Treat The Runner In Your Life This St Valentine's Day

With more than 100 delicious recipes to fuel your running, the runner's cookbook is the ideal place to find not only your mid-week and weekend dinners but those all-important treats too.

Nothing shows the love of your life how much they mean to you, more than a little bit of home baking, so why not treat them to these runner-friendly banana and pecan muffins this Valentine’s Day.

With less fat and sugar than traditional banana cake and an extra helping of healthy omega-3 fats, there will be no need to run extra miles to burn off the calories.

There's no need for love potions this Valentine's day, these delicious delights will go straight to the heart.

Banana and Pecan Muffins

If you don’t manage to eat them all in one go, wrap individually in foil and freeze so you can just take out and defrost as needed.

Makes 12 muffins

200g (7oz) self-raising flour
75g (3oz) brown sugar or honey
2 ripe bananas
50g (2oz) olive spread or butter, melted
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 tbsp milk
100ml (3½fl oz) plain low-fat Greek yogurt
50g (2oz) pecans, chopped

Pre-heat the oven to 200°C/180°C fan/gas mark 6. Line 12 muffin tins with paper cases.

Place the flour in a large mixing bowl. In a separate bowl, mash the bananas and sugar or honey, then mix in the melted olive spread or butter, egg, vanilla, milk and yogurt, then pour into the flour. Stir until just combined. Fold in the pecans.

Divide the mixture among the muffin cases and bake for approximately 20 minutes until the muffins are risen and golden.

The Runner's Cookbook by Anita Bean is packed full of delicious recipes and nutritional information for runners, whether you're enjoying a weekly 5k or aiming for your next marathon and beyond. 

Anita Bean is an award-winning registered nutritionist, health writer, internationally published author and champion athlete. She specialises in sport and exercise nutrition and is passionate about helping runners improve their performance in training and competition through her writing and talks. As well as The Runner's Cookbook, Anita is also the author of The Complete Guide to Sports Nutrition, The Vegetarian Athlete's Cookbook, Food for Fitness and Sports Nutrition for Young Athletes. Photographs by Adrian Lawrence Photography, Getty Images and Daniel Georgiev.