Salad Days

The January thaw came and went, leaving us in a world of ice.

Which does have its pleasant aspects.

I succeeded (mostly) at taking an easier week, but still ran doubles on Monday and Saturday because the 100 runs in 100 days challenge is still a thing until late March. I'm actually hanging in decently well - at the halfway point (today), I'm technically 5 runs ahead of pace.

..and just barely in the top 10.

The ice has made it tough to get out on the trails safely, though. I ended up running down to the farmers' market through town on Saturday instead of via the trails, as Tanker and I did a small scouting mission on Friday evening and discovered they were nothing but icy death. It did give me an interesting view of some of the flooding in town, though.

Like this small conservation tract just blocks from our house.
There are trails under the floodwaters and ice.

Another road run on Saturday afternoon, then Sunday was brunch in Guelph with friends. I couldn't resist the opportunity to run on the Royal Recreation Trail along the Speed River, but I threw on my spikes just in case it was a bit icy.

"A bit" didn't begin to describe it.

Yowza.

There was a full sheet of 1"-2" thick ice that started at Victoria Road (where Tanker was sweet enough to drop me off so I could do a 6.5k run to our friends' house) and covered all but a couple of small patches of the trail for the full 2.25km down to Woodlawn Road.

With some sunshine and mild temperatures to melt the top layer, making it extra slippery.

It was lovely to run jacketless on the last weekend of January, though!

I've run on this stuff before without issue, as the carbide spikes in my traction devices have been able to bite in and give me decent grip. Not sure if it was due to wearing them with a different pair of shoes than usual or just the hardness of the ice itself, but even with my spikes I was getting some slippage.

NOT COOL

With some quick feet and a lot of butt clenching, I made it through ok. In some cases the side trails were actually the better option, but I tried not to be an idiot about taking anything too sketchy if I could avoid it.

The layer of snow on top of the ice actually gave some welcome traction.

The snow that came howling down this Monday buried all that ice under a thick layer of white. While I wasn't super keen on running through it (twice), it did allow me to finally get back down into the creek valley for the first time in a month on Wednesday evening's run. I'd been trying to spare my ankles while I went through the sizeable block of running from Stride Inside through Frosty Trail (and my "recovery" week thereafter), but for my last run of January I couldn't resist taking the chance.

I had missed this sorely.

That put the cap on 294.5km for the first month of the year, which is a pretty decent start. I've also been slowly chipping away at the extra insulation I put on through my "off season" in November and through the holidays, mostly thanks to paying some extra attention to my nutritional intake.

Proper nutrition not only leads to better body composition; it's also a path to decreased recovery time from taxing workouts, plus the best way to support your immune system for general health. So, I'm going to share with you one of my favourite recipes for a meal that you can almost feel revitalizing you after a long run. I hereby give you..

K's Big Effin' Salad of Awesome

That's one of those big 312g salad boxes, about half full.
Go big or go home!

This is something I make at least once per weekend, usually after my longest, hardest day of running. It's so wonderfully filling that I sometimes find myself not wanting dinner afterwards, and it has tons of nutrients to help me recover for the next day. I swear you can practically feel the vitality radiating through you.

The ingredients are all things that I generally keep on hand:

• couple of big handfuls of baby spinach and/or spring mix
• 2 large mushrooms (white or cremini, sliced)
• 3" piece of English cucumber, sliced
• 2 hard boiled eggs, sliced
• six big slices of pickled beets, chopped
• sprinkle of vegan mozzarella cheez shreds
• a tablespoonful (give or take) of raw pumpkin seeds, shelled
• your favourite dressing (I love Farm Boy's apple cider vinaigrette)

Toss it all into a giant bowl, mix it up and go to town. The best part is, you can tweak it based on your preferences or what you have on hand. Don't have any dairy issues? Use regular mozzarella. Don't have any hardboiled eggs, or have an aversion to them? Just leave them out, maybe substituting a different kind of protein (hemp hearts, tofu, chopped lunchmeat). Don't like beets? You could leave them out, but there's a fair bit of evidence they're really good for you both for general health and performance. I'd really suggest giving them a chance - you may find you don't mind them when they're all mixed in with everything else. You can add other things in if you want, too - I've enjoyed it with dried cranberries, cooked sweet potato, and even chopped raw broccoli in the past.

This can all be whipped up the day before (sans dressing - add it just a few minutes before eating, unless you want things to get a bit soggy and wilted), too, and stored in the fridge so it's ready to just grab and eat after a hard workout.

It might seem a bit odd to be eating salad when it's now about a million degrees below freezing, but from both a flavour and nutrition standpoint you just can't beat this for a meal. Add a hot bowl of your favourite soup and you'll be ready to take on anything!

Because even icy trails of death can take you beautiful places.

Just pudding it out there

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day, and there's no more traditional way to show your love than with chocolate. That, however, can have some rather unwanted consequences...particularly if you're the kind of idiot that signs up for long spring races at bloody ski hills.

Don't you worry, though - I've got your back! I'm here to show you a quick, simple way to indulge in rich, chocolatey goodness that won't wreck your dreams of reaching (or maintaining) race weight. You can even make a single serving just to quash a chocolate craving, and since all of the ingredients are whole, natural foods you can feel pretty good about what you're eating. It's absurdly easy, too, and will take you less than 5mins from the time you start pulling out ingredients until you're savouring your first spoonful of chocolate heaven.

Healthy Chocolate Pudding

(Makes 2 servings - approximately 5mins total required)

Ingredients:

1 ripe banana
5 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tbsp almond butter
1 tsp vanilla bean paste (or vanilla extract)

You only need half a banana per serving, but you can always just eat the other half..

Method:

Peel a banana and break it into chunks in a small bowl. If you're not too fussy about presentation, you can pop them right into the serving dishes.

We're not too picky.

Use a sturdy fork to mash the hell out of the banana chunks. You want to get it as smooth as possible.

Keep going..

Once you've got the banana to a fairly uniform, creamy consistency, add 1/2 tsp of the vanilla bean paste and stir in thoroughly. If you can't find vanilla bean paste you can use vanilla extract instead, or even scrape a vanilla bean pod into the banana.

This stuff is goooooood, though.

Now add 1/2 tbsp nut butter per serving. I like to use a raw, unsweetened almond butter but you could change it up if you'd like something different. Don't use stuff that's chock full of sugar, salt, soybean oil and other crap though - it sort of defeats the purpose of making a healthy alternative. I'd also suggest that you should only use smooth butters for this, not crunchy...unless you really like chunky pudding.

Stir the nut butter in until well blended. As an aside, this makes a damn tasty dessert all on its own, or as a base for other flavours.

This, however, is about chocolate. Let's get after it!

Now here's where you may have to play around with things to get it right. I add a heaping forkful (which I estimate to be about 2 tbsp worth) plus another 1/2 tbsp or so of unsweetened cocoa powder per serving. I also eat and really, really enjoy dark chocolate with 90% cocoa content that other people find rather bitter. Thus, you might want to try less cocoa powder to start, then adjust to taste. Or, you can add ALL THE COCOA, then add a liquid sweetener like maple syrup or honey to reduce the bitterness.

I won't judge. Promise.

I do, however, suggest that you use the absolute best quality cocoa powder on which you're able to lay hands. Without it, the flavour will be disappointing at best. I try to find cocoa powder with higher fat content (20% or more) like this one from the Bulk Barn as the flavour is more intense than the standard fare. 

Now take that fork and stir the ever-loving bejeezus out of the mixture. It will start off looking like you've added way too much cocoa powder and are going to end up with a sticky mess.

Have faith!

Just keep stirring, scraping down the sides of the bowl as you go. You might be able to do this with a food processor or some other gadget, but I'm trying to keep things simple here. A fork is fine, and with enough elbow grease you'll finally come to a smooth consistency.

Voila!

Taste and adjust things to suit yourself. If you don't have an ingredient (other than banana and cocoa) then go ahead and make it anyway - I started out just stirring cocoa powder into mashed banana and it's pretty awesome, though the almond butter does add creaminess and the vanilla bean paste makes the flavour pop. If you want to be all fancy-schmancy about it, you could modify it further with some add-ins like:

• A sprinkle of fleur de sel or sea salt on top
• A spoonful of cocoa nibs
• Top with fresh raspberries
• Stir in a swirl of caramel
• Sprinkle with unsweetened, shredded coconut
• Add 1/4 tsp instant coffee for a mocha flavour

Or just grab your spoon and go to town on the smooth, chocolatey deliciousness as is. I ran the basic ingredients through a calculator and it spit out the following data:

Does not include any add-ins; just half of the recipe as listed.

Just 160cal for a bowl of silky smooth, mouth-watering chocolate pudding, made entirely from ingredients that you can pronounce and probably have sitting in your kitchen right now. Make it for a loved one to show them you love them, make it for yourself as a midnight snack, or make it any time at all just because it's freakin' amazing.

So what exactly are you waiting for? Get stirring!

And remember that the cook gets to lick the bowl.

Hope you all have a wonderful Valentine's Day!