Rum cake, birding, running and biking

Posted on by Gaurav Parekh
It’s been a hectic 10+ days since I last blogged (about the 5k race report). Amit and Dana are in town to celebrate the holidays. It’s been fun and festive. The Tokyo Marathon training is in full swing now. I’ve been running hard intervals or tempo runs on Thursdays and long runs on Sundays. On non-intense days, I have easy runs and bike rides. Here are a three of my hard runs over the past few days:

It only gets harder from here. January will be a tough training month. Fortunately, the weather has been nice and cool (albeit sometimes rainy and sometimes a bit too cold for biking).

Christmas Decor in Arizona

Lately, I carry my iPhone while running and stop for a few seconds if I see something unusual or exceptional. Arizona sunsets and birding along the canal keep my mind occupied during long runs. It’s mostly water birds like herons, ducks and geese but an occasional kingfisher or woodpecker brings momentary joy. When I see people walking their dogs, I still am immersed in thoughts of Simi and Missy. It’s brings heartache but the memories are fond.

Cactus Wren (state bird of Arizona) playing peek-a-boo

I’m not sure what got into me but I decided to cook for the first time in my life. When I was a kid, my older sister (Sheelben) used to bake me a cake. Her specialty was some sort of chocolate marble cake but she also made a a rum chocolate cake at least once. I have good memories of it and decided to try my hand at a rum cake. While it wasn’t a disaster, it wasn’t very good either. It looked good though (as you can see), and if you put a lot of ice cream on it, it tasted just fine (and it just may get you drunk)!

Rum Chocolate Cake

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