July Hibernation

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

I don't know what it's like in your part of the world, but over here we are awash in Italian-style cafes and restaurants with names such as Ti Amo, Cafe Paesano and (God forbid) The Godfather Restaurant and Pizzeria. Some of these are superb, most are adequate, and a few are simply awful. Over the years I have developed a standard test for the worth or otherwise of a supposed Italian eatery: I order a simple bruschetta on the basis that it is a simple dish that is either divine or terribly ordinary, and a fantastic litmus test for purveyors of Italian fare.

My own bruschetta recipe is hard to beat, and ridiculously easy - fresh tomatoes (good stuff, not the rubbish from a hot house somewhere), finely diced (but not pulped) and mixed with fresh, chopped basil, the best extra virgin olive oil and an excellent balsamic vinegar. The base can be a good pizza dough or toasted rye, or whatever you like really, but the key is a liberal rubbing of fresh garlic (and I don't mean the dull, vulgar Chinese variety) into the base before the tomato topping is applied. If you can let the tomato/basil/olive oil/balsamic mix sit for up to 24 hours before use, so much the better, but freshly made is OK too if there is no choice.

A cheap, nasty cafe will serve up some God-forsaken tomato-paste glup on a basic pizza base with maybe a token smattering of chopped basil. While this may be edible, it mostly signals the fact that you should eat your bruschetta, drink your cappuchino and move on elsewhere. The recipe is simple, but the freshness and quality of the ingredients is critical. This is why it makes a good test.

I mention this because it is good training food for runners. I'm not sure how true this is exactly, but whenever I run, I generally crave a good bruschetta in the hours immediately after a tough session, and I nearly always have the ingredients handy, and so it is an easy craving to satisfy. Pretty darn healthy too, I think. Only problem is that it doesn't sit very well with beer. The sharpness of the balsamic and the acid of the tomato make a decent Chianti or even a Rhone or Rhone-style red a much better and safer bet. No problem there. You can feel the antioxidants and phyto-nutrients gurgling with delight inside you afterwards.

Anyway I mention this only because today was supposed to be a rest day, but as it was such a pleasant day (I swear the first hints of spring are in the air down here) I took myself off to the beach, not just any beach, but one I remember from my childhood but hadn't visited in about 30 years or so. A lovely beach, (see photo below) but rather steep and with very soft, deep sand. The result of which was that instead of a gentle, pleasant 4km stroll up and down the beach, it was quite a respectable work-out, with tired and sore hamstrings and lower back soreness afterwards. And not to mention a decent sweat with it.

Which left me with a hankering for the aforementioned bruschetta. Perhaps coincidentally with the beach-of-my-childhood visit, I also watched I movie I hadn't seen since I was a lad - John Schlesinger's Marathon Man with Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier. An excellent movie, but really having very little to do with running. In fact, I'm struggling to work out what the running motif had to do with the movie at all. Perhaps someone here can put me straight on that point. Anyway a good flick.

So no deep and meaningfuls in this post, just a good day at the beach, an excellent bruschetta and a brill movie.

Some Sundays are just really excellent like that.