Flourless Cookies and Running Talk Down.

Not thrilled about being poured on while Garmin was gearing up...

After my run today I hurried down to the boathouse and had an ALUM ROW! Woohoo! Rowed for about an hour with alumni and current rowers. Wish I got some pics while we were out there - left my phone in the car :( Good thing is, this is likely to happen again! I sure hope it does, I miss rowing with those girls.

Headed straight from the boathouse to wish my cute friend a happy birthday! I won't get to be with her on her real birthday (Tuesday) so we celebrated with ice cream this afternoon (Mitchell's caramel fudge brownie is my new favorite ice cream).

Made some cookies for the week... they are FLOURLESS. Check out the recipe by Babe & Bird (she has some great GF recipes :). Can't believe I hadn't thought of doing this before!

These cookies are flourless hot chocolate cookies which means they are laden with marshmallows. The recipe calls for mini marshmallows but I simply chopped our big ones in half and it worked fine. If your marshmallows are fresh this will be easy to do.

It's very important to SPRAY the parchment paper so it's greased! The sugariness of these cookies will cause them to stick even to parchment, so make sure you do both. 

The batter will spread out a lot so you might want to opt for two cookie sheets, unlike me. Making smaller cookies will also make them easier to wrangle when you want them to come of the cookie sheet (they will come out very thing and fragile).

Despite being thin, they are some of the gooeyest cookies I've ever made!

I think these are best eaten almost immediately after they come out from the oven, when the marshmallows are gooey and delicious. YUM.

If you are a milk-drinker, a nice cold glass will go perfectly with these sweet cookies.
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Running Talk Down :

Decided I should label this section... if you don't like to read about running you can avert your eyes :) 

This week seemed to go well running-wise. (I tried not to talk about it too much in my other posts because I don't want it to completely overshadow my blog!) I did some new stuff like ... Epsom salt bathing! Sounds sort of like a myth that it will help your body but I am willing to try ANYTHING to make sure I stay healthy. 

It was kind of nice to "have to" soak in a tub for 20-30 min after work... I might have to schedule this more often... ;)

I also used my PVC pipe tiger tail roller before bed to roll out any knots.

Sorrynotsorry, I'm not about to spend $30+ on a real tiger tail (or at least that's how much the ones on Amazon were). 

Another important thing I've been working on is General Strength and Mobility (or GSM) to make sure that my core is strong for maximal injury prevention. I found a set of videos that's been working really well for me. (I'll post the link to them below.) Core is not just your abs, but also your back/trunk, glutes, and even quads and it's really important for athletes to have strength in these areas to prevent injuries! These videos focus on a particular weakness of my own... hips/glutes.

Also this week I found a cool app... Runner's World columnist Jenny Hadfield does a walk-through of the Chicago Marathon! The app is designed to take you through the course of the marathon and she will tell you if you need to pick up your pace to stick to your goal and she points out interesting/important parts of the course as you go. You can even use play your music for the marathon through the app. I don't plan to use it for the actual race because I don't like to race with my phone BUT I can definitely use it for entertainment in my training! I did try it today during my long run and it definitely was interesting to hear about some of the sites!

I'm a nerd about this stuff so I've been reading Chicago Marathon race recaps from other bloggers (such as Runs for Cookies) as well... I know, I really need to tone it down ;) It's time for me to get back to Oxford so I don't have time to dwell on this stuff!

Needed some retail therapy on Thursday but all I could afford was this GU for $1.00. I've heard good things about this flavor...may try it out on my upcoming 14 or 16-miler... My first GU!

Weekly Running Summary : Week 14

Monday : Off (rest) 8-minute abs and GSM

Tuesday : Easy paced 6 miles

Wednesday : 22 minutes on the erg @ steady state, GSMx2, 8-minute abs & 8-minute arms, +12-mile bike ride after work. (Phew!)

Thursday : 1 mile warm up, 6 miles at 7:48 avg mile pace, 1 mile cool down.

Friday : 3 easy miles

Saturday : 4 easy miles, 8-minute abs

Sunday : 11-mile long run (easy)

Total miles : 32

I think this week's running went really well! I knew I needed to scale back a smidge and listened to my body's tiredness, so my Friday/Saturday runs were REALLY easy and were shortened from what my training plan suggested (which was 34 miles for the week, so I'm clearly not far off!). I took the long run also very easy and am glad that I did! It's hard for me to be flexible but now I am seeing that adjustments really pay off.

In all, I am still feeling good. Not even one month in - got about 3 months of hard training to go!

Awesome app that will guide you through the Chicago Marathon found HERE.

General strength and mobility (GSM) for runners found HERE.