Heart and Soul

I went to my appointment with Dr. Jordan Metzl on Monday.  I got x-rays of my butt, hips, pelvis and left ankle.  Apparently I have no fractures.  Instead, he diagnosed me with a "weak butt."  I got a prescription for 6-8 weeks of physical therapy.  Dr. Metzl said I could continue running during this time.

At first, I was considering not going to the physical therapy.  Butt exercises are pretty straightforward, and I probably get plenty of that from all of the warrior poses they do at Yoga to the People.  But I checked out the website of the physical therapist, and it seems like the guy in charge there really knows about runners' injuries.  Michael Conlon, the lead physical therapist, has run 14 marathons, including three Boston Marathons, and also completed two Ironmans.  On top of that, he coaches the NYC chapter of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society's Team in Training.  So I think he'll be a good person to talk to about my butt.  I'll keep you updated.

Monday was a rest day.  Instead of running or Yoga, I took a walk to Western Beef.  My favorite thing about Western Beef is that in the evenings around 7:30ish, they mark down their rotisserie chickens to $2.99.  I'll sometimes buy a few, and portion them out for lunch for the rest of the week.  Or I'll take the breast meat and make a delicious Chinese peanut butter and mustard chicken salad (it's tastier than it sounds).  I often save the bones to make stock.

I was happy to see that on this night, there were plenty of $2.99 rotisserie chickens left.  I decided to pair one up with some soul food inspired sides.  My friend Serenity was with me, and she said she would cook some collard greens (she's from North Carolina; they know their collards there).  I had some white rice left over from chicken curry night last week, so I figured I could use that to make a black-eyed peas and rice side.

Serenity suggested we buy some applesauce to tie everything together.  I gasped at her proposal to buy applesauce...why on earth would you buy flavorless, industrial grade, preservative-laden applesauce when we can just make our own.  So I got a variety of apples to show her how easy it would be.

Serenity's collard greens came out fantastic.  She said she ideally would have put in some bacon for extra flavor, but my bacon was lost somewhere in the deep black hole that is my freezer, so we skipped it.  Being from the South, Serenity likes to cook her vegetables to death.  I would have stopped at this point when there were still bright green and delicious looking.  But hers were actually better.

The peas and rice I made was so simple I'm almost embarrassed.  I just sauteed some garlic and onion, and then dumped in a can of black-eyed peas and my leftover rice.  I added a couple of spoonfuls of Goya recaito (a cilantro-based sauce), salt and pepper, hot sauce, and a ladle full of leftover pot roast juice.  It turned out quite good.

I think the biggest surprise of the night was my applesauce.  I blended together three different varieties of apples, added some cinnamon, nutmeg, ground cloves, and brown sugar.  The granny smith apple that I used gave it a fun tartness that is maybe better characterized as an "apple chutney" than applesauce, but but it was super tasty, and brought all of the different flavors together. 

Running to Western Beef. Next stop, the marathon!

I'm happy to say that after my relatively successful run today, I've decided to go through with the ING New York City Marathon!  OK, it wasn't the greatest run ever.  But I finished it (albeit slowly) and felt good at the end.  I'm not going to be setting a new PR next week, but I feel like I can run it painlessly and without messing up my legs, and have a good time while doing it.

Today's run took me from my apartment down the WSH, across the Brooklyn Bridge, and back around the Greenway up to 16th Street, where I ended up at the market to buy groceries for a dinner party I was hosting tonight.  The run itself was OK.  I did it with Dane who's running his first NYC Marathon next week.  We took it pretty easy, and had to slow down considerably on the Brooklyn Bridge because there were a zillion tourists there taking in the first nice fall weather that we've had in a while.  My butt issue (which I've self-diagnosed--with the help of Alison, a Front Runner who's doing NYC three weeks after Steamtown--as Piriformis Syndrome) was noticeable, but not in a big way.  I also felt some tenderness on the top of my right foot towards the end of the run, but I think I can massage it out during the next week.

The run was a little slower and longer than expected.  And Dane and I spent way too much time at Western Beef buying groceries, which is easy to do since it is the best supermarket in all of NYC.  By the time we got all of the supplies to my house, it was 7:15, and we had to shower and make two lasagnas before a group of hungry gayrunners arrived at 8:00.  That was a pretty stressful 45 minutes.  To top it off, we had completely forgotten to get ingredients for a salad, so we had to get Ryan to pick some up on the way to my place.  I'm not sure how we did it, but a vat of sauce was made (decicious meat sauce with onions and mushrooms; I also threw in some ground up carrots for texture and Vitamin A), and by the time the first guests were arriving, the two lasagnas were assembled and in the oven.  My sauteed broccoli rabe and garlic bread were on schedule too.  And we were ready to eat by the time Josh arrived fashionably late at 8:30.

Because of the time constraints, some corners were cut with the lasagna.  I should have taken the foil off before it finished so the mozzarella would brown a little.  Instead, it was a bit of a gooey mess.  And adding to the gooey messiness factor, the ricotta in the lasagna was running all over the place after scooping out each piece.  I usually mix an egg into the ricotta, which I think guards against this exact situation.  Oh well, it was tasty anyway.

Somewhat less successful was the garlic bread.  For one thing, I had not baked it for long enough, so the not-fully-cooked garlic chunks were a bit overly pungent, to put it gently.  But even worse, something happened during the cooking process to turn all the garlic an unappetizing shade of bright green.  I have no idea why this happened, although it has happened to me once before.  The garlic had just been purchased today, and it looked fine after being put through the garlic press.  Was it because I used olive oil instead of butter?  If anyone knows, please leave a comment!

To finish off the meal, we had a plethora of desserts.  Mike Terry brought over some homemade rice pudding.  It was sweet and delicious, topped off with a silky meringue.  Derek brought over a sweet potato pie, which I really love this type of year.

And Ryan, urban planner by day and home brewer by night, brought over a homemade mead, which is a honey-based alcoholic beverage.  I had never had mead before, and am sometimes skeptical about home brews, but this was quite delicious.  It was sweet but light, a perfect dessert beverage.  I think Ryan said he just used honey, water, yeast and some raisins.  It sounded so easy to make that I might have to try brewing it myself sometime.