Alfie - AnnaTheApple

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?

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.

September 10, 2014

Nature is out to get me

Last weekend after getting back from our cycle, I took Alfie for a long walk. I didn’t bother showering before I left because it didn’t make sense and Alfie needed a walk. I got back from the walk and experienced something quite horrific.

I got ready to get in the shower. My hair was in plaits so I took them out and ran my fingers through it to untangle it. I felt something stuck in my hair and a sharp sting to my neck. I had already take my contact lenses out so couldn’t really see but when I looked in the mirror there was definitely something in there.

I panicked and shouted to Ben. I flipped my head upside down and yelled that there was something in my hair that had stung me. I was flailing about a bit and he couldn’t quite see through the voluminous mass that is my hair. His demeanour instantly changed as soon as he found what the ‘thing’ was. He started speaking in that calm, slow voice that you use with panicked animals. This freaked me out even more – the thing in my hair must be deadly, must be massive and dangerous.

He grabbed my hairbrush and started whacking at my hair in true Man Style. This scared me even more that he didn’t even want to touch the thing. I started crying and wailing like a lunatic, terrified this giant flesh eating spider was about to crawl up my hair onto my scalp.

Eventually he got it off me. The verdict: it was a wasp. I flopped onto the bed in a heap of emotional drainage.

I know I reacted in a very whimpish way but frankly it terrified me. Though it was quite funny afterwards. All occurred butt naked. Good times 😉

But then, not two days later another attack of nature.

I was drying my hands on our tea towel which was hanging from a hook and suddenly out dropped what I thought was a dead spider. It was all scrunched up and not moving. Then it jumped up after lulling us into a sense of false security. I balked and ran up the stairs, Alfie got the hell out of the kitchen and Ben was left to deal with the fiend. but I’m a bit of a weird one in that I hate killing thing so I made him take it down the road and throw it in a bush – far away from our house. I don’t want that thing making it’s way back to us!

Whew. Jeeeze. Nature is a bitch.

In other news. Alfie has been keeping a keen eye on my foam rolling lately. I’ve been using a tennis ball on my calves to help loosen them up. Sadly for him I’m using his ball. He used to get exciting but now he realises that ‘catch’ is no longer what’s about to happen.

And again, where are his paws???

And on a random note, I found one of these at a petrol station.

It tasted amazing and was very refreshing. I’m quite impressed how mainstream coconut products are becoming!

What are you scared of?

How do you get rid of spiders?

What’s your favourite coconut product?

September 1, 2014

Jam-packed active weekend

Wow where did August go? Did it even happen? It’s scary how quickly the year is flying by.

This weekend was jam-packed. Like non-stop. I love weekends like that but it doesn’t really give you time to relax and take stock. It started Friday night with me rushing home to meet up with some of my running club for a 20 mile bike ride. As usual I was the slowest of the group – and they weren’t even pushing it! I felt bad that I might be slowing them down but they were all lovely and waited for me if I got too far behind. This cycling business is tough work!

Then I got home, quickly showered, dressed and headed out with Ben to enjoy a nice night at the pub with Kyle (our sports massage therapist and running guru friend – he writes his own blog HERE) and his lovely wife, Sophie. As Ben and me weren’t going to parkrun the next day we decided to enjoy a bit of a drinking evening. We also had a cheeky Indian as well. Good fun!

The next morning we had a luxurious lie-in, had a lazy breakfast and then made our way to the swimming pool. Ben was going to do some lane swimming (he’s still injured) while I did my pool running. Ben’s a great swimmer and he does quite enjoy – unlike me who is a) rubbish and b) hates it.

My new flotation belt. It’s just not running 🙁

Unfortunately the swimming pool was having a “float time” and was heaving with kids. We’re not particularly child-friendly people so this was a *bit* of a nightmare. Ben couldn’t even swim as there were no lanes (we had rung up to check we could swim…clearly“swimming” can be interpreted in different ways). It was screaming mayhem!

Check out those hotties!

I had piled my hair on my head to keep it dry as your head doesn’t go under the water when you’re pool running – bonus! I had brought goggles though just in case (that’s what’s round my next in case you wondered).

Ben attempted to swim but it was tricky due to the sheer number of kids so he mainly kept me company while I splashed about. I have no idea if I was doing the pool running right so he checked out my form underwater for me bless him.

I’ve watched a few YouTube videos and read a bit about it. So I was trying to master and maintain the correct technique. It was very dull though so to jazz things up I decided to do intervals. I sped my legs up as fast as I could for 30 seconds and then went bit easier for one minute. Suddenly things were a lot harder! I was puffing and panting away. It was tough but in a weird way. It was hard effort to keep my legs moving fast and my arms going, but there was no impact. All in all a good 30 minute work out I think. Some children started jumping in the area where I was floating and splashed me. I gave them the death stare and they never came back 😉

I’ll keep you updated how the pool running continues as I plan on doing it as much as I can in order to replicate normal running. When I get back into running after my mini break I’ll keep at it to supplement my gentle come back. Well that’s the plan anyway!

I did think this was slightly ironic in the changing rooms on the lockers…

Come on! Seriously? Mock me at every turn why don’t you, universe!

Anyway it didn’t feel like the hardest workout of my life but it felt like something at least.

Later we had a lovely meal at Ben’s mum’s that evening. Like I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I love spending time with my family and it was nice catching up. And the food was so good! We had a lovely choice of puddings as well – fruit, ice cream, meringues and homemade rhubarb crumble. Ben went for everything.

Underneath the mass of ice cream and meringues there is a HUGE slice of rhubarb pudding I assure you.

The next morning we met up with our friend, Nathan, and went for a 41 mile ride on the bike. This is my longest ride to date! I did find it really tough from the start – my legs felt like lead and I had no energy (could this be from the pool running..??). The route wasn’t easy and it was really warm.We’d decided to not eat breakfast before going so half way we could stop for something to eat in a little cafe and then continue to the end of the ride.

Annoyingly I’d somehow started my Garmin 10 minutes before we actually started cycling and only realised when it told me my first mile was 14 minutes long. So I had to restart it.

It was a nice cycle as we’re all reasonably the same speeds so there was no pressure and no worries. There were a fair number of hills but we kept each other going. At 21ish miles we went to Lilly’s in Wickham (where I’ve previously been for afternoon tea a few times) and we had breakfast (at about 11am…).

The boys had waffles with bacon and maple syrup but I went for a full English as I was starving (no photo, too hungry sorry). Slightly regretted that decision though when I got back on the bike. I was so full! Thought I might be sick as we hit some up-hills. Foolish, Anna!

We didn’t break any speed records but it was hard work for us newbies. Definitely a tough long workout!

To keep our Sunday working hard we got showered and dressed and met back up with Nathan to go for a long walk in the New Forest with Alfie.

We were all feeling pretty knackered but it was a nice walk. The route said 10k but in the end it was almost 7.5miles!!

By the time we got home it was almost 6pm and I’d only had two apples since my brunch. Needless to say I was starving. Ben and me had lunch/dinner (?!) and collapsed on the sofa. Exhausted! Even Alfie was worn out bless him.

Usually he hates car journeys but he was so tired when he got into the car he just laid down and chilled.

It’s funny because usually if I don’t run at the weekends it can seem a bit empty and not that ‘epic’, if you know what I mean? I adore running and I love my long runs, but it was really nice to do something completely different. The long cycle was epic and we felt so good afterwards. I fell into bed before 9pm and was asleep straight away. I had the beautiful exhausted feeling that my body had been worked hard in a good way. Obviously I don’t need running or cycling to make my weekends good, but I’m an active person and can’t just sit on the sofa all day long. That’s not how I relax.

And in terms of the impending marathon? Ben and me have agreed to take each day as it comes without thinking to far ahead. I can’t think about what ifs at the moment. I haven’t decided if I will do it or not yet. It’s very much up in the air, but I’m only thinking about the day I’m on at the moment, not the weeks that are coming. Otherwise I might be sick with panic…

How do you like to spend your weekends if you got to do everything you wanted?

Have you done a long bike ride before?

Do you enjoy going to the swimming pool?

August 20, 2014August 20, 2014

Foods and Alfie lately

It’s Wednesday and amazingly I’ve just got today left at work and then Ben and me have five days off. We’re heading to North Wales tomorrow to visit my grandparents again and (hopefully, weather dependent) do lots of hiking and walking.

I’ve had to shift a few runs around but I’m hoping to get my long run done tomorrow morning before we go. It’s a four hour car journey so it’ll be nice to sit and nap chill (Ben loves driving) after completing a long run. I’m hoping to do between 10-13 miles just to keep my body getting used to that distance before going any higher. Caution is my best friend right now.

I was recently giving the opportunity to review some Beet It sport products: the Pro-Elite Bar and the concentrated beetroot shot.

I haven’t used them yet as I want to save them for Berlin. Though I will test drive a few shots before my next half marathon (7th September – Pharmalink in Maidenhead). I’ve heard some really good things about the product so I’m really excited to try it out. And I love beetroot…The goodness in these products is all down to the nitrates from the beetroot which have been shown to help with stamina and performance (source; source).

I’m considering having one of the bars as breakfast before the Berlin marathon (obviously I’ll trial this first! I’m not crazy). For the Paris marathon I took the little oat pots and made it up in our hotel room with hot water…but I’m wondering if one of these bars and a banana might be more beneficial? I think I’ll test it for the Maidenhead half. I’m just worried it might not fill me up. It’s 235 calories which seems a little low for breakfast – but with a banana as well? Any advice would be welcome!

On the topic of food, I’ve been enjoying some really random but tasty meals lately.

Sausage and Sweet Potato Hash (serves one)

Small sweet potato, grated (I leave skin on)
Half white onion, diced
Couple of mushrooms, chopped
Half a small courgette, chopped
Good handful of kale
Two sausages, chopped into chunks
Large tablespoon of cream cheese
Spices (I used a Cajun spice mix which had a nice kick)

(I think I might have had the scrag ends of a stir fry mix in there as well – basically any sort of veg goes!)

– Fry the onion in oil (my favourite is coconut oil), then add sweet potato (add a bit of water if it starts to stick to pan) and allow to soften for about 5 minutes with occasional stirring. Then add courgettes, mushrooms and kale.

– Add the spices along with the sausages.

– When the sausages are cooked add the cream cheese, heat through and then serve!

Everything Salad (serves one hungry Anna)

I won’t patronise you with a recipe as it’s fairly self-explanatory. In the mix is a whole lot of veg (carrots, courgette, salad leaves, beetroot, mushrooms, roasted sweet potato) and in that mound hidden away are chickpeas. And then covered in my favourite Caesar dressing of course 😉

Feta Chicken

Feta chicken is always a normal meal during the week at ours. Sometimes done in the slow cooker, sometimes just the normal oven. I’ve written the recipe before (find it HERE).

And here is Ben’s dream meal which he’d eat every night if he had the chance…

This is actually leftovers from his pizza meal the night before. To be fair to him, he had run 18.5 miles (this was a few weeks ago…pre-injury). He ordered a large pizza, chicken dippers, garlic bread…and then consumed the leftovers (with toast of course) the next day. Jeeze. Who said runners were healthy, eh?

So like I said, we’re off to North Wales tomorrow. I’ll be saying good bye to this furry chappy tonight as he’ll be holidaying at my parent’s house while we’re away.

Alfie selfie

I’ll miss him so much. Gives me hope that when I eventually have a baby it’ll be similar feeling – finger’s crossed, eh?? 😉

Ben’s Alfie Snapchat he sent me while I was upstairs

Hopefully my parents will send some Alfie Snapchats as he loves them so… 😉

If you get the Bank Holiday off, how are you spending long weekend?

Have you ever tried the Beet It products? Or heard about beetroot as a sports supplement?

What’s your dream meal you’d eat all the time if health didn’t matter? BBQ ribs, sweet potato fries and a whole lotta cake.