Doing some Cooking

With time off the holidays and relatively light training load I’ve spent some time cooking the last couple of weeks.

I cooked something I’d been wanting to for a long time, braised pork belly.

I started with the pork and browned it for a while.

Then I cooked up some vegetables

Added the pork back to pan and surrounded it with chicken stock

Then it went into the oven for several hours and I took it out to cool and reduced the sauce.

Then put the pork back into the oven at a higher temperature

I was a little disappointed, the actual meat was great but it turned out to be very fatty. I’m not sure if that was because I didn’t braise it long enough to melt off the fat or that’s just how this cut turns out.

I’ve also cooked some pork chops with roasted grapes

And made some berry french toast for breakfast on Christmas morning.

Rack of lamb was also on sale at the grocery store one day so I bought that and cooked it up and added a roasted tomato tart.

2011 Year in review and 2012 Goals

You can find my 2010 review here

2011 was another mixed year. I had some good races where I met my time goal or took home age group hardware: Atlanta, Kinetic, Luray. One where I had a great time but fell just short of my goals: Philly Marathon. And then a couple of duds: Eagleman, Poconos.

I also had an interesting year in my build up to the two big races this year, with a case of poison ivy that got infected in May, and a somewhat nasty bike crash in August that left me with some scars and bruises.

The most frustrating thing this year was Eagleman. I spent plenty of time out on the eastern shore riding and running in the heat this spring with some very encouraging long rides and runs that led me to believe I should have been able to put down a very fast time but it just didn’t come together.

In 2012 I’m going to take another attempt at racing the half Ironman distance with hopes of finally getting it right and putting together a solid race. I’ve learned my lesson from Eagleman and will trying some colder weather races this year. First up will be Mooseman in June with hopes of getting a qualifying slot for the 70.3 world championships.

If that doesn’t happen then my next big race will be Muskoka 70.3 in Ontario Canada in September.

I also plan to add in some shorter local races and a few running races this winter as well.

I’ve complied my year to year break down below. It looks a like last year which is to be expected given I focused on two 70.3s again. Most of the year I was running more then last year but after the Marathon in November I took most of December off running and focused mainly on swimming. I’m planning to spend some more time swimming early in 2012 with the hopes of breaking through and improving my swim because it seemed to stagnate in 2011 compared to the improvements I was seeing elsewhere.

The main goal for 2012 is to have a solidly executed 70.3 race. For a tough course like Mooseman I think that will mean a sub 5 hour race with a 30 min swim, 2:40 bike, and sub 1:40 run.

Year	Total Hours	Swim Time	Swim yardage	Bike Time	Bike Miles	Run Time	Run Miles
2008	377 hr	79	195,000	163	2,621	135	917
2009	377 hr	65	184,000	156	2,811	156	1,086
2010	436 hr	104	311,000	166	2,939	166	1,142
2011	457 hr	132	366,500	162	3,150	163	1,170