Avocado Bacon Baked Eggs

Marathon training requires a lot of running, well duh. And a lot of running requires a lot of eating – yay!  My usual breakfasts are entirely unremarkable. But post-long run breakfast? Well that is something I plan in advance and get excited about!

This past Sunday’s run was a hybrid workout/long run. When I first saw it on Coach George’s marathon training plan (2 mi ez, 4 mi tempo, 1 mi ez, 3 mi tempo, 1 mi ez, 2 mi tempo, 1 mi ez, 1 mi tempo, 1 mi ez, 16 total) my thought was, Gah! This is too complicated! I am not smart enough for this! But then a second look showed that it really wasn’t that bad: the workout is a 4-3-2-1 ladder at marathon pace, with one mile in between each tempo. With a 2-mile warm up and 1-mile cool down, it totals to 16 miles. We started at Jack’s Boathouse in Georgetown at 8am on Sunday morning and ran across the Key Bridge, along the Mt. Vernon bike path to Alexandria, and back.

Luckily I was running with people who had fancy GPS watches to tell me when to start and stop, and also to check in on our pace. Running-wise I’m a bit like a wind-up toy: point me in a direction and start me at a pace and I will maintain that exact pace for however long is required. This “skill” comes in quite handy in tempo runs. And it's the same re: eating: put delicious food in front of me and I'll eat until it's gone (not sure if that's a good or bad thing...)

So anyway, the run went well, and by the time I got home around 11:30 am I was starving in the way that only long running can make me starving. Soon enough LOTR-Emily was on her way over with avocado and bacon, and we proceeded to make the best post-run breakfast ever. 

We scraped eggy bacony avocado onto whole wheat English muffins, basking in the warm glory of my living room, watching Big Easy Express. This is a direct quote from Emily: “Avocados and coffee and bacon! Mumford and Sons and nail polish! It literally does not get any better than this!!!” Agreed.

Avocado Bacon Baked Eggs

Printable recipe. 

Serves 2

Ingredients:

• 1 medium or large avocado
• 2 small eggs
• 2 sliced of bacon, cooked then crumbled
• 2 English muffins or slices of toast
• Salt, pepper
• Hot sauce (optional)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
2. Cut avocado in half and carefully remove the seed (like this). Scoop out some of the avocado to make room for the egg.
3. In a medium baking dish, try to rest the avocado half inside the edge of the dish so that the avocado doesn't tilt over. We used tin foil to fashion a little avocado nest so it doesn’t tip and spill egg everywhere. 
4. You can crack the egg directly in the avocado, but it might overflow and make a mess…so instead, crack the egg into a small bowl and then use a spoon to scoop out one of the yolks and place it into the hole of the avocado. Then spoon the egg whites into the avocado hole utill it's full. 
5. Salt and pepper the eggs and bake for about 15-20 minutes. Watch the eggs! Ours went from raw to done very quickly. 
6. Cook bacon however you want (we used a frying pan). Crumble bacon on top of your avocado/egg.
7. Enjoy!

Oh don't worry, in actual practice there was extra bacon on the side!

Printable recipe.