Caramel Apple Deliciousness

When I started this blog I promised that under no circumstances would I post a recipe or a picture of food..and of course 3 blog entries later I am going to do exactly this.  In an effort to prove to my family that thanksgiving day desert could be healthy and tasty I volunteered to make desert.  I had no idea this would require a lenghty internet search, a 45 dollar grocery bill, a trip to my moms house to borrow a mixer and a springform pan, and a 2 day baking procedure.  But in the end, all of this was worthwhile because what came out was AMAZING! I made low fat caramel swirl-apple cheesecake.  A good take on this recipe can be found here:
http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=10000000344122

My dad who is incredibly hard to please swears that this is the best cheesecake he's ever had, which I find rather amazing since it's mostly composed of vanilla yogurt.  Heck yeah.  Here are some pictures through the 2 day procedure. 

Right after making:

After refrigerating and plating:

After cutting:

A Week in the Life

The last week has been exciting and tiring...with an emphasis on tiring.  The week started with the final xcountry race of the season, the upstate championships.  Historically this race brings out the best of the best and this was definitely the case on Sunday.  This is the best picture of me that I could find:

The rest of the pictures look much like I felt, like I was being run over by a bus.  A hard day.  Soft grass, gradual hills, except for the wonderfully flat, packed dirt 4th kilometer, and a steep hill right before the finish.  2 kilometers from the finish I imagined my teammate Mary and I crossing the line together and holding our hands up in triumph for finishing another season..instead we sort of collapsed on each other and then tried to get out of the way of the people behind us.  I ended up 17th overall, 4th for the open women.  This may perhaps sound slower than my norm, but relative to the competition I'm really really happy with how I did. Plus, I was feeling extra perky thanks to cheering from Melo and my guy, Jerille, who decided to surprise me/give me a heart attack by showing up randomly last week.

Tuesday I woke up at 4:30 am to do an FTP on my bike.  There is no workout that gives me more anxiety than this.  I have no idea why, but when I do that test I just want to kill it, and if it doesn't go well, I'm cranky for the rest of the week.  Thankfully, this FTP was not awful.  I put on some Jay-Z and didn't think about anything besides that and killing it.

Average Wattage:  212
Average HR:  170

BOOYA!

The same day I boarded a plane for the University of Kentucky to give a talk.  I feel like I've always harbored some animosity towards UK as a die hard Cuse basketball fan, but Kentucky was actually overwhelmingly nice.  Very beautiful for running/cycling (as determined by my 11 mi run on Wednesday), friendly people. However, I firmly believe that having biscuits and gravy for breakfast, the Kentucky norm, is mildly repulsive. 

I'm back in Cuse for the weekend and excited to cheer for my friend Terri during IM Arizona on Sunday!!!

One with the Mud

Two quotes from the amazing Lynn Jennings that summarize how I feel about cross country:

"The freedom of Cross Country is so primitive. It's woman vs. nature."


"The footing was really atrocious. I loved it. I really like Cross Country; you're one with the mud."

There is no form of racing that I like more than cross country, running quickly through trees and mud while elbowing your opponents just to get by, sometimes even elbowing these opponents into the trees that you are running quickly by.  Awesome. Sunday was my return to cross country after spending the past month desperately trying to get my hip to cooperate again. I think the return was generally a success, but running that fast came as quite a shock to the system when everyone else has been competing every weekend.  I had some minor concerns that I was going to stroke out the first mile, but by mile two I found my rhythm and settled in. The pace was perhaps a little quicker than I had anticipated, but I was hungry for a good finish, and every time I heard someone cheering for a woman behind me I accelerated.  I ended up with a respectable 3rd place overall and 3rd place for the open women. Overall, the Syracuse Track Club is filled with bad ass women this year.  As a team we essentially destroyed the field for the second week in a row.  Nice job ladies!!!    

This is a pic of me trying to recover from the only hill in the course, the man behind me did not run me over.