Recipe: Grasshopper Cupcakes

Way back on Tuesday, I said I'd post a recipe for a delicious treat.  Here it is, Saturday!  Yikes.

I'll save my workout recap for tomorrow when I review **Week 10** of my half marathon training.  Holy Smokes.

So Wednesday night I made some delicious cupcakes that I guess I first learned about 3ish years ago.
Back in the day before I had even run my first race (a 3k) I stumbled upon this blog because of knitting (a hobby that seems to have been replaced by running).  While I was there for knitting, I came across some fantastic pictures of cupcakes (pictures no longer there).

Here's the cupcake post.

And here are my cupcakes.

 I resisted temptation while unwrapping all these peppermint patties...

 Thumbs up for Butter Cream Frosting.  Whipped.

 I only had neon green food coloring, so the frosting's a little bright.  

There's peppermint extract in there too.

Peppermint patty surprise in the bottom!

These are always a hit both at work and at home.  If you like chocolate +  mint... I highly recommend.

Today I did a 5 mile (half marathon) pace run.  Goal pace was 10:23-10:42.

Range was 10:06-10:34.  Success!

Though I did feel sluggish at the beginning.  And I had to stop during my warm up mile to fix my mp3 player and to get a pebble out of my sock.  Then for the first 2ish pace miles I was running into the wind, and mad that I didn't put lip balm on before I left.  I got out of my funk though.  Not sure why I was flying for mile 5... I slowed myself down to 10:06 half way through when I saw I had been running around a 9:45.

After my run I had a large glass of chocolate milk.  It was delicious.  After making myself presentable, we took a drive up to our favorite Middle Eastern restaurant.  Sad they were out of our favorite appetizer, the babaganough...but we got falafel instead.

(after eating two of them)

Then we got pitas (hummus for me and kufta for hubs).  Not much to see, because they were wrapped in foil, and we scarfed them down quickly.

After that we walked around and got coffee.  And checked out the Delaware River which floods often.  And after all the rain we got over the last two weeks, the water level is really high.

This picture is actually further down the river, where we stopped on our way home this afternoon (and a little history tidbit: it's where George Washington crossed the Delaware!)

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Anyway, we had ourselves a nice little Saturday.  Tomorrow I'll be doing my second to last long run before my half marathon!!!  I can't believe it's almost here.

I know I posted earlier about picking up some Clif Shot Energy Gels...but for this half marathon, I decided I'll be sticking with what has worked for my past several long runs...Gu.  I can experiment with the Clif brand after April 3rd.

Friday after work, I swung by a local bike shop to pick up some Gu in favorite flavors.  Much to my dismay they did not have the mint chocolate that I loved so much.  But I picked up a couple in Espresso Love, AND they offered to order the mint chocolate for me, which will arrive by the middle of this week.  Hooray!

Happy Weekend everyone!