May, 2014 - AnnaTheApple

May 12, 2014

Another wedding and yet more cake

I’ve had four days off and yet I feel like I’m even more tired. We’ve just been crazy busy. But in a nice way.

Ben and me had Thursday and Friday off as we had a wedding Thursday afternoon and were staying the night in the hotel where the reception was being held. On Thursday morning we tried to get some boring house jobs done and also sort my new car out (very exciting!) Then we headed to the wedding, which was being held in the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth.

Basically it’s this huge tower-like structure where you can go up in a lift and see amazing views. Well, I say amazing…it’s about as amazing as it can get in Portsmouth 😉 Because we got there about 40 minutes before the wedding began we waited in the cafe and had a sneaky bit of cake.

We had a slice of carrot cake and millionaire shortbread and had half each of both. This is big news as I never normally share cake!

Despite the weather being less than stellar, the views were fantastic. It was really quite a unique and lovely ceremony.

And there was a glass floor you could stand on (without shoes) and look straight down. Very cool.

After the ceremony we headed back to the hotel for the reception. Despite my previous cake, I was getting hungry. The meal was a buffet and in true Anna fashion I started getting antsy. I hate buffets. I’m always scared they’ll not be enough food – and consequently eat way too much. When will I ever learn? Ben said he thinks it’s hilarious, but I tried to make him understand by saying imagine that the bar was a buffet format and there were only so many drinks available. His eyes lit up in panic. Exactly!

I ate quite a lot of sweets from the sweet buffet too…and three *little* pieces of wedding cake. I felt quite full by the end. And rather rough. It was a good evening though with lots of great company and banter.

The sign reads: “I’m here for the cake”

I woke up feeling a little delicate and quite bloated. Not good!

Then we had a mad whirl-wind of a day where we had to dash back home to Southampton to pick up my paper bit of my driving licence to then drive back to Portsmouth to sort my new car out. We’ve officially bought a new Fiat 500!

And amazingly it’ll be ready this week as they had one in stock to the spec we wanted. How lucky is that??

Then from there we had to go home, do the food shop, go to the post office and pick up our road bikes from Halfords. And I wanted to do a bit of baking for a party I was going to the next day. Whew.

As we don’t have a bike rack we could only get one bike safely in our car so I cycled mine home (it was only 4 miles). It was great to get a proper feel for the bike. It felt really good. It fit well, I felt very comfortable and it was light and speedy – from my limited experience!

Unfortunately we don’t have anywhere to put them yet as our shed is rather full. So they’re in the living room for the moment.

Looks fine, right…? Alfie doesn’t even care.

After Parkrun on Saturday morning I headed to a surprise party for our lovely previous ladies’ captain who’s currently pregnant. A fair few of us made cakes and it was all very lovely. She was very surprised and chuffed (I think!) I brought cupcakes but forgot to take a photo. They looked liked cupcakes… 😉

Obviously I was in my element with the cake…

Which was well documented by our current ladies captain (I’ve stolen the photos from her – thank you, Kelly!)

But this was the best part:

Photo credit – stolen from Karen (thank you!)

Now, I’m not a baby person but that is just adorable! Mini Hedge End Running Club gear. Karen’s baby will be the best dressed baby in town 🙂

On Sunday we went to the Alton 10 mile race where Ben aimed to beat his PB (around 1:26 I think) and I planned to just run with him and help push him along and keep him company. I’ll do a recap of my latest runnings in another post. Spoiler alert: Ben got his PB 🙂

Whew. Lots going on!!

Next weekend is the Netley 10k which is our running club championships (lots of medals up for grabs for different achievements). I’ve eaten so much rubbish the past few days (yep, I include cake in that) that I’ve decided to go on a bit of a ‘detox’ this week. I say detox but what I mean is a ‘cake and rubbish free zone’. No cake, chocolate or ‘big’ treats until I finish the race. I feel like I went overboard the past couple of days and I want to get back to feeling good and in race shape!

How was your weekend?

What’s the best part of a wedding for you? I’d be lying if I said the cake was one of my favourite parts…

What’s your car like? I’ve never had a new car so this is very exciting. I will be cleaning it every weekend…maybe.

How do you deal with a weekend or few days of eating rubbish?

May 8, 2014October 28, 2016

North Dorset Marathon Relay

This week feels very strange to me. The UK had Monday off as a bank holiday and then I was only at work for Tuesday and Wednesday before having Thursday and Friday off (another wedding, hurrah!).

Anyway I mentioned in my last post that I ran the North Dorset Marathon as part of a relay team. There were four of us in total from (all female). Quite a few people from the running club were there as part of the relay (we had four teams in total), or part of the marathon, or to support.

Ben and me had to get up at the joyous time of 5.20am on Sunday to meet some guys for a lift at 6am. I ate my porridge in the car in a state of tired confusion.

There was a tiny part of me that was jealous of the marathon runners. I much preferred the idea of running slower for longer than faster for shorter, if that made sense. But the course is very hilly so in retrospect I’m happy I didn’t!

One of our team members had made us all hair ribbon ties to wear which were amazing.

A go faster bobble!

Coincidentally Ben and me were down to run the last legs of the relay so despite the race starting at 8.30am, we actually had around 2.5 hours until we were running. This was both good and bad. It gave my body time to wake up and get going, but also there was a lot of nervous energy coursing through me for an extended period of time. I sort of wanted to just “get it over with”, you know?

Before the race keeping warm in jeans – he didn’t run in them! (Ouch)

Actually though there really wasn’t much time to wait around and dwell. After seeing our first lady off for her first leg, we had to dash to the Race Mobile and get going to the hand-over point for the second leg. After getting there, parking, using the loo (I used each loo at each handover point – my pee likes to save itself up apparently), we stood there with the other running club guys and supporters and cheered on the super fast marathoners zooming through and other relay teams. It was a lot of fun to cheer people on and we saw our running club marathoners pass which was great. And it was also fun cheering on cyclists that happen to pass through too…and the odd car hehe “strong driving!”

Princess Leia, Darth Vader and some other Star Wars characters were out in force (tee hee) as it was May 4th (Star Wars Day). I am hugely impressed with them being able to run in full costume. Amazing.

As soon as our first lady appeared the hand-over commenced and then we rushed to the Race Mobile to get to the next location. This was a bit more hairy as we only had 4.5 miles (the first leg was 7ish miles). Our poor first team member barely had a chance to catch her breath! But she’d set us up well for a strong start.

The next location was fairly similar. At this point I was getting hungry. It was about 10am and having had breakfast a good four hours ago I was starting to wilt a bit. Luckily the other guys had the forethought to have brought more than just apples with them so I snacked on half a bagel.

The weather was lovely, though a little chilly in the shade. You just knew it would get hot on the run. Our ladies were running really strong and soon it was my turn to wait for the handover of the baton. I started doing a little warm-up as I waited. We knew only the rough time of when our runner would be coming in from working out predicted splits.

Warming up

After seeing my team mate in the distance I whipped off my long running top to reveal my superman costume…whoops, no, to reveal my vest underneath with the bib ready to go go go.

As I grabbed the baton and headed off I felt exhilarated and ready. I knew that my section was fairly hilly (well, the whole course was really) and it was 6.8miles. I’d set myself a very loose target of a pace 7.30-8minute miles and just see how it went. It was a strange race if I’m honest as it wasn’t just my race, it was the team’s race. So that added some pressure but also relieved me a bit as it wasn’t just my time that mattered.

With a very small field of runners (less than 500 I think) it was quite lonely out there. I settled into a nice rhythm around 7.30min/miles and felt that I was comfortably pushing it but nothing extreme (not a Parkrun/5k exertion if you know what I mean). This did mean however that I quickly came upon marathon runners. Obviously I’d just started, my legs were fresh and I was only running about 7 miles so it made sense I’d be overtaking marathoners. But I felt very bad. I made it very clear when I ran past I was a relay runner and tried to encourage them (not sure if this was the best thing to do but I felt I couldn’t just overtake them).

I ran with one guy who was lovely and we chatted for about 0.5 miles until he told me to push on as he was trying to keep up with me which was ruining his pacing – he said something about a “male ego” 😉 I ran past another guy who grunted “hmph, relay runner” when I overtook. When I asked him if he knew how far we had left to go (as I couldn’t do the maths from my Garmin) he said in a very clipped voice “no”. I quickly apologised and headed off. Don’t annoy the marathoners, Anna!

After passing the 25 mile marker I knew I could push it on. I’m so pleased with how I felt during this race. I never once felt like I was dying, or it was too hard. It felt good.

This gives me huge confidence for my upcoming 10k (worst distance) in a few weeks.

I finished literally as my team arrived after getting to the finish and parking the car. Fairly amusing. We came second female relay team and our overall time was 3:23:05. Amazing, super running ladies! But it seriously made me realise I am so far away from that sort of time doing a marathon on my own.

One of our speedy marathoner’s had finished already in a very nice time of 3.17.xx (he did Paris as well…oh and he was the one who cycled with us on Monday – fresh as a daisy!) We then stood to cheer our other relay teams and marathoners.

Our other marathoners did amazingly too. Seriously impressive times considering the course profile and warm/sunny conditions. To be honest, I’m just hugely impressed at anyone who completed that marathon – my leg was hard enough with those hills! Paris was hard but that was flat. Not sure how keen I’d be to do this marathon…maybe when I’m a bit more experienced.

Strong running from the hubby

Ben’s relay team did great too with a time of 4:02:22. The morale was just brilliant and I loved supporting everyone and hearing how everyone’s run went.

As our team came second we got a little trophy (wish I’d have taken a photo) and a bottle of cider each. Not bad at all!

I definitely recommend a relay marathon to anyone; the morale within the team, the fun of driving off to the next location and supporting the marathoners is just a brilliant experience.

Have you ever done a relay?

What’s your ideal course profile in terms of terrain, popularity, length and elevation? I think mine would be a half marathon, off road with no more than 500 people (Cheddar Gorge half anyone…?).

Do you talk to people in races or do you like to be left alone? If I’m pushing hard then I tend to not be able to chat away but I do like a good natter in a race.

May 6, 2014November 8, 2018

Cars, bikes and a snowman

Oh man what a weekend. There were a fair few ups and downs I have to say!

Friday ended appallingly. I was driving home from work and just before getting on the motorway and I was stuck in the usual stop-start traffic. The roads were wet and the car in front put its breaks on a little sooner than I was expecting. I slammed my foot fully to the floor and watched as my car slid forward and knocked into the back of the car in front. My poor little Corsa didn’t stand a chance.

The other person’s car was fine – no superficial damage anyway. He was a nice guy but I felt terrible. So embarrassing and stressful 🙁

But anyway, I was fine, he was fine. The only thing not fine was my car. The damage isn’t too bad but I’m pretty sure it’ll be a write-off as it’s such an old banger. Ironically, I had spent some time looking at car insurance reviews on Consumers Advocate not too long before this happened. Ben and me came to the decision that a brand new car would probably be better for me considering my mileage to work everyday. I need something a bit more reliable, safe and economic. Every silver lining, eh? Fairly rubbish way to start the bank holiday weekend though.

Saturday we had a pacing event on at our local Parkrun. I had volunteered to run the 24 minute pace. I was quite excited about doing this as I’d never paced before. But I was very nervous as I was being relied upon!

My bib was huge. I looked sort of naked!!

As we headed to the start I was suddenly followed and surrounded by people hoping to achieve 24 minutes or there abouts. No pressure…

I had planned to run 7.50minute/miles as this would give a bit of lee-way for the ‘nubbin’ of 0.1 mile. I kept fairly consistent to that pace, though I slowed on the up-hills and then sped up on the down-hills to compensate. One guy ran up next to me and said “you do know you’re going slower than you should be for that target?” This hugely panicked me. I checked my watch. Nope, I had gone through the first mile in perfect time. I tried to say no I was fine but he didn’t believe me. He told me I should speed up. I didn’t, but I kept panicking.

My group dwindled a bit as the run continued and this made me panic a bit more but also feel bad because there was nothing really I could do for them. I had to stick to the plan whether they kept up or not.

I finished in 23.45 with a consistent pace. I got thanked by a fellow runner for helping him PB and other runners said they still kept me in their sights despite dropping off. This hugely boosted me. I was so chuffed! The man who had criticised my pace came up and apologised me afterwards as well, saying he misjudged my pace. Mmm, yes, thanks for stressing me out!

After Parkrun we got ready quickly and then headed out to find some road bikes with a friend. We went to quite a few different shops. Big ones, like Decathlon, and small local ones. We got some good information from the different salesmen (what gears were good, what frame sizes we should be looking at, price differences, etc.)

We tested a few out as well. In the end, the price was right and the spec looked good (from our limited knowledge!) for two Carreras from Halfords. We’re not after all singing and all dancing, or top of the range. We wanted something in our price range that fitted well and met our requirements. It had good reviews on the website so we bit the bullet!

TDF for Ben, Virtuoso for me. Maybe these aren’t the best bikes in the world, but for now they’ll be fine I’m sure. We’re hardly going to use them every day or rock out a 60 miler on them any time soon!

On Sunday we did the Dorset Marathon relay race. I was part of a team of four ladies and Ben was in a team of four men. In our running club I think we had four teams in total? And we had several guys running the whole marathon. I’ll do a recap in another post. It went well though and was such a fun day.

Monday was my first ever riding experience on a road bike. Though we’ve bought our new bikes, we haven’t collected them yet so I was borrowing a friend’s bike and shoes. I went out with three other guys from the club and it was good fun!

I was definitely the slowest by far and probably holding them up a fair bit. But it was a fun, sociable ride. The weather was lovely. But it was tough, don’t get me wrong. Jeeze, you think you’re fit until you try something new!

And quite hilly. But the down hills were so much fun! Wind in the hair, crazy speed (for me), exhilarating fun!

I don’t really know what’s fast or not at this stage, but what I do know is it felt more like a long run in terms of endurance rather than a speed session (which I guess you can see from my average speed). And I didn’t fall off once amazingly. I got used to the clip-on shoes and started getting the hang of gears and positioning on the bike.

I was shattered though afterwards. My bum hurt (despite wearing new padded shorts), my legs felt tired and my wrists actually ached a bit as well. Then it was off out to look for new cars.

After going round different car dealers I’m pretty much 100% decided on a Fiat 500. A very iconic and ‘girlie’ car perhaps, but small and dinky enough for me (and very safe, economical and eco-friendly). We’ve spec’ed up what we want so it’ll be a wait yet. Ho hum. Well, I say ‘we’ spec’ed up. Ben pretty much did this for me as I literally don’t know anything about cars. Ben had a lot of fun though as you can imagine 😉

We then went to Nando’s and had chicken. Perfect day, really! Topped off only with an evening of lolling on the couch in a chicken-induced coma watching Frozen. Ben’s face when the characters started singing was hilarious. He’s very much a Disney novice and didn’t quite expect how much singing there would be. He did enjoy it though and I heard him singing “Do you want to build a snowman?” while getting ready this morning. Excellent.

Have you ever paced a race before?

What car do you have? I’m such a car novice. Ben did all the talking in the dealership!

What’s your longest bike ride?

Have you seen Frozen? I loved it. Disney doing what Disney does best. And any film with a Princess Anna (though said ‘Arrrrnnna’) is fine by me.

May 1, 2014May 1, 2014

I’ll always be a runner but…

I’m thinking of getting a road bike. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a runner. Running is at top of my list and, for the foreseeable future, will continue to be.

However, I know I can’t just run. And the probability of getting injured again is quite high (8/10 runners every year get injured…how depressing that??). So I need a back-up plan to stop myself from falling down a well of despair when this happens – because let’s be honest, it’s not if it’s when.

What started this thought process was that I quit my gym membership this month (how very liberating!). I haven’t been for ages. Spin wasn’t doing me any favours as my IT band always felt terrible afterwards and I actually hated every single of the 45 minutes I’m there. I also hate using cardio machines. When I’m injured the last thing I want to do is get on a machine to further my depression. Also, we have a ‘mini’ gym at work which is perfect for all my strength workouts. So really I’m not missing out on much. Except for some cross-training…which is how the road bike scenario has occurred.

Quite a few people at my running club are into their cycling and going on ‘Big Rides’ so my interest was peaked. They’ve given me so much good advice (as have some other non-runners I’ve been asking too – it’s amazing how many cyclists I actually know). Though I do feel a little overwhelmed with information. Running is so much more simple – believe me!

This weekend I’m hopefully going to be borrowing a road bike off one of them and joining a group from the club for a 30 mile ride on Monday morning. Gargh! Though I’m terrified because I actually don’t know how good a cyclist I am, I’m very excited. I do love a good personal challenge and it’ll be great if the weather’s nice. Though I’ll be using clip-on shoes…I’ll keep you informed of how many times I fall off the bike.

The plan is that I’m hoping to get myself a relatively inexpensive road bike soonish (not a rubbish one but not one I need remortgage the house for). Then I’m thinking maybe once a week, or every two weeks, to get a good ride in. All supplementary to my running of course 😉

Now that the weather is getting better(ish) and the mornings and evenings lighter it seems like a good time to start. Ben is keen too (and secretly I think he hopes he can out-cycle me as I can currently out-run him 😉 so it’s all looking good. Just need to get kitted out with those oh-so-attractive padded shorts, get road bikes and zoom zoom zoom. Or, more likely, amble along slowly, fall off, continue to amble along slowly.

This is not a precursor for me becoming a triathlete though. I am fine with just running events at the moment. This is just about trying some different and hopefully distract my body from getting injured 😉

If any cyclist out there have any advice, I’m all ears!

Do you enjoy cycling?

What cross-training do you do?

Have you ever taken up a sport your not familiar with?