I’m starting to think about MdS as a restful vacation with a bit running thrown in. I’m not underestimating the desert...
Chocolate cake
LizaAsa told me I was “sweet like a cinnamon roll,” so I have forgiven him for getting up at 5 this morning. I had a lot on my mind and hadn’t fallen asleep until past midnight, but I’ll overlook most anything if you compare me to fatty sweets — and you’re three.
We baked a three-layer chocolate cake from scratch today. After I’d sucked down my coffee this morning and used some toothpicks to keep my eyelids open, I asked Asa what he wanted to do. “Bake a chocolate cake.” It seemed like a fine idea and something that might possibly eat up the hours until nap time when I could crawl into bed again for an hour –what with forcing Asa to hunt and peck the letters for a “chocolate cake” on the computer and then choosing a good-looking cake from the hundreds listed on epicurious.com.
Here’s the winner.
We made the requisite supermarket trip, buttered and floured cake pans, decorated the walls with the electric hand mixer, and 10 hours later, here’s our version.
The bar-be-que skewers are to keep the layers from sliding off onto the other shelves in the refrigerator. The boys thought it was pretty great — unstable or not. I’ve no idea how long it’ll take going to take Asa to fall asleep tonight with all three layers of sugar coursing through his bloodstream. I can hear him singing loudly to himself from the bedroom now. “Fifty nifty United States! From 13 original colonies!”
In the running realm, I’m back to training and looking forward to working hard to improve before Western States. I need to work on speed, and hill climbing, — and running down hills, and core strength, — and nutrition. You know, everything. It’ll be a fun adventure for the next 3 1/2 months. Let me know if you have any suggestions about training for downhills here in Flats-ville. I think we might build a wedge to stick under the back of the treadmill. Sounds sketchy, doesn’t it?
Wish I could share some chocolate cake with you. Have good nights.
Food log:
Derrick
A few things for downhill running you might find helpful are plyometrics/bounding, split lunges and wall sits.
Good luck
Paige T.
I’ll second Derrick’s suggestions, and add that decline squats (squats on a…decline :)) and walking lunges have really helped me a lot with my downhilling. I live in flat-as-a-pancake Chicago and have not other real way to do it, but these exercises have helped big time.
That cake looks devine!
lizahoward
Thanks Derrick. Will look into those.
Olga
Weighted squats. Slow go down. Lots of weight. Like, equal (or more) of your body weight. Yeah, the wedge is good too.
lizahoward
Will add that in Olga. I’ll let you know how measly the weight I can actually do is.
Tika
Your cake looks SO much better than the other one. Please tell me you just couldn’t figure out how to put that in your food log….
lizahoward
Thanks Tika! I’m just glad the skewers held through the night. You know, I didn’t have any — besides some spatula licking. I’m just not all that fond chocolate cake. Now, if it’d been a tortilla chip cake, or cake doughnut cake, well, it’d probably be gone.
Tika
The spatula licking is probably my favorite part. And since that doesn’t count, no need to log it!