It's in the Bag

The Apple Crumble, just liberated from the grocery sack

The title is a reference to an odd cooking experiment I tried tonight - cooking apple crumble inside a paper bag.  I used a paper grocery sack from a local farmer's market, and was a bit nervous that the bag would just burst into flames in the oven.  But it didn't, and the end product was most delicious - the bag appeared to help steam the pie as it cooked and concentrated the flavor.  Everybody had seconds!!!

Everything's better with ice cream

On the running front, it's been an odd few weeks.  I had a mini layoff due to surgery, which I hoped would also give my sore knee a chance to heal.  Then my first run back was a 7 mile pace effort which left me convinced I needed to drop San Antonio down to a half marathon, as my knee was still complaining.  But a few days of icing (while grumbling about getting old), and finally switching over to a new pair of running shoes (I've only been running in the old ones since December!!!), seems to have done the trick because I did 20 pain-free miles yesterday.

And it was an important psychological run for me.  I haven't run 20 miles in months, but I had one of those glorious runs where you feel like you could go forever.  It gave me a much needed boost of confidence for San Antonio.

In other news, the application period for the 2012 Boston marathon ended last Friday.  Since I qualified last December, I've never really considered actually running it.  But then I realized that since I'm not at all sure I will ever hit that qualifying time again, this may be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me (some well-timed prompting from Clea didn't hurt either).  So I sent in my application on Thursday, and I'm now waiting on pins and needles to see if I got in.

Keep your fingers crossed.