Of Footpods and Lardo

Running

Turns out the Garmin FR70 doesn't do much other than track time and give you a heart rate unless you purchase a footpod.

Now my Garmin gives me all kinds of interesting bits of information, like foot speed, cadence, minutes per mile pace, and stride length.  The date confirms that I need to work on both cadence (foot strikes per minute) and stride length - no surprises there. 

It also shows me average speed per mile which in runners language I believe is referred to as splits.  As I suspected, I tend to run faster in the second half of my run, then in the first half.

I'm still working on aerobic training, but I have been mixing in speed work on the treadmill and can pretty reliably do a 1:1 ratio of 5.3 mph: 6.8 mph for up to 40 minutes.  This varies from 1 minute 5.3 then 1 minute 6.8, to 2 minutes of 5.3 followed by 2 minutes of 6.8.  The 6.8 mph is crucial as this breaks a 9 minute mile, my goal in my 5 year plan.

I'm going to bump up the intervals to 5.4mph:6.9mph for next week.  I really want to run a sub-30 minute 5k this year, and I think I may have one lined up for early October.  I'm also starting to look at half-marathons, but I want to see how my long run goes tomorrow before deciding.  Finally, when this weather cools down, I hope to start running twice a day on Tuesday and Thursday to get my mile total up to 60+ before the end of the year.

Culinary

I bought some chuck roast, cured it with 1.5% salt, some Oregano powder and garlic powder for 3 days.  I then ground it and mixed with 3/4 cup of my Mystery Beer along with 4 finally chopped peppers - two sweet Italian peppers, one yellow bell pepper and an Ancho pepper.  I made hamburgers and cooked them out on the Primo - delicious!

Back in February I put some pig back fat into a mixture of salt, thyme, oregano and garlic.  It is now 6 months later and I pulled it out to reveal lovely Lardo!

The salt mixture:

 The larger piece of Lardo:

 A smaller piece for tasting and cooking for today:

It is quite tasty sliced thin and eaten.  I cubed some up to put into a pot of beans I am cooking.  I also put in some ham trotters (that I smoked and froze earlier in the year) along with garlic, oregano, a bay leaf, carrots, and onions.

The beans are to accompany a pork shoulder that I cured with the same seasoning mix I used on the chuck roast.  I am slow cooking/smoking the pork shoulder in the Primo.  I am just using chunk charcoal this time, no wood chips to add smoke.