Wednesday, November 28, 2012

New Salomon Gear for TNF50

Some of the new gear. 

Salomon red nail polish

Crossing the bridge.  Hmmm, there seems to be a lot of red around here...

This is one piece of gear I am really excited about, the 2013 hydration belt.  The belt is very flexible, minimal and it even looks good. The blue bottles are really lightweight water bottles that compress when they are empty.  They appear to be the same material as a hydration bladder.
S-Lab Sense, if it's not too muddy I'll wear these shoes for the race.  Super comfortable.
S-Lab shoes

compression tights

Lightweight rain jacket.  I mean really freakishly light for being waterproof.

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Training Journal 11/19-11/25

Monday, November 19-Sunday November 25, 2012: CRAZY WEEK!!!  This week marked a pretty serious short term setback for me.  I did all my usual training runs on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and woke up Thursday morning with severe pain in my calf and in my inner thigh.  It seemed really strange since I couldn't recall doing anything to cause such severe pain.  Even the most gentle feather touch to the calf was painful and the spot on my thigh was a hard lump. I limped through Thanksgiving dinner and skipped a recovery run that day, instead I biked.  I didn't feel any better the next day, in fact, it felt worse and getting out of bed was difficult.  My friends encouraged me to go to the doctor, but I resisted.  By the end of the day, I too had to agree that I should get it looked at as it could be something serious like  blood clot.  I ended up in the ER with a diagnosis of blood clot in my thigh.  Apparently this can happen to perfectly healthy people (of which category I classify myself).  So this is what I am currently dealing with and I am still hoping to race at the NF50 this Saturday Dec. 1, but there is a good chance that I will not be able to. 
Flying to San Francisco!
Monday: 7 mile recovery run, 800 feet of climbing (1 hr)
Tuesday: 12 mile run, faster on hills (2,500 feet of climbing, 2hr)
Wednesday: 7 mile recovery run (600 feet of climbing, 1hr)
Thursday: 12 mile bike ride (45min)
Friday:0
Saturday:0
Sunday: 4 mile walk, (1hr 15, 500 feet of climbing)

Totals: does it matter?!  Not so good this wee in recovery mode from leg issues
Run Miles: 30 miles
Run Elevation Gain: 4,400 feet of climbing
Other Exercise: 12 mile bike
Total Exercise Time:  6 hours

Monday, November 26, 2012

The Landing

The Landing 11/26/12

Saturday, November 24, 2012

Curry it

I said I could add Curry to anything.  Meet Curry Popcorn: mix popcorn with olive oil & Udo's oil and sprinkle with generous amounts of curry powder, and a smaller sprinkle of cayenne and salt.

Spinach and roasted garlic salad with balsamic-orange dressing

Spicy Mustard & Garlic Chicken: run chicken with German mustard, sprinkle dried hot peppers, paparika, pepper, and salt.  Douse with olive oil.

Roasted Curry Potatoes and Baked Head of Garlic

Nautilus Lovers

Nautilus Lovers 11/24/12

These fascinating seashells are spiral in shape and consist of a series of ever-larger chambers in each of which the sea creature lives for a season until it outgrows that particular space. The Nautilus then enlarges its shell by the addition of a new chamber suitable for the next stage of its life...The spiral shape of the Nautilus shell suggests that it can keep growing forever. There is no design for a "final" chamber. The creature must keep building new chambers as long as it lives. It cannot go back to the previous ones; they no longer fit. It cannot stay in its present space or it will die. It has no choice but to move on. And on.
---From http://www.beyondreligion.com/su_about/nautilus.htm

Thanksgiving Photojournal

 Thanksgiving at Grandpa's.  He's 99 years old!

I brought the salad

My salad dressing: olive oil, balsamic vinegar, pomegranate juice, orange juice, garlic, salt





Thursday, November 22, 2012

Death by Butter Knife

I like riding my bike on Thanksgiving
Cars all parked in driveways
The road could be a river
And my bike, a boat.

The girl was stacked high
with bags and a stroller
Sobbing at the bus stop
A baby smiling at me
From its covers, oblivious

Are you ok?
I asked the girl
The baby smiling at my voice,
The girl’s anger filling the street,
As a flood might in early Spring
The baby nestled in the stroller,
As though it were on a boat,

Enjoying the sunshine.

My fucking Step Dad
Hitting me and my son
I bought those groceries
I'm going fucking stab him
With a butter knife

I left reluctantly with a
Happy Thanksgiving
Have a good bike ride
she replied.

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Training Journal 11/12-11/18

Monday, November 12 -Sunday, November 18, 2012: Two big wins this week: I'll be running for Salomon at the North Face Championships 50 miler on Dec. 1 and I hit 104 miles this week! The first thingy, it's REALLY AWESOME!  I am looking forward to a fun week in San Francisco at TNF50 with some amazing runners.  As for the latter, I finally broke through that 100 mile wall.  Not that I have really been trying.  I have been trying not to be uptight about hitting certain miles.  This has been my biggest mileage week I think since doing the Wonderland trail in 31 hours (93 miles) in September.  It didn't feel that much harder than other weeks, other than I had a few aches and a few cramps a night (calves, ouch!).   The ball of my left foot has been sore and I had some fatigue on both my runs Friday after I did double runs on Thursday (including a 20 miler).  No wonder!  It was only a little more than the past 3 week's mileage: 90.5 miles, 85 miles, 92 miles.
To get in 100+miles you gotta run in the dark sometimes! Heading out for an early morning run.
Monday: 15.5 mile Progression run.  (2,100 feet climbing, 2hr 25min)
Tuesday: Two run day.  10 mile speed session in AM (1/2 mile and 3/4 mile repeats with no rest including a 3 mile warm up and 3 mile cool down). 7 mile recovery run in PM. (1hr45/1hr20/1,300 total ft. gain)
Wednesday: 8 mile recovery run. (1hr10, 500 feet climbing)
Thursday: Two run day: 20 mile run in the AM (3hr30min, 3,700 feet climbing), 7 mile recovery in the PM (1hr, 550 feet climbing)
Friday: 9 mile fartlek AM (1hr. 20, 1,300 feet climbing), 6 mile recovery PM (1hr, 600 feet climbing)
Saturday: 7 mile recovery on treadmill (1hr)
Sunday: 15 mile run on Blanchard Mountain, focusing on technical downhills. (3hr20min, 4,500 feet of climbing)

Totals:
Running miles: 104.5 miles or 168km
Running elevation gain: 14,550 feet or 4,435 meters
Crosstraining: Situps and plank exercises 3 days
Total time running: 17.85hours

And my illustration of upcoming TNF50 San Francisco!

Warming up my Spleen

Per the acupucturist's directions, I have been adding warming herbs to my food.  I tend to eat a lot of raw foods all times of the year.  According to the Eastern medicine point of view, eating a lot of raw foods in the fall and winter months can strain your body.  Such was my case, and apparently I am showing signs of a damp spleen.  Yes, a damp spleen.  I have been remedying it with cinnamon, curry, ginger, garlic, cayenne, and red peppers.  Today, I balanced out my raw carrot/lemon/celery/beet juice by adding cayenne to my drink.  It was really good and had the added benefit of adding a little kick to the drink!

I've included some pictures of the foods I have added warming herbs to:
Cayenne Infused Red Root vegetable Juice (Carrot, Beet, Celery, ginger, apple, lemons)

Rosemary Curried Fingerlings

Cayenne Infused Red Root vegetable Juice (Carrot, Beet, Celery, ginger, apple, lemons)

Curried Wild Cod, Fingerling, and Avocado Salad.  Sprinkle with Udo's Oil, salt and curry powder.

Warming Spices: Ginger, Cayenne (as many IU's as you can get!) and curry powder.

Sunday, November 18, 2012

The French Invasion

I am super excited to be running for Salomon in the North Face Championship 50 miler this Dec. 1!  What an honor to run for a company that has had such a pivotal part of trail running.



Friday, November 16, 2012

Matcha and Orange Marinated Chicken

Green Tea on Chicken?  Why not?
Plus I have a LOT of oranges left over from the Trail Marathon so here's what I came up with (scroll down for recipe)
I've been running at all hours of the day.  Got up this morning to do a nice 20 miler in the dark, fog, and eventually sunshine!
Matcha and Orange Marinated Chicken
Makes 2 large breasts (bone in with skin, you'll see why).  Preheat oven to 350F Bake.

To make the marinade:
Mix the juice of 2 oranges with 5 TBS of olive oil.  This is the base marinade.

Then:
1. Peel 8-12 garlic cloves
2. Peel 3 TBS worth of ginger and chop very small
3. Douse the chicken in the orange-olive oil combo then place in a 1-2" deep dish.  Pour marinade in dish so that the chicken is sitting in it.
4. Stuff the chicken skin with 1/2 the garlic and ginger.  Slather the top of the chicken with matcha (powdered green tea, about 1/2 teaspoon per breast).  Sprinkle extra ginger over chicken and marinade.  Leftover garlic cloves are added to marinade as well (whole).
5. Slice another orange and place thin slices over chicken. Sprinkle top of chicken and orange slices with paprika and course ground salt.

This is what it should look like before cooking:

Cook at 350F bake until done.  Chicken can be served over a bed of spinach (see below). I also added baked potato.  The marinade can be used to dress the salad. 






Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Rabbit Hole

Click for larger view
Two very different songs I'm enjoying right now.  From the gentle, subtle artistic and melodic "Resurrection Fern" to the baltant, bold and crass "Die Young".  Enjoy the contrast.


Spicy Hazelnut Pumpkin & Apple Pie: crust free

A healthy desert? I think so.  In time for Thanksgiving.

Layered Spicy Pumpkin and Apple Pie with Hazelnuts

Slice 2 large apples thinly
grind in a food processor 1.5 cups of fresh hazelnuts

Mix together:
1 can of pumpkin pie mix (15oz) go for the organic mix
2 eggs
1/4 cup almond milk
1 tsp cayenne pepper

Oil the bottom of a 9" pie pan with olive oil.  Place sliced apples in a layer covering the entire bottom of the pie pan.  Sprinkle a generous layer of the ground up hazelnuts over the apples (about 1/2 the hazelnuts).  Place another layer of apples over the hazelnuts (cut up more apple if need be).  For the second time sprinkle remaining hazelnuts over the apples.  Pour the pumpkin mixture over the top of the apples and hazelnuts covering it entirely.  Oven preheated to 350F. Cook until apples are soft and pumpkin pie mixture has thickened.  Sprinkle with cinnamon before serving.
Eggs, pumpkin pie mix, cayenne pepper
Making the pie layers

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Warming Soup n' Salmon

You'd think all I love to do is run, but I actually love playing with my food too.  Before I quit my other blog to work on this one more, I used to post foodie stuff.  Running can be a pretty full time job though, and I just didn't have enough time to put the kind of work into the other website that I wanted.

Today I made soup for the first time this fall. Soup is usually a staple for me, but I've been a bit lazy about making food, opting for an apple or banana or handful of nuts between work and running.  Motivation comes in unusual ways sometimes. I found out that I have an ulcer and I am trying to eat simpler stuff. Soup seems like a good option  My acupuncturist told me I need more warming herbs, hopefully they won't be an issue with the ulcer.  This soup was pretty freaking good.  I mean really good.  I'm glad I made it, I was planning to juice a bunch of veggies, but the soup was good for a cold day.  I added baked copper river salmon to it.

here is what I included:

Warming Fall Soup
bag of fingerling potatoes
2 russet potatoes
4 carrots
bag of Brussels sprouts
2 fresh tomatoes
7 whole garlic cloves (a lot)
2 TBS ginger root, chopped and peeled
1 onion
3/4 # copper river salmon (baked & added in pieces) see below for salmon recipe

with these herbs/spices:
aforementioned ginger and garlic
1 tsp red pepper
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp sea salt
Salmon wrapped in seaweed with lemons
Sweet & Sassy Seaweed Baked Salmon
2 sheets of nori
1/4 cup mirin sweet cooking wine
4 TBS fresh lemon juice
3 TBS olive oil
curry powder
4 wedges of lemon

Place the salom in a cooking dish on top of one of the pieces of nori.  Pour olive oil, mirin, and lemon juice over the top of the salmon. Sprinkle curry powder over that and place lemon wedges on top.  Use last sheet of nori to cover the top of the salmon.  The idea is to wrap the salmon in the nori.  Wrap it in such a way that the nori sticks to the salmon and lemons.  You can tuck the edges underneath the salmon.  This helps give it flavor and keeps it from baking too quickly.  Oven preheated to 350F.  Cook for-who-knows-how-long just don't overcook it!! I often turn the oven off as it gets closer to being done and let it cook more slowly.  Makes for more tender salmon. 



Monday, November 12, 2012

Training Journal 11/5-11/11

This is the kind of exercise I get as a Race Director.  I'm either warming up my foot or peeing on the heater.
Monday, November 5- Sunday, November 11, 2012: This week was destined to be super busy, but I still got 92 miles in!  How did I manage to do that when I took 3 days off?  By doing one really long day: 60.5 miles on Tuesday.  Sunday I race directed the Bellingham Trail Marathon, which went off without a hitch thanks to lots of pre-planning on my part and a busy week.  Heck, I even got sleep Saturday night!  This was my first race that I directed solo!  Well, I had a LOT of help from amazing volunteers of course.

Monday: took the day off in anticipation for Tuesday's long run.
Tuesday: 60.5 miles.  Cornwall Park (Bellingham) to Mt. Baker.  7,100 feet elevation gain, 12hrs, easy pace.
Wednesday: Day off, not because I was tired or sore (in fact my body felt fine) but because I had too much to do in prep for the Bellingham Trail Marathon.
Thursday: 10 miles of course marking for the race.  Felt more tired than expected, but my stress level was high for race so I am not surprised. 3hrs (it takes a long time to course mark!) with 3,100 feet of elevation gain.
Friday: 2 runs: 7 miles of course marking in the AM (2.25hrs with 1,000 feet of climbing), 5 miles tempo on treadmill in the PM (35 min).  It was just so cold and dark by the time I was able to get out that I opted to treadmill. Felt good.
Saturday: 9.5 miles total.  2.5 miles very easy (course marking, 45 minutes) then 7 miles tempo (50 minutes, 350 feet of climbing).
Sunday: Bellingham Trail Marathon RDing.  No time to run, but ran around with my head cut off---does that count?  Actually the race went really smoothly and I think I looked reasonably calm

Totals:
Running miles: 92 miles or 148 km
Running elevation gain: 11,550 feet or 3520.44 meters (for our Euro and Canadian friends)
Cross Training: does race directing count?
Hours Exercising: 19.35 hrs or most of a day.
Me giving Ethan his medal for 2nd place.  Ethan has the FKT for unsupported Wonderland Trail (circumnavigation of Mt. Rainier).  So there you have it, the two Wonderland FKT holders at the BTM! A high profile race!
Pre race speech. I think the tape got caught on my fingers

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Bellingham to Mt. Baker: 60 mile run

More epic than expected?  Yes.  It went by pretty quick as half of the run was on gravel or road.  Unfortunately, there was a mix up on my ride home (I was supposed to be picked up at mile 45-50) and I had to backtrack for a good 90 minutes before being picked up.  This was mainly because I was way ahead of schedule.

Between the heavy rain and my propensity toward getting cold easily I was miserably cold for the last, oh, 5-6 hours.  Haha.  The run ended up being 60.5 miles with 7,100 feet of climbing. 

Running up Stewart Mountain.  Really cool cloud views
Lake Whatcom, road section

My friend Dan and I started at the water in Bellingham and ran up to Mt. Baker
Starting the descent on Stewart Mountain
SOAKING wet after a big downpour.  Very glad to have brought my rainproof jacket!