Over the Hill (work) and Birthday Cake... (Chocolate Stout Cake with raspberry frosting)

Saturday's awesome hill...

The tip of the arrow touches the top of the hill where I start my decline.

My sweet husband drove me to the top of this hill with the goal to meet me at the bottom and drive me to the top again for a total of 5 miles of running down a 14% grade hill.  I'm training for Hood To Coast's first leg starting at Timberline Lodge.  It's a doozer of a leg... quite the incline (err, decline!).... but lucky for me I found a great hill!  Steeper than the popular Terwilliger Hill in Portland...

And this hill I found is quite the run.  I ran one mile down it and was incredibly sore in my calves.  Yikes!  This is a great workout!  

When I got to the bottom of the hill, one mile complete, my run plans were dashed when I found my husband with his head under the hood of our broken down car.  It was running, but would not disengage from park.  Something was up with the transmission?  Well, after ditching the car and going home to do some research, he found that the solution was a 10 minute trip to the autopart store for new fuses.  I'll have to tackle this amazing, steep hill some other time.  

In the meantime, while hubstud worked on the car (at my hill), I analysed my amazing hill's decline to that of Hood To Coast's first leg.  Huh.

My one mile descent was 400 feet.

Leg one at HTC covers an average of 500 feet in a mile... (unless I'm reading the graph wrong...)  One hundred more feet per mile, I'm venturing to guess, is going to be quite a difference.  Oh boy.  Feeling nervous.

Well, when I was done fretting over the hill work and hubstud finished working on the car, it was time to celebrate his birthday.  Last year's cake was the "Mario and Princess Peach" Toasted Pecan Cake (and a blog post about how supportive and amazing he is to help me with my training... I'd like to also state that he isn't really a runner.  [Not yet anyway... ;) ]).

So, I suppose to stay consistent, here's the recipe for this year's cake.  As you can see, he is still amazing, super supportive and helpful with my running.  :)  

I'm a lucky girl. 

Chocolate Stout Cake with Raspberry Buttercream frosting

Cake:

2 C flour

1/2 C unsweetened cocoa powder

1 1/4 tsp baking soda

3/4 tsp salt

2 sticks of unsalted butter

1 1/2 C light brown sugar

2 large eggs

~ 2 cups (or less) of Rogue Chocolate Stout  (save the rest to drink with the completed cake, or just drink it while the cake bakes and enjoy the Voodoo Doughnut Pretzel, Raspberry & Chocolate Ale with the cake!)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Butter/grease a 9 inch cake pan.

Mix together flour, cocoa, baking soda, salt. 

In a separate bowl, beat together sugar and butter until fluffy.  Beat in eggs and then stir in half the flour mixture until well incorporated.  Then stir in half the beer, mix and the rest of the flour and mix.  Then the rest of the beer.  

Pour into cake pan and bake about 35 min or until center of cake is cooked.  (Insert a "cake tester" or toothpick and if it comes out clean, cake is fully cooked.)

Frosting:
1/2 C salted butter (to go with the pretzel theme of the ale... unsalted is fine also)
3 to 4 C powdered sugar

1/4 C raspberry jam

splash of milk if frosting is too thick...

In a mixing bowl, cream together (with electric mixer) jam and butter until incorporated.

Add powdered sugar (one cup at a time) until desired consistency is achieved.

If it's too thick, add a little milk.

Spread on cooled cake!

We enjoyed the cake.  Here's to loving life... and loving some hill work in my future.

Do you think my hill is good enough?  

Race Recap: The Joe Dudman 5K

Race Recap:  The Joe Dudman 5k on June 21, 2014 

June 21st fell on a beautiful, sunny Saturday this year and also marked the first day of summer.  As the longest day of the year, several races were going on in my area during the morning and into the evening.  

So many choices.... where should someone kick off the celebration of summer and go run?

Well, the answer was simple for me.

I spent my morning at The Joe Dudman 5K.  This was a small community event (just under 70 participants) and a once in a lifetime race.  After all, how many times do we get together in the racing community to throw a 5.0K race in honor of someone's 50th birthday?   I haven't spent time with Joe outside of saying "Hey, good job." at local races, but it was important to me to be there for such a milestone for such a great guy.  You can catch up on some of his adventures on the Run Oregon blog.

That morning, I hung out at the packet pickup table and helped runners check in before they went out to warm up for the race.  There were athletes of all levels represented in the audience from those who hadn't run much (or at all, like my dear husband) and some who were new to the idea and this was their first race.  However, the great majority were strong athletes vying for the prizes for the top three finishers in the Overall division and the Masters division.  (Don't believe me?  52 of the 67 athletes finished the race in under 30 minutes.  Don't worry.  I wasn't one of them.)  One participant was a 6 year old and I hope that my kiddos will want to run with me (instead of ride in the double wide behemoth stroller).

We started the race by singing "Happy Birthday" to Joe and then counting down until the race began.  And everyone was off on a strong start!

Joe with his prize for a great race, (upper right corner) me with my mug and cupcake and (below) my husband securing the behemoth stroller to the roof of the car.... because my stroller is the size of my car.

The course was laid out in a pretty and quiet business complex in the Beaverton area and then over to the Fanno Creek Trail and back again, starting and ending near the ADAPT Training building.  The course was fairly flat and I enjoyed the foot bridges and trees in the paved trail part.  My kids shouted "YIPPEE!"  everytime we crossed a bridge.  

Before the race, an Adapt trainer lead the group in some dynamic warm up stretches and after the race, participants were invited to checkout the 9am class for free.

Funds from the race were donated to the American Cancer Society, and about $500 was donated.
Participants were given a pretty blue mug donated by Run Oregon blog and I happily filled mine up with half hot chocolate and half black coffee, donated from starbucks.  The race had lots of fantastic donations and raffled off some free race entries to some local races, socks, "Thera pearl" recovery hot and cold packs, tech shirts and much more.

 There was a cupcake bar that participants could pick out a chocolate, vanilla or red velvet cupcake and coat it with chocolate, vanilla or cream cheese frosting and then top with various candy choices.  How cool is that?  If anyone wonders what to get me for my birthday?  Throw me a race party with a cupcake bar.  ;-)

They say it's your birthday... It's my birthday too! Yeah!

Happy First Day of Spring!!!  And, Happy birthday to me....

Honestly, my expectation are kinda low.  I put so much energy into the kids' birthday that I'm happy to just sleep in and shave my legs. 

Today, I woke up to a fantastic breakfast of banana and neufchâtel cheese stuffed french toast.  The kids ate my fruit flowers...  :)  

After breakfast, I got on o the computer to check my email... Cute.  Google knows it's my birthday.  That's either nice, or creepy. 

This is all the cake I need today....

So, once I got into my email..... I see....

"Congratulations, Hood to Coast Winner!" 

 Hood to Coast is a 199 mile relay for teams of 12 (8 minimum) from Mount Hood to Seaside, Oregon.  It's a bit difficult to get into with a lottery system, on top of all the other hoops to go through (training, van rentals, hotel?  beach house?, gas, team member deposits and the like....)

Something to dream about...  but something I was also feeling like was for the "real" runners.  Something i wasn't sure I'd ever qualify for.

Well, in steps MaryAlicia from RunOregon blog who mentions a giveaway going on with Nuun for a race registration (for a whole team!) into the race.

I WON!!!

Happy birthday to me!!  Best present ever!  Can I do this?!  Holy mackerel.

And now I have more friends than spots available on my new birthday bash team!

Team name ideas?
Tips for running a relay?