Have you Ever Seen the Rain?

The post title is a reference to one of my favorite Creedence Clearwater Revival songs (I downloaded their Greatest Hits album off amazon for $5 last night and it's playing on the jukebox as I write). But it also refers to the Rocky Hill Ranch race I was working this morning. Gavin and I had an early start at 2:30am and got out to the race site at 4am. We got deluged with rain, thunder and lightning strikes which washed out parts of the course and led to the race being canceled just after the start of the 50 miler - bad news for the hundreds of runners who had signed up for it, but absolutely the correct decision. I was helping with packet pickup, and felt so bad telling those folks who had traveled out to Smithville on such a stormy morning that the race had been pulled, but most of them took it really well. I felt even worse for the volunteers who had spent all day Friday marking the course in even worse weather.

But I just got a notice from the RD to say he's rescheduled the race as a free event in June called "Hell's Hills" - a classy gesture by a great guy. Since I have no conflicts that weekend, I think I may just run the 50 miler as an early tune up for Cactus - it will be mighty hot, but may also be the motivation I need to get my butt back into gear. Since this is Nancy's last weekend out of town I can start my long runs again next weekend.

Enough about running - I haven't blogged about cooking for a while. Tonight I experimented with a "concept pizza" partly inspired by one of the pizzas I enjoyed at a dinner party last night. I made a sourdough spinach pizza crust topped with 3 cheeses, potato, red onion and some chicken fajita I grilled a few nights ago. It was yummy, very different to my usual pizza, and Gavin loved the green pizza dough (the crust is real easy to make - I just combined a cup and a half of my proofed sourdough starter with some spinach leaves in a blender, added it to a cup and a half of high protein flour with some olive oil and salt, and kneaded it into a ball of dough which I covered and let rise). Definitely one to put on my "cook to impress" list.

Some nice pumpkin ale went very nicely with it.

Pizza and beer - a winning combination