Look what arrived yesterday...

I'm going to run a marathon! Panic!!

Sexy socks...!

Mmm, lovely...! These are my new compression socks, which I tried out on last night's run. Compression socks are meant to be good for giving extra support to your leg muscles, reducing fatigue, and helping with recovery. I do find that I get tight or tired calves after a run, especially if I've been running on uneven ground, so I thought I'd give them a go, and I have to say I think they worked really well! I ran a very hot and very slow 10 miles last night - the first time I'd attempted anything like that sort of distance for about a month - and my calves didn't feel tight afterwards at all, and this morning I don't seem to have any muscle soreness. So far, so good!

Now I'm just waiting for my new trail shoes to arrive so I can try those out on Saturday's 12-mile off-roader!

Bristol 10K 20/5/12

This weekend I headed down to Bristol for what was actually my first proper organised 10K run! I was running with my friends (well, they're more like honorary sisters) Anna and Tori, raising money for a really fantastic cause.

We all had a brilliant day - none of us were expecting all that much, as we'd all struggled with illness in recent days and weeks, but the weather was perfect and we were all determined to finish the run. Special mention should go to Tori, who was worried about her cough but actually ended up being struck down with a sore knee halfway round! But she made it to the finish! And I managed to totally exceed my expectations with a new PB - I knocked 35 seconds off my 10K time from the Reading half marathon and managed a time of 55:05. Slightly annoyed that I didn't run six seconds faster and end up sub-55, but a PB is a PB!

Here I am looking knackered at the finish (I wasn't expecting my mum and dad to be there taking photos!)

...and here's all three of us with our medals!

The race was really well organised and it was great fun. It was a little bit quiet, because there weren't that many places where people could stand and cheer, which came as a real contrast after Reading, and I wasn't too impressed with the collection of the timing chips - instead of being part of the medal/goody bag/water 'funnel' after the finish, there were just people collecting the chips in the race village and it wasn't immediately obvious where they were. I can imagine a lot of people forgetting to hand in their chip! But all in all it was a fab day (topped off perfectly with a lovely family barbecue) and we've raised an amazing £730, so we're really chuffed!

Soggy veg - Veg Box Day 15/5/12

Thanks to the marvellous spring weather we've been having, my veg box was a little bit wet by the time I got home! No harm done, though, and inside was a punnet of cherry tomatoes, four onions, a butternut squash, a bag of potatoes, watercress, summer greens and four massive beetroot!

I was heading to the pub on Tuesday night for a meeting about the Ealing Eagles 10K run, which (in case anyone fancies signing up) is happening on Sunday September 9th in Gunnersbury Park, so I didn't have time to make anything spectacular with my veg, but I did put together a quick and delicious pasta sauce using one of the onions, a small tin of chopped tomatoes, some of the cherry tomatoes, a few black olives, a small tin of tuna and a big handful of the purple sprouting broccoli that I nicked from my parents' garden at the weekend. It was gorgeous!

The 2012 PSB Mountain...

That's purple sprouting broccoli, for those not in the know!

It's Veg Box Week again, but I didn't take a photo of Tuesday's box because it was rather soggy after a massive rain/hailstorm and I just wanted to get all the veg dried and into the fridge as quickly as possible! Anyway, this week my box contained onions, carrots, swiss chard, little gem lettuce, cherry vine tomatoes, potatoes and purple sprouting broccoli. I love PSB...and it's a good job, too, because my mum sent me home after Easter with a bag of the stuff from her garden!

Last night I went for a run, as usual on a Wednesday, and I'd originally planned to have beans on toast when I got home, but then I remembered about the ton of PSB in the fridge and thought I'd better use some of that instead. I wanted something quick, as I don't get home from running until after 8.30pm, and gradually a sort of eggs florentine idea started to form. Before my run, I made a batch of Angela's amazing sauce, and then when I got home I toasted some rye bread, steamed some PSB in the microwave, reheated the sauce and fried an egg. In an ideal world I'd have poached the egg, but I couldn't be bothered!

Toast, PSB, egg, sauce, black pepper. It was really nice! And I still have half the batch of sauce in the fridge - I think I'm going to have it stirred through some pasta with yet more PSB.

Unfortunately I then undid all my healthy running and vegetable-eating work by slaughtering a Lindt Easter bunny...

...but these things happen!

Reading Half Marathon!

In case you can't read that...it says 1:57.39! Under two hours! I'm totally chuffed and I've had a great day. The weather was perfectly chilly yet sunny (a little bit too sunny really, but I ignored that and powered on regardless!) and the race was so well organised and so much fun, with lots of people cheering us on and lots of bands and drums and students banging saucepans with wooden spoons along the way!

The official results aren't up yet, but my Garmin should be fairly accurate, I think. It's amazing how much mileage you add on weaving through the crowds - my Garmin reckons I actually ran nearly 13.4 miles, so I'd probably have come in at 1:55 if I hadn't been dodging people! I also managed am 8:22 mile which is quite frankly ridiculous, and only two of my miles were over 9 minutes...it couldn't have been better, really! My fellow Ealing Eagles all did brilliantly too, and some lovely friends of mine came to cheer me on and I went out for a celebratory lunch with them afterwards, so all in all it's been a really fab day and it's certainly put my fear of organised races to bed, I think!

Edit: my chip time is 1:57.40 but I think I'll give myself that extra second! Also, thanks to my friend Pete, here is a hilariously bad photo of me at mile 10. In my head I was all 'Yeah! This is great! Look how good I feel!' but actually I look ever so slightly crazed and extremely sweaty...

Raspberry baked oatmeal for a long run...

Have I mentioned that I'm running a half marathon tomorrow? I have? Oh, good.

I've made quite a bit of progress in my running in the last year or so, mainly since joining my local running club, but organised races still scare me. My last one was the Bath half in 2010, where I'd trained for 2:30 but crashed and burned at mile 9 (for some inexplicable reason, the trainers I'd worn for months with no problems whatsoever suddenly gave me blisters) and ended up with 2:35. That shows how far I've come since, of course, because my target for tomorrow is (whisper it) to finish in under two hours, but the idea of an organised race still takes me out of my comfort zone.

One of the things I'm most worried about (now I'm reasonably certain the weather's going to be nice and cool rather than stupidly hot like last weekend) is eating. I'm not one of those people who can get up, have a bite of toast and go and run 10 miles. I need to eat properly before a long run. Usually, I get up an hour before my run and have a bowl of porridge, and then I'll have a banana or a nakd bar about half an hour later. That seems to see me through anything up to 12 or 13 miles, so it's perfect for a half marathon. But of course tomorrow, I'll be getting a lift to Reading at 7am, and I won't actually be running until 10am. So what to do? The number one rule of running is that you don't try anything new on race day, so I wanted to find some way of being able to eat porridge and banana while standing around in the race village waiting for the start.

Then my sporting guru friend Nic suggested baked oatmeal, which sounded perfect, and coincidentally just a couple of hours later this recipe for strawberry and banana cream baked oatmeal popped up on my Google Reader, so I definitely had to give it a go. I made some last night, so I could try it this morning and make sure I liked it, and I had it for breakfast this morning.

Success! I took my inspiration from the recipe on How Sweet It Is but obviously I used raspberries instead of strawberries, and I used my usual porridge mix of oats and millet flakes. I also wanted to make it a bit healthier, so I just used almond milk for all of the liquid and I didn't add any sugar as I thought it'd be sweet enough with the banana and raspberries. First of all I tried a piece cold, as that's how I'll be eating it tomorrow, and it was lovely - like an oaty banana flapjack with bursts of raspberry every now and then. Yum yum! Then I warmed some up in the microwave and had it as the original recipe suggested, with extra raspberries and cold almond milk. It was amazing - it feels really naughty and decadent, like eating cake or flapjacks for breakfast, but in fact it's ridiculously healthy! I have a feeling it's going to become my new favourite breakfast, as it'd be so easy to make a batch on a Sunday and take it to work during the week.

Fingers crossed it'll fuel a good run tomorrow! I'm off to stretch my hamstrings...

Sunshine and chocolate pie!

It's been a lovely weekend. British Summer Time arrived in style, with wall-to-wall sunshine and lovely warm weather. It feels like spring has really arrived! Personally I'd like it if spring could bugger off again for the day next Sunday, because I hate running in warm weather (yesterday's 12-miler was utterly hellish and very slow) and I'd like to not die halfway round the Reading half marathon, but for the time being I'm enjoying the sun!

My sister also came to stay this weekend, and as usual I wanted to find a suitably delicious Suze-friendly recipe to make. Especially this time, as I hadn't seen her since November! I eventually decided to have a go at this chocolate pie from Post Punk Kitchen and I'm really glad I did, because it was brilliant. I made my own buttery biscuit base from 1 1/2 cups of biscuit crumbs (I used a pack of Doves Farm hazelnut and orange cookies and a few TruFree digestives as there weren't quite enough cookies in the pack) and 1/4 cup of dairy-free spread, which I melted and mixed with the biscuit crumbs before pressing it into a 9" non-stick shallow cake pan (I don't have a pie dish that size) and baking it in the oven for about 10 minutes. Then I made the chocolate filling as per the recipe, except I used Alpro hazelnut drink instead of almond milk.

We were SO impressed with the results! The hazelnut biscuits were perfect for the base, and the hazelnut milk in the chocolate filling made it taste ever so slightly Nutella-like. Yum yum! You absolutely would not know it was gluten- and dairy-free. It was amazing, if I do say so myself!

Oaty banana pancakes...

For the last couple of weeks, I've been running on Saturdays instead of Sundays, doing a brilliant 12-mile trail run with a few others from the running club. It involves lots of hills and it's been fantastic - not only is it something completely different and a great addition to my half-marathon training (two weeks today, eek!) but it means I get my running out of the way at the start of the weekend and I can do whatever I want with my Saturday night and my Sunday!

Last night I was out at a friend's 30th birthday do (there was an 80s TV characters theme and I went as Velma from Scooby-Doo...check it out...)

...and so this morning I fancied a bit of a Sunday treat. I came up with these pancakes - they were really easy and really tasty!

Oaty Banana Pancakes
(serves one)

1 small ripe banana
30g oats
15g buckwheat flour
Enough milk (I used almond) to make it into a thick batter

Mash the banana really well, then stir in the oats and flour to make a thick paste. Then whisk in the milk until you get a thick batter, and dollop spoonfuls into a hot pan. Make them quite thick, as they'll be quite delicate, and make sure you let them cook thoroughly on one side before turning them over. Serve with maple syrup. Yum!

WIAW: nine miler

Yet again it's been ages since I last participated in What I Ate Wednesday, but never mind, here I am again!

Today kicked off with my current breakfast of choice, which is still Activia yogurt (vanilla this morning) with Mesa Sunrise cereal. This was the last bit from the bottom of the box, hence all the crumbly bits!

Then at about midday I had this lovely juicy apple...

...and lunch itself was my new favourite food for running days, a Tilda microwave basmati rice pouch thing (this one was brown basmati with butternut squash) with my customary broccoli and Brussels sprouts! WIAW this month is all about the vegetables, and as you probably know by now, I have a bit of an obsession with those little packs of veg that you can get in M&S and Waitrose. They're perfect for lunch because you can just steam them in the microwave for a minute or so (our work kitchen only has a microwave, toaster and kettle) and you've got lovely fresh veg. I eat them all the time.

Delicious. I then ate a few too many mini flapjack bites, but we'll gloss over those and call them 'fuel' for this evening's run! I also had a banana and some rye toast as further fuel before I headed out with the running club - and it seemed to work, because I ran 9 miles in 1:22.37 - an average pace of 9:06/mile. I was really pleased with that, because the first four miles were really hilly and there was a fair bit of waiting around at traffic lights, and my race pace is meant to be between 9 and 9:05/mile, so I was pretty much there! It felt like a really good run, too - I felt like I easily had a few more miles in me at the end. Good job, too, because this arrived today...

Not long to go now! My first organised half-marathon since March 2010...!

Then when I got home I settled down in front of Masterchef (I still don't know who I want to win!) with a bowl of leftover tomato and barley risotto, a poached egg, and some oatcakes. A slightly odd supper, but very nice and just what I needed after my run!

My new toy...

Yes, I've finally joined the world of 21st-century running! I'd been thinking about getting a Garmin for ages, but I'd always been put off by the price, and I've never really liked tracking my pace while I'm running. I prefer to do a run, see how I feel, see if I can push myself a bit, and then see how fast I ran when I finish. But seeing as I actually want to attempt to run a sub-2hr half-marathon at some point in the near future, I think it's time to brave it and actually start keeping an eye on how fast I'm running - and on how that compares to how fast I should be running!

So when someone on the running club's Facebook page alerted us all to the fact that Sweatshop currently have the Garmin Forerunner 110 for only £74.99, I decided to go for it. I haven't actually used it yet - it's charging at the moment - but it sounds perfect. It's not stupidly complicated but it'll give me all the information I need and I'll be able to track my progress online. So we'll see how it goes!

Victory from the jaws of defeat...

It's been a day of running and cooking, with a bit of football thrown in for good measure! First off, this morning I headed off with the running club for a 10-mile run, and I was feeling quite nervous about it - I hadn't done that sort of distance for a good few weeks and last week's shorter runs weren't really anything to write home about. But I actually managed to smash my PB by over five minutes! I think it was down to the lovely people I was running with - they're so chatty and supportive, and even when I found my rightful place at the back I had someone who runs at my pace with me and we were spurring each other on. Just look at this time!

I was so chuffed! And it's really boosted my confidence as I start my half-marathon training.

Then this afternoon I watched (hiding behind a cushion, given our recent form) the FA Cup clash between United and City - I am, of course, a United fan and the first half couldn't have gone any better, but we can never do anything the easy way and the second half was horribly nail-biting! Thankfully we won 3-2...but having seen off one set of bitter rivals, we've now been drawn against Liverpool in the next round! Give me strength!

After all that excitement, I knew I wanted something nice for supper, but I had no idea what. My mum would no doubt have said 'If you don't know what you want, you can't be hungry' but that wasn't the case at all! I just couldn't work out what I fancied. Then I happened upon an online discussion about takeaways...but I can't afford takeaway from either a financial or a health point of view! So I ended up making my own. After a bit of Googling I found a recipe for naan bread - I'd never made naan myself but a couple of months ago I went round to a friend's house and she made gorgeous naan which she cooked in a frying pan, so I fancied having a go at something like that. It was a really easy recipe - I halved it and made mini naan breads, and they were really lovely and flaky and absolutely delicious. I also made some red lentil dhal (it was never going to photograph well, I'm afraid...) which had cumin, mustard seed and garam masala in it, and a mushroom and chick pea curry with some curry paste, garlic, ginger and tomatoes. It was a feast!

Can't wait to have the leftovers for lunch tomorrow!

This week's cooking...

As it's a new year, I am of course attempting to get myself into an 'exercise and healthy eating' habit. I've signed up for the Reading half-marathon, which is on April 1st (shock horror - I'm doing an organised race! Hopefully this time I'll finally get over my bizarre tendency to do perfectly well in training before a spectacular crash-and-burn on the day itself...) so I need to start putting in the miles, and although I don't have many Christmas pounds to lose I would like to be a bit healthier after spending the entire festive period eating my bodyweight in cheese and drinking rather a lot of wine. A trip to the pub last night probably wasn't the best start, but never mind! This morning I went to Pilates, and on the way home I bought lots of healthy things.

Some of which I used to make this lovely nut roast:

I do love a nut roast! Bizarrely, though, this was my first attempt at making one - my mum makes an amazing pine nut, pepper and mushroom terrine thing that sort of resembles a nut roast, which I have for Christmas lunch every year instead of turkey, but it's not really a nut roast. This one was the real deal, with walnuts and sunflower seeds as well as carrots, mushrooms, onion and pepper. I didn't have any of the herbs the original recipe called for, so I decided to add some toasted cumin seeds and a bit of ground coriander, and it's absolutely gorgeous. As you can see, I had it with a lovely tomatoey sauce (I just cooked up a little tin of chopped tomatoes with plenty of salt and pepper and a bit of chilli) and some brown rice and a big pile of baby Brussels sprouts. I'm hoping it'll be good running fuel! The loaf makes easily enough for six, so I've popped the rest in the freezer in two-slice portions.

The healthiness doesn't stop there, though - on Thursday night I was stuck for something to make for supper when I stumbled across a recipe from Appetite for Reduction for soft broccoli polenta. I've had a massive bag of polenta in the cupboard for literally years - I bought it to make Jamie Oliver's pizza dough when I lived in the flat before this one - and it's only just gone past its best before date, so I thought it'd be a good idea to use some of it up. This polenta dish was ridiculously quick and easy to make, ridiculously filling and ridiculously low in calories - and of course anything containing broccoli is bound to be right up my street!

I made some garlic mushrooms to go with it and drizzled the whole thing with some balsamic glaze - yum!

It's beginning to look a lot like...

...CHRISTMAS! Yay!

Apologies for the complete lack of blogging action recently - I've been ridiculously busy and my internet connection at home has been playing up. Anyway, here I am! Since I last posted, I've done all sorts - I put on a posh dress and went to a ball, I drank far too much at the running club's Christmas party, and I did a bit of celeb-spotting at the work Christmas lunch.

I also managed a PB on my usual Wednesday night 4.4-mile run - look!

I'd promised myself a night off, as it was the day after the aforementioned work do and I was anticipating a monster hangover, but I actually woke up feeling fine and therefore had no excuse for not getting out there for a run. I'd joked with one of the running club chaps that he should coach me to a PB, and he was as good as his word - he paced me round and I knocked a whole minute off my previous best! Just goes to show what I can do when I actually put some effort in...!

I've also been doing some Christmas shopping and baking - this year I made little gift bags for my friends with all sorts of homemade goodies inside, like rhubarb gin, caramel apple jam, and chocolate, cherry and almond cookies. And I also made some gingerbread men for some vegan friends of mine - they were the ones I made a vegan banana and mango loaf for a few months ago, but unfortunately I'd somehow managed to forget that my friend Janet hates bananas, so that didn't go down quite as well as planned! So this time I wanted to make sure I made something extra delicious, and this recipe from The Post Punk Kitchen was fab. I think my mini gingerbread man cutter must have been extra small, because I got hundreds of the little buggers! They looked brilliant all packaged up and ready to go - I just hope they've survived the post!

I've only got two days at work before I head down to the Westcountry for a (well-deserved, I like to think) Christmas break, but I'm sure I'll be taking lots of photos and I'll try to blog about all of our festive adventures as often as I can!

WIAW: Catching Up...

I haven't taken part in What I Ate Wednesday for weeks - I've just been ridiculously busy, and then last Tuesday, when I had all sorts of good intentions about photographing my evening meal, it ended up looking like this:

Whoops.

But today I remembered to take pictures of everything, hoorah! I started off with a new breakfast experiment - Mornflake 'Oats 2 Go' with added oatbran. The boxes of oat sachets were on special offer in the Co-Op near work so I bought some, and they're really nice! Plus the box is really cheery on a dull winter morning.

Then I returned to an old lunch favourite - baked potato with cottage cheese. Excuse the rubbish photo - the lighting in the kitchen at work leaves a lot to be desired! I'd originally planned to have a baked sweet potato, but Waitrose didn't have any (!) so I had to have an ordinary one. It's hiding somewhere, under a pile of broccoli (which I added to bump up the veg quota in the absence of the sweet potato) and some onion and chive cottage cheese.

Once I got home it was time for a pre-run snack - usually I don't put my rice cakes and cereal bar on a pretty plate, but I thought I would seeing as I was going to be taking a photo of it!

Had a decent run - I managed 39:38, which is just under 9-minute miles! I've been stuck on 40 minutes for ages, so it was nice to get a 39. And then, finally, supper! Just look at the amount of effort I put into styling my plate. Oh, wait...I just ate it out of the bowl it came in...

I had planned to have egg and beans on toast, but then I felt like I really ought to go all-out on the veg, so I went to M&S and got one of their new Thai noodle soup bowl things, which you just add water to and microwave. As you can see, I clearly have some kind of broccoli problem, because I couldn't resist adding some of that and some Brussels sprouts just to make absolutely sure I got my five-a-day!

Head on over to Peas and Crayons to see what the other WIAW-ers have been eating!

WIAW: Running on Full

It's Wednesday again already! How on earth did that happen? And Wednesday means it's time for this...

Yep, it's WIAW! Today began as days usually begin at the moment. Look at the lovely leaf on my 'heritage' apple!

Said apple ended up on top of my morning porridge - my usual mix of oats and wheatbran and date and coconut porridge, although I'm slightly bored now and am quite looking forward to finishing the tub! I think when it's done I'll just get some plain oats and wheatbran and then add different things to it.

Then lunch was an M&S Super Wholefoods salad with blueberries and mango (and quinoa, pearl barley, cranberries, raisins, pumpkin seeds and various other things) - and of course, being broccoli-obsessed as I am, I bought one of the handy little mini bags of broccoli that M&S do and microwaved that to add into my salad. Yum yum!

Then I came home and had another bowl of porridge and my usual pre-run rye toast with peanut butter. I didn't bother taking pictures of those! I wouldn't usually have the porridge as well, but I'd planned to run 10 miles so thought I should have something extra. In the end I didn't run 10 miles - there was only a small group doing that route and they were all going to be way faster than me, and I didn't know the route so I'd either have got lost or slowed them all down, and as they're training for things I didn't think that would be fair! So I ran the middle distance, 4.4 miles, and made sure I kept up a decent 9:30-mile pace.

When I got back, I had the chocolate hemp shake I'd made before my run - I didn't really need it but it was sitting in the fridge so I thought I might as well have it! I tried the strawberry hemp powder on Monday night and it was actually much nicer than the chocolate, which surprised me!

And then I had a proper dinner - I always need something quick and easy after running club, as I don't usually get home until 8:45pm, and tonight I decided to use up the bag of spinach and ricotta tortellini that kept falling out of the freezer at me every time I opened the door. I just fried up some mushrooms and added garlic, herbs and a mini tub of extra-light Philadelphia, and mixed it all in with the pasta. It was lovely - I haven't had pasta for ages!

What I Ate Wednesday (WIAW)

I've been meaning to join in with this fantastic weekly blog event for ages, and now here I am! What I Ate Wednesday is the brainchild of Jennifer at Peas and Crayons, and the idea is simple - you just post on a Wednesday telling everyone what you've eaten. It doesn't have to be Wednesday's food - plenty of people pick a different day and just post about it on the Wednesday.

Unfortunately I totally forgot to take photos of my breakfast and lunch, but here goes...

Breakfast was my usual porridge mix - I have a big tub with a mixture of oats and wheatbran and Waitrose date and coconut porridge, and I take a portion of that with me to work every day. Then I just mix it with water, microwave it for about two minutes, and add a splash of milk. While British strawberries are still in the shops I've been having plenty of those chopped up on top of my porridge, but I might move on to apples soon!

Then lunch was a bowl of New Covent Garden Indian Summer soup, which was delicious. I'd never tried it before, but it was coconutty and fragrant and mildly spiced and very filling thanks to all the lentils! I also had a bag of Kallo sea salt and balsamic vinegar mini rice cakes, and a 'heritage' British apple (I bought a big bag of them from the Co-Op supermarket near work) which tasted just like the ones from my mum and dad's trees.

And then I came home and started taking photos of my food! Wednesday nights are running club nights, so when I got home I had a slice of rye toast with a little bit of Whole Earth organic smooth peanut butter...

...and a spoonful of bee pollen. I found this jar in the supermarket in Portugal for about 4 Euros, which was a total bargain! It's meant to be ridiculously good for you, and I think it's yummy, so I'm giving it a go!

And then I went running and had a great time! It's too dark to run through the parks these days, so there are now three options for the club's evening runs - a 3.4-mile, a 4.6-mile and a 5.6-mile. I did the 5.6-mile route and LOVED it - it was the first run in weeks that I'd genuinely enjoyed. My shoes felt great, my hip didn't hurt, it was a nice cool evening, the route was good fun, I ran it in 53:16 which is perfectly respectable...I feel like I've rediscovered my running mojo!

When I got home I had this dubious-looking treat waiting for me!

It's a protein shake made with Good Hemp chocolate Gym Shake powder. Nic over at The Fit Writer (who, by the way, just bagged herself second place in the BNBF British bodybuilding finals - only her third competition ever!) kindly sent me a shaker bottle and a few hemp protein powder samples, and I had a go for the first time tonight. It's an interesting taste (I couldn't think what it reminded me of until it dawned on me that it tasted like the smell of horse feed!) but one I think I could get used to, and its nutritional profile is fantastic. I can almost feel it repairing my muscles!

And then supper was leftover curry with cauliflower, chickpeas, tomatoes, spinach and peppers, topped with a poached egg. The egg was slightly overdone, but I have a thing about runny whites and would rather overdo it than end up with horrible undercooked egg!

A definite running theme...

On Sunday, when thousands were taking part in the Great North Run, I popped down to Chiswick for a little run of my own - a 10k fun run which was part of Yellow Umbrella Day. I'd never actually done an organised 10k before, and it was great fun. As it was a fun run, the route was apparently 'just over' 10k, and there were a few points where we had to climb great big flights of steps to get on and off bridges and whatnot - I'm using those as excuses for the fact that I didn't quite manage to hit my target of running it in under an hour! Instead I managed 1:00.24 - gutted!

There were plenty of people from my running club there, which was great to see - here we all are before the start!

After the race, there was a company offering free five-minute sports massages to the runners, so I had one - blimey did it HURT, but it was brilliant! I wish I could afford to have regular massages - although they did give me a voucher for a one-hour massage for £30, which I think I'll definitely use at some point.

Then last night I went over to the City for a talk by Micah True, otherwise known as Caballo Blanco. I read Born to Run by Christopher McDougall a while ago and found it really interesting - the book is all about ultra-long-distance running, but it focuses particularly on the Tarahumara tribe and their incredible talent for running, and on the year a group of American runners joined the Tarahumara for an ultramarathon through the Copper Canyon - a race that had been started several years previously by the mysterious Caballo Blanco. It was a fascinating talk, all about how Micah got into long-distance running, how he met the Tarahumara and how he wanted to reconnect them with their running heritage. He's a very humble and self-effacing character, and it was great to hear more from his side - about the way his annual race helps the Tarahumara (he provides corn and money as prizes, with everyone who completes the race receiving 500lbs of corn) and about the challenges they face from the encroaching modern world. If you're into running and you have the chance to go and hear him speak, I'd recommend it!

The XT Memorial Mile...

Once upon a time, my friend Nic (channel swimmer, copywriter, journalist and now champion bodybuilder!) had a black and white canine training partner called XT. Sadly, a couple of years ago XT passed away suddenly, and every year since then Nic has run a mile in his memory (and in memory of the other dogs we've loved and lost). She posted on her blog asking others to join in - running, walking, swimming, cycling or otherwise ambling a mile at some point over the weekend.

And my mum and I joined in - we're doing a Race for Life on Saturday 23rd so I dragged Mum out for a bit of a training session! We did three miles and I'm dedicating the first one to XT, Basil, Ruddles and everyone else who's lost a dearly loved pet recently. I ran my Memorial Mile in 10:50, which is ridiculously slow compared to my usual 9-minute mile pace, but understandable when you consider the fact that the entire mile involved running up an absolutely enormous and very steep hill! I did then do another two 9-minute miles afterwards!



You can read about everyone else's XT Memorial Miles on Nic's blog.

Post-run feast...

I haven't posted much about running lately, and that's because it's been a bit rubbish lately! After our amazing half-marathon triumph, we've done a couple of 9.5-milers, but our times have been really quite embarrassingly disappointing. I think it's a combination of the weather being warm(ish) and the fact that I've been a little wrung-out and exhausted just recently.

But this evening we ran 7.5 miles (for the first time in ages) and despite it being a really warm and sunny evening (and you all know how much I hate running in anything approaching warm weather...) we managed 1:08, which is perfectly respectable. So I'm feeling a little bit better about the whole running thing. And after this evening's run, I made a fantastic (and enormous) salad with mixed leaves, some 'Sweetfire' marinated beetroot (39p in the reduced section in Tesco, what a bargain!) roasted broccoli, sweet potato and a yummy fried egg. Perfect!