Dinner with My Favorite + Week 6 of MCM Training

Last night, I had dinner with one of my Internet BFFs, Valerie. We’ve been following each other on Tumblr for years now and g-chat daily, so it’s hard to believe that this is only the second time I’ve met her in real life. (The first: last summer.) She’s training for the Disney marathon, and I’m really excited for her.

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She was in NY for a wedding this weekend, so we got together for some sushi.

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I started with seaweed salad, which I’m addicted to as of late.

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I had a spicy tuna roll, which did not photograph well at all, and we split an ebi shrimp roll.

Moving on to the running portion of this post…

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I was hard on myself in my recap last week.

This week, I had a pretty busy week, so I’m just happy to have gotten most of my miles in.

Tuesday: Had my personal training session and REALLY didn’t want to run my scheduled 5 after, so I ran 3. It was better than nothing, I reasoned.

Wednesday: Slept late, worked late and didn’t have it in me to run late.

Thursday: With Tina coming into town, my only option was to run before work–but I had my early meeting and didn’t think to adjust my start time. I had 6 planned and did 4.

Friday: Had 4 miles planned, ran 4 miles. (WOOOO.) I started inside and then moved it outside and was happy to get a run in before getting on a bus.

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Saturday: Had a great 15-miler with Amanda and Alex. I stopped my Garmin for a minute or two while not feeling well and ended up being a little short of the distance. I got back to the hotel at 14.5 miles and turned around to run another .25 out and back to even out to 15. “You know you’re a marathoner,” Amanda said, “when you’re not content to have just run 14.5 and you need to get your extra .5 in.”

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[photo via Meghann]

Sunday: Did the HLS fun run for about 3 miles. Sat on a bus for 4 hours and realized when I got home that I was 7 miles short of my mileage goal (36 miles) for the week. While I was happy that I’d gotten all 5 days in, I wasn’t happy with my mileage, and I decided to go out for a second run of the day of 5 miles. For approximately 2.5 seconds, I considered doing the 7 but knew that would require far more energy than I had left. Five miles I could do–approximately 50 minutes and I’d be home. I was tired, but I’m proud of myself for pushing through to get it in.

I ended up with a total of 34 miles–slightly short of my goal of 36 but more than last week’s 32, so I’m okay with it.

I’m going away this weekend, so my big goal is to get my runs in on Saturday and Sunday, no matter what. That’s it.

How was your week of training?

Chobani Dinner at EVOO

Just one more HLS post, promise.

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After all the Official HLS stuff was over, I went up to Meghann’s room for a little cocktail hour with some ladies.

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As the conference planner, she got a suite with a pretty sweet view.

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Roomie love: Anne, me, Ashley and Gretchen

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After our little cocktail hour, a group of us headed over to EVOO, an award-winning Cambridge restaurant.

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Some of the lovely Chobani ladies were our hosts for the evening. Just a note here that I can’t tolerate a ton of dairy but I attended this dinner because I really like the Chobani brand and the ladies hosting the dinner.

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Like the lovely Emily, their director of consumer engagement.

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I also like wine. One of the wines they had to pair with the dinner was Sancerre, which I love.

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Each course included Chobani in some creative way. The first course was an heirloom tomato salad with a yogurt gelee. The gelee texture made the yogurt taste almost like cheese.

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The next course was a lobster succotash with vanilla Chobani. Lobster is one of my favorite foods by far, so I was really excited to see lobster on the menu, but I wasn’t crazy about any other part of this course.

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What’s a blogger dinner without a little photo intermission? Oh hey Heather.

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Our main course was Seared Yogurt and Spice Sous Vide Lamb Loin with Crisp Eggplant and Raita. The veal was really tender, and the eggplant was delicious. I don’t think I’ve met many fried foods I didn’t like, hence the reason I needed to start this blog…

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We finished the meal with a nectarine-basil crisp with frozen berry yogurt. I’m typically way more of a savory person than a sweet person, but I finished this before Heather, sitting next to me, had barely made a dent in hers.

This was a special menu created for us by Chef Peter McCarthy, and I love that he did everything with such a light touch. The yogurt was never overwhelming in any of the dishes, but accented the other flavors in the dishes.

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Thanks to Chobani and thanks to all these lovely ladies for such a fun dinner. (And thanks to Ashley for the photo.)

If you could eat a meal centered around one sort of food, what kind of food would you pick? OR if you could have one chef design a special menu, which chef? I’d pick Jose Andres; I was pretty obsessed with both Jaleo and Oyamel (long live their beef tongue tacos) in D.C.