Celebration - AnnaTheApple

November 23, 2015November 23, 2015

Grumpy running, good snacking and a leg workout

Brrrrrrrrrrrr!! It is cold! Sorry to state the bleeding obvious but it really is. OK we don’t have snow and I know we’re far better off than you warriors up North or in countries with lots of snow, so apologies for my pathetic moaning.

Saturday morning I optimistically put on my shorts for parkrun but after taking Alfie for a quick walk I realised this would not be a wise move. It was so much colder than it had been in the week – and very windy.

I had intended to wear all three of my new running tops and take one off on each lap (as I mentioned, jokingly, in a previous post – then people actually wanted me to do it) but it was too cold for short sleeves! Before realising how cold it was I did put them on with the intention of wearing them…Top layer was to be the Bournemouth finisher’s t-shirt, then the Marathon Talk t-shirt, then finally the parkrun 50 t-shirt.It was going to be so good… Then I stepped outside with Alfie and thought “yeah this isn’t going to happen”. There was no way I’d want to strip off any layers when I was running!! Instead I put on some leggings and a long-sleeved top.

I got to parkrun to meet the other set-up crew guys and we were all pretty miserable and cold. It was windy and wet as well as stupidly cold. As the minutes ticked closer to the start I started to feel more and more apprehensive and, well, moody about the whole thing. I was so close to just going home. My muscles all felt really cold, creaky and just niggly. I was worried about my knee and worried about needing to stop.

I did a quick warm-up with some of the guys and I just felt myself sinking further and further into a bad mood and was certain I couldn’t run the whole parkrun.

At the start my friend Mark realised I wasn’t in the best of moods and, bless him, he tried to pull me out of it by running with me and chatting. At first I just wanted to stop and give up – I gave him fairly blunt responses to his questions and conversation attempts. I was so cold and I couldn’t warm up. I couldn’t seem to run any faster either, and I was nervous to push it anyway because of my knee, which was feeling uncomfortable.

Mark realised how cold I was and gave me his jacket mid-run which was nice of him and did help. Possibly because I wasn’t running very fast (for me) and how cold the wind was I just didn’t get warm until the 3rd mile. By then I had started to come out from my dark place and actually be a nice human being to Mark. He was very patient with me and I wouldn’t have blamed him to have left me!

In the end I ran 27:18, my slowest parkrun in a long while and possibly one of the worst in terms of enjoyment. We were also on the winter course which is worse anyway in terms of hills (and wind). I was so glad when it was over. My knee didn’t hurt but it was uncomfortable, but given the conditions I’ll take it!

I was in such a better mood afterwards as you can imagine. I was warmer, relaxed and just glad to have got it done. And there was cake made by my lovely friend, Sheryl, who was celebrating her 150th parkrun!!

Mar bar crispies and Malteaser bites

I was in my happy place once again 🙂 The hot drink in the cafe afterwards was much needed as well!

Later on my friend, Tom, was celebrating his 30th birthday with a Mexican and Cowboy themed party. His wife, my close friend Louise, had made some really tasty cupcakes and an immense Cactus cake. There was a spread of nachos and dips and a chilli slow cooking as well.There were churro cupcakes (with cinnamon sugar and a doughnut texture) and piñata cupcakes that had Smarties in the middle!! I can attest that both cupcakes were very tasty 😉

I also brought round some popcorn I’d found in Budgens.For 99p and buy one get one free I call that a definite bargain! Marshmallow popcorn?? Yes please! To be fair though, it actually just tasted like sweet popcorn with a slight marshmallow hint.1 I think I was expecting chunks of marshmallow stuck to pieces of popcorn (what an idea, eh??) and the salted popcorn was basically sweet and salty. But tasty nonetheless!

I didn’t do a very good job at the fancy dress by just having a checked shirt so Louise did my hair in plaits for me and lent me her hat 😉I couldn’t stay for the evening sadly as my parents had invited me over for a meal with some friends, which also meant I didn’t see the main cake being cut 🙁 Lou, the lovely friend she is, said I could pop over the next day to pick some up. Always need friends like that in your life!After seeing Lou and Tom on Sunday morning, I headed to the gym for my leg workout. I don’t know if you guys care to see what I did but here it is anyway…

Squat: (warmup sets first): 4x 65kg, 6x 62.5kg, 8x 62.5kg x3, 10x 60kg x2, 8 x60kg
Box squat: 12x 60kg, 12x 65kg, 12x 70kg, 10x 75kg x2
Deadlift (warmup sets first): 6x 65kg x2, 8x 62.5kg x2, 10x 60kg, 10x 55kg x2
Hack squat: 12x 47.6kg, 12x 57.6kg x4
Sumo squat: 20x 10kg, 20x 20kg x4

Followed by some glute kickbacks/sidekicks on the cable machine and ab work. It’s a lot quieter on Sundays than Saturdays so it was nice not to feel crowded. The hack squat was a new machine to me, which focuses primarily on the quads. I prefer the leg press machine but it wasn’t working annoyingly. The hack squat machine was quite painful on my shoulders and left marks, despite there being cushions on it. It wasn’t a fun experience!

Anyway the rest of the day was same-old same-old: Alfie walks, housework and watching a new-to-me TV series, True Detective. The first episode was soooo s.l.o.w. I’m hoping it’ll pick up. My physio leant me the box-set so I need to get through it fairly quickly (I feel bad hanging on to borrowed things for too long).

What’s your favourite popcorn flavour?

What machines do you like to use at the gym?

What’s the coolest shaped cake you’ve seen (in real life, not on the Internet!)?

July 13, 2015

Too much of a good thing

I think I need another day off…this weekend was so rammed, I’m not sure I’ve recovered.

It was my friend’s wedding on Saturday in Dorset. I live in Southampton so that’s about an hour and a half away. Originally I was going to camp there overnight as that’s what the invitation stipulated guests to do as they had an entire field booked for the wedding where the marquee was set up. Then I (thankfully) found out my couple friend and their one year old son were driving up and back. So I scored a lift with them, hurrah!

I sadly couldn’t make parkrun (breaking my 18 week streak *sob*) but I got up early to get in a four mile tempo run. I warmed up on the first mile and then aimed for 7min/miles for three miles and I was meant to cool down on the final 0.75 but I was really pushing for time and needed to get home quickly. Standard Anna procedure: only give yourself the very bare minimum of time and end up rushing like a madwoman.

The run went well though and I felt strong. I did miss parkrun but it was an OK alternative, even if I was running in the opposite direction to those running to the local parkrun 🙁

It was so warm and then having to have a shower and blow dry my hair was just a nightmare. Nothing like feeling super hot and sticky while trying to get into a nice dress.

Like I said previously, I went for a very simple dress so I could jazz it up with accessorises. My mum has lots of lovely fascinators so I went for a cream one and added pretty statement necklace.

For the first time in ages I wore heels! I sensibly took a pair of flip flops with me as well for after the ceremony when we got to the field – there’s only so much heel wearing I do.

The ceremony was gorgeous, set in a beautiful courtyard on the grounds of a castle.

It was fairly windy though which was slightly problematic for my skater skirt! It was a beautiful ceremony with Sarah, the bride, arriving on her horse (seated on it in the traditional side-on way ladies used to back in the day) and I felt a bit emotional – which is so unlike me! It was such a lovely touch as Sarah is very into her horse riding and the couple are both very outdoorsy (they were camping that evening too!).

Her dress was beautiful too. Nicely fitted with lots of lace detailing – she looked stunning. Afterwards we had the usual photo session and there was homemade elderflower champagne – oooh er!! Delicious.

We then left for the field for the wedding breakfast. My best friend (and lift), Louise, looked lovely in a white and blue dress with matching blue heels. Yummy mummy indeed!

We both enjoyed a glass (*cough* or three) of Pimms and I felt far more relaxed in my flip flops. Unfortunately I’d applied my suntan lotion a little too late and could already feel the slight sun burn tingling. Gargh!

The marquee was fantastic. They’d done everything themselves in terms of arranging furniture, catering, doing all the decorations and flowers. Honestly, Pinterest would have exploded.

Outside there were hay bales to sit on and space hoppers, giant Jenga, balls…it was brilliant.

They had handmade jam favours that had labels saying “Spread the love”. I mean, wow! Such great attention to detail.

The food was BBQ food which was very tasty indeed. The sausages were really good quality and the beef burger handmade.

Lots of salad and BBQ sauce as well, of course 😉

The pudding was Eton mess, very light and tasty.

Ohh another glass of champagne, a sneaky gin and tonic…I was quite on my merry way. We played with the balls and space hoppers outside, danced lots and basically just enjoyed ourselves.

Then the fish and chip van turned up as the evening guests arrived. Now I don’t even like fish and chips and somehow there I was in the queue waiting my turn for a battered cod and greasy chips.

The portion was huge. Though that didn’t stop me from consuming all but three chips. Honestly, I have no idea what happened! But it tasted good and I enjoyed it. The chips weren’t those horrible soggy ones, they were nice and crispy. Not quite content with consuming a ridiculous amount of stodge I then proceeded to eat three (albeit small!) slices of wedding cake. I can only blame the good atmosphere, my lack of self-control and the alcohol. But you know what, it was bloody fantastic. I did feel sick though and far too full. And massively regretted wearing a belt 😉

As I headed outside to walk to the nearby toilet facilities an elderly man was staggering back. He stopped in front of me and said (quite politely) “Excuse me, but you have lovely legs”. I sort of laughed and said thank you and he continued saying “you made an old man feel young earlier in the courtyard when your skirt blew up. My pacemaker went wild”. I’m pretty sure I just stood there laughing awkwardly. What do you say to something like that?? It was somewhat flattering I suppose…

I have to say, there’s nothing like a wonderful wedding to make you feel quite significantly alone. I wouldn’t say I’m lonely at all right now, being newly single, but being at a wedding where there are lots of couples and love-themed things…well it does sort of salt the wounds a bit. I tried not to dwell on it and just enjoy myself.

Eventually though it was time to head off home around 10pm. I had nicely sobered up by this point (well, I had been drinking since 12) and felt very tired. When I got home and collapsed into bed I fell asleep immediately. Only to wake up at 1.30am to be sick several times (sorry if this is TMI). Not my finest hour. Especially considering I had a half marathon the next day, though thankfully it was at 10.45am and not far away so I would get a lie-in at least. But honestly, I felt so ill. Being sick did help but I also felt very cold and shaky. I reckon being in the sun all day and not hydrating properly along with the alcohol and stupid amounts of food really did a number on me. But hey ho, life is meant for living right??

Not the best way to prepare for a half marathon for definite, but I wasn’t planning on going for it anyway. It was just a nice catered training run on hilly and off-road terrain. PBs were certainly not on my mind! I’ll leave it there for now and recap the race in another post!

Do you enjoy weddings? What’s your favourite part? There’s a lot of standing around…but there is also cake 😉

What handmade touches have you noticed at weddings before?

Have you ever gone to a race hungover and feeling delicate?

June 22, 2015

A reluctant birthday and an almost sub-20 parkrun

It was my birthday on Friday. To be honest, I really wasn’t feeling it.

I went with the attitude that I could ignore it. Going to the gym, going to work and not doing anything Friday night was my aim. Obviously with Facebook you can’t quite hide the fact it’s your birthday and I appreciated all my birthday (and Twitter) ‘happy birthdays’ but other than that I was rather grumpy.

Turning 27 in itself isn’t bad at all, I know that. But I never imagined myself at 27 to be single, selling my marital home and looking for a flat to buy (something for another post!). It’s all rather depressing.

Anyway I was looking forward to parkrun. We were finally on the cricket pitch (fast and flat course only used occasionally). After the marathon on Sunday I took two full days off (I was meant to do yoga Tuesday but got my times wrong). But otherwise during the week I got back to the gym twice for my usual strength training and ran 4.5 miles on Thursday morning. All went well though all week I was just tired.

I really wanted to make a good go at parkrun though as it seemed a perfect opportunity. Generally it seems that the week after a marathon it’s a great time to bust out a good parkrun time. You still have marathon trained legs and as long as you’re not injured you tend to do quite well.

I drank a big cup of coffee in the morning (mistake) and headed to help set-up. The cricket pitch is easy to set-up because it’s just a big circle really.

I felt a lot of pressure on this parkrun and this was furthered when a few other guys from the running club said I should do well today because of the marathon. Arghh!

I’m not made for short, sharp sprints. My body doesn’t like 5ks. The entire time you’re running you’re in pain, your lungs are bursting and your whole body is telling you to stop. Give me a marathon any day! In my personal experience I’ve found that most of the marathon you’re running at a comfortable speed – it’s the mental monotony and the fatigue in your muscles you have to deal with, not the heart racing pain of a 5k (and 10ks – they’re much worse!). It was hard work from the start. It might look like I’m enjoying myself but honestly, they were well timed smiles for the cameras. Most of the time I was wishing it would end. What was also annoying was I had badly timed that coffee and really needed to pee. I had a sudden fear I’d pee myself! We’ve all heard the stories from other runners!! (Spoiler: I did not pee myself).

It was Iwan Thomas’ (400m Olympian and our local celeb) 50th parkrun and he was just ahead of me most of the race pushing a little lad on, giving him good encouragement. My music stopped working on the first lap (my iPhone’s still playing up) so I dropped it to some supporters and tried to use Iwan’s encouragement too 😉

My three goals were:

Beat 20:26 (my Netley Abbey parkrun PB)
Beat 20:16 (my overall parkrun PB and 5k PB)
Get a sub-20

Well by the second mile I knew the sub-20 wasn’t going to happen. I was lagging and just couldn’t keep pushing (the pee fear was also heavy on my mind). In the end I finished 20:06. Honestly I was just glad to stop 😉 I’m very pleased. Two out of three ain’t bad!

While I was chatting to people afterwards and starting to help tidy up I suddenly heard a chorus of “Happy birthday” begin. I turned round and there were loads of people from parkrun and my club singing me happy birthday…holding the most fantastic cake!!

A wonderfully talented lady, Roberta, from the club had baked it (apple flavour of course). It has an apple and a slice of cake on top, and it’s in my favourite colour (purple) with tiny little yellow icing trainers all round the edge. I’m over the moon!

OK so I know I said I wanted to ignore my birthday and felt very sorry for myself…well I was very chuffed. It’s pathetic to curl up in a ball and ignore the happy moments in life and this was certainly very happy and very much appreciated. My smile remained all day long. And I received a card which so many lovely people had signed – I almost cried. I didn’t though thankfully!

After parkrun we headed to the cafe and all indulged in a bit of cake, which tasted INCREDIBLE. I’m glad to say though that I was able to stock up my freezer with a few slices as well. Whew!

I stayed at my parents’ that night and had a very chilled evening (with a takeaway of course). I wanted to run the next morning but had no idea what distance to go for. In my head I thought anywhere between 6-10miles. When I started running though I knew I wasn’t in the right head space. My legs felt very heavy and very tired. Just not right, you know? I’d planned for the two weeks post marathon to be low mileage and recovery so I decided to be sensible and cut it short to 4.7 miles rather than just force the run.

I’m so glad I did. Mentally and certainly physically I need a break for a bit. I have a 10k next weekend that I want to go for but other than that it’s all going to be a bit directionless and chilled for a while, which is perfect.

My dad and me had agreed to postpone Father’s Day and have a joint celebration with my birthday in July as we’ve recently had so many meals out together it seemed sensible to save it for another month. So instead I went out to Winchester again to meet my friend and her lovely fluffy dog, Rain, for some chatting, walking and lunching.

I went for something new for lunch this time (even though the Caesar salad was calling me). A delicious goat’s cheese salad.

I must say though…I think I’d have preferred the Caesar!! Though it was tasty, just a little small.

Despite being a grumpy fart before the weekend began, it actually turned out to be a pretty damn good one! Despite my life being a bit upside down right now, I have so many lovely people in my life that remind me that it’s not all doom and gloom. Twenty-seven is a great age to start fresh and enjoy whatever life throws at me!

What do you prefer: short or long distance running?

What’s an essential salad requirement for you? For me it needs to be BIG. Small salads are side dishes, not main meals.

Do you have any local celebs near you? Unsurprisingly, Iwan Thomas did not bring cakes to celebrate his 50th parkrun…

February 16, 2015

A good normal weekend

Hello Monday! Hope you all had a lovely weekend, ours felt like old times again. The holiday is a distant memory sadly (one week of work pretty much wipes away all that joy away…).

This weekend started with a delicious meal of ribs. I’d love to say I marinated them myself but I didn’t. I just saw them in Tesco and spontaneously bought them. Though I have ribs on my recipe to do list for definite.

Both Ben and I agreed that though it said it was for two, you could have easily eaten one pack on your own. The portion size was a bit measly (though I might still be distorted by my holiday…). With the sweet potato fries though it worked OK, it was just slightly disappointing.

Saturday morning both Ben and I got ready for parkrun. I’ll do a post on my running (and Ben’s injury update) soon I promise (if you’re even interested!). As a cliff notes version, my running is going very well. I’m running three times a week while also going to the gym three times a week doing lots of bootcamp/strength and conditioning style routines. I feel less pressure and more love for running than I have in ages. It helps that I’m loving the gym and get a real sweat on there that I don’t feel the need to run as often as I used to as I know I’m getting stronger in other areas that will help my running. I’m still happy with my decision of deferring London as it would immediately panic me and pressure me to hit certain mileage as it’s so soon…but I do have races in the future lined up.

So parkrun. We helped set-up and there was much love for Ben returning which is always nice. I decided to push it as all my other runs have been easy. The course is the hardest one (the winter course) where, because it’s three laps, there are a total of six hills you need to get through (over?). I’m not really in a good running shape but felt like it was a sustained effort and a great workout to help get back to where I used to be. Third lady and 22:35 which I was over the moon with.

I also got my hair cut. This is monumental news as the last time I got it cut was April 2013 (THIS post). I tend to notice when it needs a cut because my arms start severely aching when I’m blow-drying. I was rather apologetic to the hairdresser but she said it actually didn’t look that bad for the length of time I’ve left it. I suppose there’s a compliment there? Anyway instead of being a cheapskate I actually paid for a quality cut rather than the cheaper place I usually go for…hairdressers were called technicians and the power doesn’t cut half way through a blow-dry!!

That being said, it still looks pretty much the same just a bit shorter! At least my arms will be happy…

Ah yes it was Valentine’s Day as well wasn’t it? Ben and me aren’t romantic and lovey-dovey so this passed us by. It’s also my dad’s birthday so we popped over to see my parent’s and treat them to a nice coffee in a lovely little tea room in Lee-on-Solent called The Tea Party.

We decided to forgo afternoon tea as we’ve all got back from a holiday and Ben and me have said February is a more ‘sensible’ (read: boring) month. I can assure you though, I found it hard to stop staring at the BEAUTIFUL cakes and it’s definitely an afternoon tea location to be trialled soon!

They serve alcohol as well so my mum had a lovely little glass of Prosecco in a baby sham glass as well as her tea, as you do. I stuck with a latte.

It was a lovely catch up and mourning of our respective holidays!

Sunday I went for a really good six mile run. It was one of those runs that just felt good. I felt strong, in the zone and found myself going faster than I had intended. I let myself off for it as six miles isn’t that far, but for my future Sunday runs I will really ensure to run slow – probably a good 40-50 seconds slower than I ran. I will take no chances this time around! I’m trying not to make the same stupid mistakes I always seem to make. I’m always climbing the mileage v.e.r.y. slowly; next week is seven miles for my long run, for example, while keeping the other runs the same.

I got back, wolfed down breakfast, chilled for a bit and then met up with Nathan for a 17 mile bike ride.

Hideous selfie

Ay, ay, ay! When you haven’t ridden in so long it is tough. We did our usual route and we both slower (as you can expect) than previously. It was a tough ride but I really enjoyed it. I felt shattered when I got in. But a good NON-BROKEN shattered. I won’t be cycling every week but once in a while it’s nice to get out there.

Then obviously we all went to Nando’s…kind of standard I suppose. I forgot how filling a whole chicken is, but I was not defeated!

Then the afternoon involved ironing and watching Belle (very good film) and going to be stupidly early as I was pooped. Good weekend 🙂 All that was missing was cake…

How was your weekend?

Do you celebrate Valentine’s Day?

How do you celebrate family member’s birthdays?

October 27, 2014

Cake not children any day

Happy Monday, we’re here again. I don’t know what happened to me over the weekend but I was shattered! I even had an hour long nap yesterday afternoon, which is crazy for me! I’m back running consistently so this is probably the case. My foot seems to be fully OK now, whew!

Friday night Ben and me decided to go out for a meal to our recent favourite find (Zippers) and we invited my parents and Ben’s mum to join. Funnily enough my mum and dad had already booked to go to there after we’d raved about it! Happy days.

I went for my salad duo which, once again, rocked my world: salad bar starter and then chicken, avocado and bacon salad.

Apologies for the poor photos – it was dimly lit in the restaurant

And because it is the best chocolate fudge cake I’ve had in ages, I had it for pudding again. Consistently good – and I think I’m qualified to say that now having had it three times! I didn’t take a photo because I’ve already got two photos of it…

Needless to say I think we’re done with Zippers for a bit. We’ll be back for definite but we’ve OOT-ed it recently as you can imagine 😉

Saturday morning I finally got back to parkrun. I haven’t been for soo long due to being busy, injuries and marathons. I really missed it. I went down early to help set up and caught up with the parkrun crew. It was the Halloween special which meant people had dressed up in fancy dress for the occasion which was brilliant!

Skeleton morph suit!

The costumes were brilliant, from pumpkins to zombies, morph suits to masks. I love stuff like this. Sadly all I had to offer was a black sparkly tutu and my colourful RunMummyRun compression socks but it felt fun wearing it.

I took parkrun nice and easy and chatted to lots of people on the way round, which I always really enjoy. Unfortunately talking so much gave me such a nasty a stitch – that’ll teach me! I got just over 25 minutes which I’m happy with for a social run wearing, as it turns out, a rather itchy tutu.

Check out the costumes behind me – amazing effort with the face paint!

The rest of the day was spent just doing the chores, walking Alfie and watching some trashy television watch (*whispers* Made In Chelsea) which Ben and me embarrassingly like to watch and Gogglebox (I’m a new comer to this programme but I am fully addicted – it is HILARIOUS).

Sunday I got up and ran for 50 minutes (Kyle confusingly works in minutes not miles…this makes route planning quite hard!!) then rushed about getting ready to go to church to see my friend Louise’s baby’s Christening-but-not-Christening thing. Basically it was a “welcome to church” kind of thing for their baby, Jacob, but not an actually Christening because they want him to decide on his faith later. I won’t lie, I did not sing at all. No one wants to hear me sing especially if I don’t know any of the songs! Louise is an incredible singer though and is part of the church band so she rocked it.

After the service we headed back to Louise’s parent’s house for “nibbles”. Let’s just dissect this word for a moment…we thought crisps and snacky things, which were out on the sides when we arrived. We nibbled away and had some fizzy pop and were quite content. But Louise’s mum is just amazing at hosting these sorts of things and suddenly an hour later BOOM there was an entire buffet of food. Then after the buffet there was a pudding buffet of lemon tart, chocolate tart, meringues, jelly (all home-made!) and ice cream. Wowza. And of course cake afterwards!

I won’t lie. I went a bit crazy having a slice of both the lemon and chocolate tart (let’s call them slithers shall we? They weren’t huge…) and a couple of slices of cake.

All home-made by Louise herself. Vanilla sponge for the main cake and chocolate for the little trains and square blocks. My reputation preceded me as Louise came over after the first cutting of the cake and handed me a chocolate slice saying “I knew you’d want more”. Full sugar coma commenced afterwards (and an afternoon nap later).

Most of my school friends were there too so it was nice to catch up and have a laugh with them. Mostly taking the mic’ out of my fear of small people and how awkward I am around them. It was actually quite scary how many children were there – Louise has a HUGE family. Needless to say, it’ll be a few years yet before I have the desire to have one!!

Do you go to church? I’m not religious but don’t mind going to these sorts of things.

What are you doing for Halloween? We do nothing. Mainly hide behind our curtains and hope no small people come knocking.

Cake or dessert? I think I’d go with cake.