the girl Dunbar good

If you need a rationale for buying armloads of workout clothes or ingesting every sugar or sharp-cheddar laden fat bomb in sight, running a marathon is a pretty stellar one, for a little while at least. Of course I need these remarkably unremarkable white "cool mesh" socks and cranberry track jacket, I reassured myself while standing in front of the register at JackRabbit on Saturday for the third time in three weeks, I'm a runner. Sure I can have another mound of Dunbar macaroni, I reasoned while scooping up another sumo-wrestler sized portion of the outrageous recipe I'd made for our neighbors (but mostly for me), while watching the Superbowl yesterday. More chocolate chip cookie cake with caramel sauce and vanilla ice cream? Dig in, sugar, you're a runner. Sometimes I need to remind myself that I'm training for a marathon, not a tri in running, shopping and testing the outer limits of my body's ability to metabolize fat and sugar. So tomorrow, I'll start the day right, with an amazing pb&j smoothie from The Abs Diet. Several of you have asked for the recipe, so here it is:

3/4 cup low fat vanilla yogurt
3/4 cup 1% milk
2 teaspoons peanut butter
1 medium banana
1/2 cup frozen unsweetened strawberries
2 teaspoons protein powder
4 ice cubes, crushed

Serves 2. I like to crush the ice cubes first in the blender first, then add the rest of the ingredients and blend some more. Pour it in a thermal mug and sip it while you put on your makeup, or on the subway (but never while doing your makeup on the subway). Yum!

In big news this week, I ran 12 miles on Saturday! It took 2 1/2 hours and for the last 3 miles I couldn't have been slower if I were standing still, but I persevered. My teammate, Sarah, who kept up a welcome stream of chatter through the entire run, carried me through. Sarah's husband, Nate, was diagnosed with a rare form of lymphoma a year ago and he kept pace with us part of the way. It's hard to whine about aching arches, or anything really, when you're running with someone who's just had a bone marrow transplant. Hello, instant perspective!

Last Friday, I'd had lunch with Valerie, a former colleague who was also diagnosed with lymphoma this year. We worked together for a few zany months at a web site five years ago, kept in sporadic touch, and it wasn't until I sent out the link for this blog that I learned what she'd been through. Great news though--she just got the all clear from her doctor. Yay, Valerie! Check out Valerie's amazing blog.

The stars must be aligned in my house of money this week, because in addition to snapping up a running jacket half-price at JackRabbit, I won the office Super Bowl pool! I only bought one box and took away $200! I was too enraptured by my Dunbar macaroni to realize I'd won the big prize until this morning, when our copy chief, Wendy, came by my desk holding a wad of moola. I pledged it to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, so now I'm the top banana on my donor list--want to dethrone me? I double Dunbar-macaroni dare you!