Naughty but nice - AnnaTheApple

October 11, 2013October 11, 2013

Time For Marathon Training

How quickly a holiday fades from your memory and real life takes over…I am fully back into the swing of life. And jeeze how cold does it suddenly feel UK people? My tan is being replaced by goose bumps.

I’m going to save my second part of my Mexico recap till next week if you don’t mind (check out my recap HERE and the amazing food I enjoyed HERE). I thought instead I’d catch you up with what I’ve been up to post-holiday.

So it is approximately 11 weeks until Marathon Time. I am doing the Portsmouth Coastal marathon on December 22nd. I am getting my head and training into gear. I’ll share my plan with you guys once I’ve perfected it. I’m basing it on several different plans and moulding into what I think will work well for me.

It’s all trial and error really as I’m a marathon newbie. But I know what works well with half marathon training and hey they’re similar right? Can’t be that much different, right…? Ha. No seriously, I know myself and when I like to run, the types of runs that work well and also what races I have planned. I don’t like to rigidly stick to a generic plan. It would never work for me. I’m also fully preparing myself to change it as I go. Flexibility is key here I think!

I’ll go into more detail later, but it’s going to be a pretty standard plan!

In a nutshell: running 4-5 times a week, the long runs going no higher than 20 miles, I’ll be balancing things with spinning and will also always stretch and foam roll after running.

Last weekend I went to my first Parkrun (weekly local 5k timed run) since getting back. Wowza it was tough. Having done no speed work over my holiday I found it quite tough. I decided to run the 4 miles there at a casual pace (7.45mins/mile) as a warm-up. I know from experience that my body needs to have that warm-up before attempting any serious speed work or racing. Then when I get there I do a lot of dynamic stretches (see THIS video for some of the stuff I try to incorporate – not all of it as otherwise I look like a berk at home I do a lot of these though).

The Parkrun itself went well. I told myself just to go with however I felt when I started running. It was quite reassuring to look at my watch and see my pace considering the whole time in Mexico was like running through treacle. Mentally I needed that reassurance that I hadn’t fully lost it.

Though I will say that we were on the flat course (there’s a choice of two courses – one with a hill you do three times and then this one). So I know after a few more weeks back into normal running I could be faster on this course as this was only a few seconds from my PB from the hilly course. Well, fingers crossed anyway!

On a non-running related note, Saturday afternoon we watched Wreck-It Ralf. Watch immediately, it is hilarious.

As Ben is a keen gamer and I used to be, this really went down well with us. But I’d say it could appeal to the masses easily.

Sunday I decided to get stuck in and do my furthest mileage yet: 14 miles. I stuck a podcast in my ears and just went out at a nice and easy pace. I tried to make sure I stuck to around 8.30mins/mile as this is roughly where my longer runs should be sitting.

It was tough but not overly tough. In my head I said if at 11-12miles if I wasn’t feeling it or felt too tired I’d cut it short. But at 12 miles I was feeling very good and decided to go for it. Luckily I have a route where you can tag on extra miles or cut things short.

The rest of the day involves not much else! HOLD THE BOAT. I forgot to tell you. I am OBSESSED with the Great British Bake Off. For those who don’t live in Britain or, like me a few weeks ago, lived blissfully unaware of this TV programme, let me explain.

It’s a competition where 13 (very talented) contestants have a to bake an array of different cakes and show different baking skills (seriously tricky baking skills – when I say tricky I mean not tricky for me which is generally weighing ingredients out and mixing them). I’m not even doing it justice. It’s just so good. And also just emphasises how truly appalling my baking is!

Though I did attempt some baking the other day to take into work. Double chocolate chip and oat and raisins (I didn’t make a note of the recipes, I think I just googled them! Nothing hugely crazy or spectacular about them).

But they came out OK and that is a thumbs up in my eyes. And they were gone by the end of the day. Happy days.

This weekend I’m randomly running a half marathon. Ben and me signed up last minute as it’s a league race with our club and we thought “what the hell”. Though I will not be racing it, I will use it as a long run.

And I have some very exciting running-related news that I’ll share with you soon! I literally am so excited. It’s sad how excited I am but it’s true.

Have a great weekend everyone!

What are your plans this weekend?

The Great British Bake Off – do you watch it? What other food-related programmes do you indulge in? The Food Network is like my mecca.

Have you run a marathon? Do you have any wise tips and tricks to share?

What good films have you seen lately?

October 9, 2013October 9, 2013

What I Ate in Mexico

Hello! So for this post I thought I’d show some of my very tasty eats from my Mexican holiday.

And as it’s Wednesday, I’m linking up with Jenn’s WIAW post:

Thanks Jenn!

Ben and me stayed in a fabulous all-inclusive hotel. I’d never been to one before! I was a little worried that the food would be rubbish, bulk-made and the options would be limited. But I was pleasantly surprised. In fact, I was hugely surprised at the sheer volume of food and the amount of choice there was. There were several restaurants; some of them you had to book for, some you could just rock up to. We often went to the more casual one where we didn’t have to book. This was because it had the most choice and was a buffet rather than ordering off a menu.

Breakfast: I always get a bit worried about breakfast because I’m so particular about what I normally eat for breakfast (have you noticed??). I eat porridge (oatmeal) pretty much every single day. (Yes I know: snore!)

But on holiday I decided to push the boat out and go for something different. Seriously, I could have had anything. We’re talking cereals, yogurt, fruit, toast (huge variety of different breads!), crêpes, pancakes, doughnuts, smoothies, eggs in every way humanly possible, sausages, bacon, burritos, tortillas, guacamole, salad, cheese…honestly, it was quite overwhelming.

I often went for an onion omelette (you basically requested whatever flavour you wanted and the chef made it in front of you), with different ham, tomatoes and guacamole.

Some mornings though the lure would be too hard to stay away…

Not quite to my strict requirements of stodginess but good nonetheless!

And one morning Ben and me got up early, took a walk along the beach (40 minutes in the sun – this was quite hard work even at 7am!) and had breakfast at a lovely little restaurant called 100% Natural in the town.

It was amazing. They had all fresh ingredients and organic options. And on the menu they gave you the nutritional benefits of the different meals. I went for a spinach, beetroot, carrot and celery smoothie. Maybe a crazy choice but it was very refreshing.

For breakfast I chose oats with chopped banana, raisins, nuts and amaranth. Deeelicious!

And we may have gone back there for more smoothies another day…

This was apple, carrot and beetroot (I like my beetroot!).

Lunch: Lunch tended to be a less of an elaborate affair than dinner. Usually it involved taking a break from sunbathing and going into the nearby restaurant for some quick food from the different buffets.

Fish paella

Towards the end we preferred going to the Italian restaurant for lunch as it was a bit cooler (the other place was more open and not air conditioned as it was right next to the pool).

The Italian restaurant had a great salad selection.

Roasted vegetables, tomatoes with mozzarella, beef Carpaccio, smoked salmon, bruschettas, antipasti selections…and steak, buttered fish, chicken, meatloaf, pizza, pasta, soup… and you could still order of a menu as well for ‘mains’. We stuck to several trips to the salad bar as that was enough!

Dinner: This was by far my favourite meal of the day. The selection was phenomenal and some days they’d have themes. One night it was Japanese-inspired.

This was one part of the salad bar. Sushi! Honestly, this was like 1/10th of the options. They’d always have a range of salads, roast meat, Mexican selections (quesadillas, tortillas, fajitas, bean stews, guacamole, salsa…), fish, actual meals like curries and casseroles, pizza, chips, burgers, pasta… literally everything.

Basically I’d pile my plate high with salads and vegetables and then choose a few different ‘main’ pieces that I liked the look of. Mainly I’d go for one serving of many different things, work out what I really liked, then go back for more of that.

So much tasty food…fish casserole, fish fillet, ribs, chicken skewers, ham and pineapple cocktail sticks…loads of fresh vegetables and salad.

For our anniversary dinner we booked to go to the Steakhouse.

For starters I had prawn cocktail. This was very tasty. In fact I loved being able to eat so many prawns (shrimps?) during the holiday. For main I had spiced chicken with corn on the cob, broccoli and roasted wedges. So good. For pudding I went for mango ice cream (this was almost like mango soft serve or sorbet – so fresh tasting) and fruit salad.

After finishing this I still had a bit of space (I know, as Ben says, I’m a machine) and because it was a special occasion I persuaded Ben to go to the main restaurant and have a ~~second~~ few more puddings…just because we could!

I mean, seriously, check out the selections! Mini puddings!

It was different every night

So I went for a mini selection

I have no idea what I ate (I’m pretty sure the right-hand square was a brownie?) but it all tasted good! Hey, if you can’t be indulgent on holiday when can you be!?

Other puddings that were enjoyed…

That is a carrot on top of the cake!! Phallic-shaped puddings ahoy!

I had two of those churros in chocolate one night. I would have had three but Ben managed to drag me out in time. It was touch and go though. SO GOOD.

They always had a chocolate fondue with fruit and marshmallows to dip. AND an ice cream bar. Oh I miss Mexico!! The first night I felt very saintly just having fruit for pudding…then the floodgates opened when I tried my first marshmallow with chocolate. Every night then involved melted chocolate and mini puddings haha.

Though the fruit selection was excellent. I ate a lot of fresh watermelon and pineapple!

I enjoyed some other tasty treats and drinks as well throughout.

From left to right: my first ever snow cone (lemon flavoured – I loved this), a Baileys coffee, first ever pina colada, blue lagoon cocktail and ice coffee.

So I definitely had my culinary treats this holiday! These all fuelled some hot and taxing runs (OK, the cocktails didn’t obviously…).

I tried not to get despondent when I was running at least one minute slower than normal and still finding it really tough. Here’s a typical run:

[Please don’t be offended by me getting a bit miffed about these times – this is purely comparing against my normal times. It’s all relative. I’m not saying that people are ‘slow’ if they run this speed!]

Sweaty, mid-run selfie

Despite finding it hard and typically running an average of 9 mins/mile, I enjoyed getting out there and being active. I can’t lie on a beach all day. That’s not me. I ran a few 7 miles as there was a perfect 7 mile route, one day I did a 4 mile with Ben and the first day I ran 10 miles because I got lost!! (This involved a panicked text to Ben and several awkward conversations with locals who had no idea what I was saying).

What I’m most pleased about is that I maintained my usual 30ish miles/week. I didn’t want to lose that on holiday. But speed was a different story!

Seriously, with views like that in the morning, it was so worth it.

I could go on… but I’ll stop! Basically, the food was amazing. The puddings were outstanding. And the running was sweaty.

Buffets or ‘proper’ restaurants on holiday? I would never normally say buffets, but when the selections are that good I’m definitely swayed!

On holiday do you usually stick to your usual breakfast or do you try something new?

What’s your favourite holiday treat? I loved the puddings. I dream about churros at night. It’s that crunch and the soft doughy insides…and the sugar

September 11, 2013September 11, 2013

Everything but the kitchen sink

How s-l-o-w-l-y things seem to drag when you’re soon to be going on holiday. Every day seems to crawl by…I know I shouldn’t complain though. I’m very grateful to soon be on a beach in Mexico applying another layer of suntan lotion…

It couldn’t have come at a better time as well. I feel a bit frazzled. And I know Ben is as well with all his travelling and hard working he’s been doing lately. So bring on the cocktails!

But first I have the small tiny little Bristol half marathon to get through first…I’m strangely looking forward to it. It should be great to do such a big race in terms of numbers of people. Cheddar Gorge half was under 200, whereas this one is around 20,000! Even Reading was only around 15,000 I think. So a lot of people!

What’s crazy as well is that when we get back from our holiday the ‘big’ training begins. Marathon Training. Those words just look scary to me. Marathon? Whoa. It’ll be less than two and a half moths until the big date when we get back from Mexico. I already have two races planned to help the training along:

End of October: Great South Run (10 mile road race – very popular, should be brilliant)

Mid-November: A nice and local half marathon (Gosport Half)

December 22nd: Marathon

Annoyingly enough our work Christmas party is the night before. My work always do a really good Christmas do. Last year’s was in Bruges for the weekend. This year it’s at a beautiful stately home in Winchester. Unfortunately Ben and me will opt out as it just wouldn’t be a good idea. Not with a 9.30am start the next day. I’m not too sad… *sobs*

Anyway, like I said I’m feeling a bit frazzled with work. Definitely in need of a holiday. I’ve been using my workouts as a bit of a escape. Seriously, I can’t think of anything important during those tough spin classes. My mind is purely “this hurts” or “I’m tired” or “when’s it over”. And running is like a cool breeze flowing through my mind. It just wipes all that stress away. For the half marathon I plan on just putting on some music and enjoying the scenery. I do enough introspection and worrying in my daily life to allow myself to get bogged down by unnecessary thoughts for 13.1 miles.

I haven’t really posted much about food lately. Mainly because it’s all been a bit samey and not interesting at all.

However, as it’s Wednesday (WIAW: go check out Jenn’s blog!) I did stumble across a quick meal that I just can’t get enough of at the moment. It was after I’d gotten in from spin and my body was like FEED ME. We had a lot of vegetables in the fridge that needed to be used and I just thought “what the hell”. So it was pretty much a meal with everything but the kitchen sink.

This delightful mess is a three egg scramble with lots of stir fry veg, mushrooms, sun dried tomato and diced trout. With a side salad of course – because you can never have too much veg, am I right?

What made this was the trout and the sundried tomatoes. The tomatoes were in oil so this helped increase the flavour as well. I loved this. And good healthy omega oil from the fish as well!

Another meal that I’ve been enjoying is gammon steak.

I grilled the steak and had this with cauliflower mash with goat’s cheese mixed in (heaven) and broad beans…and maybe a sneaky bit of beetroot (it needed eating). Oh how I miss eating gammon! I’m on such a meat kick at the moment.

And at work it seems everyone can’t stop bringing in cakes. Not that I’m complaining!

Hello oat and raisin cookie. How I love thee.

Sadly our cake stash in our freezer is quickly going down. This is not good. My mum came over the other day for a catch-up…and we had the last slices of Victoria sponge. I almost cried. Well, that just means getting/baking more I guess!

As my last point, I’ve just started reading Gone Girl after it seemed the blogging world exploding with how amazing it is a while ago (I’m so behind the trend). I couldn’t wait to get stuck in. I’m 17% through (God bless the Kindle) and I’m not massively keen. DON’T HURT ME. It’s just that it reads a bit like a comedy romcom style book but so clearly is not. I don’t know how to take it if I’m honest. It just seems a bit odd. I shall persevere though.

Have a great week guys!

When’s and where is your next holiday?

What’s your latest favourite meal?

Do you use exercise to switch off or switch on? Sometimes a long run is quite cathartic to think about different things, but usually I just like to stop thinking and shut off from the world for a bit.

What are you reading at the moment ? Have you read Gone Girl? Thoughts?

September 4, 2013September 4, 2013

Tasty dirty food

Hey guys, how’s everyone doing? You can really tell the summer is coming to a close and schools have begun again. Hello annoyingly long commute.

Anyway, I wanted to rant talk about this business of ‘clean eating’ today in line with WIAW (check out Jenn’s blog).

I read a great article the other day that really made me think. Honestly, go and read it.

It made me wonder. What is ‘clean eating’? You read so often in so many blogs, magazines, adverts etc. that clean eating is the done thing. The healthy thing. The right way forward.

No processed food. Lots of vegetables. No refined sugar. No white bread. No caffeine. Something like that, right?

The article basically argues that clean eating doesn’t exist. It raises some very interesting points, such as for every diet/way of eating (e.g. vegetarian, vegan, paleo, low carb, etc.) there is always a type of food or selection of different foods that are deemed unhealthy or toxic (unless you’re a veggie for animal welfare reasons I guess**). Basically, all food can be seen as unhealthy from one perspective or another.

So, by rights, this meal could be described as ‘not healthy’.

Stir fry with river cobbler fish thrown in, tons of veg, courgette noodles (or coodles as we fondly call them in our house) and a large dollop of cream cheese to create a lovely creamy sauce. [With a corn on the cob because they’re so damn juicy right now.]

Yep. Processed Philadelphia low-fat cream cheese. Not the full fat version…probably produced in a factory god knows where adding god knows what making it taste like pure heaven.

I have also been eating loads of turkey and pork sausages.

And they don’t always contain stellar ingredients. Check out the ingredients list on your sausages (pork, chicken or turkey). Doesn’t look great doesn’t it? Do I even know what half of those things are??

But they taste pretty good. I mean, they taste like sausages. If you want to remove all that other stuff out then just buy a damn pork chop or turkey breast. But let’s be honest, you’re not eating sausages for breakfast, lunch and dinner are you? Every day? Then seriously: stop worrying.

I am a strong believer that no food is bad for you. No food is going to cause you nutritional harm. Obviously if not eaten in excess. Let’s be very clear here: any food eaten in excess will cause you issues. Yep, that includes my beloved apples.

Now, you know I like my cake. I eat cake every week. I even ate this bad boy then my husband made and he didn’t even make his own icing.

He used SHOP-BOUGHT icing. Icing from a tub. OK it didn’t taste as good as normal icing but it was pretty good. He went for the quick and easy. Quick and dirty.

My point is I’m tired of hearing about clean eating all the time. I understand that for some people that’s their life and that’s their prerogative. I don’t mean to offend anyone so I’m sorry if this is how it’s come across! But it really annoys me the tone that some of these blogs or articles etc. can come across. The ‘holier than thou’ tone. I agree that eating a balanced diet with lots of fruit and vegetables and whole foods is a great approach, but it’s not the only approach and it’s not mutually exclusive with eating foods that, let’s be perfectly honest here, taste amazing but have been in some way been processed.

Those tasty dirty foods. Ice cream. Chocolate. Cake. Sweets. BBQ sauce. Steak. White bread!! Stuff that we can turn to when life just sucks a little bit or we just fancy eating.

Let’s not feel bad about not eating clean! Let’s enjoy the balance of life. Don’t banish those cupcakes (*cough* cupcakes with ACTUAL sugar in them and actual WHITE flour). Enjoy your food, whatever it is your eating.

*Jumps off her soap box* Have a great Wednesday!

**I know that some people can’t eat some types of food for medical reasons as well. My aim is not to offend anyone!

Clean eating: what’s your opinion?

Do you avoid any foods? Why?

What’s your tasty dirty food preference?

August 19, 2013

What a weekend!

Hi guys! How was your weekend? Mine was pretty much a whirlwind. One of the best weekends in a while I think.

Ohhh before I start with the weekend: MY MUG HAS RETURNED!!!

Apparently it had been taken down to the canteen downstairs. My poster worked

Anyway…

Saturday morning Ben and me woke up late (whoops) for Parkrun and had to mad dash around the place to get ourselves together. I like to arrive at least 30 minutes before so I can relax a bit as I get so nervous and stressed before races. Even though Parkruns aren’t really ‘proper’ races as they’re so informal and just a bit of fun.

Anyway we got there and made it to the start. I didn’t really know how I was going to run but I did want to try as I’m not going to be back at our local Parkrun for a couple of weeks now. As soon as I started running I felt strong and happy. What was brilliant was that there was a bunch of guys who were running the same speed and I kept with them so it really helped.

With 5ks I just like to give it my all and hold on for as long as I can. Not sure if that’s a great strategy as the last lap is always so tough. My running club friend was right behind me as well which helped push me on but she managed to sail past me breezily on the last stretch. She obviously has a great strategy of keeping something in the bag because she looked very fresh as she zoomed past me hehe.

Amazingly I beat last week’s PB by about 5 seconds. I think I’m going to plateau soon because it just gets too hard now.

Then we zoomed home and got ready to go to my work’s summer BBQ. I was the designated driver as I rarely drink and I wasn’t going to drink the day before the half marathon anyway. My parents came with us too (my dad works in the company as well).

It looked a bit gloomy and like it was about to rain when we got there but it didn’t really matter as they had a huge marquee in the garden.

The marquee is that white tent on the side of the photos

There was mini golf, giant Jenga, a beer tent, a tent for other alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks, a puppeteer, a face painter (more on that in a bit!) and a beautifully huge garden.

Oh and even very posh temporary loos! Of course I took a sneaky photo in the interior of the toilets as I was so impressed.

And there was a bouncy castle. *Sighs* I love my father. I really do. But seriously.

Within five minutes of arriving he was on that bouncy castle. I feared for his life

I stuck to sparkling water (which I really love – anyone else with me on that?) and just milled around enjoying myself.

I enjoyed a lovely plateful of BBQ food when food was served.

Burger, kebabs, a sausage (I’ve found I quite like actual sausages – since having turkey sausages things have changed!), rustic-flavoured bread, corn on the cob and salad. And maybe another cheeky burger and sausage afterwards…

So good. Always a good spread as these things!

Ben enjoyed himself too and was (in my opinion) daring and had a few glasses of wine! His mentality was that he hadn’t really done the training, had been in Germany for the week on business, had just come back from an injury…so why the hell not! If the odds were against him he might as well enjoy it haha.

Then pudding. Oh pudding.

Honestly I just did not know what to have. So I had one of everything.

Totally joking! Wish I could have, haha. No I was sensible and stuck very diligently to two puddings only. Believe me when I say I was enormously tempted to go back for more.

There was a conversation like this between Ben and me:

Me: “But surely a cupcake doesn’t count, right?”

Ben: “Anna, you told me to stop you from having more than two puddings. Don’t do it.”

Me: “Yeah…I don’t think I was being sincere though.”

Ben: “You’ll regret it for 13.1 miles tomorrow.”

Me: “Fair point.”

So I stuck with a slice (should I say slab?) of Victoria sponge and a brownie *grumble grumble*. No in all honesty it was perfect and in the evening I was thankful that I hadn’t eaten a buffet of cakes (which, let’s be honest, was a real possibility).

Obviously we had to get a bit of face paint action.

And of course so did my dad…

He had ‘LFC’ on his cheek…*sighs* Liverpool Football Club. Bless him. He kept checking his phone all the time watching the score of the match while we were at the BBQ as well!

Even the rain didn’t dampen our spirits. It was a great day!

When Ben and I got home we really didn’t fancy anything to eat which was annoying. So we had some crisps and snacky things and left it like that. Ideally I wanted to have a proper meal before the race the next day.

And then the half marathon on Sunday…well, I will continue this in my next post as it might be a bit lengthy otherwise and I want to do it justice. Though I will say that it was one of my favourite races of the year. It was epic! And we both survived

How was your weekend?

What is your best pre-race meal the night before? Usually it’s a pizza without cheese (so it’s less heavy and I’m not a bit fan of regular cheesy pizzas – unless it’s goat’s cheese of course).

Did you ever used to get your face painted? It brought back so many memories of when I was little!