I would like to blog more than once per month…

So yeah, looking at my blog that comes up as my homepage on my internet browser, I realize that I haven’t blogged in a while. Every time I see it, I go “I know I know” I need to write a new one. So here I am, writing a new one. Let’s take a look at what has happened recently.

I did a winter run on Ghost Lake a little while ago. GPS data can be found here. This is the drive out there. Wintery indeed.

Last time I was out at Ghost, it was not frozen. But now it is. Figures… Good thing I didn’t bring a canoe.

I have a picture similar to this one that I took while kayaking this past summer. It can be found here. I love how we have seasons here. It’s so cool (and cold!).

I got out to the little island on Ghost lake and had some fun flying through the air. I am a nerd, that’s for sure!

I managed to get this one. I think it worked well.

Temperatures were close to –30 while I was running, which makes exercise and breathing difficult. It’s great for maximizing lung capacity though. I don’t know how, but after running in the cold, running in normal temperatures seems so much easier. Maybe it’s just in my head. Anyway, the plan with the run was to go circle the island and come back, but I ended up losing my car key somewhere along the run. So I spent a whack of time sifting through the snow and couldn’t find it. Bummer. Luckily, I got back to the car and had left the door unlocked. I got in the car, called for help and waited for 1/2 an hour before rescue came. Ooops. Luckily, friends were in town and able to help, or I would have had to hitch-hike back home.

I have also held true to one of my resolutions to try making an Artisan loaf of bread each month. This month’s (well, January’s) was a French Loaf from Peter Reinhart’s Bread Baker’s Apprentice book. The book is fantastic. I read almost 100 pages of bread theory. I ended up with this.

A sad attempt at a French Loaf. I think the main problem is that I accidentally shut off the oven during baking.

It sure looked good, and tasted great, but the oven-shutting-off incident caused a thick, chewy and rather hard-to-eat crust. At least the bread tasted really good.

The payoff though? Well my wife got some great photos . I learned that turning off the oven while baking generally produces poor results. But the key thing I learned is that a 2 day pre-ferment makes absolutely deliciously flavoured bread! I will definitely try this again.

Lastly, I have officially signed up for the Powderface42 FULL marathon. Yeah yeah! For the longest time, their website was down, then all of a sudden it was up and the race was 80% sold out! I immediately signed up and made it in! Yeah yeah! So January 31st marked the beginning of my training. It’s basically a 3 day on 1 day off training schedule. I’ve adopted Crossfit Endurance to help out with that. So far, it works great, although I am only in day 2 of it, lol! But one problem I found last year during the Powderface21 was that I ran out of fuel. So I am experimenting with fuelling while running without having to buy energy gels. I found a recipe for Pinole, a roasted corn endurance food. I learned about it in Born to Run (I know, I know…) so I figured I would give it a go.

Basically, you take cornmeal or corn flour, roast it till it browns (parches), mix it with some honey (I used brown rice syrup, about 1tsp per cup of corn), cinnamon (or ginger for flavour) and water to make little cookies. I baked it at 400 till it hardened and voila, instant energy! I made 3 variations, one with corn flour, one with cornmeal and the third with a mix of both.

I ran a 90minute Time Trial this morning at the track and took one of these cookies every 15 minutes with water. I cannot believe how well it worked. I even tried skipping one meal at the 45 minute mark and noticed a decline in performance. So yeah, I just have to tweak the size of these things (big, dry cookies are hard to eat when you’re thirsty) and they should go well. It’s amazing how well fuelling works! I will keep this up as I continue my training!

That’s all from me!