Running and cooking

On the running front Kathleen and I have both been running well lately; she has her sights set on qualifying for Boston hopefully early next year.  My own goals are not quite as lofty: it would be great to stay healthy for a while and hopefully improve the speed a little bit, trying to get back to around 21+ minutes for a 5K.  I know that won't be easy and that I would have to lose quite a bit of weight to get there.  Will have to see about that. 

The weather has been exceptionally nice so far this spring and Kath and I have been able to increase our weekly mileage quite a bit; my last two weeks have been over 40 miles with just a couple of warning signals.  A bit of tightness in the calves possibly caused by one too many runs in the Vibrams, and a little discomfort in the left knee.  We'll take it easy next week. 

We've had a lot of fun participating in the weekly Tour de Bayou runs presented by HARRA, every Thursday in April.  So far we've completed cross-country races (about 3 to 4 miles with approximately 150 to just over 200 runners) at Spotts Park, White Oak Bayou, alongside Buffalo Bayou at Memorial & Waugh and last Thursday along the Ho Chi Minh trail in Memorial Park.  Practically all of the city's hard core racers show up so it is a tough environment to do well.  Fortunately the results are age-graded so we are both hoping for a decent showing once the results are tabulated. 
 
It has not been all running all the time though.   I've been doing quite a bit of cooking, baking bread again (not a good thing for the weight loss program...) and trying several new recipes.  A couple of weeks ago I tried my hand at a Houston Striders chili cookoff, but alas the chili was not up to scratch.  The consistency was more like a sloppy Joe than a real chili.  As a result, there's plenty of Bert's 'non-award winning chili'  in the freezer - as soon as we've worked our way through it, I will start investigating some new recipes.

Talking of sloppy Joes, we had Snobby Joes on kaiser rolls (from Veganomicon) for dinner tonight, accompanied by a very tasty and nicely textured edamame and snow pea salad with lime-ginger dressing.