Baking Brad Episode 66

This is episode sixty six - nanaimo bars.

Recipe

• Link

Good

• Good quantity
• New food processor worked well

Bad

• Chocolate broke apart when cutting slices
• Not as good as the previous hedgehog slice
• Should have done 100% for middle and top layer
• Trying to cook chocolate quickly was a failure

Ratings

• The Cook - 5/10
• The Taste - 7/10

Bottom layer ingredients.

More bottom layer ingredients.

75% for middle layer ingredients.

Nanaimo bars.

Run For The Kids 2015

And we're back for the fourth attempt at Run 4 The Kids - with a third different race distance.

My preparation was pretty average as most of my training sessions had been showing no signs of improvement, which had been quite frustrating. That wasn't helped after a visit to the dentist on Friday afternoon - I tried to start eating before the anaesthetic had worn off (three hours later) and did some damage to my lip and gum, so I missed out on Friday dinner and Saturday breakfast...I don't think the race booklet recommends this.

With all that forgotten about it was race day, Dave turned up to my house in the eastern suburbs (not an apartment in the city) and we were off to the train station in the cold - by some coincidence we all had nearly matching black clothes and gray shoes. The train turned up almost on time and we managed to all get a seat, which definitely beats standing for half an hour before a run...the race booklet should recommend this.

We arrived at a crowded Flinders Street with runners coming in from all lines, almost getting killed on the escalators because people were getting on quicker at the bottom than there was room to get off at the top.

Dave was signed up for the later 9:00am start and had to find a friend so we parted ways at the station and went in search of the starting line for the 8:30am group. After some confusion where all the runners moved up to the starting mats a good fifteen minutes too soon I found myself about ten rows from the front - good enough to not get held up too much I figured.

For some reason we had to wait a few minutes after the elite athletes were sent off - which is pretty pointless because we aren't going to catch them - then it was our turn to go. I managed to dodge through the slow idiots, who always line up in the front rows, by the time we reached the tunnel. Jason started closer to the front so I also caught up to him during the downhill tunnel section as well.

Out of the tunnel the road seems to go on forever, some of it uphill as well, and I started to lose time to Jason on the way to the 6km drinks station at the bottom of the Bolte Bridge, but still comfortably under 4:00 per kilometre. My cut lip was stinging a bit, not helped as dehydration increased, but not causing as much annoyance or distraction as I thought.

There wasn't much wind on the bridge this time but I still failed to match last year's time (according to Strava which compares race segments), about ten seconds slower to get up and down the other side. After the bridge I had a good stretch of the race, and managed a few more overtakes as we passed through Docklands and around Etihad Stadium.

Immediately after stopping in at the 11km drink stop I felt some pain in my stomach all of a sudden which was weird. Maybe because of this I really struggled up the Collins Street hill near Southern Cross Station, barely making it to the top. The rest of the run was pretty flat, through Southbank and back on to St. Kilda Road but my best efforts were behind me and I even had a couple of runners come back past me, which was annoying.

The finish line finally came, and I just managed to sneak in under one hour in a time of 59:16 and 116th overall - I was hoping to break in to the top 100 this year. At the finish I found out I had picked up a nose bleed somewhere along the course - which is quite rare and usually only happens when I'm running too hard.

There was some free water, sports drinks and apples at the end - so nothing particularly exciting - and that was the end, a jog back to Richmond just in time for the train and the race was over for another year. Now to do some more hill training before the next one...

Baking Brad Episode 65

This is episode sixty five - chocolate hedgehog slice.

Recipe

• Link

Good

• Chewy and crunchy

Bad

• Took a while to chop up the biscuits and hazelnuts

Ratings

• The Cook - 8/10
• The Taste - 10/10

Ingredients.

Chocolate hedgehog slice.

February Review

This is the February review, these things are taking too long to write, so I may need to trim them down.

My running has being going too well for too long now, I think an injury must be just around the corner. I got caught in a big rain shower during one of my weekend long runs which wasn't much fun - I don't mind the rain so much as the wet shoes and socks that are likely to cause blisters or just feel uncomfortable. My Garmin 110 survived the rain, but Jason's 210 wasn't so lucky. Since he was ordering a new Garmin 220 I decided to get one as well. My reason for upgrading was simply for the much better satellite performance - I often waste up to five minutes at lunch time waiting to acquire a solid GPS location in the city - surrounded by all the buildings and interference I assume, so it was well worth the money.

A couple of races came back on the calendar at last, first the VRR Yarra Bend where I entered the 12km event. My official time was 46:52 which was quite disappointing, but I was happy with my race strategy and coming up from fifth to finish second comfortably. A couple of weeks later was an early start for the Warburton Half Marathon. We didn't race it for a serious personal best, but I went a bit harder, particularly in the second half which was more downhill, since I wanted to finish in the top ten. I was really happy again that I managed to go past several people during the long hill climb that went for about two kilometres, and got a few more coming back down as well to finish in ninth overall with a time of 1:29:18.

Despite the extra running my weight is still a source of frustration, must be too many chocolate croissants. I'm stuck at about 75kg which is actually up from 74kg, and this is even when running six days a week instead of five. It's kind of annoying but I'll just monitor it for the moment before making any radical changes. I also tried to add some skipping into my exercise routine, I exceeded my expectations by a huge amount with my first attempt - my best streak was about 250 and my arm strength wasn't a total failure. I think some calf soreness resurfaced by doing it, so I will have to gradually introduce it.

The sports calendar has been a bit empty, but I've already had my highlight for the year with the NFL Superbowl. My team the New England Patriots were back to try again, after two devastating losses in recent years. I thought all hope was lost when they were down by two touchdowns in the third quarter, then I thought they had it won when they took the lead during the fourth quarter. It wasn't to be so easy though, as another miracle long catch by the Seahawks had set things up for the worst loss of all. I'm not sure what kind of emotions I had at this point of the match, possibly a combination of despair and disbelief, but somehow they survived with a lucky interception of their own and kept possession to win a fourth superbowl !

The NBA All-Star Weekend was also on a couple of weeks later, but the game itself lost all meaning years ago. The Saturday night events were alright, the three point contest was competitive and the dunk competition was a bit more fun that previous years, even if it's become almost impossible to do anything really unique anymore.

I still haven't been doing much baking this year, there was almost a month between my baking blog entries - although I did repeat a batch of finger buns during that time too. Trying to find a balance of eating healthy and baking may prove to be difficult, I think I will definitely need to start halving the recipes. On a related but much less interesting note I tried out a few new dinner recipes that went quite well, a Broccoli Green Curry and Chickpea Burgers were the best.

Sadly with all of the school and university students back I'm now stuck standing up on the train to and from work just about every day - and that's definitely not good for my poor, brittle calf muscles. In just the first week at full capacity there were delays, overcrowding and trains altered to go straight to Flinders Street. After I finally made it in to the office, the air-conditioning had apparently been failing or working at a reduced capacity for several days, but I hadn't even noticed ! Other people were likening it to a sauna but it seemed almost no different to me - I think it's because I have some kind of low body temperature problem, I'm guessing it's something bad rather than good, such as poor circulation.

I got to see a live band for the first time this year, and actually the first time in several months. The event was Spoon at The Forum, although I have seen them at least once before but it was a long time ago. I found a good spot where I was able to lean up against one of the seating booths, which was a big relief since my legs - much more than my back these days - can't handle standing in the same spot for two hours, even one hour is a big ask actually, I think I need to see a chiropractor or something. I'd rate the performance a 7 out of 10 since there was a couple of songs I didn't know and a few slow ones, but all the others were great, the best were "The Beast and Dragon, Adored" and "New York Kiss".

I had a big victory in the area of home maintenance, fixing the leaking laundry tap. It took three tips to Bunnings in total.

1. All the parts I thought I needed - enough to replace the spout at least
2. A hammer to bash the water mains into the off position
3. A tap spanner to remove the spindle from the wall - didn't even know I needed one !

So that probably saved me about five cents a day, the thing has been leaking for months now.

The Easter holiday planning I keep putting off, I had settled for New Zealand and had a good itinerary worked out, but Jason took forever to tell me if he wanted to come that the prices and availability kept getting worse. So now the third sad plan is to just take a short trip to Brisbane and/or Sydney instead, but even that is running out of time now.

I'm started making a to do list to try and avoid disasters like the Easter holiday above, and to make sure I keep track of things, but more importantly to prioritise them so I don't keep putting off the larger or more difficult tasks. It's still early days but I think it was a success for February, some examples:

• 2014 and 2015 super blog posts
• Bluetooth speakers for bedroom
• Computer desk chair
• Easter holiday planned (sort of)
• Fixed the laundry tap
• Gold Coast Marathon "holiday" planned
• Organised baking recipe collections
• Reactivated (slightly) higher interest bank account
• Relocated all online accounts to not use an ISP email address
• Two trips to the dentist :(

That's it at last, here is the regular summary:

• Books
• Salem's Lot by Stephen King
• One third through before anything started to happen
• A bit like Needful Things
• Vampire theme was a bit strange
• 7 out of 10
• Movies
• Cujo
• The book was just average, movie was quite boring
• 4 out of 10
• Desperation
• Didn't seem like a book suitable for a movie
• Was alright but hard to translate some of the themes in the book
• 5 out of 10
• Nightcrawler
• A refreshing original idea for a movie
• Great lead role by Jake Gyllenhaal
• The ending reminded me of The Usual Suspects
• 9 out of 10
• The Running Man
• Very different from the book
• Just a survival game show with differently themed characters
• 6 out of 10
• Music
• Nothing
• TV
• Hacking The System
• Apparently hacking is the new thing, there's also Hack My Life
• Some cool ideas in this one, but the host isn't so great
• 7 out of 10
• Kart Life
• Great show about kids and their families trying to win go kart championships
• 9 out of 10
• The Short Game
• Another great show about kids and their families playing golf
• 9 out of 10
• Video Games
• Gran Tursimo 5
• Only played a couple of hours