Happy Easter everyone! Hope you had an egg-cellent time (sorry, couldn’t resist). Mine was jam-packed, which was brilliant but means I don’t feel that rested for work!
I had Friday and Monday off of work, which I suppose is the norm but I know a lot of people still had to work (I would never work in retail for these reasons!). On Friday I popped to the gym in the morning to do my strength training, though thankfully not having to get up at 5am! I was there for the more reasonable time of 8am. Though this did mean it was far more busy than I’m used to. People all over the place!
Then after breakfast my mum popped over and we headed out, with Alfie, for a lovely walk in Queen Vitoria Country Park which is where my local parkrun is held. Though the weather was a bit grisly, it was nice to walk and chat. And Alfie just loves to walk straight through all those muddy puddles! Walking is helping my mum’s back and she’s trying to swim a bit more too but she’s still off of work and will hopefully have her MRI booked in soon 🙁
We dropped Alfie back off at home, de-wellied ourselves and headed out for lunch at Gunwharf Quays. But the traffic was dreadful. The queue to get to Portsmouth was just chock-a-block so we made the most sensible decision to come off at Port Solent instead and have lunch there. Obviously this meant Zippers (which I’ve been to a fair few times I must admit). Sadly there was no salad bar anymore! Apparently people weren’t fussed with it? This does not compute with me.
But I still got a very tasty chicken, avocado and bacon salad (with a side of chips…). I absolutely couldn’t resist their fantastic chocolate fudge cake either. I’ve had it every single time I’ve been there and it’s consistently amazing. I would go back to Zippers purely for that cake.
Saturday was finally my 50th parkrun! It’s been a long time coming as I’ve been going to parkrun for two years. I baked some double chocolate chip cookies (a very standard recipe, nothing crazy) and they actually turned out OK which is something for me as usually I’m a terrible baker.
I went down early as normal to help set up and as I stood waiting for the others to come I saw my dad pull up. He had said he might come down to watch (he loves supporting races and seeing me run, bless him, and he’s never been to a parkrun before so my 50th seemed an ideal one to watch) but I didn’t know for certain if he’d come. I’d told him to come for 8.30-45am if he was coming so I was quite surprised to see him so early. So I dragged him into setting-up as well. hHe didn’t mind and found it quite interesting.
He was my own personal photographer as well which was cool, as well as a brilliant cheerer.
Annoyingly I hadn’t charged my earphones and hadn’t realised till I got there so I had to run music-less. I wanted to push it and find without music it’s so much harder. Probably need to work on this I suppose as it’s such a mental crutch. Though it was nice to not have music for once and enjoy the atmosphere.
I ran it in 21:14 which is slower by 10 seconds or so than last week but I felt strong so I’m happy with that! I feel like I’m being consistent which is good.
The rest of Saturday I spent with my mum again and Di, my mother-in-law. We went to Lymington for a mosey around some shops and lunch.
Lovely violinist setting the tone
There was a market which was cool but it was very busy. The weather was nice, it was Easter weekend…not surprising really! It was lovely to mooch around little independent shops and the market.
For lunch we stopped in a lovely little pub called The Hobler Inn.
I had a lamb kofta for my starter, followed by a mango Cajun chicken salad. Both were delicious and I’d really recommend this pub. It felt very food-focused and the staff were lovely.
Sunday morning was long run time again. This time 14 miles was on the plan and the wind was practically non-existent thank goodness as I was running along the beach again.
It was a good run; I felt comfortable and my legs felt strong (how long will this last??). 7:47mins/mile average.
The only annoying thing was that I got really bad stitch about four times during the run (probably nine miles onwards) and I had to stop a few seconds to try and get rid of it. I wasn’t running fast so I wasn’t sure what was wrong (though I had eaten a lot the night before in the shape of an Indian take-away…but this has never been a problem before?). Though it was annoying it was strangely a good thing because as it kept creeping back I worked out a way to get rid of it while running so didn’t have to stop anymore. I held myself up taller and took big breaths whenever I felt it starting. And it died away! So actually quite good to have happened during a training run to work out how to get rid of it.
After the run I blasted up a beasty smoothie at my parent’s house after showering.
This contained half a banana, loads of strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, semi-skimmed milk, orange juice, the Superfood power (<– not an affiliate link!) and kale. Very tasty and it made two lots so my dad got a superfood boost as well.
Right this post is getting too long so I’ll leave it there for now and recap the rest in another post.
How was your Easter?
How do you motivate yourself to run fast?
What is your perfect pudding? Fairly boring but mine is probably a brownie/chocolate cake with ice cream. But if there’s no ice cream I won’t have it as it’s too rich and I don’t like cream!