Running to Think

It has been a while since my last post. A lot happened in my life. I changed job, moving from academia to industry, finished the renovation of my house, found some time to go on holiday, also lost motivation to run long distance for a while.
But I never stopped completely.
There was some kind of innate mechanism in my brain that was forcing me to put some shoes on and run, almost every day.
However, I reduced the weekly mileage from the usual 110 km to barely 70. Still OK to keep up the shape.

I feel that things are getting better now. Motivation is slowly coming back. Even though motivation is not the only one ingredient to achieve a goal, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, today I want to start writing again about my running adventures, and I want to start in an unusual way. That is sharing a recipe of a super tasty and well presented dish I made myself, after Halloween.
Spoiler alert: it made my girl really happy to see such a beautiful dish, even more so with one candle on the table and a glass of good red wine.

The recipe I created literally from scratch is called "Fusilloni with pumpkin, mushrooms and leek". Delicious!

The recipe is, as usual, for two people, as I prefer to have dinner with Caroline.

Ingredients:
300 gr of pumpkin
150 gr of white mushrooms
1 white leek
1 red onion
200 gr fusilloni pasta
salt, persil, black pepper

Procedure
Chop the pumpkin in large pieces and soften in hot water for 10 minutes.
Chop leek, onion and mushrooms and brown off in a pan with one table spoon of olive oil.
Then add the pumpkin and add half a glass of water to keep it wet enough to steam. If it gets dry, keep a lid on.
Boil fusilloni pasta and 2 minutes before they get ready add them to the pan with the pumpkin.
Finish cooking the pasta in the pan.

Serve as in the figure below.



Buon appetito!

Waiting for the post-workout dinner to be ready can be even more painful than the workout itself, interval training included.
One relatively fast way I found to kill time and to stay healthy is making things rather than buying them. Humus is one such thing I am used to prepare before dinner. Sometimes I feel satisfied just with some lebanese bread and a salad.
I am aware that buying humus is much easier than making it. But, as many other things, I prefer to see my food and process it by myself. Here is a recipe to make humus and serve it in a coloured way that may stimulate your appetite.

I usually run in the morning due to many factors like having the rest of the day free or simply to respect my working duties. Dealing with the pretty unstable weather conditions of Belgium is yet another reason to run in the morning if it's not raining. A wet day is always better than a wet night.
But those rare times I go running in the afternoon or at night, even though there is no such line separating the two in winter, my diet and habits can change accordingly.
After workout I need to eat. Taken this for granted, I have to deal with rule #0 dictated by nutritional sciences which says "no carbs at night" especially when the next meeting of the day is the one with the bed.

What then? How can I go to sleep right after shower? Jamais!
I would fail to fall asleep, being nervous and feeling that there would be something missing. Not to mention that it would be extremely hard to follow the regular morning schedule of the day after without proper fuel. That would result in a clamorous knock out in the morning.