug speaker, which mounts on your helmet (comes with a  few different mount systems).  Once you mount this to any surface – such as your helmet – you immediately get astonishingly clear music, while still allowing for the outside ambient noise (like cars) to easily pass through to your ears.  I had no problems hearing cars or The Girl.  Very solid.  More testing to come… Oh – and if you don’t have Bluetooth on your MP3 player, it comes with a long cable to attach to your MP3 player.

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Oh – and as hinted at above, Sunday included a bit of a short 90 minute ride with The Girl, just enjoying riding for riding, instead of riding against a training plan.

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The only bummer was that the cooler temperatures meant that my HR strap was a bit erratic – even with the uber-new Garmin Edge 800 strap (which was looking to fix this issue)…so, it’s back to my usual advice on how to fix HR spiking/droout issues…or, well, swapping out for the Polar Trick (which worked perfectly for The Girl).

And thus…my weekend at home. :)

Have a great week all!

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7 Comments

  1. As a TrainingPeaks user, what do you do with your garmin workout data when your HR strap is a bit erratic? Do you upload it anyway and not worry about it messing up your summarized data (time is zones, avg HR, Max HR, etc)? Have you found an easy way to edit the data? ex. Remove HR data that spikes above a certain level, etc.

  2. What does Rainmaker think of ANT+ & iPhone?

    link to itunes.apple.com

    Potential? I sure hope so

  3. Mrfish

    Can you post the recipe for the stuffed beef please. Looked good.

  4. Dawn G

    Speaking of Garmin, have you heard anything about Garmin Connect? Nothing is uploading into Garmin Connect even after clearing the cache like they recommend. This has rendered my Tanita BC-1000 virtually useless as I can’t view the data with all of my workout data anymore. Garmin has not responded to email or postings. They appear to be ignoring the situation. Are you having the same problem with your Tanita data?

  5. Hi Matias-

    RE: The iPhone…check out this post:

    link to dcrainmaker.com

    I actually use it a fair bit – works great!

    Hi Mrfish-

    I would…except…that’s the one piece that I picked up at Whole Foods. Essentially it was just a beef tenderloin section cut and then stuffed with spinach and goat cheese, and then I baked it at 350*F for 45 minutes (for rare).

    Hi Dawn-

    Hmm, strange, I’m not seeing any issues with generic uploads from my 310XT or FR60, but I’d have to check on the BC-1000 and see if they’re making it or not. I’ve been using the Withings WiFi scale a bit more as of late.

  6. Love the pumpkins in seatbelts!!!

  7. Stuffed Beef… that was my college nickname :)