My Cake Day, whoops I mean Birthday

Right, bare with me. I know I talk a lot about cake. I’m trying to tone things down a bit (talking about it and eating it). BUT it was my birthday…so I’ve got a free pass.

My birthday was last Thursday, and sadly I was at work so it was fairly nondescript. I hadn’t asked for anything from Ben as I couldn’t think of anything I’d want. In the end we agreed to go on a daytrip and do some shopping together and have a nice lunch out. But this will need to be sometime July as our weekend’s are so fully booked!

Just to rewind quickly back to Wednesday first. I ran the 10k Race for Life in Basingstoke with my newbie runner friend. She’s ran the 5k RFL before and she has done quite a bit of training so I wasn’t worried she wouldn’t complete it. She’d previously done a training run of 11k in 1hour 15minutes so I suggested we try and beat that and maybe aim for around an hour.

Ben, my mum, my dad and my friend’s husband and son came to cheer us on. The three of us girls were kindly bought a flower by our respective loved ones (*cough* let’s not talk about how I cajoled Ben to do this *cough*).I’ve never been to or raced a Race for Life before (if you’re not aware, it’s a women’s-only charity based event raising money for breast cancer – pink is a major theme!). It was completely different to any of the races I’ve been to before. There was a kind of party atmosphere and it was very informal. So many people had pictures of loved one attached to their backs for whom they were running and raising money for. It was very sobering.

The race was all on grass and through a very windy course completely off-road.

We were running around 10-11 minute miles. I found this quite challenging as this is quite slow for me. I don’t mean any disrespect to anyone who runs at these paces, this is just something personally I found. It helped though as I could chat away and encourage my friend easily.

My lovely sparkly pink nails done specially for the event

My friend achieved the brilliant time of 1:04! To be fair, she could have got a better time but we were held up a fair bit by walkers (it was a two lap course). She’s really getting into it now though: she’s going to Parkrun at the weekend and trying to improve her times. I’m so proud 🙂

Right, so back to Thursday and cake. Sorry, my birthday. I got into work to find one of my other friends had made my friend and me a Mars Bar crispy cake to celebrate our 10k.

Ohmygawwwwd this was incredible. I could eat so much of this, it’s so moreish. I had about two…yeah let’s say two, pieces of this. Then at lunch I wandered over to nearby Tesco to by the standard cakes for the office. A weird tradition but one that I think is important to be upheld 😉

I tried to be good. I tried to buy things that didn’t really take my fancy. Except I picked up Smartie cookies. How can you resist a Smartie cookie?

When I got home one of our friends was over and Ben was being all sheepish. I wasn’t allowed in the living room. My friend (yo Nathan!) gave me some birthday goodies…err think he’s got me down to a tee!

Mini rockit apples (a variety I must say I have not been acquainted to before), some M&S sweets and muffins. Boom. Edible gifts are the best gifts in my book 😉

Then the piéce de resistance…I was allowed into the living room. And there on the table was the most phenomenal cake I have ever seen.

A Paris marathon birthday cake, made by a very talented lady at Ben’s work. I mean seriously, how absolutely fantastic is that?? There’s a little me on the top, even wearing compression socks! And the medal is very similar to my Paris marathon one – she got Ben to describe it!!

Needless to say I almost cried and then debated whether I should have dinner or just eat cake? Well, the sensible Anna implored the Cake-Frenzied-Anna to eat something sensible and then gorge on cake.

Alarmingly though I was only able to have one slice as it was so dense and sweet – but 10/10 in terms of flavour and consistency. And four layers?? Jam and butter cream? Heaven.

And I guess as we’re on the subject of cake I might as well mention the incredible chocolate cake I had a slice of (I say slice, more like WEDGE) at my other friend’s birthday party on Saturday. How dare she have a birthday so close to mine! 😉 It was a bit of a shame considering after my cake-filled birthday I had decided to lay off the cake a little bit…then arrived at Saturday’s birthday BBQ to find this bad boy. How can you refuse?

Whew. So there we have it. What more could a girl want? This week I’m trying to eat less cake. That’s my mission. It hasn’t gone entirely well but the motivation is there and that’s half the battle right?

What is your dream birthday scenario?

Favourite type of cake…? I’m not sure I could narrow it down. Each cake has its merits.

Do you like more formal or informal race events?

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