Welcome back to our monthly roundup of favorite snacks, gear, articles, books, podcasts, and other random things we’re loving here at Consummate Athlete HQ this month!
Consummate Athlete Top 5 Favorites: February
Grilled cheese / quesadillas with halloumi cheese with tomato soup
Back from a long ride or run? We came late the to halloumi cheese game last summer when a friend introduced us and fell in love with grilling it. (If you also haven’t tried halloumi, it’s a Greek cheese that you can actually grill on its own, on the grill. But camping, we realized that it does not grill very well on a not-very-hot frying pan. It melts. So, we had to pivot a dinner plan into making grilled cheese with already gooey cheese. It was delicious. So, it’s become my new filling favorite for long endurance days.
Quoc sandals
I maintain my mild annoyance about how much I like the Quoc lala slides. I was medium on them when I first spotted them, but for camping all month (and paddleboarding and post-ride or run all summer) they’ve been worth their (light) weight in gold. They’re just super easy to slip on and they’re ultra-comfy. Ideal for both showering in a camp shower and avoiding athlete’s foot but also wandering around the campsite all day. I found myself wearing them with socks A LOT in January since it was pretty chilly at our site but I still wanted to let my feet breathe. Highly recommend.
The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter
If you’re looking for a new read, I highly recommend The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter. As you may have guessed by the title, it’s all about how we’ve comforted ourselves into less-than-optimal lives/health, and offers good recommendations for breaking the cycle. It was a good read ahead of our three weeks of van-lifing it in January, since we were in much colder conditions than anticipated and frankly, quite uncomfortable a lot of the time while we were trying to work and cook and sleep. (Training was OK, but everything else was freaking cold.)
This Folding Mattress
We upgraded from using an old memory foam mattress topper and some yoga mats as the mattress in our van to this folding 6″-thick memory foam mattress and it was the best buy we’ve made for the van thus far. I’m sleeping so much better, without the shoulder or hip soreness I was getting from our old setup. And it’s pretty inexpensive (around $200 depending on size). It comes super compressed and definitely needs a day or two to fully fluff up, but luckily it didn’t have that gross smell that some foam mattresses have, and it made a huge difference in our sleep quality. I’d recommend it even as a spare mattress in your house, but it’s great for RVs and vans—and we like that it folds because that makes it easier to shift out of the way if we need the storage space, and we can fold it up slightly to let it air out.
Ecusta Brewing in Brevard, NC
If you happen to visit Brevard, North Carolina, make sure you check out Ecusta Brewing if you’re into beer at all. Best imperial stout I’ve ever had, and they have a fantastic little fast-casual Mexican restaurant right inside as well, so you can enjoy a burrito and a beer. (Also, strangely, best tortilla chips I’ve ever had?) We went there after meeting a fun group of trail runners for a 5-miler, and since then, I’ve been trying to hold off going back because honestly, I could go every night.
The Athlete’s Guide to Sponsorship
OK, shameless plug: my (Molly’s) 2019 book The Athlete’s Guide to Sponsorship got a 2024 update. The new edition includes a few new sections like how to use (not abuse) AI when writing sponsorship cover letters, resumes, captions, et cetera. It also talks about looking carefully at a company’s values, and about how rejection rarely has anything to do with you / rarely is something you can do anything about. Plus some new stories and examples! (It’s not necessarily worth re-buying if you own the original, but if you’re new to the athlete game and are thinking about seeking sponsors or turning pro, it’s absolutely worth the read!)
