AnnaTheApple - The life of a girl who loves apples and running

May 7, 2015

Top tips for a gluten free birthday

Today I have a collaborative guest post for you about enjoying your birthday when you suffer from celiac disease or gluten intolerance.

Who doesn’t love a birthday? The birthday is a real cause for rejoicing no matter how old you are. The day you or your child was born is worth of celebrating and having a good time. It goes without saying that a good birthday needs some good planning, which is even more true if the guests (or birthday boy or girl) celiac disease or gluten intolerance. It means that at the birthday table there will be no room for wheat, barley, rye and other gluten-containing food and beverages. Nevertheless, their absence will not spoil a holiday mood and feast. The below tips will give you a hand with celebrating a gluten free birthday.

Let’s start with the culmination of any birthday party – the cake. The memory of blowing out the candles on the cake will always dwell with your child. The cake has to be tasty, mouth-watering and, of course, chocolate! You can have all of these things, and still be gluten free. Try looking for special cakes like this gluten free chocolate cake. If you’re feeling adventurous, why not try baking your own? There are hundreds of recipes, though this one looks especially delicious. Just try to bake it in advance to make sure that its taste and look won’t disappoint anybody.

As for main and side dishes, feel free to cook meat, fish, poultry, fresh vegetables, beans and other naturally gluten free grains (rice, buckwheat, quinoa, corn and millet). Be careful about condiments, salad dressings and spice mixes. As a rule, they contain wheat flour and can be a sneaky source of gluten. To eliminate any harm, make them on your own using safe ingredients or buy ‘gluten-free’ labeled ones. There are a lot of specialist shops, even supermarkets, that sell gluten free foods. Plain oils and fresh species are your savers in preparing and favoring gluten-free food.

How about drinks? Luckily, most sodas have no gluten, and 100% fresh juice is out of danger. For adult guests, there are well known gluten free beer brands. Check with you gluten free invitees which ones they prefer. Tequila, rum and wine are considered gluten free, so why not make a few cocktails?

To be double safe, make sure there is no cross contamination. Keep away the sources of gluten while cooking gluten free meals. Do not use the same silverware and surfaces, and avoid any drip of gluten containing condiments to gluten free food. Such conditions are a must for having a successful gluten free bash.

And our last advice is not to forget about decorating a room, captivating entertainment, taking pictures, having fun and enjoying friendly atmosphere on the hop of hosting a gluten free birthday! Altogether these ingredients will make your birthday party special!

Hope this was helpful to anyone who suffers from celiac disease or gluten intolerance!

May 6, 2015

Rants and Raves #12

Well I haven’t done one of these posts in a while and I certainly have an abundance of rants stored up in me…but I’ll try and keep it balanced.

Rave: I’ve mentioned a few times about how my Garmin heart rate monitor strap rubs when I wear it. This is highly annoying considering it cost around £50 (separate from the actual watch). I don’t really do heart rate training with all the different zones but, like most runners, I love having all the stats from a run (oh the graphs! Oh the numbers! So much information!). It’s also handy to keep an eye on my heart rate when I’m doing a long run to make sure I’m not pushing too hard. But anyway the strap rubbed my chest and was quite painful, meaning I couldn’t wear it. Very frustrating considering I was able to wear my Polar HR strap when I went to the gym with no issues. I did try putting the actual HR bit on the Polar strap but it kept pinging off…so I did some Googling and found a way to overcome the chafe.

Plasters! I found this out from the legendry running tech reviewer DC Rainmaker so I’m hugely grateful to him. I’ve had no issues since! The article is HERE. I’m stat happy once again 😀

Rant: Windy running. I don’t mind running when it’s cold, or wet, or really hot, or even in snow…but wind? Wind just sucks your soul and drains your energy like nothing else. I ran 17 miles on Sunday and it felt like I was being slapped by a wall of sea water as I ran along the coast. I ran past another runner and we looked at each other like “why are we out in this?!”. When I got home I then had to contend with the dread Post-Run Hair: Luckily it didn’t take too long to comb through. Short-haired people and (the majority of) men, you are lucky!

Despite the hair issues, the run went well thankfully though my pace was all over the place despite trying to keep it consistent. Though I wanted the final mile to be faster so I could see how it felt on tired legs. It was tough!

And after last Sunday’s fun Southampton half running with a bunch of friends, this run was lonely and hard work. I’m wondering if I can tempt anyone to join me on my 18 miler in two weeks time – or at least part of it…It seems everyone else’s marathons have finished so there’s a severe lack of long run runners on Sundays now.

Rave: Kangaroo burgers at my friend’s BBQ. A local farm shop sells the most amazing meat and BBQ fodder that I couldn’t resist buying kangaroo burgers and some equally delicious red Thai chicken burgers.

Kangaroo burger

Kangaroo is a bit gamey and a bit beefy but very nice! The BBQ was on the Bank holiday Monday and was good fun, though slightly chillier than I had anticipated (I wore shorts: mistake). And two of my very talented friends baked cakes which were delicious. Homemade for the win every time.

How pretty is that cupcake on the right?? My friend Louise is so good at baking!

Rant: Headaches after my long runs. It doesn’t happen every time, but occasionally I’ll get an awful headache that just persists regardless of what I do. I drink a big 500ml of nuun after my run and drink through the day but I don’t drink on the actual run so maybe that’s it? I also try not to drink too much before running because I hate needing the loo half way through. Re-fuelling with lots of sugary cakes is probably not the best thing either. I know I need to be more sensible but all I want is cake when I do a long run! I feel like I’ve earnt it you know??

Another afternoon tea session with my parents on Sunday – The Tea Room in Lee-on-Solent

Rave: Being in the paper! A lovely reader Tweeted me to say they saw me in their local paper. I was over the moon (so was my mum).

Our moment of fame!

The picture above the photo of my running friends and me is of another Hedge End Runner who ran both the Southampton 10k and the Southampton half (same day!) in a Cookie Monster outfit to raise money for charity – what a legend!

Rant: Being forced out of the communal gym area because one of the personal trainers wants to use it for his customers’ boot camp session. Now I wouldn’t mind so much if it was a proper scheduled class run by the actual gym and is pinned up on the board like the other classes (so I was aware), but this is his freelance work and so he really has no monopoly over the gym space. It’s rude and unfair. He pushed out another girl, three guys and me – we were not amused.

Rave: My mum gave me her spare hot sleeve for my hair straighteners so they can cool safely after I’ve used them (my mum is the type of woman who buys two of everything, just in case).

It’s so useful! It means I don’t have to worry about the hot irons leaving marks anywhere or Alfie finding them (find it HERE – not an affiliated link, just if you’re interested!).

What are your recent rants and raves?

Do you get headaches after working out? Any tips?

Do you wear a heart rate monitor when working out?

May 5, 2015

Southsea parkrun and The Tenth Hole

Why do long weekends go so quickly? This Bank holiday weekend has just flown by. One minute I’m bouncing to my car after work on Friday evening and the next I’m trudging back to work through gale force winds Monday morning. *Sighs* Such is life.

To mix things up a few of us from my running club decided to do a bit of parkrun tourism on Saturday morning instead of going to our usual local parkrun, Netley Abbey. I went with three other running club friends to Southsea parkrun, which is renowned for being super flat and speedy (depending if the wind isn’t too bad). I wanted to test out where my speed was on a flat course as I haven’t really had the chance (Netley has a hill you do three times).

Southsea isn’t far from us at all so it didn’t require too much of an early morning thankfully. I’m actually very lucky to have so many parkruns near us if I fancy going somewhere different (Eastleigh, Southampton, Winchester, Southsea and Netley are all fairly close – though Southampton is quickly becoming a very popular one with almost 800 going each week!).

We convoyed together and soon realised that it was fairly windy and quite cold. My hopes of getting a sub-21 minute parkrun were diminishing by the minute as I watched the seagulls getting battered about by the gales as we sat in the car, waiting until the last second to get out to go to the start.

The course is quite simple: it goes out along the seafront 2.5k and then back on the same route 2.5k. The first half was straight against the wind. I pushed my legs as fast as they would go, barely keeping my super speedy friend, Karen, in my sights. I just kept pushing and pushing, knowing that soon we’d be turning around and things would get a lot easier (in theory). I even tried to wedge myself in with bunches of runners but it didn’t seem to help.

It was quite cool to see all the speedy front runners zooming past the other way as I got closer to the turnaround point and then finally I was heading back. Ah relief! The wind was pushing me along now and I looked down at my watch to see a 6.15min/mile pace! I was gobsmacked – the fastest parkrun mile I think I’ve done is a 6.3Xminute. But it was clear how much the wind was helping when we ran through a slightly sheltered area and suddenly it became very hard again. Don’t get me wrong, even though the wind was helping it was still a tough run back, but it was a lot easier with the wind for definite! I wouldn’t have got that pace without it.

I could see the finish ahead but looked down at my watch and was confused – it was far too early! As I finished I stopped my watch – 2.9miles?? Short by 0.2miles. I looked around and other people finishing and saw they too were looking confused.

My time was 19.22 – which was stupid because in reality it would never be that quick if the course was a proper length. I felt a little bit cheated. I know it sounds silly but if I’d have known I’d have probably carried on running to get to 3.1miles (while somehow grabbing my finisher’s token…). I was on for such a good time! I was also concerned that that supposed PB would go on my parkrun profile. How would I ever be able to beat it!?

Post run: Matt, Karen, Mike and me (L-R)

Thankfully we chatted to some of the parkrun guys and they said that everyone had agreed it was short and they would do some time adjustments later when they inputted the results. This made me feel so much better! But still I was deflated because it still wouldn’t really be a ‘real’ 5k time. Southsea parkrun made a lovely statement on Facebook afterwards so I’m not annoyed at them at all – these things happen, it’s not the Olympics after all. It just means we have unfinished business with Southsea and we will be back!

Very close to the parkrun area there’s a lovely little tea room/cafe called The Tenth Hole where we had planned to refuel. The Tenth Hole do they most amazing cakes and initially we were going to refuel with cake but all decided that at 10am that was probably unwise and no one’s stomachs were quite ready for that onslaught of sugar (yes, even mine!).

Barely containing my excitement

So we chose more time-appropriate things like toast, toasted muffins and (what I had) a veggie breakfast.

A toasted muffin, two fried eggs, a mushroom, black pudding and bubble and squeak

Though I swapped baked beans for black pudding so de-veggifying it! They did get a little snotty about me asking to swap the two items as apparently making amendments to orders would make things far too confusing in the kitchen which slightly baffled me considering you could add extra items to the meal anyway, and they weren’t exactly heaving! Anyway, they did kindly agree in the end with no extra charge.

It was very tasty and I adored the teapot and milk jug! How cute! And then obviously we did what all runners do…check out our stats and generally debrief about the race and our performance. I think everyone felt a little dissatisfied with the short course but in general we were all pleased with how speedy we’d been.

All our watches – mine is the purple Garmin 220

This parkrun has made me keen to test my legs on another 5k so I think I’ll aim for one of the local 5k race series towards the end of May. Normally I’d never bother with a 5k race other than parkruns but it’s awakened a slight hunger in me to see how fast I could go as my marathon training is going so well…Plus it’d be a good speed session!

Obviously I couldn’t leave without taking cake with me. My cake freezer stock (doesn’t everyone have one of those?) is running a little low so I thought this was the ideal opportunity to restock. I didn’t think I’d eat it that day as I was going for afternoon tea the next day with my parents (yes, yes, I know, again) so didn’t want to spoil that.

I went for a slice of carrot cake and a slice of toffee apple cake. But the decision was so hard with things like Mars Bar cheesecake, Oreo brownies and raspberry vanilla sponges on offer!

They are huge wedges (doorstop slabs – the ideal cake slice proportions in my opinion). Honestly I don’t think they’re going to last long in my freezer at all! But I do have that warm fuzzy feeling knowing that they’re there 🙂

So Southsea parkrun, we’ll be back! A great, friendly, inviting event on a super speedy course – just hopefully not so short next time 😉

Do you do enjoy a bit of parkrun tourism?

What would annoy you more: a short course or a long course? I’d rather run further because then at least you can look at what you could achieved at the correct measurement, rather than just wonder.

What’s your idea post-workout meal if you’re out at a cafe/restaurant?

April 29, 2015April 29, 2015

Southampton Half Marathon recap

Originally I had planned to race this and attempt to come somewhere near my half marathon PB, but after speaking to a few people I realised this probably was going to be harder than I wanted it to be as I didn’t realise quite how undulating the course would be.

So I re-planned what I was going to do. Before the Liverpool marathon in June I want a half marathon that I can let myself go a bit on…but I’d quite like to give myself the opportunity to do well (yes, yes cherry picking courses for PB potential purposes I know). I haven’t actually been able to test myself out on any sort of flat course yet as my local parkrun has a hill you do three times and other runs are either intentionally hilly or are my long slower runs.

I heard about the Hackney Half Marathon (two weeks time) and found it was flat and fast so signed myself up. This meant that I could use the Southampton half as a training run, and with running there I could make it up to 18.5 miles. There would be a time gap between the 5.5 mile run there and the start but as my first 18ish miler I was happy.

I had a High5 Energy Bar after my run there to tide me over and some water with nuun in it. I was also able to put some fresh running clothes on too. I met up with some running club friends and we headed over to watch the 10k start. We cheered them on and then headed to the race village. It was lovely and organised and honestly didn’t feel like the first ever event.

You could pick up your finisher’s technical T-shirt before the race but I decided to leave getting mine until after I had finished as the queue was massive (though this did stress me out a little as I was worried they would run out of Smalls – they didn’t thankfully). There were so many of my running club, Hedge End RC, doing this race that I was just surrounded with red, white and blue vests everywhere which was fantastic. The atmosphere was brilliant as well, but it was COLD.

Eventually we all had to reluctantly peel our layers off and head to the bag drop (nice and well organised). I realised in my bag I handily had my poncho that I’d kept from the Paris marathon (last year!) so while everyone else was donning their black bags I had this huge, quite posh green ponch (with a hood!) to wear. And as we walked to the starting pens I saw someone else had the same poncho so I tapped her on her shoulder and said “snap!”. She smiled and replied “yes but mine is last year’s” and I said “yes mine too!” and we chatted about how much we enjoyed that race which was lovely.

After the standard pre-race selfie with the guys I was going to be running with and hopping around trying to keep warm for a bit we were soon off. I was running with a lovely bunch of running club guys, some of whom were after a PB or was their first half. We’d discussed beforehand a range of paces to stay at and we started nice and relaxed.

In fact, I’ve never run so many miles so easily and with so much enjoyment before on a training run. The miles just flew by! We chatted, we joked, we waved and shouted. It was brilliant! We pushed each other and got pushed on by the brilliant spectators (and swarms of our own club mates who weren’t running).

Not the whole gang, but looking quite focused

We pushed each other on when we got to Itchen Bridge, which was a slow long incline up and down and then back over it again. We enjoyed the scenic (sort of?) sights of the Southampton football club. We encouraged each other up the steep Burgess Road hill. We even sung to Matt Le Tissier (old Southampton football player) whom we caught up with. In fact, we got everyone around him singing and he looked quite pleased (though very knackered).

Photo credit: Stephen McPhillips – thank you!

The support from our club was amazing and from the people of Southampton who came out in droves to support us. OK so Southampton isn’t London or the most scenic of places, but it was an interesting course with lots of variation in terms of sights and elevation. A good number of water and gel stops too.

Sadly though the fun times ended somewhat at mile 10 when Mike experienced some horrible cramp in his calves. He had to slow down and stop a few times to try and alleviate the tightness and pain. It’s happened to him quite a few times during races and he doesn’t know how to prevent it or cure it when it occurs. Any ideas or advice would be appreciated! He’s going to try calf shields while running and taking magnesium tablets to see if that helps.

The others carried on but I stayed with him as my time didn’t matter as I was just looking for the miles on my feet. I just wish I could have helped but there was nothing really I could do but try and take his mind off it and encourage him round. He was on for such a good time which was clearly very frustrating to him. But that being said, he still got a good time despite stopping and slowing down (and the course being hilly!) so he shouldn’t be too disappointed at all.

I don’t regret staying with Mike at all as it would have been awful for him to have suffered alone and if anything keeping the pace slower meant my legs felt really good the next day! I wasn’t as tired as I normally am after a long run as well. My official time was 1:54:58.

As we headed to the finish the crazy thought did cross my mind that I felt I could run home but realised that would be tempting fat far too much. Let’s not get carried away! I did feel very good running though and it’s given me a great confidence boost for the marathon. I just need to survive the coming weeks. I have two more 18 milers, but without a break as I realise having an hour and half between the runs wasn’t a good emulation of a marathon experience!

The medal is quite chunky and hefty and the post race goodie bag was a real drawstring bag with crisps and water…and they tried to give me some weird pink protein drink which I managed to duck away from – looked suspect to me 😉

All in all an absolutely fantastic race. The company I ran with was brilliant and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I just wish Mike’s calves had behaved so he could have had a better race, but (perhaps selfishly) it showed me that being sensible during a long run in terms of my pace could mean quicker recover for me afterwards. I even did intervals on Tuesday morning they felt that good!

Have you ever done a race as a training run or part of a training run? It’s brilliant. It’s catered, you get a medal and you’re with loads of other runners.

How do you deal with cramp?

What do you like to see in a race goodie bag? Generally I like food, but decent food not a Mars Bar or some sugar-filled drink.

April 28, 2015

A lot of running and a lot of ribs

What a weekend! If you’re a British runner then this weekend gone was bloody fantastic. Nothing makes me smile like the London marathon. Truly love being part of such an awesome community.

But winding back first to Saturday morning and my usual parkrun fun at Netley Abbey. I’d decided to take it somewhat easier (medium effort I’d say) as I knew I had a lot going on the next day with the Southampton Half Marathon and running there to make it a total of 18.5 miles (more on that later). This meant I was quite chilled beforehand.

The handy tree where everyone hangs their stuff

That was until I headed off for a warm-up with my running club friend, Mike, and his daughter, Kelci who was running her first ever parkrun at nine years old, and we didn’t realise the time until we saw everyone heading over to the start. But we were still all the way across the other side of the park! We had to properly sprint over, ripping off our jackets as we went and tossing them under a random tree to meet the line-up just in time for the start. My heart was thumping before we’d even begun!

I decided to rock out my new Adidas Boosts that I’d won as being parkrunner of the month for Netley (saving myself an incredible £130!!)

They are so pretty! They’re slightly less cushioned than my regular Mizunos and Brooks so I’ll only be wearing these for short runs and ideally when I’m not running on concrete roads – so parkrun is ideal.

This also handily meant I was matching!

Small things, eh!

What was funny about the parkrun was how many volunteers we had. Because obviously it was the London marathon the next day and we had the Southampton half and 10k it meant lots of people were saving their legs. This also helped with a very quick clear down!

Anyway, my parkrun time was 22:05 which I was happy with. My running this week has gone really well. Honestly, who the hell am I!? The only hard things I’m finding are my gym sessions which are a) boring and b) hard. Running seems to be the easy part funnily enough. The gym sessions I truly believe are keeping me in good shape and injury-free so stay they must, though I might drop to one session a week as the weeks continue and mileage climbs. I can always pick it back up again full throttle post-marathon.

Mike’s daughter did very well but was pretty shattered after her first ever three mile run. She had a great finish though and the look in her face was one of sheer determination. Well done Kelci!

The rest of the day was same old same old, apart from having a little trip to West Quay shopping centre with my dad. My mum is away so I was suspicious when he invited me out shopping with him. What? Shopping? You don’t like shopping? Is how I responded. Ahh yes, the new Apple Watch was out…he wanted to have a look and feel.

Personally, I’m not won over by the Apple Watch. I have far too many watches now to need another one (my Vivofit, my Garmin, Polar watch and normal watches!) Plus my iPhone does everything I want it to and the Apple Watch doesn’t have GPS so I couldn’t even swap it for my Garmin (assuming of course I could even afford one of these – ha!) But my dad loves his gadgets so was in his element.

As it was the Southampton Half the next day a few of us from my club had arranged to go out for some carb loading that evening but due to several reasons it just ended up being Mike and me. It was lovely and chilled and a far better way to get a good dinner in than me being on my own at home (and let’s be honest, I’d have probably just gotten an Indian take away…).I went for the chicken Caesar flatbread which was perfect. I didn’t feel overstuffed (which is always the temptation) and it was delicious (Caesar never lets me down!).

I was feeling very relaxed about the half marathon the next day because I wasn’t racing it. I’d planned to make it into a long run after discovering it was 5.5 miles from my house. This was perfect considering I ran 17 miles last weekend and all the roads were going to be closed anyway to get into Southampton. Mike (yep, him again!) graciously offered to take my bag with him the day before so I had a spare set of running clothes, warm clothes, my bib, food and drink when I got there. He also works at Southampton Solent university which is all of five minutes from the start and said I could use their facilities to get changed in. I mean, seriously how perfect! He was doing the race too and I had planned to run with him and some other friends from my running club so it worked out very well.

Except I did get stressed the night before because I was running a route that I’d never run before (and I’m notoriously bad at navigating anywhere), it was a hilly route and I had a set time to get there. This meant a rubbish night sleep. I gave myself plenty of time and left at 7.30am on Sunday morning having checked my route a zillion times, but felt very ‘naked’ without any of my race things.

But the route went perfectly, the hills weren’t half as bad as I’d imagined and I got there in plenty of time to meet Mike and co. I was instantly de-stressed and got myself ready in real toilets in Solent University. It was a cold morning so I was grateful to have somewhere warm to get sorted. I’ve never felt so relaxed before a half!

I hadn’t had breakfast before I left but had decided that because I had an hour and a half to wait until the half began that I’d need something easy beforehand. I found I had a High5 Energy Bar and went with that. It was chocolate orange flavour, which isn’t a flavour I’m big on, but it went down well and I felt good. I also had some water with a nuun tablet in.

I’ll do a full race recap in another post so I’ll leave it there. After the race I got a lift back, got myself into a lovely hot shower and ready to meet my dad for lunch. Both of us are meat-lovers so the obvious choice was Ranchos Steak House which would cater to his love of steak and my ~~obsession~~ love of ribs.

After 18.5 miles I was sooo ready for food! Because I’m that obsessed I went for a half a rack of ribs to start and then ribs for my main. Go big or go home 😉 It’s just what I really fancied so I went with it.

And chocolate fudge cake for dessert. I was stuffed, but hugely satisfied. My dad enjoyed his meal too and it was a lovely dad-daughter lunch outing.

When I got home and I just immersed myself into my recorded London marathon coverage and two separate Paula Radcliffe programmes. One from ITV and one from the BBC. The BBC was more of a celebration and was a lot happier, but the ITV was gritty at times and more of an unblinking look into Paula’s ups and downs. I had no idea about the relationship with her husband being under such scrutiny and the media attention surrounding it.

I also didn’t realise they’d show that unfortunate moment in the London marathon where she had to stop at the side of the course because of tummy issues. Despite those tummy issues though she still finished the marathon in a time that tops all the latest female times today (2:17:42). Seriously, that is hardcore. What I admired most was how she spoke about that unfortunate incident. She was so down to earth about it and not fazed at all. It was just one of those things that happened and she had to deal with it. Massive respect.

I’m very sad I didn’t get to run it this year but honestly 2016 I am ready for you!!!

Have you ever run the London marathon?

Who’s your sporting idol?

What do you love about being British (or whatever nationality you are!)