Mother's Day Update, with dim sum

A lot has happened in the past few weeks!

Spring came.

These are our mysterious new tulips last Sunday, May 4. (We planted them last fall so had not seem them yet--couldn't wait to find out what they look like!)

Same tulips 3 days later... They are incredible! Like a tulip channeling a sunflower. The neighborhood is agog.


In other news, I ran my second half marathon. Here's a small selection of what I took along. (I packed 3 bags! I love local racing!) Chocolate agave gel, Bearded Brothers energy bar, Action Wipes for cleaning up post-race. I also took a complete change of clothes, a protein drink, a towel, and an ice pack.

The race is called the Western Mass Mother's Day Half. I did better than my first half marathon last September, though I must say that 13.1 miles feels insanely long. Here's the data...

 

Compared to my first half marathon, I made it another 2 miles before I hit the wall around mile 8 and started to slow down. For all of my great intentions to maintain a certain pace for 13 miles, or maybe even speed up at the end, I did start to get tired and slow down whether I wanted to or not. But it wasn't awful, just a bit uncomfortable, and it was wonderful to crest a hill at the end and have the finish line right there. The best part was that my mother came along with me to support and cheer me on! It was great to see her at the finish line and I even pulled off a little bit of a final kick--check out that 7:26 above!

For a double treat, we went out for dim sum brunch after the race. This is definitely my half marathon tradition now, since every time I run one (and that would be two times!) I eat dim sum afterward.  If you've been reading this blog for awhile you may have noticed that I have a huge soft spot for this special Chinese luncheon. (Read all my posts about dim sum!) I used yelp.com to triangulate dim sum options and came up with Oriental Flavor in Amherst, MA.

Oriental Flavor is totally charming. And they open at 8:30am on weekends to start serving dim sum.

Shrimp Har Gow

Char Siu Bao 

Beancurd Sheet Roll

 Pork Siu Mai

Sticky Rice in lotus leaf. YUMMM.

For the rest of mother's day I hung out with my lovely children, which included a trip to the ice cream stand and a chicken-n-biscuit dinner with steamed fresh nettles from the farmer's market. Fabulous!