My Sisters Blog

stbanter.blogspot.com

My sister followed in her little brother's footsteps and created a
blog. Good for her and us. She has guided me to creating healthy
recipies including one that I made yesterday: creamy sweet potato
soup. This happens to be the second time I made this fun to make
soup. Basically, you just boil the sweet potatoes in a veggie broth,
add a few spic and some onions, and then the fun part of putting it
into a blender and watching it magically change consistentcy to a
thick, creamy sweet potato soup. Yummy. Maybe, she will post the
recipe.

She also wrote abot running the Pittsburgh Marathon this upcoming May.
She ran an awesome race last year. I had the honor of running the
last mile or so with her. Big road races like this give me chills and
make me want to compete. Suddenly, I can justify the sacrifice of
running 1 or 2 hours everyday after experiencing such a spectacle.

Needless to say, that race happened to be the turning point in my
training last year. I had been struggling with IT band problems all
last spring. I went to the Pittsburgh Marathon and it got me fired
up. I decided to stop making excuses and work through my leg issues.
And I did. I had an awesome summer and fall of running and racing.

I raised the bar for myself by running up mountains and running for a
loooong time. Every race I ran in 2009 took place above 5000 feet
with most at 8000 ft. The fear of altitude is overhyped unless you
are above 10K. I had little trouble moving up from 4k to 8k to race.
I also learned that you can recover rather quicker from a high
altitude trail race. The day after Pikes Peak last year, I felt
good...I suppose it should be rather easy to recover from 12 minute
miles haha.