Running D.C.
We had a wonderful trip to Washington D.C. to see my brother, his wife and their 2 year old son. Our gracious hosts planned a nice training run for us and we extended it a bit by accident for a lovely 8 mile tour of the Washington Mall:
It was fun to go by the museums and monuments, maybe not so great to see the 'no running' signs around some of them, but we enjoyed the dual tour/train experience. Weather was great and will remember this as the temps start to drop here in Boston.

Fund raising deadlines are looming and hoping to make our minimum before them. I will need to buckle down for my next series of letter writing! Running is going well and wish everyone a happy, healthy New Year!
A picture of Kai in D.C. So much fun!

Baking for the Cure: This is a post about my side fundraising for Boston. Since the start of training on November 12, I have been baking daily to sell breakfast pastries at Tim's workplace to raise funds for this race. It has been fun as a past pastry person in a restaurant to dig up some stuff that I hadn't done in awhile. I especially liked the refresher making up danishes. The benefits are that you can have your apartment smell like a dream for a few hours every day and the tricky part is arranging the time to bake. Today, I made Bienenstich, or "bee-sting" cake, a yeasted sweet bread which is drizzled with honey and almonds, baked and then split open and filled with pastry cream. Here is the recipe, sans pastry cream (from Richard Sax's Classic Home Desserts), and I bake it in two 4x16" pullman loaf pans lined with parchment. It is really worth the effort, and you can halve the recipe if you only want a single loaf! I find the rising time to be significantly longer than the recipe states- allow up to double the written amount of time. This is a fancy sweet bread that presents quite well with a burnished almond glaze:

makes two 9" square (or pullman loaves) cakes; each serves about 8
Dough:
2 packages active dry yeast
1/4 C lukewarm water
3/4 C unsalted butter, softened
3/4 C sugar
2 large eggs
2 large egg yolks
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1/2 C lukewarm milk
1/2 C sour cream or plain yogurt
4 1/2 C all purpose flour
2 T unsalted butter, melted

Bee-Sting glaze:
2/3 C packed light brown sugar
6 T unsalted butter
1/4 C plus 2 T heavy cream
1/4 C plus 2 T honey
1/4 tsp lemon juice
1 1/3 C (about 5 oz) sliced blanched almonds

1. Dough: In a small bowl, sprinkle the yeast over the lukewarm water. Let stand until foamy, about 10 minutes.

2. In a large bowl with mixer, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs and yolks one at a time and mix well after each addition. Add the salt, vanilla, milk, sour cream or yogurt and yeast mixture, beat about 2 minutes.

3.Gradually beat in 3 3/4 C of flour until a very soft dough forms. Continue to beat, adding additional flour until dough is smooth and elastic, 8-10 minutes. If your mixer is not strong, work on the counter with flour as needed instead- you may have to use more flour, but try to minimize adding too much. Place dough in oiled bowl, turn to coat, and let rise covered until double, about 45 minutes.

4. Butter or line 2 9" pans. Punch down dough and divide into pans, pressing evenly. Brush with the melted butter and let rise, covered until doubled, 40-50 minutes.

5. Glaze: In a small, heavy saucepan, stir together brown sugar, butter, cream and honey over medium heat. Bring to boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar; boil for 30 seconds. Remove from the heat and stir in the lemon juice and almonds. Let cool slightly, 8-10 minutes. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

6.Drizzle warm glaze over fully risen cakes. Bake until the nuts are golden brown, about 30-35 minutes. Let cool to luke-warm or room temp. If desired split in half and fill with pastry cream. Cakes can be wrapped and frozen (unfilled) for up to 2 weeks.

Enjoy!

December training: Here it is- December and ready for a winter full of running! We had a great training session in Wellesley this past Saturday. The miles are still light and 26.2 miles feels a long way off. We are working on little things like proper running form, conserving energy and motion, core body strength, and it is nice to have the refresher.

My mileage is a little higher than our training schedule. I've been working in longish weekly runs of 10-13 miles with the shorter ones, but spoke to our coach and will drop it back to one long run every couple of weeks. Yes, it's time to join a gym for cross training! We will be doing 9+ mile weekly runs starting January, so why not drop back a bit?

It is great to be back with the Boston team. I remember a year ago going to the first training sessions and feeling really shy. There just seemed to be so many runners, and ones that had already done Boston, not once, but some people more than 10 times! How would I ever train with this group? But, like anything else, you get your behind out the door, and it's your own trip, and one that your whole team supports, whether running in front, beside or behind you. Your job is to figure out your own goals and potential and to train sensibly within them. And it doesn't hurt to give some encouragement while you go along! I am happy to see familiar faces and to talk with people who took up this challenge.

Of course, I am making it seem like a cake walk, but there are always the nagging choruses of injury fears, self doubt, self-criticism, etc. I am not listing them here or elaborating. Why? I think that challenging goals are often achieved in accompaniment with a back-up chorus of doubt, but if taking a listen to them makes you assess them as minor, why detail their voicing? In that sense, marathon training is kind of like mountain climbing- you are looking up that steep trail thinking- "what made me think this was fun???", but if you can manage your negativity and realize that one step at a time gets you closer to the peak, you will share the amazement of all those who have gotten up to the top and found the memory of those difficult steps have changed to a positive recollection of your hiking experience. Soooo- no whining .......for now.

Reports: Thanks to family and some key supporters, I have reached the first thousand of my 3,000 minimum, which must be met by the end of January. Thanks to everyone who has contributed so far!