Saturday, August 20, 2011

C25K success and Beef Tongue

Yesterday at our crossfit gym we ran a 5 K. I have just completed week 4 of my C25K programs --- I've been running to the gym some mornings and on other days I just run from my house straight up Bird to Malone to Lincoln to Minnesota back to Bird and then on home. The whole course is about 4.2 miles or (6.6 K) as mapped on Google. I've been listening to the Running Mate pod cast on the way out and the British NHS podcast on the way back. I'be been using my Vibram 5 finger shoes and running on my forefeet.
Well it seems to be working. My previous 5 K runs each took about 40 minutes. Yesterday I ran at 0715 on a lovely cool, breezy morning - just perfect for me -- and my time was 33 minutes and 54 seconds. That's a whole 6 min 46 seconds less than my last two runs. For the most part I felt pretty good while running, and I finished pretty strongly too. So I feel that I might get better and at least pull off a 30 minute 5K at some point in the future.

Last night I got the night off from OCH my first night off in 6 nights --- it was lovely to just lie in bed and not have to get up at 2200. I stayed in bed snoozing until about 0300 then I got up and started cooking like mad. I made zuccini noodles with my spirooli tool and then sauteed some onions and andoulle sausage and combined everything with bacon grease.
I went to the gym at 0700 and we did some weight lifting
Split Jerk 5x3 this is my favorite because it doesn't involve knees or squats - I mostly worked on technique -- I land fairly well after the split but I have to work on keeping my elbows up just before the jerk. My weight was only 63#
then
Run to Hydrant
10 1 Arm DB Snatch (5 each side) I did 20# dumbbell
10 Broad Jump
x4

I boiled up a beef tongue for 30 minutes in the pressure cooker and then cooled it and peeled it.
Then I boiled it again for another 30 minutes at a moderate to low speed in the pressure cooker with some rich jelled beef hock stock that was sitting around in the fridge. I added some chopped onion, some chopped celery and a small can of tomato paste and the remains of a bottle of marsala.
While that was cooking, I sauteed some sliced onion, with some beef fat skimmed from the top of the jelled stock, and some sliced crimini mushrooms and some garlic and also some purple bell peppers. I also charred a red and green pepper that were sitting around in the fridge waiting for attention. After the beef tongue was cooked, I sliced it and added the remaining juice to the mushrooms in a big wide frying pan. I started to reduce the liquid but then decided to spoon out the mushrooms and peppers with a slotted spoon. The remaining mixture was beef juice, tomato paste and marsala and it reduced down to a nice thick sauce that I spooned back over the beef tongue. It tasted pretty good to me.