Speedwork

I haven't been running enough lately. Ever since the marathon last fall, I haven't been able to really get into a groove. I've had a couple of 12-15 mile weeks, but mostly I have a hard time getting out for three runs a week, and I haven't managed to do any kind of consistent interesting workouts, like speedwork, hills or tempo runs. I keep telling myself that I need to get out after work at least once a week and go to the track. The other option is to get out early in the morning, which is a great option with only one downside. It's not happening; no matter how many times I tell myself I'm getting up early, it never happens. I can manage to get out of bed for swim practice, but for running I just can't seem to do it.

Anyway, finally today I got over to the track after work. This morning started out cold and rainy, or drizzly at least. By by late morning, the cold front moved on through and it turned into one of those days that you dream about as a runner. Sparkling blue skies, low humidity and temperatures in the 60s. By the time I left work it was dark, but still beautiful outside.

I've been feeling pretty slow lately. Ever since I got well into my marathon training back in July, I haven't really done any speed work or intervals or anything like that. My runs lately, which have mostly been 4 milers with the occasional 6 or 8 miler have just felt slow. I keep telling myself that it's just how I feel, and that once I get back to the track things will feel better. Well tonight dispelled that idea pretty quickly.

I ran an easy mile to warm up and then did two sets of the standard Texas Iron drills and strides. My plan at that point was to do 6x400 with a 200 recovery between each. I've done enough 400s at the track to know that I should be able run around 1:35 and even down to 1:25 on a good day. However, tonight wasn't a good day. My first interval was around 1:45. Which might not be so bad, except that it hurt like I was running hard. And the others didn't get any better. I stopped at 4 because I didn't want to go on an more; they were all around 1:45 - 1:50.

I suppose that I could use the excuse that I had swum a hard workout in the morning, my first in two weeks. But it wasn't like I felt that bad or tired before running. I've just lost my speed it seems. But now that I know, I guess it's incentive to be back at the track every week. At least I know that things have to get better.

Oh, and one benefit of being out tonight. It really was a beautiful evening. In fact, as it got darker, I could actually see my shadow on the track cast by the moon.

Tamales

I've done the tamale thing now for several years on and off, serving mostly as labor who spreads the masa on the shucks. While this could be drudgery, it is usually accompanied by copious amounts of alcohol, plenty of good food and quality time spent with family. But with our head tamale chef (Sylvia, my mother-in-law) in St. Louis for Christmas, it was either go it alone or no tamales this year.

So, after a bit of thinking and then planning (and then calculating, as in "how many people can I trick into coming over to help spread the masa?) I decided that we would give it a go. I knew that mom would always be at least a phone call away, and also I remembered that last year she had discovered that you could buy masa that was pre-mixed, meaning that the hardest part of the job (in my experience) was already done for you.

So the first part is planning and shopping. I knew a partial list of stuff I would need: masa, shucks, a pork roast and chiles. Patty called around and found a few places that sold masa pre-mixed so I knew that I could get it. With my confidence in place, I started to make plans.

I ended up going to Fiesta Mart to attempt to get everything. This was on Christmas Eve eve, i.e. the 23rd. It was evening, but I figured that things wouldn't be too bad. Of course I was wrong, but nothing new there...

When we arrived (Bailey was with me, as I was bringing her home from swim practice) we headed to Fiesta. I bribed her by promising to buy her ojarascas, which she really likes. We showed up around 6:45 in the evening and the place was packed. We had to park a ways across the lot and then make our way in through the thronging patrons. Now if you've never been to Fiesta it's and experience. It's about as much of a third-world experience as you can get in Austin, expecially when it's crowded. They sell just about everything: clothing, luggage, cds, in addition to all of the strange foods that you could imagine. As we made our way into the store the tamale making stuff was front and center. And middle center and back center... Five pound bags of masa, lard in ever imaginable measure from one pound up to huge buckets, bags 0f dried chiles of all types: anchos, pasillas, cascabels, Guajillo, etc. I picked up a few things that I knew we needed (based on a call to Sylvia earlier in the day). This included a bag of ancho chiles, and a few heads of garlic. I searched high and low for the pre-mixed masa and also for a decent pork roast (shoulder or butt) but no luck. However, if I wanted a pig's head, well then there are more than enough to go around. I wanted to ask at the meat counter, but it would have taken 20 minutes just to wade through the line, so I gave up and picked up the few things that I had already and vowed to come back early in the morning. Oh, and they were out of ojarascas too...

to be continued...

Panettone

Every Christmas one of the things I do is bake at least one batch of Panettone. This is an Italian Christmas bread that is studded full of candied fruit and nuts. It's essentially a brioche dough with a few extras added, as are most Christmas breads for that matter.

This year I decided to go with the recipe from _ The Bread Baker's Apprentice_ (by Peter Reinhardt). I can't remember if I've made this one before or not? I think that I have at least once, but I'm not sure. I know that in the past I've used a recipe out of Bernard Clayton's book (the title escapes me right now) and also one out of _Bread Alone_ by Daniel Leader. I also think that a time or two I made up my own recipe on the fly, but this year I decided to follow someone else's lead, at least mostly anyway.

Reinhardt starts with something he calls "barm" which is a wild-yeast starter that requires a bunch of time and effort. I decided to dispense with that and just go a more standard pre-ferment starter. So I started with:

1 cup milk
a pinch (~1/8 tsp) yeast
1 1/2 cups flour

I mixed these up about 4-6 hours ahead of making the final dough. (In reality I had to call home from work and ask Patty to make this starter for me.)

When I got home, prior to starting the dough, I got the fruit ready. I took a cup or so of candied fruit that I had bought at the store plus about 1/2 cup of golden raisins and soaked it all together in 1/4 cup of rum. I also heated some water to boiling in a small saucepan and once it had boiled, I put turned it off, added 1/2 cup of raw almonds and covered the pan to let them soak. This would make the them easy to skin later on. So, in recipe terms:

1 cup candied fruit
1/2 cup golden raisins
1/4 cup rum
1/2 cup almonds

After letting the fruit soak for a couple of hours, it was time for the final dough. Here I followed Reinhardt pretty directly. As I remember, the recipe was something like:

starter
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
3 tsp yeast
1 egg
1 egg yolk
3/4 tsp salt
3 cups flour
1 stick butter, room temperature

You start by mixing the yeast and the warm water and let the yeast soften. Then you add the starter and sugar and start mixing. Once it's well mixed, it's time to add the salt, egg and egg yolk and mix it well. Next the flour, letting the mixer mix it all well and knead it for a bit (~1 minute). At this point, it's a good idea to let the dough rest for a bit so the gluten can get started forming. About 20 minutes give or take.

Now it's kneading time. Also time to get the butter incorporated into the dough. I like to keep using the paddle attachment here because it cuts the dough a lot better than does the dough hook, and in trying to incorporate butter you need to keep the dough kind of broken up.

The butter didn't really want to go in this time, but I kept at it, even removing the beater and choping at the dough with a knive to force the two (dough and butter) to combine. Eventually thought it all mixes and comes together into one solid mass that you can knead with the dough hook. After letting it go for a bit, it's time to work the fruit and nuts in.

I was using raw almonds, which took a bit of work to peel. Even after soaking them for 30 minutes or so, some of the skins didn't come off easily. But, with Patty's help, we got them all peeled. I didn't bother to chop them as it was getting late, but a lot of them broke in half when I peeled them, and I thought that would be perfect. A nice crunch to counterpoint the soft dough and chewy flavor of the candied fruit.

I mixed in all the fruit and nuts at once, rum and all. This made the dough wet all over again, but the mixer was able to incorporate the fruit and nuts pretty quickly. I added flour, one tablespoon at a time, to convince the dough to come together and pull away from the sides of the mixing bowl. Probably four or five tablespoons at most until I felt like things were ready. The dough at this point is a nice silky smooth texture with a beautiful yellow sheen from the eggs and butter. I shaped it into a ball and put it into the rising bowl and into the fridge to wait for tomorrow.

This year I finally bought some actual panettone baking papers so I can have something that makes it easy to bake and then easy to transport afterwards. After letting the dough sit overnight, I got it out the next day at about noon and let it get to room temperature and then continue to rise. For whatever reason (probably the butter) this dough rises slowly. But rise it does, and eventually it pretty much filled the bowl, so I took it out and divided it to be ready for shaping. I had large panettone papers and small ones, so I made a mixture. My dough was enough for two large ones or several small ones, so I made one large and several of the smaller ones. Once again, it rises slowly, so after spraying down the paper with oil spray I formed it and put it in there and set it out to rise.

The bread is generally baked at a relatively low temperature (325) for a pretty long time (> 1 hour). I've taken to testing the temperature with an instant-read thermometer for these breads to be sure that they're done but not over baked. At about 195 they should be done, so that's what I did. The smaller ones were done in about 50 minutes, but the bigger one took more like 75.

In the end, the bread was much moister this year than in the past. Whether that has to do with using the papers or the recipe, I'm not sure. But I thought that it was the best I'd ever made. Here a a couple of different pictures.

Pain a l'ancienne

Pain a l'ancienne is an interesting and fun style of bread to make.  The recipe that I first learned, and the one I used here is from Peter Reinhardt's book The Breadbaker's Apprentice.  It's a different method for making bread with results in a loaf with a very different flavor, a sort of bright, sweet, nutty flavor.

The dough is a very wet one.  The general recipe is:

  2 1/2 cups cold water (i.e. ice water)

  2 tsp dry yeast

  6 cups flour

  2 1/2 tsp salt

The method I used was to soften the yeast in the water, then add all of the flour and salt to the bowl of the mixer.  I then mixed it on low speed for 30 seconds or so until the flour was all hydrated.  Then I mixed on medium speed (this is a stand-up Kitchen Aid mixer) using the dough hook for about two 

minutes.  In my case, the dough was so sticky that I added some more flour, on table spoon at a time, to encourage the dough to not stick too badly on the mixing bowl.  Still, this is a very wet dough, and it will stick at least on the bottom of the bowl.  You just want it to crawl at least somewhat up the dough hook.

You don't really want to knead it for long, the gluten is going to form in while it sits in the refrigerator overnight.  However, when the dough is this sticky, transferring it is lots of fun.  I used a silicon spatula that I wetted down with cold water to scrape it from the mixing bowl to my heavy rising bowl.  Here's what I looked like:

Looks like fun to work with, doesn't it?

Now you cover it with plastic wrap 

and put it into the fridge and leave it at least over night.  

The next day, I took it out (well Patty did) about four hours before I was going to be working with it.  That allows it to get up to room temperature and continue to rise.

  By the time I got home, it had more or less doubled in size and looked nice and bubbly, like this:

From here, I put a nice layer of flour on the countertop (like a half cup or more) and had the flour container standing by for refresh as need be.  I took my silicon spatula and wetted it again and used that to scrape the dough out of the bowl and onto the countertop.  More flour onto the top of it; you pretty much always need a

 layer of flour between your hands and the dough, because if you get into it you may never be able to separate yourself from it.

I used my dough scraper to cut it into two pieces, and rounded them each up into a ball, which I then let rest for a few minutes.  From there, I flattened one of the balls out into a rectangle, more or less 12x7 inches, always using enough flour to keep things from sticking to each other.  Then, I cut the rectangle into three strips using the dough scraper.  At this point, it comes time to shape the dough.  This is definitely my weak point with bread, and with this dough I'm not sure how much you can do anyway.  Bu

t what I tried to do here was to stretch the dough evenly  into three "baguettes" each about 14 inches long and 2 inches wide which I placed on a sheet of parchment that was set on a cookie sheet.  You can see from the picture, that even stretching didn't really happen for me...

 

At this point, I set the cookie sheet out and let the dough rise while I worked the other piece in the same manner. Now I heated the oven to 500° and let the dough rise for about 30 minutes while it gets nice and hot.  

The bread rises, but it also spreads a lot, kind of like a ciabatta dough.  I mist the oven well with a spray bottle of water and put the slip the parchment sheet right onto my baking stone, baking one group of three loaves at at time.   The baking time is on the order of 25-35 minutes, you just want to watch for the caramelization to appear.   Technically Reinhardt says to measure the internal temperature of the loaves at 205 before declaring them done.  I just look for something like this:

I know, the shape is goofy, but believe me the smell and the flavor make you forget all about that.  And perhaps with enough work, I can figure out this whole shaping thing.

Owls

It's been a bit of a stressful time over the last month or so with all of the things going on in our lives.  I came home after a long day of meetings at work today; it was a drizzly warm evening, with a bit of a fog in the air owing to the super high humidity.  When I got off of the car, I thought that it seemed like a good night for a walk.

After dinner I asked Patty to go for a walk with me.  We went out and I noticed that it had cooled off a bit and the fog was gone.  Still everything was wet from the rain and it was a great night to be out walking.  As we walked through the neighborhood we noticed that the moon was mostly full.  Everything was bathed in moonlight; it was very beautiful and peaceful (in spite of the noise from Mopac).  We walked hand-in-hand just talking, working out as much stress as we could and enjoying the evening and each other's company.

After twenty minutes or so, as we approached home, I just suddenly felt and I stopped, took her in my arms and kissed her.   As we held each other tight, off in the distance I heard an owl.  You hear them sometimes here in town, but it's not that common and it just felt like a special moment, that I had chosen just this time and spot to stop and linger for a bit.  We listened and remarked that it must be a special sign of some sort.  

Eventually we moved on, not really wanting to leave the moment, but understanding that it couldn't last forever.  But as we passed 29th street, I thought I heard the owl down in that direction, so we turned there and walked on towards home.  Sure enough, the owl sounded closer as we walked and then it sounded like two different owls calling back and forth.  Pretty soon it was obvious that we were getting closer.  And then, it was right across the street from us.  We looked up in a pecan tree across the street, and there, high in the branches we could see the outline of a large owl where the sound came from.  Soon the companion called, and he was clearly nearby too.  In fact, as we looked for a bit we picked him out as well, in the same tree just over on the other side.  They continued to take turns calling back and forth, one higher pitched than the other, in spite of the more-or-less constant noise from the cars that passed underneath on a regular basis.  

We stood and watched for a while, not wanting to leave the moment.  I think I remarked that I could stay all night; I've never been that close to an owl calling that I could see so clearly.  But eventually, after several minutes we finally moved on towards home.   But still, that moment will live with me for the rest of my life.  It's frequently not the big things, but the little moments that make up the most special memories.

Chicago, A Tale of Two Races

It was the best of races, it was the worst of races.

Ok, I got that over with. But it is what I kept thinking coming out of the weekend as I limped around waiting for my quads to recover enough to walk like a normal human being again.

To get it over with up front: 4:04:16. That put me 7114/31,401 finishers. I guess that when you put it that way it doesn't sound quite so bad.

It was a warm day in Chicago, unseasonably warm. I would guess that it was probably around 65° at the start and probably close to 85° by the time I crossed the finish line. But that's not even as warm as most of my training runs were (how nice 65 degrees would have felt in July and August here) so I wasn't worried when I saw the forecast.

The race was amazingly well organized. I don't know how you accomplish something like that; there were 31,000 finishers. Add to that some 3,000 non-finshers and 11,000 no-shows. So if everyone who signed up had run, that would have been over 45,000 people! Everything ran like clockwork. I took the subway in the morning; it was crowded pretty much entirely with marathon participants. I got off at the Harrison station and made my way into the park. From there it was pretty easy (I had studied all of the material carefully to figure out where everything was) to find my way to the gear check tent and then around to the C corral where I was seeded along with the other 3:40 - 4:00 runners. The corral was relatively uncrowded, though it filled up pretty well by race start time. Still it wasn't shoulder-to-shoulder like most race starts I've been in are.

We got the national anthem sung by a couple of country music stars appearing at the country music festival in town (shows how much I know about country music that I didn't even recognize their names). And then there were several luminaries in the starter's box. I remember Datham Ritzheim and Cat Osterman (Ron, you should have been there ;-) by name. I looked for her as I passed the starting line, but wasn't able to pick her out.

The race started fine; it took me about 5 minutes to reach the starting line I guess from the gun. 10 from the elite start, and all of the clocks along the route started with the elites, so they were running about 9+ minutes ahead of my watch. The race starts north, out of Millennium park and then across the river before turning back to the south and then eventually back north again on a quick tour of the heart of downtown Chicago. It's spectacular and the crowds are amazing, easily six and seven people deep and lining every bridge and overpass along the way.

The energy of those early miles is astonishing. You really have to think consciously about holding back. Though there are enough people running in the street around you that you don't have to work too hard to set a reasonable pace. And it's not like the races in Austin where people who fully intend to walk the entire race like to get up at the front of the starting gate, and you have to spend the first couple of miles weaving around them. Everyone around you is more or less running your pace, so you can just settle in and run with the crowd.

I took it relatively easy and probably ran the first couple of miles around 8:45. It was so crowded that I never saw the mile markers, it wasn't until mile 3 that I first saw a marker. I got my split there at 25:29, which put me right at about 1:30 off my goal pace. That was fine; I fully intended to lose a couple of minutes during the early part of the race, with the hope that if things went well, I would get it back later.

Things went well for the first half of the race. I stuck to my hydration and nutrition plan, the water stops were all two full city blocks long with gatorade in the first block and water in the second (both sides). I made sure to drink at every single one of them and took my GU dutifully every 30 minutes. My early splits were good:

3 -- 25:29
4 -- 8:03 - 33:32
5 -- 7:54 - 41:25
6 -- 8:16 - 49:42
7 -- 7:37 - 57:19
8 -- 7:57 - 1:05:15
10 -- 16:03 - 1:21:18
11 -- 8:18 - 1:29:36
12 -- 8:11 - 1:37:47
13 -- 7:58 - 1:45:11

This part of the race, after weaving through downtown, heads north on La Salle street and goes up along the lake to near Wrigley field before turning back south on Broadway. That is a really great part of town; feels very much like a university area with streets lined with shops and then later row houses. Eventually you find your way back downtown and then cross the river and head due west. That's about the halfway point, and the race was going well.

The splits from there on tell a different tale:

14 -- 8:58 - 1:54:43
15 -- 7:50 - 2:02:13
16 -- 8:29 - 2:11:14
17 -- 8:56 - 2:19:59
18 -- 9:56 - 2:29:16
19 -- 9:39 - 2:39:35
20 -- 11:02 - 2:50:18
21 -- 12:30 - 3:03:08

I stopped taking splits at that point. Looking back, it's pretty easy to see where the wheels came off. As to why, I'm still not sure. All I know is that long about mile 15 or 16 my hips locked up and my left knee started hurting. I tried moving forward as well as I could, but quickly things devolved into a death march where I tried to run for as long as I could before I had to start walking again. The last four miles were particularly long and painful. As you can see, it took me 1:01 to run the last 5.2 miles. Of course using the word "run" here is a stretch.

I didn't see Patty or Mel along the way, though they saw me several times. It's just hard when you're running and the crowds are so deep along the way. I kept looking but it wasn't until around mile 25 that I caught sight of them. So I didn't get my recharge of nutrition stuff, but that didn't have an effect on how my race went. Everything fell apart before any of that would have made a difference.

Was it the heat? The nutrition/hydration? Did I not train hard enough? I can't look back and say that I really have any idea. Maybe I'm just not cut out to run long distances like that? Anyway, I did the training (the hardest I've ever trained for any race) and felt like I was ready. The heat was there, and it would have been nice to have a 45° to 60° day, but would that have made all the difference? The humidity didn't seem overly high and the breeze that blew out of the south felt nice from time to time. Also the first half of the race was mostly in shade due to the tall buildings.

Anyway, under the heading, "you learn more when things go badly," (my mantra, by the way ;-) this should have been a great learning experience for me. I have no idea what I really learned, though. I will say that I was able to appreciate a lot of things, like how much fun I had in Chicago with Patty and Melissa and how much I enjoyed the experience of running a big city marathon like this. Overall, it's definitely an experience that I won't ever forget and maybe someday I'll go back and do it again. Though I need some time right now to forget the pain before I'll be able to convince myself to try to do something like that again.

I should say something here about "Tis a far far better thing I do..." but I can't think of any good way of working that in. What I will say is that I really appreciate all of the help and support I got along the way on this journey. Dave, Scott and Jim carried me through so many of those long runs in the July and August heat. It's hard to imagine having made it through the training without that support. And Patty really supported me through the whole effort. I'm sure that those 5:30 wake-up alarms were more than annoying to her as was having to live with this grouchy, wreck of a man during those high-mileage weeks. And she and Mel were troopers on race day, suffering in the heat, hoping subway trains and cabs trying to keep ever ahead of me. I guess that, in the end, like with the rest of life, it really is all about the people around you.

Chicago

Well, here it is just three days out from Chicago. Come Sunday morning at 8:00 I'll be lined up in corral C and ready to go. It's been a long summer of early mornings, slogging through long runs, painful tempo runs, sore tired legs and plenty of "what was I thinking?" moments. But now it all comes down to 3-4 hours on Sunday morning and then it will be over.

I guess I knew what I was getting into when I signed up last April but still, nothing quite prepared me for long runs in the heat of July and August nor for those 5:30 wake up calls from my alarm watch telling me that sleep time was over and I had to get up and moving.

I guess I'm pretty nervous about the race right now. The taper has been kind of strange. I don't feel like I did a great job with my running, but still I managed to get in a decent amount of mileage generally around 24/week over the last 4 weeks, down from a peak of 41 in week 10 (out of 18 total). Then about a week ago, my legs got this strange soreness that continues to stick around. It's really not soreness, more like the fatigue that I feel late in a long run; it's all up in my hips as kind of feels like almost sharp pain moving longitudinally down my legs. I don't know what to make of that, but I guess it's something I'll have to deal with.

I keep telling myself, "I've put in the training, all that's left to do is relax and enjoy the weekend." If it's not there on race day, there's not much I can do, so just enjoy being in Chicago and the thought that I at least accomplished hard training through the Austin summer.

They have a tracking site setup for the race. If any of my one or two readers were to want to track my progress, they could go to this URL:

http://www.doitsports.com/results/MSG-signup.tcl?sub_event_id=2161

and get updates of my progress along the way.

Right now the weather forecasts are for a low on Sunday morning of around 63 and a high of 78. That's a bit warmer than I would prefer (55 and 68 would be about perfect) but not too bad. I've run the Austin Marathon three times, first was a 3:55 (2003) then a 3:38 (2006) and then a 3:45 (2007). My goal for this race is to hit my Boston qualifying time, which is 3:30. I think that on a good day I should be able to do it, but we'll have to see how Sunday goes.

My race strategy (to the extent that it matters; they're usually out the door in the first few miles for me) is to try to take it easy early on. There will be pace groups, but I'm not going to try to hang with the 3:30 group from the get go. I'm afraid that if I'm out of the gate right at 8:00/mile, that won't be the best strategy. It usually takes my body 20 minutes or so to settle into a rhythm, so if my first few miles are 9:00 or 8:30, I'm not going to worry. But I hope to get to the 10 mile point at no worse than 1:22. The next 10 miles are the "hang on" part of the race. I'd like to be right at 8:00 for these if I can still do that. That would get me to 20 at 2:42 or better. That leaves me 48 minutes for the final 10k to arrive at 3:30. I really don't think that I can go faster than a 48 minute 10 k at that point, and 50 is more reasonable.

The other thing is nutrition. I'm planning to take a GU every 30 minutes, regardless of how I feel. By the end of the race I'll be sick of the sweetness and texture, but it really does help me to keep my legs moving. I'm also hoping that Patty can meet me from time to time along the course and I'm planning to load her up with baggies of pretzels and fig newtons; I know that late in the race I usually really crave something salty and substantial. This will be better nutrition than I've done in my previous marathons, so I hope that it helps.

So there you have it. At a minimum I should have a fun weekend in Chicago with Patty and her sister Missy. That I'm looking forward to. And I will run the race and do my best to enjoy it, regardless of the outcome.