Alfie - AnnaTheApple

August 12, 2014

The one with all the selfies…

This past weekend was quite a strange one for me. Ben was off camping for a running event called Ultra 12 (solo or relay runners running Saturday 7pm until Sunday 7am). I had planned on doing it as well and being part of a team of six with Ben but as it got closer I realised my time was probably better spent focusing on the marathon.

I didn’t feel too bad leaving the team because this actually meant they could get more laps in without me and they’d get a better running experience (I hoped) from it. Obviously I was sad I wasn’t going and being part of the team but I knew my decision was sensible (albeit boring). I’d get to go to parkrun on Saturday and do a longish run Sunday.

This past week or so I’ve had a few niggles I wanted to put to bed so have been focusing a bit more on cycling and hoping the niggles don’t develop further. So far so good. Just means I haven’t been able to run as far in my long runs as I’d want at this point. But I’m not dwelling on it or panicking.

Friday night I was on my own and watch the Dallas Buyers Club (a film I knew Ben wouldn’t want to watch) occasionally interrupted with a few selfies from the husband to keep me informed of all his good behaviour…

Preparing well for the race the next day

Saturday morning I cycled the four miles to parkrun and helped them set up.

Parkrun selfie

Then ran a nice and easy parkrun with a friend from my club. I just ran on feel and didn’t want to push it but felt good at the end and picked up the pace a bit (to the surprise of my running partner, whoops!) I would like this documented that this was my first ever royal flush negative split parkrun (I know it’s only three miles but still, this is something for me!)

Very pleased with that! Then I helped pack up and cycled back home.

Ben was away until Sunday lunchtime-ish so I’d planned on hanging with the parentals for Saturday until Sunday morning, where I’d planned to do a nice long run along the seafront (as my parent’s live closer to the sea than we do).

I took Alfie with me and we headed there at lunchtime. I enjoyed a nice walk down to the local village with my parents to pick up some supplies for the evening dinner.

Then we had a nice lunch and headed out for another walk, this time along the seafront to stop for coffee in one of the little tea rooms. The walk was very windy but lovely in the sunshine.

I do love being near the sea. And this helped take my mind off that I was missing out on all the Ultra fun and Ben 🙁

Sea-side selfie

I sent some selfies to Ben and he responded likewise so I sort of felt in the loop.

Ben and Nathan

The weather was looking to turn to the worst however…

Some less happy than others!

Anyway, back to the walk. Our plan was to have coffee and to also buy a slice of cake each to have after dinner. Well that did not work out at all after seeing the amazing selection and having worked up a bit of an appetite for a snack.

Yeah right I could walk a slice of cake the two miles back to the car without eating it!! We all agreed cake would be far better now than after dinner. Good decision, yes?

That absolute beast of a slab is red velvet. So. Damn. Good. My dad had an incredibly sized slice of carrot cake and my mum had the same as me. I think I need to return though for test purposes because they said they had a cinnamon bun cake and I’ve never tried one of those before.

Our walk back was powdered by cake; we were stuffed! As we continued to walk we all agreed our planned steak dinner was probably not a good idea anymore. It’s a shame because it was going to be Steak Diane and this is one of my favourite recipes my dad cooks.

Anyway we had a lazy evening of a snacky dinner (soup for me) and a good film, the Guilt Trip. This film is just made to watch with your mum. Seriously. It was very funny and the perfect choice for the evening…while Ben and the team were working hard in the night…

Head torches to the rescue?

The next morning I planned on running 10 miles down the beach…until I looked outside.

It was absolutely pelting it down and the wind was unbelievable. Hurricane Bertha was saying good morning it seemed. Running along the beach in this? No thank you! I’m not a fair weather runner (I’ll run in wind, rain and snow any day) but this was stupid. I’d get blown away! My parents agreed I shouldn’t go out so instead I enjoyed a bit of Xbox with my dad (geek at heart I’m afraid).

Then I made my way home and had the lovely company of my returned exhausted runner. The team absolutely smashed it and came first for the mixed relay runners – how about that! They were amazing and I’m so glad they all enjoyed it. Ben managed four laps (of the 5 mile course) so he was pretty spent for the rest of the day.

His well deserved medal still round his neck

I’m a very proud wife! He did amazingly. Though I don’t regret not going, I am sad I wasn’t involved and didn’t get to see them all do so well. Next year!

What films have you seen lately?

Have you ever done a relay race?

Do you enjoy spending time with your parents? My parents and me are very close and I’m not ashamed to say I like spending time with them. And Ben’s mother in law as well. I’m very lucky to have such a lovely family! (Cheese alert sorry)

August 6, 2014August 6, 2014

Something different for once

I’m not a big drinker. It’s not that I don’t drink for a particular reason, I just never feel the need. I don’t go out clubbing or go to pubs to drink. I tend to go to pubs to eat! Ben loves a glass of red at the weekend but I just don’t have the taste for wine.

I like a crisp cold G&T occasionally, and an exciting cocktail on a special occasion but otherwise I’m good. Except last week sucked. I was stressed and had a few down moments and was looking forward the weekend like crazy. Ben finishes at 12.30 on a Friday so had planned a boy’s afternoon/night down the pub leaving me pretty much a spinster on Friday night. I’d planned to watch a film and just go to bed early. Humph.

Until he graciously extended the invite to me as well when he realised I needed a bit of cheering up. Go to the pub? Well why not! That’ll definitely de-stress me. We decided to take a day off from parkrun the next day and actually get a lie-in for once so I didn’t need to worry about what time to get to bed as I had no set time to get up. Perfecto.

After work I headed straight for the pub and joined the drinking wagon (which by this point was merrily trucking along). I ordered and drank my first ever Desperados. And it went down a treat.

We hadn’t eaten dinner yet so we ordered food. Two huge sharing platters of Mexican chicken, chicken dipper things and other fried goodies. Then on to the main event.

I was hugely surprised that the menu had quite a few salad options (you know how I love my salads) but even more surprising was that you could order a side of BBQ ribs. I mean seriously this menu was made for me. So I got my chickpea chicken salad with a side of ribs. As you do.

The evening was good fun and a lot of laughs. Ben got fairly drunk, which was hugely amusing. I must say I did get fairly tipsy (I managed 4 Desperados). My lie in until 9am the next day was blissful and entirely necessary.

We’d planned a walk in the New Forest and invited our friend Nathan with us (also in attendance at the pub).

All looking a little tired and delicate

Ben and Nathan was somewhat delicate but I think the fresh air really helped. Or at least I told them it would and stop moaning 😉

We took Alfie along as well and he absolutely loved it. Incidentally it turns out this was the same route we ran for the MarathonTalk weekend long run! We didn’t realise until we arrived.

We walked 3.75miles and stopped for lunch in a lovely little pub called the Royal Oaks. The menu was small and all home-made. No chips (fries) in sight. Just ploughman’s, dressed crab (!), fresh sausage rolls and pork pies. Nath and I went for crab with salad, Ben went for a sausage roll and we shared a cheese and gammon ploughman’s because we were hungry (and hello my name is Anna the food machine).

It was so tasty. Everything fresh and homemade (even the chutney in little mini jam jars – and there was an apple as well!).

My crab was amazing. The boys had salted caramel and honeycomb ice cream and we were raring to go again. It was funny because we’d all forgotten to turn off our Garmins when we first arrived which we was a bit annoying as our pace had been quite consistent and then we all had to keep clicking our watches every so often to stop them from power saving and turning off. So there was a lot of beeping during our meal.

A Ben selife

We continued on our set route which was actually quite tough. Some gradual inclines and deep sandy tracks. Glad I wasn’t running it!

The full route was 8.5 miles and we did it in around 2 hours 43 minutes. Not too shabby. Though obvious we had a break in the middle!

We were all shattered at the end, Alfie included. And stupidly thirsty. We had to stop at the services on the way home to buy drinks. I unwisely chose Diet Mountain Dew. The luminous colour of the bottle should have been a warning to me, it tasted so chemical and wrong. Bad choice. Not Fanta Zero for sure.

We dropped Nathan off and Ben and I promptly flopped on the sofa for some quality relaxing time watching How to Train Your Dragon (this film is AMAZING, I want a dragon!!).

Do you enjoy going for a long walk in the countryside?

What’s your favourite pub meal?

Do you drink? What’s your beverage of choice?

July 31, 2014

A Day in the Life of

Me! I did one of this ages and ages ago but thought I’d do another one as things have changed a bit. This was a working day last week where I was running in the morning. I don’t run every day but it’s more interesting when I do 😉

At 5.10am my Fitbit fitness tracker gently wakes me up by vibrating on my wrist. This is handy because it only wakes me up and not Ben (though, to be honest, a truck could drive through our bedroom and he’d still struggle to wake up, whereas a drip in the sink from the bathroom could jolt me awake).

I took this photo from our bed just before I got up. Our curtains have been left open just because it’s so damn hot. Also it’s nice to be semi-awake anyway from the morning sunlight when my alarm goes off.

Around 5.30am after the bathroom usuals and getting my running gear on I take Alfie for a walk.

Unbelievably this dog is raring to go at this time. What is wrong with him?? I do quite enjoy these very early morning walks with him. It warms me up for my run and it’s so peaceful and quiet outside, barely anyone else around except for a fellow ~~crazy~~ dog walker or two.

I get home and do a little 5-10min dynamic warm up before I run. I do things like leg swings and high knees. Just some moves to get the creaks from my legs.

Then off I go. Depending on the session I’ll either listen to a podcast (easy run) or music (intervals/hill sessions/tempo) or sometimes just run to sound of my own feet. I run anywhere from 3 miles to 6 miles (but this will be increasing as the weeks go on).

Then I get back and walk Alfie again as a cool down. On days I don’t run I usually give Alfie a long walk, so when I run I’m giving Alfie two short walks (we call him Double Dump Alfie – go figure!)

Then I get back and do some stretching and foam rolling while drinking some water with this stuff in it:

I got this ages ago (I only have 5g a time). It basically helps with muscle repair and you metabolism. I can’t say I’ve noticed anything really but I take it anyway! I then race to the shower. I’m usually always late at this point (where does the time go??)

Shower, wash hair, comb hair, dry hair, straighten hair – gargh I sometimes HATE my hair. So damn long and so damn long to maintain.

Acceptably groomed

Then I’m ready for breakfast!

I sort my lunch out for the day (I’ve made most of it the night before so this is just a case of popping my popcorn in the microwave and putting everything in my bag by the door). Sometimes I also prepare dinner for the evening to go in the slow cooker. This day the evening meal was coconut beef curry so I prepared all those bits and pieces.

And finally breakfast time.

Just simply oats, teaspoon of chia seeds and almond milk.

Every single day and I love it.

Then brush my teeth and off to work. I have a 45-60 minute commute to Basingstoke which is just a joy, I can tell you. Sometimes I share a lift with my dad which has it’s good points and bad points… 😉

Recently I’ve been dropping into Costa to grab a coffee (black Americano, sugar free caramel syrup – I just adore. No calories, more chemicals…yeah I know).

Then work, work, work.

This day I was in a lengthy all day meeting so I had regular drinks to keep me going. This was a cranberry, raspberry and elderflower herbal tea.

Finally lunch time comes around. I love my lunch. Sad but true. Tuna salad, salted popcorn, Greek yogurt with frozen blueberries and summer fruits.

Then work, work, work. Mid-afternoon Graz snack to keep me going.

Mmm the cake ones are the best! Though I probably do prefer the nuts ones as they keep me going longer. Then my 4 o’clock apple and banana (someone stole my banana the other day – I had one left in my fruit bowl and someone took it. Everyone claimed innocence…apparently it was someone senior. Damn them. They were lucky it wasn’t my apple!).

If I have nothing on in the evening I’ll probably go to our office’s mini gym and do a 45 minute strength workout.

I really do mean ‘mini’ gym

I tend to focus on my physio exercises that have been recommended to me in order for injury prevention (e.g. single leg squats, clam shells, core work, etc.)

Getting ready to do the ‘crab walk’ with my resistance band

Then the long commute home. I usually get home anywhere from 6.30pm to 7pm. Ben is already home and has walked Alfie so I sort my things out, pack my gym bag for the next day and get into mooching clothes. Then time to prepare dinner. This morning I’d already prepared the meal but some evenings I need to make something from scratch (like tortilla pizza, something egg based, gammon, etc.).

As I said previously, I’d prepared coconut beef curry. This was OK, nothing amazing. It filled a whole! I don’t think I used a recipe, just put some diced beef (from the meat that Ben won) with some vegetables (like chopped onion, kale, carrots, courgette, mushrooms) and added a bit of beef stock and a can of light coconut milk with lots of Indian spices. It was kind of soupy as there was a fair bit of liquid but nice nonetheless. More of a stew I guess!

Then I have two apples after dinner (always) and chill out watching some TV with Ben. I’ll have a hot chocolate and a jelly (rock and roll) before hitting the hay around 9ish to read my book and get an early night. I’m shattered by this point! It doesn’t take me long to fall asleep at all.

My day might sound boring but I enjoy it. I love running so early in the morning and I love having an easy evening where I don’t have to do too much (quality sofa time!).

What is the favourite time of your day? I love mornings. I might not be overly chatty but I get so much done and am very efficient.

Do you have night time snacks before bed?

Is your day always the same during the week? The only real variations for me are if I run in the morning or not! Also if Ben is running in the evening (he’ll never get up as early as I do to run) then I might get to watch all those amazing shows like the Kardashians 😉

July 10, 2014

Things lately

Things are plodding along quite nicely round here. Though I’d hate to look back at my life and think of it as a “plod”. Rather that though than a sprint I suppose!

I guess you could call this an ‘odds and ends’ post of stuff that’s been happening lately:

Ben making carrot cake

This is big, big news people. For so long Ben has been promising to bake for me. But these promises have never materialised to actual calorific-dense baked goods (despite me buying him ingredients and everything). I’m the one who cooks, he’s the one that apparently bakes.

Last week he had the week off as he was starting a new job so he had no excuse. Being a typical man, he left it to mid-afternoon Friday to begin his task. I got regular text updates as to the progress of the cake…

Apart from a minor zest grating related injury (and a lovely photo of it sent my way – in case I wasn’t fully aware of the sheer hard work he was putting in), it all seemed to be going swimmingly.

That is until I got a bit of an urgent phone call: “Anna, I forgot to add the carrot in before I put it in the oven. What do I do??”.

He even sent me a selfie to adequately express how he felt.

Luckily he was able to get the cakes (there were two) out of the oven asap and stir in the hastily grated carrot (no further grating related injuries here thank goodness). Whew. Rectified. But amusing nonetheless 😉

Ta da! How good do they look? As the loaf tin was a little small for the batter, he made a mini round cake as well…with a better cake to icing ratio if you ask me 😉 It tasted divine and it was all I could do to not consume the entire two cakes in one sitting. And yes, there was carrot in it 😉

New mattress

Ben’s above selfie could also adequately describe the feelings we felt when our lovely new mattress was delivered the other day.

“Pants” would be one word to describe this situation. There are others I could use. Thankfully we can swap it (and pay the extra) for the correct mattress size. Not sure how we got this so wrong really…I don’t know how we both survive in this big wide world pretending to be adults.

Trips to London

Getting up at stupid o’clock to get the train to London for a meeting is no fun. Especially when it means eating my porridge in the car while my dad drives us to the station.

Lots of things in my life change and new habits form, but eating porridge for breakfast will never change.

And I’m sorry all you lovely Londoners but I detest going there. It’s stressful, busy, crowded…and dirty. Yes I realise most cities (and places in general) are dirty. But I freak out.

Essential requirement for me!

And just randomly, a mini escalator. For all those lonely people who have no friends to stand with…

Room for one only

Or people who are so so busy they need to use the mini escalator to hurry up them quickly, by-passing the more normal sized busier escalator (I found this out as I was dallying around taking photos of said escalator while a man tried to hurry past…).

Birthday trip to Chichester

On Sunday Ben and me went out to Chichester to go shopping for a belated birthday trip. Rant alert: I got a little bit angry in one of my favourite shops (Oasis) when I realised they didn’t stock my size is anything I liked (bar one dress). It’s not an obscure size either – a normal size eight. The lady in the shop just shrugged and went “yeah I know” and after a long pause “look online”. Gargh!! I like trying stuff on and I’m there willing to buy stuff NOW. I understand that they can’t stock masses of every size but they had about three size 20s in everything. Your loss, Oasis, was FatFace and New Looks’ gain.

We stopped at one of my favourite restaurants for lunch as well: Trents.

We had a sharing platter (hummus, sundried tomato dip, beetroot dip, stuffed peppers) to start, followed by a Caesar salad for me (of course) and a club sandwich and curly fries for Ben, followed by crème Brule for Ben and chocolate brownie for me.

I had run 10 miles in the morning and I was FAMISHED. Sadly my salad didn’t quite cut it. I enjoyed it but it wasn’t one of the best I’ve tried (no croutons and no anchovies). Ben was struggling so I helped him out with eating some of his sandwich filling (bacon and chicken) and his fries. Win.

That pudding. Oh wow. It could have done with vanilla ice cream to balance it rather than hazelnut ice cream but it was pretty damn amazing. Afterwards I was like “pft, that was easy. Three courses done and dusted.” After leaving the restaurant for a shopping continuation the fullness hit me like a ton of bricks (literally in my stomach). I couldn’t bare to even look at people eating or drinking. I couldn’t eat anything else for the rest of the day and required an hour long nap when I got home. Whew. Pretty good day I’d say!

Alfie

Kids (and adults) all over the globe are obsessed with Frozen.

Apparently so is our dog, Alfie. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is what he does all day when we’re at work. He just wants to build a snowman…

Do you prefer online shopping or going into the actual shop? I like to try things on because invariably things that I think will look nice look awful. And it’s the whole faff of sending stuff back that really annoys me with online shopping. But it annoys me when a shop is seriously under-stocked in my size for pretty much everything.

Ever ordered a large purchase that turns out to be very wrong?

What’s your worst baking disaster? I could write a book for mine so it was nice that Ben, ‘Mr Baking Pro’ got something wrong 😉

March 31, 2014

The best kind of weekend

Posting a bit later today as things have got a bit ahead of me. The story of my life at the moment! Definitely didn’t enjoy losing that hour Sunday morning.

The weekend was a busy one. We went to Parkrun in the morning and helped set out the course. Ben is a huge fan of doing this and now has me hooked. I don’t mind getting up earlier to help out as you get a bit more social time with other runners.

I was a bit nervous for the run as my calf had gotten quite tight after Thursday and it’s so close to the marathon now that anything is causing me huge amounts of stress…someone sneezing near me is enough to freeze up my system in terror.

I made sure I did a very good warm-up with jogging, dynamic stretches and specifically stretching my calf using a handy tree.

I’m sure a fun caption could be made here… “Ben I can’t seem to move this tree no matter how hard I push”

Which was caught on camera…lovely! Not one of my best photos haha!

I decided to take Parkrun nice and easy and there were quite a few of us who decided to run together so we had a nice natter as we ran round the course in the lovely sunshine. My calf was OK <– WHEW.

I’m still wearing my gloves even though it was so warm. My hands are the very last things to heat up.

My time was 23:29 and third female – not too shabby at all! After this we had a nice cup of tea with some of the running club and then headed home for breakfast. At this point I was STARVING.

We met up with a friend in the afternoon and did a huge walk with Alfie around the countryside. It wasn’t meant to be so long it’s just we got caught out with lots of muddy routes and had to go the long way back home (needless to say Alfie required a bath that evening…). At the end of the day I’d done almost 30,000 steps. And, more importantly, this happened:

If you don’t know what this game is, I urge you to download it (it’s an app). It is so simple but so very addictive!!

We had a lovely early night as we had to get up early the next day for a long run. I was so tired when the alarm went off at 6.40am – which my body thought was 5.40am due to the daylight savings. Arghh!

My plan was to run 13 miles. Perhaps not the most ideal distance considering I have the marathon a week later but psychologically I needed to do it. Ben and me had decided to meet up with some guys from our running group to run with them. The route was only 10 miles so I ran the 2 miles to the meeting point instead of going in the car with Ben, then planned on adding a bit on at the end.

The route was lovely. Credit to my husband who planned it (though I think it was based on a route one of the other guy’s had used before – so credit all round). It was fairly hilly though which was tough.

There were quite a few of us – eight or nine? Not sure. But in the end we sort of spread out from each other as we found our natural paces. It was really nice to spend a long run chatting to people rather than go solo. Though I will always love my solo long runs listening to podcasts…

I’m not going to lie, it was tough with the hills and not feeling completely fresh from a week of running (6 miles Tuesday, 8 miles Thursday, 3 miles Saturday) of which I’m not as used to anymore with my sporadic training. But it didn’t feel that bad as to worry me. I felt like I could have gone on further (bloody lucky considering it’s double that seven days later).

I was shattered when I got home though. Absolutely drained. So was Ben. We’re pretty sure the long walk the afternoon before hadn’t helped. Then it was time to treat two lovely ladies to some afternoon tea as it was Mother’s Day in the UK.

My mum showed up with the same handbag as me but slightly smaller – it was like mum and baby handbags! (She had originally given me the big handbag as she prefers smaller handbags and I love a huge bag to put my multitude of things in it).

Then off we went to indulge in some very lovely tea, sandwiches and cake at our favourite local (dangerously local) coffee shop: Elsie’s Tearoom if you’re in the area.

[Ben wasn’t happy with this photo; he said he felt uncomfortable because the table next to us were gawping at us – how rude!]

We all had afternoon tea. I had ham and mustard sandwiches, a fruit scone (with strawberry and rhubarb preserve, oohh err) and a slice of lemon cake.

Honestly, I am getting to be somewhat a pro at this afternoon tea business. Way to easy to eat. And I even had a bite of my mum’s unfinished lemon cake. Oh god…

After spending some quality time with The Mums, Ben and me pretty much did nothing. I fell asleep on the sofa to the dulcet tones of Ben blowing up zombie brains on the Xbox…then awoke with a new lease of life to tackle the ironing while we watched Elysium. I would give this movie a rating of “meh”. An OK film for when you’re not in the mood to think too hard.

The plan for this week is all easy running. Probably three miles Tuesday, three miles Thursday, the Paris breakfast 5km on Saturday (to shake out our ‘plane legs’) and then just a short gentle jog taking in the different sights of Paris. Probably 26.2miles, but we’ll see how it goes 😉

For those who celebrated it, how did you spend Mother’s Day?

Do you struggle with a full afternoon tea?

Ladies, do you prefer big handbags or small? (Men you can join in too with your manbags!) I have small handbags when I’m going out for an evening, but I do love a good handbag. Looking forward to all those back problems in later life 😉

Long runs solo or with a group?