Fun Times - AnnaTheApple

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.

October 15, 2014October 15, 2014

Post Berlin Marathon

Gosh it feels like ages ago now that I was in Berlin and running the marathon. The days after Berlin were a lot more relaxed (for me at least) than the days before, but a lot more painful as you can imagine!

After the debacle of finding Ben and my dad after the race and then trying to find our way out of the race area, we headed back to our hotel. The boys had a drink and some nibbles in the hotel bar while I went upstairs to shower. I was so thankful that this time around we didn’t have a bath-shower. After the Paris marathon I remember how painful it had been to get my legs over the bath sides to get into the shower *shudders*.

I did however have fun finding all the places I’d chaffed. Not under my arms this time but weirdly just above my bum on my lower back!

The top of my shorts must have rubbed. Fun times.

After enjoying a luxuriously warm and bubbly shower, I headed downstairs all cleaned up to see Ben had got himself possibly the most disgusting looking meal possible.

You can see a fellow marathoner’s foot in the background – there were so many in the lobby!

A curryworst. He loved it so what can I say! Looks a bit funny to me 😉 My dad ordered some chips and like a vulture I landed on those chips with a vengeance. So salty and good.

Then sadly my dad headed off to catch his flight as he was only staying to watch the marathon and had work on Monday (sucker). Ben and me had an early evening meal in the hotel restaurant. It was rather posh!

We had another one of those sharing platters with lots of antipasti style bits and pieces (I got the veg and salad, Ben got the Parma ham and bread – we work well as a team). For main I went for pork schnitzel with fried potatoes and cranberries with a side salad (well, two side salads as Ben didn’t want his). For pudding I went for a peach crumble (it was microscopic in my marathon hungry eyes…but very nice regardless).

Then we went to the hotel room. I chilled in the best way possible.

We did consider renting a film (like we did in Paris) but we were both so tired we read for a bit and fell asleep around 7.30pm. I’m not even joking. I woke up at midnight thinking it was like 3am. I had a banging headache and struggled to fall back asleep but eventually fell asleep until 7am-ish. Headache gone and we both felt so refreshed!

We decided to do some sight seeing so headed off to wander through the Tiergarten and then to the Reichstag.

We saw lots of sights, like the Brandenburg Gate, the Jewish Memorial, Checkpoint Charlie again and a huge mall. Both of us staggered along, me because I was aching everywhere from the marathon and Ben because his knee was playing up a bit after all the walking the day before 🙁

We found a crazy American-style diner (called Andy’s Diner) that took our fancy for lunch. We were both in need of a nice sit down and some food.

I chose a salad and honestly it was possibly the best salad I’ve had in a while.

Chicken, kidney beans, hard boiled egg and lots of salad in a huge crispy tortilla bowl (which is underneath all the salad in the above photo) with a creamy ranch dressing. It literally took me like 20 minutes to eat all of it.

Literally bigger than my head – my kinda salad!

Then we plodded on. In total we walked 34,000 steps (15.5 miles). We were shattered and honestly me legs felt like they would fall off. Ben found it hilarious watching me trying to get down stairs.

My dear husband finding it far too funny that I was in pain

We stopped in the afternoon for another respite. And lo and behold! I found a cafe that sold beer, coffee and cake! A winner all round 😉

I went for a delicious vanilla chocolate cake. It was all spongy and delicious. So good. Ben went for a cheesecake.

It was a huge thumbs up from us. We then chilled for a bit people watching. It was a great spot – down the road from the Brandenburg Gate and the number of people we saw hobble past was quite amusing. There were so many people who had clearly run the marathon.

Dinner that night was a quick meal in a local, but lovely, restaurant and then another early night. Honestly, sleep (and cake) was the best recovery for me!

And the next day we headed home. It was a lovely little mini-break and I loved Berlin and the marathon but, as I’ve said before, it was bittersweet. I really wish Ben could have run. But he’s deferred his place so next year I think we’ll be returning! I might run it if I get in the ballot but we’ll see.

What’s your normal ‘go-to’ meal in a restaurant? For me it’s always a salad.

Do you like to try the local food when you’re abroad? The curryworst did not appeal but the schnitzel was amazing.

Would you ever want to run the Berlin marathon?

October 13, 2014

Boosts, London and Africa

I used to love thunderstorms. The sound of the rumbling and crashing and the flashes of lightening was always quite exciting. Alfie, however, does not like thunderstorms and as he sleeps in our room, we are fully aware of this. He starts barking at the thunder or running around the room in a panic. Or sitting on our pillows trying to get as close as possible to us. He’s frightened by it I think which is all very sweet. But seriously, Alfie, MAN UP. I need my sleep!!

This weekend, thunderstorms aside, was great. It started Friday night with a great run. I got my new Adidas Boosts delivered to work and was desperate to give them a little trial run (ha!)

I text Ben saying I might go for a run after work in Basingstoke and might be home a little later than usual. He was uber happy about this as he was planning a surprise for me and needed a bit more time. He had told me the night before he was going to put his Friday afternoon off to good use and do something special for me. Well, my curiosity was definitely spiked!

I wore my new Berlin marathon finisher t-shirt and obviously my new Boosts.

Unintentionally colour coordinated!

Having not run for 10 days I was thinking it might feel a bit sluggish. But actually I felt like I was flying. The Boosts felt amazing and my legs felt very fresh. The first mile was downhill but I was very surprised to see a 6.42min/mile! In the end I did 5k in 22.02 minutes. Not too shabby. I probably shouldn’t have gone so fast on my first run but I just felt good and went with it.

When I got home I was welcomed by a very pleased looking Ben and my surprise.

Yep still looking sweaty

A three-layered red velvet cake – all made from scratch. *Swoons*

I was over the moon! What a guy, eh!? And let me tell you, it tastes AMAZING. Cream cheese frosting heaven! He was a bit miffed the sponge didn’t come out that red though, despite using food colouring gel rather than liquid. Bakers, is there a special way to do this?

Saturday morning we got up early to go to London. Ben needed a quick passport change as he’s going to China with work (oooh er!) so we decided to make a day of it.

We did a lot of walking around and saw the classic tourist bits, like Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, the London Eye, Houses of Parliament etc. I’ve seen them before but never actually done this with Ben so it was nice.

Also saw some of the roads I’ll be running along come April next year…how exciting! (Providing I’m not injured – I feel like I have to say this as you know how injury-prone I am)

After getting the passport sorted we went to find some lunch. I tried to tempt Ben into going to Wholefoods for their salad bar but that really didn’t go down well…but he did say we could go and have a look 😉

Before that, we found a lovely South African restaurant called Bbar which took our fancy. There were animal prints and animal pictures everywhere and the waiters were lovely. We went for a pitta and dip board to begin which was a little smaller than I had imagined but all very nice (taramasalata, hummus and baba ganoush dips). And for main I went crazy and had a salad. It’s funny because I didn’t even realise there was avocado in it before I went for a big chunk of what I thought was lettuce – it was so camouflaged! Ben went for an amazing burger which looked huge. There were so many burger options, even buffalo and boar.

After a relaxed lunch we walked to Wholefoods and checked out more sights along the way. We didn’t do much shopping or anything that exciting, it was just nice to walk around London together without any real aim.

Wholefoods was just full of young adults – possibly students and, I guess, people like me.

The cakes looked out of this world

It was just rammed. The salad bar looked good but I’m glad we hadn’t gone for it – the queues were huge and it felt a bit claustrophobic. I know Wholefoods is held on a pedestal for healthy and unusual ingredients but some of the things did make me laugh. A cupcake that was gluten free, diary free, egg free and low fat had the ingredients list that would make a Pop Tart tremble. Seriously, so many chemicals with long and scary names. Fairly ironic.

As we slowly ambled back to Waterlook, fairly pooped now, I kept seeing people with whole coconuts drinking out of them with straws. Then a few minutes later we got to Trafalgar Square and we passed a huge area of tents and festivities. It was called Africa on the Square – which fitted into our theme of the day perfectly 😉 We had a wander around (so many amazing smelling foods and cool music) and I found the coconut tent. For the fairly pricey £4.50 the guy chopped off the end of a coconut, popped some straws in and handed it to me.

It tasted divine. Fresh coconut water! Yum. It disappeared rather quickly! Then we decided to head back to the train before our legs fell off. We both fell asleep on the train we were that tired. And embarrassingly I woke up with my mouth open…classy girl right here 😉

Sunday was supposed to be fairly relaxed until we decided to clear out the Cupboard of Death (under stairs cupboard…*shudders*) and some kitchen cupboards to make space for Ben’s new plaything – a Kmix. He’s really getting into this baking lark and with having Friday afternoons off I think I’m going to be seeing a lot more cakes. Can’t be bad, right? 😀

What are your favourite things to do in London?

Have you ever had a real coconut before?

What trainers do you wear?

October 6, 2014

Pre Marathon in Berlin

It’s hard going on holiday to run a marathon. The days before you’re so nervous that it’s difficult to fully enjoy yourself. Or eat and drink whatever you want, or walk lots and lots. You’re always thinking “will this help for the race?” and that’s not particularly how you want to be on holiday.

But saying that, there is something truly amazing about running a marathon in a foreign country. Ben and me caught a mid-morning flight to Berlin so we left the house at 6.30am. Though an early wake-up call it meant we could have a nice breakfast at the airport. Sadly not Jamie’s Italian, but Giraffe (which is also very, very good).

I had an omelette with lots of roasted vegetables and an avocado salsa (ooh err!) with sourdough toast. Thankfully this was quite filling as we missed lunch entirely because we wanted to get to the marathon expo ASAP when we got to Berlin. When we landed, we got a taxi to the hotel and then headed straight to the old disused airport from there where the expo was happening.

It was huge inside with so many running-related stalls selling clothes, trainers, gels, nutrition…basically everything running-related. It wasn’t like anything was cheaper than normal so Ben and me just by-passed it all and headed straight to the bib collection.

One of the big rooms of running stalls

FYI it’s the furthest possible point – just to ensure you do indeed walk past every flipping stall possible. Not particularly fun for poor Ben who couldn’t actually run at the moment. Almost like a big “F*** you” from the Berlin marathon 🙁 especially when he wasn’t allowed to come with me to collect his bib: “runners only”. I’d have probably burst into tears at this point if I was him but Ben was a true trooper and just waited patiently for me.

There was no queue to speak of which was a relief as I’d heard horror stories of hour-long waits. Friday late afternoon is the way forward!

There was a huge crowd of people all trying to get a photo like the one above and we patiently waited until it was my turn. Embarrassingly as it got to my turn and I stood there ready for my photo a woman pointed at me and said “your bib’s the wrong way up”. Nailed it, Anna.

Ben and me proceeded to then walk ~~a million miles~~ ages to find food. We headed in the direction of our hotel (which was a 45 minute walk away) and hoped to find somewhere en route, or worst case just eat in the hotel. We hadn’t eaten since 7.30am (except for an apple or two for me and an airplane snack for Ben) and it was now coming up to 6pm…Things were tense.

Hilariously we walked up the red light district without realising it. The first lady I saw I was about to say to Ben “oh those boots and skirt combo are a bit risqué, aren’t they?” when I saw her shake her wears at a passerby. Yikes! Ben and me just kept our eyes down and power walked on. It was rather funny though. Finally (away from the red light area!) we found a lovely little restaurant.

We both had beef Carpaccio to start (delicious!) and I, erm…had Caesar salad. It’s embarrassing to admit I know. I just love it! It was just alright: no bacon and no anchovies but good pieces of parmesan shavings and nice chicken. I went for a brownie and ice cream for pudding. It wasn’t dense enough a brownie for a true wow factor but it hit the spot.

And Ben began as he meant to go on…sampling the local wheat beer. I had a few sips and must say I quite enjoyed it. Very light.

We stayed at the Hotel Berlin, which I highly recommend. We had a lovely spacious room with a 70s theme. It even had a mini balcony.

The bathroom was lovely. It had one of those monsoon walk in shower things and a normal shower head for proper hair wash action.

Basically, lovely rooms, great breakfast (buffet – hello!), brilliant service, a gym (which I did not step into) and about 15 minute walk from the Tiergarten and a 30 minute walk from the Brandenburg Gate.

The next morning I got up at 8am and went for an easy 3 mile run around Tiergarten.

My best “I’m a dork” face

Beautiful scenery to run around in a capital city!

My dad had arrived the night before at a nearby hotel and so joined us for breakfast after we’d showered. He paid for breakfast while we had ours included.

I’d be lying if I said this was all I had. Honestly, this was the best hotel breakfast ever. Roasted vegetables with pine nuts and sundried tomatoes – heavenly! Little meatball things – so good! Eggs – delicious! Crispy bacon! All so good. And I had a pretzel style roll as well to go with this. Then followed it by a bowl of fresh fruit salad. The choice was amazing. From sweet pastries, donuts, muffins, to normal bread, German bread, fruit bread, pretzel bread, smoked salmon, all kind of egg, beans, cheeses, meats, cereals…honestly there was so much to choose from. So I ate everything. Joking. Though I did make a fair dent 😉

Then we headed out to see some sights. We walked past the Tiergarten and up to the Victory Column (the Siegessäule: the gold gold statue thing below) and then headed down the long road to the Brandenburg Gate. The roads had been closed off and ready for the marathon (and the skating marathon that would be happening later that day – yes, people skated on rollerblades the marathon).

After walking for an hour or so Ben and my dad demanded a refreshment stop…the beer marathon was to begin 😉

I got a sparkling water and popped a High5 Zero tablet in it to make sure I stayed hydrated – it fizzed up quite dramatically! My dad and Ben got strange pink beers which made for a humorous photo 😉

It was strange to see so many marathon signs and road blockages and made me very nervous!

We walked to Checkpoint Charlie and saw the remains of the Berlin wall (which separated the East and West of Berlin and only came down in 1989!) at the Topography of Terrors.

It was very interesting but also quite depressing. What a scary time to have lived.

Then we headed to Postdamer Platz which is very urban and modern.

After sight seeing for a bit we got fairly hungry and started to look out for a nice place for lunch that wasn’t outrageous in price, which meant walking a fair bit from the main tourist bits.

We seemed to eat a lot of Italian-style meals over the holiday! Ben and me had a sort of platter of dried meats, Carpaccio and roasted vegetables and then I had a feta and olive salad. There was so much feta! I was defeated. This has never happened before with a salad, it was just too salty to eat so much.

I had a major panic when I realised I didn’t actually bring any safety pins with me from home and at the expo I didn’t pick any up (if they even had any there). What a numpty!! I didn’t know what to do. We looked in a few supermarkets but found nothing. Suddenly we were surrounded by hundreds of children who had just finished the mini-marathon and all brandishing their medals…and they were all wearing bibs with safety pins. It was a cruel mocking of my idiocy. I tried to ask one lady for if she had any spares or if I could have her son’s now unneeded safety pins but she looked blankly at me and talked to me in rapid German. I was started to fret when I spotted a boy who was just taking his bib off. I leapt over to him and asked for his safety pins. He was German but could speak English and was more than happy for me to have his pins. Thank you!!! Panic over. And I could resign my position from being weird English girl trying to steal safety pins from unsuspecting children…

Then we walked back. We were almost at our hotel when we saw the skaters fly by! They were amazing. So fast. Though some of them were holding on to each other, creating a long train. I guess they were in teams?

We then killed some time just chilling in the hotel lobby (Ben and my dad now on their 6th or 7th beers?!) We had walked quite a long way! Not a brilliant plant the day before a marathon…

My dad, bless him, started falling asleep while reading a magazine.

Then later on we headed for another Italian meal in a nearby restaurant. We got there fairly early but within an hour or so it became packed with marathon runners wanting their carbolific meal.

Like I said in my marathon post, I had a large pizza and a massive bottle of sparkling water (I love European sparkling water, it just tastes amazing). Then Ben stayed with my dad in the lobby of hotel for more beers while I went to bed. In the end Ben and my dad had 12 beers each!!

Despite maybe too much walking (33,700 steps: over 16 miles!) it was a lovely day to just take my mind off things and enjoy the scenery and sights. It was so nice having my dad there as well as Ben had a partner in crime 😉

Have you ever been to Berlin before?

Do you do lots of walking on holiday?

How do you prepare for a big race?

September 22, 2014

Drowning iPhones, beetroot and chocolate fudge cake

One week, one week, one week…before the Berlin marathon. To say I’m terrified is something of an understatement.

The weekend was nice and relaxed though thankfully. Friday night we went out to Nando’s again with friends. Nando’s is becoming dangerously addictive! On Saturday morning I was tempted to go to parkrun to do an easy gentle 5k but after running 10k on Thursday night and cross-training Friday I decided to be super sensible and go pool running instead.

Float time in the swimming pool…

Like last time I took my waterproof iPhone cover and Bluetooth headphones so I could listen to music and keep myself entertained. I was just doing my thing when suddenly my music stopped. I looked over to the side where I left my iPhone and saw it had vanished. Uh oh. I looked down in the water to see it glowing at the bottom of the pool. A small child had managed to knock it in accidentally. He stood there looking all guilty and said “Shall I dive down to fetch it?”… “err yeah” I said, trying my best not to panic. Luckily it was fine and the child lived on for another day. Whew. So 35 minutes of pool running went OK other than that incident.

The rest of the day was non-descript but in a lovely “got no plans” kind of way. Lots of walks with Alfie and watching Kings of Summer (which I highly recommend).

Sunday morning was long run time. I set my alarm for 8am and decided to test out a possible pre-marathon breakfast. My plan is to have two of the Beet It flapjacks before the race. They’re 235 calories each so my thinking was two would be perfect for a good breakfast and I get the whole beetroot benefits (boosting endurance).

Alfie was very interested

I’ve tried the bars before but just at work when I fancy a snack. They’re so tasty – kind of earthy but sweet and crumbly. Anyway I had two and then got myself ready and took Alfie for a longer walk than I usually would before a run, just to give myself a good amount of digestion time.

My tummy felt a bit strange after eating two bars. Not like I was sick or anything would happen, but just not completely right. I instantly regretted eating the bars and decided there and then to stick to my usual porridge before the marathon. I was sad about the bars but it was worth a shot.

On the actual run though my stomach was fine and I just got on with, well, running. I aimed to stay at around 8.30mins/mile as this is nice and easy. I felt quite slow if I’m honest but on my second mile I looked at my watch and found I was storming along 7.30-45mins/mile! I immediately slowed down. I continued letting my mind drift and listen to my podcast and realised I had sped up again.

But it didn’t feel tough at all. This was dangerous territory to be on and I snapped myself out of it and forced myself to slow down. This is not the time I want to have the best run of the month – that’s next week I hope! I need to save it for then, not on a training run.

Anyway the run went fine. No shin discomfort. Just a normal run – woooohooooo! And afterwards I just felt normal aches and tiredness like I would after a long run. And even today I feel fine! I can hardly believe it.

Now this might be completely coincidental but I could it have been the beetroot bars that helped? I felt so fresh and good on the run and even when I was running faster I felt like I was running a minute slower. Now I’m confused. But I do still have the Beet It shots which give the same amount of beetroot power as the bars and then I can still have my porridge. So I need to trial a shot before a morning run this week…

After the run I got showered and we headed to a local pub to have lunch with my parents and Ben’s mum.

Family lunch

I realise my choice of food is odd but hey ho. I had a mango chicken salad to start and, er, a chicken, beetroot and goat’s cheese salad for main…with sweet potato fries 😉 You might have thought I’d have had enough beetroot at this point. You would be wrong.

And pudding…oh pudding, how I do love you. I had a hot chocolate fudge cake with ice cream. Need I say it was to die for?

It was such a lovely lunch.

And cheers to my dad for the lovely ski whiffed photo!

After walking Alfie when I got back, this is pretty much what I felt like for the rest of the afternoon:

Knackered

What did you get up to this weekend?

Are you good with small children? Or children in general really? I am not.

Are you a starter or a pudding person? It really depends for me, usually I will only go for one but I was quite hungry. Normally it’s pudding if they have something good.