Monthly Archive: May 2009

Food posts and the blogging runner

You know, I really don’t consider myself one of those hardcore runners. God, far from it. As much as I have training schedules and run several times a week, I still think of myself as a casual runner. I’m sure some people who know me might disagree a little bit. If I were to compare myself though to those people that are, perhaps, training for marathons and running 10K many days a week, I’m not at that level yet. I’m not sure I want to be at that level just yet because of the required time commitment. I don’t have enough time in the day to want to devote such a big chunk of time to one activity.

So why am I mentioning this? Well, among the group I was running with this morning, something came up about stuff I blog about. Bong was talking about other runners that blog and how they write about how their training schedules and diets are controlled and regimented. In contrast, what do I have on my blog? I have posts like “How to: chocolate chip cookie” and a small post regarding feeling gross after eating burgers and cinnamon buns. Does anyone else find this amusing?

It’s no surprise that I like eating. Heck, just look at the food tour my friend and I did back in April. I like creating and baking as well. If I think about it, perhaps that’s one of the big underlying reasons why I run these days: I think it helps me stay conscious about my food habits. Ever since I started, my weight has been on a steady decline. Back in university, due to stress and poor habits I was slowly putting on weight. So, it’s easy for me to draw the connection between running and being healthy.

Seems that the connection is easy to spot. The other day, Anne of Mississauga Kids mentioned me in a Follow Friday tweet (thanks!) where she asked wondered out loud.

MississaugaKids #ff And I love following @jnery. Trying to figure out if he runs because he eats or eats because he runs! Interesting food posts! YUM!

I replied that it was both, and that it was a vicious cycle. Anyway, in all honesty, I don’t see myself changing any time soon because what I’ve got going works for my situation. Cooking/baking and running are great hobbies that complement each other. If the balance ever gets out of whack, I can correct things. Meanwhile…this just works.

How to: chocolate chip cookie

OK, so this recipe was found off the Internet, but the notes are all my own.

Chocolate chip cookie

What you’ll need:

The dry part

  • 2¼ cups of all-purpose flour
  • 1 tsp. of baking soda
  • ½ tsp. of salt

The wet part

  • 1 cup (2 sticks) of soft butter
  • ¾ cup of sugar
  • ¾ cup of packed brown sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 tsp. of vanilla

The special part

  • 2 cups (1 pkg.) of semisweet chocolate chips

OK.

  1. Heat your oven to 375°F (190°C)
  2. First, take your soft butter and add the two types of sugar in. Soft butter does not mean it’s melted into liquid, nor does it mean that it’s hard out of the fridge. I guess it’s easiest if it’s room temperature. In my case, for my father’s sake I used Splenda instead of sugar. That allowed him to at least eat a few and not feel left out. Now, cream together the butter and the sugar. If you have a hand mixer, just go at it. I kind of like using a spatula and creaming it manually at this stage–there’s something kind of satisfying about doing it by hand. You know you’re done when it all kind of looks fluffy/creamy. Shouldn’t take much effort to get to that point
  3. Add in the eggs one at a time and blend them into the butter. At this point I like using a hand mixer. Also add the vanilla. When you’re done, it should look like a nice even brown goo.Mmm: goo.
  4. In a separate bowl, add the flour, baking soda, and salt. Stir it all together just so that everything is kind of distributed evenly. You don’t want a salty clump in the middle of a cookie.
  5. Take about half of that flour mixture and add it to the wet stuff. Use your hand mixer to blend it in. The mixture will start getting hard. Add the other half then blend it in. By the end, you should have a stiff dough. Now, why didn’t we add all of the flour at once? If you added it all the flour would’ve probably flown all over the place when you blended it.This stiff thing is your base cookie dough.
  6. By hand, just take the package of chocolate chips and dump them in. You have to work them in by hand with a spoon or spatula because the dough is too thick at this point for the mixer to be useful. The chocolate should be evenly distributed throughout the dough.If you wanted to, you could add 1 cup of a secondary ingredient. In my case, I took some Australian almond nougat, crushed it into coarse pieces with a mallet then added it in. I made a mistake here by only using a ½ cup of stuff. With only ½ a cup it’s easy for that ingredient to kind of get lost in the cookie.
  7. Spoon some mounds onto an ungrease cookie sheet. Kind of flatten the mounds slightly to get a flatter cookie or else you’ll get a chubby round thing, which is still tasty, but not as cool as the usual cookie shape. Allow room for the cookies to kind of spread out. Bake for 8-10 minutes.Depending on your cookie sheet it might be on the lower or higher end of the range. I used a dark cookie sheet for my first batch, and after 9 minutes the cookies were kind a bit dark around the edges. For the second batch I used an insulated pan and it took 10 minutes. Anyway, just bake it until it doesn’t look too pale.
  8. Let the sheet and the cookies cool down completely. Restrain yourself! If you try to use a spatula to get them off right away, you’ll end of breaking them all apart. The result would be a tasty, but disappointing mess.This recipe yielded me about 2 dozen cookies.

Failover cookies

ike I mentioned yesterday, I was already in the process of making a batch of cookies. I originally had plans to continue baking throughout the whole maintenance window, but due to a sudden stroke of amazing efficiency I was able to finish my work two hours early. So yes, I was able to work quickly all while baking cookies. And these were the results:

Chocolate chip cookies with almond nougat piecesSheet full of cookiesCookie closeup

After seeing how many cookies this batch yielded, I decided that one batch was enough. The last thing I wanted was a huge pile up of cookies lying around the house, because, really, who else is going to end up eating the cookies? Exactly. In honour of the maintenance window, I nicknamed the batch my “failover cookies.” The name still amuses me.

Yes, I’m going to post a summary of the recipe, though not in this post. Maybe tomorrow? Instead I just wanted to touch on some interesting points that baking seems to bring up. Now, as I was making the cookies last night I had full intentions of bringing them in to work to share with my colleagues. Nice, right? It’s not the first time I’ve brought in baked goods. In the past I’ve brought in brownies and lemon squares, both of which were received really well. Today was no exception. Everyone gave my cookies rave reviews as far as I could tell. Everything was great, although, there was one thing that struck me as surprising. Someone I gave a cookie to asked me whether my wife or girlfriend made it.

Eh…? Well, that’s interesting. Yes, nothing was meant by it, but I’m fascinated by the question. Is it really that out of the ordinary for me, as a manly man, to be the one to have done the baking? What’s even more interesting for me is that this isn’t the first time someone’s asked me that. Sometime last November I brought in some stuff and someone asked me if my wife or girlfriend was sending me in with all of this food. Hah.

For anyone wondering, yes, I’m single.

I’m not even going to go into detail about analyzing all of this because the things at issue are pretty much obvious, aren’t they? Whatever. I get a kick out of surprising people with my talents.

You know, on a related note, I’ve noticed some other interesting trend in terms of assumptions people make about me. I’m assuming that the facial hair I was sporting a little while ago (I shaved two days ago) was making me look way older, but I didn’t think it was that drastic. Maybe it’s unrelated, but this one guy who’s only known me with facial hair seemed to make the assumption that I was married and had kids.

¿Que?

Sure, it’s not really that big a deal, but it’s an interesting jump to make. I don’t talk about having a spouse because, well, I don’t have one. I don’t say anything about my non-existent parenting skills. So, why make that assumption? Do I look old? Do I somehow carry myself in such a way that I’ve got this weird mature dignity thing going? This is something that I can’t figure out.

Anyway, enough pondering. The recipe will follow sometime in the next few days.

Baking through maintenance

So, it just so happens that I have the on-call pager this week. Joyous! Well, its also my luck that whoever has the pager this week is the lucky person that has to take care of this maintenance window that occurs between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m.

Yeah, no kidding.

Well, about an hour or two ago I mentioned on Twitter that the hard part was waiting for the period to start:

@jnery Have to be awake for a maintenance window between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m. Waiting for it without nodding off is the hard part.

Minutes later, I got a suggestion from MississaugaKids to either bake or have a short run. In the end, I opted for the latter former. As I’m blogging I have a batch of chocolate chip almond nougat cookies going in the oven. Depending on how these turn out, I think I’m going to continue baking for the whole period. Heck, if I’m working at home I might as well do something fun. Going into 3 a.m. we’ll see how much I end up making.

Pictures to come!

Maybe!

Doing it once, then not again…

There are certain foods out there that I usually eat once, and then not again for an extremely long time. Why is that? Well, I’d eat such foods because they taste great–there’s certainly no denying fact. It’s just that perhaps the food is far too rich, or that the food leaves you feeling horrible for having just ingested it.

At this moment I can think of two or three items that fall into this category for me.

The Whopper and Big Mac

Oh, man, what’s with these burgers? It’s not hard to end up just getting a combo with either of these sandwiches. I mean, you can get fries and a drink just for a little extra: why would you pass that up, right? Anyway, for sure. the hanburgers are really good, but inevitably I’ll end up feeling gross for eating the darn things. Perhaps it’s the effect of the combo? I’m not sure that’s the case because I have a better tolerance for burgers and fries found in non-chain places. Seriously though, in the rare occasion that I find myself in a BK or McD’s, those two burgers are what I’d gravitate toward. Good thing is, after finishing it, I usually make a mental note to avoid it for a good long while. I mean, who needs to feel gross and bloated on a regular basis?

Cinnamon bun

Jesus, talk about rich. From a chain place, these things are waaaay too loaded. The inner cinnamon spread tends to be really sweet. The dough as a whole is kind of heavy. The icing on top is just killer. All in all, after eating one I feel like it’s way too much. It’s good, but sickeningly sweet. Gross.

So yeah, what foods do you have on your own version of this list?

Cyclical training periods

Today ends another running cycle. Actually, I suppose this particular cycle ended two weeks ago with my race, but that’s besides the point. Today was the celebration night for my current half-marathon clinic. So, how did we, the health conscious running machines, celebrate after our completed runs? With beer, wings and sweet potato fries.

(Actually, that was really just me, but again, that’s besides the point.)

This whole training thing is pretty interesting. I mean, it’s all very cyclical. You start off slow, and you build distance gradually leading up to race day where all of the training comes out into this explosion of sweat and determination. All of this is then followed by rest and silence.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

After all this time, I’ll admit that more than anything it’s sort of become comfortable. The routine is good because it kind of forces me to continue to get out there. The act of ramping up is great because at least it allows me to have some periods of relative down time. I can’t imagine being “on” all year round. I think I can more easily wrap my head around the idea that there are certain periods where a little more effort andd exertion are necessary to reach a desired end result. And man, the half-marathon distance is really quite respectable.

While this cycle is ending, another one is starting next week. I’ve already promised the instructor that I would be a group leader like I was with this one that’s ending. Once again, this is all part of the at of paying it forward. Since I’ve started, I’ve received so much help and support from so many people. Part of me wants to return the goodwill to the community. That’s why I’m teach the Learn to Run people. That’s why I’m a group leader. That’s why I try to be as motivating as I can be. I know what it’s like to doubt. I’ve been there–and I’m sure on certain days it feels like I’m still there. Still, the cyclical training has made me stronger and has given me confidence.

Let the new cycle begin! I’l be ready!

A little acknowledgement

A little bit of acknowledgement goes a long way. I got wind that people in high places are a little bit concerned about my team given the circumstances of the past month or so. I seriously don’t know if that’s going to translate into anything tangible. And in no way do I believe that this is something that lets the culpable people off the hook, but all the same…

I’m almost apt to believe that our frustrations are being heard.

Ideas on good running form

It’s relatively early on in my running class; we just finished week 2 of the ten week class. So far everyone’s been very responsive and that makes me really happy. I’d like to believe that I’m inspiring everyone with my encouragement and enthusiasm. I think that I’ve got a good thing going with my emails to the group. Every now and then I like posting some good tips to help them along the way and make things easier for themselves. In my last email I passed along some tips on good running form. The general feedback I heard was that they were useful. So, I’m posting them here because maybe other people can benefit as well.


Some thoughts about form

Since some of you have been asking about form, I figured I’d give you some things to think about over the next few runs.

Where are you looking? If you’re looking at your feet, you might end up leaning forward and having to fight gravity. Keep your eyes looking ahead.

How is your breathing? If your breaths are quick and shallow you’re more likely to develop runners’ stitch. If you do get a stitch, try to slow your breathing down and be more deliberate.

How is your posture? Are you slumped over? Having good posture allows you to use less effort to move forward. Having your chest forward helps you breathe easier. You hips should be forward–your bum shouldn’t be sticking out.

How are your feet landing? The feet of long distance runners (that’s you!) should land flat when they hit the ground. Short distance sprinters often run on the balls of their feet. For our purposes, that’s just going to give us shin pain. If you land on your heels, you’re effectively applying the brakes which slows you down. Landing on your heels might mean your stride is too long. It’s better to have a shorter stride with quicker foot turn over.

Are you using more energy than you could be using? If your arms are swinging wildly, or you’re bobbing a lot as you run, you’re more likely to get tired quicker! Just relax!

So, on your walk breaks, I suggest remembering these tips and thinking “HEAD TO TOE.” That should be your cue to adjust your form if it’s gone awry. If in doubt, just ask me or one of the group leaders during the run.

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