cake - AnnaTheApple

August 4, 2014August 4, 2014

A proud daughter and enjoying cycling

Last week was unbelievably busy. Mainly due to work but also life in general. I do love being busy and feeling the thrill of getting lots done, but it also means lots of other bits and pieces get pushed down the priority list.

I wanted to recap on a few things that have been happening round here, like the other weekend my dad completing his first ever 5k race. It was called Boys Against Cancer and was basically the male equivalent of Race for Life. Both Ben and my dad were taking part as well as a friend’s husband and their son.

My dad has been on the quest for losing weight. He recently got a Garmin Vivofit (really want on of these!) and has been walking more and being a bit more conscious of what he’s eating.

It was really strange for me to get up early on the Sunday morning and watch Ben getting ready for a race I wasn’t taking part in (girls aren’t allowed). Ben was fairly nervous as he wanted to try and blast it and get a good time.

The weather was lovely, maybe a little on the warm side for running but perfect for spectating 😉 My dad was not going to run it but power walk it and was really keen to do it in under an hour. He was nervous so I said I’d walk round with him from the sidelines as much as I could and give him water if he needed it.

Got my bag full of water bottles!

I spied a guy warming up and we all bet he would win (he did – by a long way!). He just looked like that type you know? Then we were off. My dad’s pace was amazing. He is a brilliant power walker! He set himself targets of other walkers to overtake and did brilliantly. I saw Ben whizz past a few times (it was a crazy two loop course going all over a rugby field).

He looked very speedy and comfortable.

My dad was so worried he’d be the last one to finish but in the end there were loads of people behind me and he overtook a fair number as he went.

For the last 200m he started to run and did a marvellous sprint finish. I was so proud of him! Everyone was clapping and cheering, it was brilliant.

He was pooped by the end!

Ben got a new PB of 21:16. He was ecstatic. And my dad got well under an hour with 47:38 of which he was very chuffed with. Good times all round!

On another note, I’ve been getting a little bit addicted to cycling. I am obviously still training for Berlin but I felt a cut back week was needed (mentally and physically) so decided to go for some solo cycles.

Without trying to annoy any cyclists out there (this is merely my observation and purely my inability at being good at cycling!) but I do find cycling easier. I find that you can coast a lot more and an hour’s worth of cycling is definitely not equivalent to an hour’s worth of running – for me anyway. My standard 15 mile route goes up quite a few hills but there are also a lot of down hills where you can freewheel and speed along quite easily. My heart rate never peaks to what it would when running and I find this frustrating.

After talking to some more experienced and better cyclists, the solution is just to work harder, go faster, go longer and find more hills! In terms of my cardiovascular system, I’m fine with cycling but it’s my legs that seem to struggle to get going any faster. I guess it’s different muscles. But hopefully all good cross training for running!

And because it wouldn’t be my blog without a bit of running…we had a fun parkrun the other week. I cycled beforehand (19 miles) and then did parkrun with Ben and a friend, helping pace the friend. My legs, jeeze, were like bricks!! I am in awe of triathletes, seriously hard running and despite running so much slower than normal.

We then enjoyed a lot of cake afterwards as it was our lovely friend, Sheryl’s, 100th parkrun (!!!!).

#parkrunselfie

Such good cakes, especially the chocolate banana loaf. And then a 10 mile ride home. I was shattered! But great to mix things up a bit 🙂

What’s your favourite form of cross training?

Have you ever supported someone at a race?

How do you support someone who is trying to lose weight? My dad is the worst person when it comes to food and I try to be really firm with him to not eat rubbish. It helps I work with him so can keep an eagle eye on him (much to his delight I’m sure) but I worry so much and he knows I do it because I love him, but it can be very hard. He has the best intentions but the worst will power.

July 23, 2014October 28, 2016

Stansted Slog Half Marathon

There is absolutely no other way to describe this half marathon but by it’s apt title – The Slog. That is the first word that came to my mind on finishing.

A few of our running friends mentioned this half to Ben and me and persuaded us to do it (who am I kidding that I need persuading to do a half marathon? Favourite distance!) It’s described as off-road, challenging and undulating/hilly. I’d go ahead and remove the word undulating and just stick with plain old hilly. Going into this I had only one real goal: to finish uninjured. I had a soft goal of finishing in under 2:15 but finishing uninjured was most important.

That is some sweet elevation. Maybe nothing compared to some hardened hill-loving runners out there, but for this road racer it was a shock.

My main worry was flaring my hip issue up again. Remember Endure? Yeah off-road stuff doesn’t seem to help things. But all body parts felt good so I thought just give it a bash, have some fun and enjoy the scenery. It’s not a goal race for me and I needed to do 13 miles.

With Ben’s mum and my parents in tow, Ben and me headed to the lovely Stansted House in Havant on Sunday morning.

We met up with a small number of fellow Hedgies and enjoyed the very lovely facilities. Not a portable loo in sight.

It was all very relaxed, friendly and had a local feeling to it. There was a marathon relay going on but there was only 150ish runners for the half.

Lovely and informal

At 10.30am we stood in a huddle at the start and the race director counted down and shouted “go!”

I bombed it straight away. Hear me out, my logic was “run as fast as you can while you’re able”. I knew the elevation would rip into me so I thought I’d go for it while I could. The two mum’s cheered us on (then headed to the coffee shop, bless them. My dad had already headed out to his spectator spot further on).

The first few miles were through woodland area and it instantly felt like one of my much loved (*cough*) RR10s so my speed was somewhat limited. Well ,what was I expecting?

Depressingly several women overtook me almost straight away. Massive respect to them though, I didn’t see them again for the rest of the race. I saw my dad at this point. I love my dad but why does he feel the need to tell me how many girls are in front of me? Like I’m going to catch them?! He’s as competitive as me!

Anyway mile two came and another girl overtook me and stayed just ahead. We played a bit of position-swapping for a while until I managed to absolutely cane it on a downhill and get enough distance between us to not see her again.

Mile five was an absolute BEAST. We hit this mountain hill and I made a feeble attempt to continue running and realised it was causing more harm then good. Everyone else had started walking so I joined in. No shame.

As we finally got to the top, we ran freely across some fields with such beautiful views. I had my phone and I thought if ever there was a time for a race selfie, now’s it.

A man ran past me and saluted my photo taking. He even offered to take one of me but I declined, very kind of him though.

Finger on lens sorry – best I could do while still running!

I don’t remember every single mile, but there was lots of running through fields, up and over stiles, through kissing gates, up hill and after hill. I broke the race into three parts. There was a drinks station just before 3 miles, half way and just before 9 miles. So I went with those segments, knowing at mile 10 the significant hills had finished and it was just a parkrun left.

I didn’t bother looking at my watch because a) the mile markers were out from it (as expected) and b) my pace was all over the place with the hills. So I just put in some effort and tried to keep going. I won’t lie, before halfway I wanted to stop. It was very warm and I was being destroyed by the inclines. I should have taken water with me as I was desperately thirsty between the drinks stations. And my heart rate monitor was chafing so much so that I had to take it off.

I had taken some mango puree with me to try on the race in place of a gel.

Yep it’s baby food. I’m experimenting, what can I say? But I didn’t fancy it at all. With the hot weather it would be warm mango puree. Yeah no thanks.

I saw my dad again at the last drinks station and was far happier by this point. He asked if I was on target but I didn’t know how to answer as I didn’t really have a target. It was nice to see him and I gave him the mango puree and my sweaty HR monitor as a thank you 😉

The drinks stations were so different to what I usually find at road racers. I would usually grab one and keep running as I drink. But everyone would fully stop at the station, grab a drink and almost leisurely drink it before toddling on. I followed suit – lovely and relaxed!

I got back on the trail and was off again. I was in such good spirits at this point. I was surviving! I wasn’t able to catch another woman ahead of me sadly – though we also played the overtake game as well. She was amazing at the uphills and by the end she was a blip in the horizon. By this point I was firmly set in my position and was happy to remain that way following the people in front. The runners were very stretched out though so sadly no in-race conversation happened. It felt a bit lonely at times.

On the last mile I was visualising the 13 mile marker that we saw when we drove in towards the car park. The last mile was all through woodland on a narrow path and I knew when we got out of there I’d see the sign and it would be the home straight. I saw a family walking ahead and they kindly moved to the side. I ran past and shouted “one mile left!” they cheered and laughed.

I broke free of the lovely shade and saw the mile marker and the two mums. They clapped and cheered and it was brilliant. Then a nice 500m downhill to the finish.

Whew! I got as much water as I could and then stumbled back to the two mums to collapse in a heap and cheer the other runners on.

I felt exhausted! But in a good way.

My official time was 1:53:09 and fifth female. What I’m really chuffed about is that I beat my target and I beat my half marathon time from last year’s off-road crazy hilly Cheddar Gorge race (I think I got 1:58 something). But I found it so much harder than Cheddar Gorge. There were just so many uphills and inclines.

Ben ran past and we cheered him on. He finished in 2:09:16.

He didn’t have a great race. His ankle is still not 100% and it was fairly uneven underfoot. Ben also doesn’t run well (his words not mine) in the heat. He really struggles when it gets too hot. But considering he did Cheddar Gorge in 2:52 he did amazingly.

The other Hedgies did so well too. All coming in not long after. Everyone agreed it was brutal. We were all shattered and sort of broken.

My heart rate monitor had ravaged my chest and was so painful.

Apologies for the tummy shot!

OK it doesn’t look that brutal there at all but I assure you it is raw and even worse under the sports bra – like hideous. I almost cried in the shower later when the water hit it. So so painful. I had tried the Polar HR monitor strap a few days previously with the Garmin monitor bit as I’d heard that was better but it kept popping off. I really like wearing it though for the extra data. I need more Vaseline I think (or any, I’d forgotten to put some on…). Good job I’m not going anywhere requiring a bikini!!

As some consolation, I managed to swag a bit of birthday cake that had been presented to one of the runners pre-race.

All was well again in my world!

My dad appeared a little while after Ben had finished. He’d walked a fair way to see us at that 10 mile point and had just made it back. I’m so proud of him for walking so far and trying to be more healthy (he’s trying to lose weight) and also so grateful for him being so supportive of our running. But when he moaned to me about his one blister, I may have wanted to punch him.

On leaving the race the race director told us to wait as he grabbed two platters of cake to give us and thanked us all (the Hedge End guys) for coming. How nice is that??

That bread pudding was AMAZING

And then we all said goodbye and the parents and us headed to find food for lunch. At this point I was actually OK without food considering I’d just eaten two bits of cake fairly quickly and I’m never that hungry post race.

We found a lovely pub in Rowlands Castle (disappointingly, there is no castle) and I had a nice goat’s cheese and beetroot salad which ordinarily I might have scoffed at as it was quite small with literally four ingredients (leaves, bit of onion, goat’s cheese, beetroot). But it was perfect for my cake-filled (though heart-rate monitor ravaged) tummy.

I have to say all in all this race was the hardest race I’ve ever done. The heat, hills and uneven terrain just killed any sort of speed and killed my legs. But it was challenging in a way that invigorated me. Pace isn’t everything in a race. The scenery, the camaraderie, the feeling of completing something bloody hard just made the race for me. Everyone nodding to each other at the end like “we survived, we are invincible”. You can’t buy that feeling of accomplishment.

What’s the hardest race you’ve ever done?

Do you wear a HR monitor – does it ever chafe you? How do you solve this??

If you had to choose hills and cool weather or heat and flat, what would you choose?

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 😉

June 25, 2014

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?

June 18, 2014

The Scone Debate and dog selfies

My friends from university came down on Saturday for a visit… (*whispers* because it’s my birthday this week) Well we combined it with a sort of hen do celebration for my friend, Charlotte, who’s getting married in less than two weeks. She is doing a ‘planned elopement’ to Italy with her to-be hubby for a romantic ‘just them’ ceremony.

Sadly I couldn’t make Parkrun in the morning. It would just have been a nightmare to have got back in time and wash and dry the beast that is my hair. So many hours of my life wasted drying it…But I did manage a speedy 5k on my own earlier in the morning. Anyway, my friends arrived at 10ish. We had the usual hen do bits and pieces (penis straws are always standard, right?) and some cupcakes one of my friends had made to celebrate Charlotte’s wedding. We caught up and then headed out to my favourite tea shop…

Fortunately (or maybe unfortunately perhaps) it is very close, about 2 miles. So we walked there chatting. Girls just like chatting don’t we? Ben joined as well and was an honorary girl for the day 😉

I’ll never get sick of afternoon tea. I had ham and mustard sandwiches, a fruit scone with cream and jam and a slice of LEMON MERINGUE sponge cake. Sorry for the caps, I got all excited. There were pieces of meringue on the top all crushed and lovely. Seriously good cake. Though I must say, the best part of afternoon tea for me is the scone. And there’s always the debate of jam or cream first. I’m of the opinion that it should be jam first, then a dollop of cream. Otherwise the jam gets all smeary? But this is a fairly heated debate. Ben is a cream then jam man – how are we together?? 😉

Then we had a good long walk back through some lovely countryside. The next day was a five mile easy paced run and then a 15 mile bike ride. I never feel the same love for bike rides as running but it was nice. I still can’t not break on downhill’s though. A cardinal cycling sin I hear.

We popped over to my parent’s house later on as it was Father’s Day. We all just sort of monged out in the conservatory relaxing. Can parents ‘mong’ out? Not sure. We had some selfie fun with their absolutely mad dog Lexi.

She is literally wired all the time. She’s the same breed as Alfie (Westland Terrier cross with a Cavalier King Charles) but she couldn’t be more different. She’s a beast. She’s eaten a bag of POTATOES before. And bitten through a can of beer, spraying it everywhere. What fun for my parents.

Ben doing his best ‘gangster’ impersonation. I think he’s been watching too much of The Wire…

Tonight I’m doing the Race for Life with my friend from work. She’s a fairly novice runner (and I mean that in the nicest way). She’s done a 5k race before and has now made the leap towards a 10k. She’s done lots of training and even went to her local Parkrun (ahh I’m so proud!) so I’m sure she’ll be fine. I’m going to run it with her and support her.

She told me last year she had no one to cheer her on or hug at the end because her husband and son didn’t really understand the importance of it and didn’t go (I think it’s a cultural thing, she’s Indian and in India running isn’t really done, or so I’ve been told). I found this heart breaking and said I’d sign up and run it with her. Ben is coming to support, my mum and dad will be there and she’s guilt tripped her husband and son into watching now so she’ll have loads of support. She’s hoping to run it in around an hour so finger’s crossed for her please!

Do you like a lot of support at a race? Both my parents and Ben’s mum love to come and watch and cheer us on. Though my dad properly likes to get involved – he likes to pre-read the course map, find a good spot, work out our paces of where will be when. He’s a runner at heart!

Do you have any pets?

The Big Question: jam or cream first?