Crabcakes and Football: Two Great Annapolis Meals

So, spoiler alert: I did not die at the Zooma Half.

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Full review TK soon – probably tomorrow – but for now, here’s a pretty Instagram picture.

I had two awesome meals (which I’m basically considering my last suppers as I start detoxing from a week at the beach this week) I wanted to share with you.

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The night before the race, we attended a cmocktail party (don’t worry, I promise to never use that word again) at our hotel and ate at the restaurant in the hotel, because we heard from even an Annapolis local, Heidi, that West was good. And we had to be up early for the 7am start. [Full disclosure: Zooma provided Tina a comp room at the gorgeous, nautical-themed Loews Annapolis and Anne and I crashed her party.]

We sat down and saw that they had specials for runners. The waiter told us that the chef had done research into meals that would be good for runners. I went for the whole-wheat pasta with grilled chicken, squash, tomatoes, olives and feta. I’m pretty sensitive to dairy, and learned my lesson after Brooklyn and asked for the chef to go light on the feta. I think olives are disgusting, so I pushed them all to the side and let Anne and Tina pick at them. The portion size was perfect; I felt full without being overstuffed after finishing it.

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We’d all wanted crabcakes the night before the race but knew that wasn’t the time for them, so after the race we had a mission for crabcakes. Walking around the night before, I noticed Phillip’s right by the harbor. I knew it was a chain, so I sort of discounted it as potentially having good crabcakes. We asked the hotel concierge for her crabcake recommendation, though, and she recommended either here or West, in our hotel. Apparently West will be written up soon in some magazine as having really good crabcakes.

But we decided eating twice in our hotel would be kind of lame and ventured to Phillips. It had an open deck, so we were able to be out of the sun but still get a breeze off the harbor. The crabcake was delicious, but the fries in Old Bay were AMAZING. Can someone please fund a study about the health benefits of fries so I can eat them everyday? Thank you.

What’s your favorite post-race food? And what’s your favorite seafood? My favorite seafoods are lobster and scallops, but I love crabcakes when in the Maryland area. As for post-race food…hmm, I think whatever I can get my belly quickly! Although I always love a good post-race beer. I had a nice Phillips Amber Ale.

Zooma Annapolis Half Goals

Tomorrow I’ll be running the Zooma Half, so I thought here would be a good place to lay out my goals.

A: 1:45

B: Sub-1:50

C: Just PR my 1:50:20 from D.C.

LOL. Or not.

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This is tomorrow’s forecast. Yikes.

Real goals:

A: Do not die.

B. Do not end up in medic tent.

C: Do not die.

I’ll start training for Wineglass in the next week or so, so this was never intended to be a goal race. I’m running the race as one of their Ambassadors, which means I got a free entry in exchange for blogging about it.

Zooma is a women’s-only race series, with races around the country. Yes, that is a ton of estrogen in one place, but I love how races like these encourage women to live active, healthy lives, and I also love Annapolis. My freshman year roommate was dating a guy at the Naval Academy, so we went up there to see him and his friends a lot that year. After that, I kept going back with friends, because it is on the Chesapeake Bay, which is the closest you’re getting to the ocean from D.C. Also, I love crabcakes and football, and that’s what Maryland does.

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And it will be a fun reunion with Tina and Anne!

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Also…apparently this will be my first two-marathon year. I put my name in the NYCM lottery on a total whim, and was accepted. It’s my friend Emily’s‘s first, so I’ll be running it with her!

Are you running NYCM? Do you abandon/adjust time goals for hot races?