Countdown to Rotterdam - 9

9 days to go. Was running with the racing shoes today that arrived yesterday. Good feeling. Tried to go hard and pushed the pace to 3:45 min/km several times. It’s tough, it feels like a distant wish to go that pace the whole marathon distance. But of course it’s -4 degrees out there right now, there’s a lot of gravel all over the streets of Helsinki, jada, jada, jada…

Need more rest. Fortunatly it’s the weekend coming up now, that means more sleep (hopefully). In the evening we prepared a nice pasta dinner with an anchovy - tomato sauce. Ingredients (for 4 people, 240kcal/portion)

• 2 garlic clowes
• 1 red onion
• a bunch of parsley
• 1-2 red chili peppers
• a can of anchovies in oil
• 4 table spoons of olive oil
• 800g of canned and peeled tomatoes
• a pinch of salt and sugar

goes well together with a stronger white wine, we had a Gewürztraminer from Chile

How to prepare

1) peel the onion and garlic clowes and chop them into very small pieces. Same - chopping into very small pieces - goes for the chili pepper and the bunch or parsley, too.

2) Drain the oil from the anchovy can and cut those fish pieces into smaller cubes as well

3) Heat up the olive oil, ad the chopped garlic, the onion and the chili peppar to it and let it stew for about 5-7 minutes, stir it once in a while.

4) Cut the tomatoes in the can into smaller pieces and add it together with the anchovies and parsley. Use salt and sugar according to your taste. Let it cook for about 10 minutes until it becomes viscid. Stir it once in a while.

5) Prepare your pasta (Penne, Rigatoni or Linguine)

6) Before serving season to taste once more. Mix it with the freshly cooked pasta. In case you have some parsley left use some for decoration.

An additional twist is to add 2 table spoon of capers and 50g of dark olives.

Preparation takes about 40 minutes with all the peeling and chopping. Experienced cooks are most probably faster. I need to watch my fingers when cutting things… Enjoy!

today’s training: 10.8km in 44mins in racing shoes + 3 accelerations

Tags: food, pasta, rotterdam marathon