American Blueberry Pancakes

I've been busy this afternoon making little lemon tarts and and a rather tempting-to-the-eye apricot tarte tatin...delicious. Well, they probably are, but they're for a friend so I mustn't touch unfortunately!

We've had a really fun weekend of activity. I went along to the Bristol Half Marathon Training weekend, held by Run Bristol and the team at Full Potential, sold a few copies of Go Faster Food, and then did a 9 1/2 mile run in the evening....in the sun (I think that was the last time it peeked out from those heavy rainclouds we've got here in Bristol at the moment). I felt really good and even sprinted at the end! Nick at Full Potential recommends that you should incorporate a few race pace sessions of 10 minutes or so into your weekly long run, so that your body learns to know what to expect. That makes sense to me and it gave the run a nice focus point.

On Sunday, Mark took hold of my book and cooked up some of my American Blueberry Pancakes which he served up as a late breakfast with maple syrup and some crispy bacon...yes, the kids are away!! He misread the abbreviation 2 tsp as 2 tablespoons - of baking powder (!)- but I managed to thwart his attempts at sabotaging my recipe and the end result was completely delicious. We were nicely stoked up for our cycle along the Bristol to Bath railway path for lunch with our lovely friends there. Door to door is only about 20 miles but the rain was torrential from start to finish and what is normally a gorgeous cycle ride was pretty unpleasant really!

The American Blueberry Pancakes are in the breakfast section of Go Faster Food - Page 60 - (maybe I'll make them recipe of the month at some point?). They are actually fantastic for post exercise recovery; a great fun and tasty way to get some high G.I. carbohydrate and protein into your system after a serious workout, with the added kick of the blueberries, now classed as a superfood and bursting with nutrients. It is really important to feed your tired muscles with some fast-acting carbohydrate to replenish your glycogen stores after exercise, and you need some protein to help repair any muscle trauma. What's great about these pancakes is that you can make the mixture before you leave the house, dream about them when the going gets tough on your run and then cook them on your return, even while you're doing your stretches. Hey presto, you'll be sitting down and pouring maple syrup over your first one within the 15 minute magic window of recovery!