Not long now! Hopefully you’re nice and organised with wrapped presents, cards sent, food bought… (if you are indeed celebrating Christmas, of course). I personally love, love, love Christmas. I’m not religious so I don’t observe Christmas as a religious celebration but I see it as a great time to spend with the family, eat copious amounts of food and just generally get into the good cheer of it all.
Christmas eve (after I’ve finished work, boo!) I’ll be at my parent’s house for the traditional takeaway (Indian for me, obviously ;-)) and then I’ll head home as I plan on doing parkrun in the morning and it’s closer to my flat.
Then, after smashing out a PB at parkrun (hahaha) I’ll be spending Christmas day with my parent’s and granddad at their house and we’ll be having turkey with all the trimmings. I’m beyond excited I can tell you. I’ll be helping my dad cook and then in the afternoon, after presents and food, we’ll all play some board games and probably watch a cheesy film. It’ll be a strange Christmas for me but I’m looking forward to it nonetheless.
I thought I’d have a little time of reflection on my year. Apart from one injury recently, my year of running went amazingly. I PB’ed at 5k, 10k, half marathon and marathon, and I had my longest no-injury streak (<– that was the best part). I trained really well for my first marathon of the year, Liverpool. I was super strict, on the ball and listened to my body. I worked hard at the gym to strength train and I loved that marathon so much and got my Boston Qualifier.
Then I sort of forgot to be as sensible and got greedy. I did two more marathons too close together. That said, I loved the Cheddar Gorge marathon. It was awesome, freeing and just one big adventure as it was off-road and crazy hard terrain. On the other hand, Bournemouth marathon sucked royally but it taught me a lot.
This is a chart of my year that I made a week or so ago from Strava (miles on the y axis):
Next year I have the Boston marathon in April and Chester marathon in the autumn. It is highly tempting to do the Cheddar Gorge marathon again in August but I just don’t know. It doesn’t sell out so I’m playing it by ear. I know it’s very similar to what I did this year which caused me then to get injured but the marathons are a bit more spaced out this time. I think if I did do it I’d need to take proper time off before building the miles back up again for Chester. But anyway, two marathons (all being well) is my plan.
Another race in the plan is the Cakeathon in May (one of my favourite races and my favourite medals). I’m also signed up to the Marathon Talk Run Camp in February (with which I’m also signed up to the New Forest Heartbreak Half). So I’m quite excited about the year ahead. I just need to stay sensible, keep focused and listen to my body.
Aside from running, this year obviously wasn’t that great for me personally. This time last year if you’d have told me I would be living in a flat with Alfie on my own and Ben living in Switzerland I’d have laughed at you. But I’ve grown stronger and more independent because of it. Life doesn’t always go how you think it will and you have to roll with the punches and get out alive. I have no idea what my life will look like this time next year but I’m excited, optimistic and ready for the challenges ahead.
Have a lovely Christmas, and I’ll see you on the other side!
Considering how much cake I eat and like, it’s surprising how few cake reviews I’ve been asked to do. I’m not great at baking (there’s an understatement), but I know my cakes when it comes to seeing how they taste and look!
When I was asked if I’d like to review a Pistachio Panettone from the guys at Artminodo.co.uk I was obviously only too pleased to say “yes please!”. I had previously reviewed their trio of preserves that they sell on their website and really enjoyed them so I was looking forward to the panettone.
It’s quite a large thing (all the best cakes are in my opinion…) and when I unboxed and unwrapped it (it travelled very well) I was surprised to see just how, well, green it was! It’s handmade by a Sicilian company called Bacco. Panettone is a sweet bread and a traditional Christmas dessert in Italy. It’s similar to the brioche in France in terms of taste and like the stollen in Germany in terms of it being Christmassy and not overly sweet (though there’s no marzipan in this cake). Panettone is not always pistachio flavoured so this was a nice twist.
I joked that it looked like a large green bogie but I couldn’t resist a tiny nibble before my friends arrived to help me test it out. It’s covered in a delicious but not overly sweet pistachio flavoured icing.
When my friends arrived for our make-your-own afternoon tea, we sliced it in half to see the inside. We were a bit disappointed that it didn’t look as good as the photo did. But let’s be real here, not many foods do.
We cut ourselves a slice making sure we got some of the icing on the top and the pistachio cream in the middle. We were all really surprised at how tasty it was. The bread itself is similar to our iced buns in that it’s slightly sweet but not only a hint. The real sweetness comes from the pistachio cream that runs through the inside of the cake and the icing. There’s a subtle pistachio taste and it’s very light and springy in texture.
We all found ourselves going back for more. It’s not heavy or sickly so it’s very easy to eat a lot of this! I can imagine it being a great breakfast treat or a nice finish to a meal when you just want something light and sweet but not too much like a proper pudding.
I’d fully recommend this cake. And to be honest, I’d eat it all year round! Caffè Nero sell mini Panettones so why the hell not 😉
Do you like sweet breads?
Do you like pistachio flavoured things?
What’s your usual Christmas tradition for baked goods?
**Full Disclosure: I was sent this product for free in exchange for my review. All opinions are my own (and my friend’s in this case as well) honest one.**
This weekend past was pretty damn good, if I do say so myself. It was a great balance of being ridiculously busy and then nice and chilled.
Friday night was a casual Christmas drinks evening with some running club friends at the pub. Annoyingly this pub was walking distance from my new home but I had to house(dog)-sit for my parents while they were in London over the weekend, which meant I had to drive instead. Anyway it was a great evening with most people wearing Christmas jumpers and just having a nice natter.
There was even a Michael Jackson tribute singer so a few of us had a boogie. Don’t blame it on the sunshine…
The next morning, as usual, was parkrun at Netley Abbey. The weather was ridiculously mild, albeit a bit windy. We decided to get a photo of our usual set-up crew which was lovely. A few us had our parkrun Volunteer 25 t-shirts on as well which worked out nicely.
I love setting up parkrun with these guys. They’re all just so lovely and we have a good laugh. They were all really supportive when I had my rough times earlier in the year as well. There’s something about running that just brings people together in a good way.
There were loads of guys from the running club running as well because it was our club’s Secret Santa. It was great to see so many familiar faces. At the start I was quite concerned that I was stood next to my super speedy friend, Michelle, but she assured me she was taking it easy having run eight miles already. I think I stayed with her for all of about 100m before she was like a blip in the horizon! Even my friend Chris who I used to be faster than pre-injury zoomed away despite being hungover having not left the pub last night until 1am. My ego got a bit of a kicking 😉
However I was really chuffed with some very even splits. I got 22:59 which I’m over the moon with. I really kept my mind focused on the effort. It’s funny because I’ve stopped listening to music at parkrun now. I’ve found it distracts me and makes me feel claustrophobic. I think if I was really pushing for a specific time I might wear some motivating music, but at the moment I’m enjoying ‘naked’ runs. I’ve taken a minute off my faster time from a few weeks ago. This is definitely progress!
I did do some investigation on Strava to see what my fastest time on this course was and found it’s 21:57 in March this year. Jeeze that’s a challenge! Maybe in a few months…
Secret Santa was good fun as well. We all crammed into the café and exchanged gifts.
Thanks again to my official blog photographer, Mark, for the photo 😉
My label said Anna Jayne Smith (*sighs*) so the person didn’t know me that well but they knew me well enough to get me very posh Strawberry and white chocolate cake and a Christmas pudding shaped chocolate slab. Very pleased!!
Afterwards my sister, her fiancée and Meg and Ellie, her two daughters, met up with me so Ellie could run a children’s fun run which was happening in the park at 10.30am. It was a charity race for Ben’s Heroes and entry was £3. Such a good cause. Ellie is almost six years old and has been doing Junior parkrun quite a bit lately with her dad. I’d love to do it with her but it’s a fair distance away from me and I haven’t been able to get there so I was really excited that I was finally able to see her (and join her!) running.
My heart melted when Ellie said she wanted to be a runner like me and run marathons. I’m beyond proud. Obviously this might be a passing trend but for now I’m over the moon she’s so into it. For Christmas I’ve got her some really funky purple Nike leggings.
I’m jealous! I want a pair! But they are TINY.
Back to the race, Ellie was really excited and kept sprinting off and showing me how fast she could run, bless her.It was two laps of the cricket pitch (our usual fast summer course) and the race organiser said the kids could run one or two laps depending how they felt (there were some quite young children). She held my hand and chatted the entire way round. She even told me that running was good because it made you “live longer”. I’m not sure Ellie should be worried about her mortality at this point in her life but it made me chuffed that she associated running with being healthy. I was careful not to run too fast and kept to her speed andsaid we could walk if she needed to, but she was adamant to keep going. In the end we did the two laps (her choice) and she did an amazing sprint finish at the end.
She got a little goodie bag and a lovely medal. She was really pleased with herself and looked like she had so much fun. I was also so proud of her when she offered her goodie bag to a little boy who didn’t get one because they ran out.
The rest of the day was a mad rush of getting myself sorted, checking on my parent’s dogs and then getting back to my flat to have a catch up with my friend Louise and her husband Tom. We’d arranged a kind of afternoon tea gathering as I said I had a panettone I was reviewing for the blog that would be great to share with them and Lou said she might bake something.
Well, they turned up with some very nice artisan bread, loads of different filling choices for sandwiches, scones, clotted cream, jam and a huge freshly baked carrot cake! Afternoon tea indeed!
I had a delicious brie sandwich with onion marmalade, a pallet-cleansing slice of panettone 😉 following by a clotted cream and jam scone and then finished nicely with a slice of carrot cake. All washed down with tea obviously. They brought their little one, Jake, over and we had a lovely time stuffing our faces and chatting away. I’ll do a full review of the panettone in another post but honestly we were all pleasantly surprised at how tasty it was. It was the perfect level of sweetness for such a sugar-frenzied afternoon.
I then had to rush to an opticians appointment and then rush to my friend Mike’s surprise 40th birthday party (honestly, there was not one single thing I was on time for the entire day). I took with me some sticky garlic and honey chicken wings and breaded paprika chicken tenders that I’d rustled up earlier. Mike was really surprised when he got home and saw us all there after being told he wasn’t allowed in the house until 5.30pm. It was lovely to see how chuffed he was (I might be over-using the word “chuffed”…).
Sheryl’s photo of her amazing cake and my own poor quality photos below (chicken wings bottom right)
Now you might think that considering all the food I ate earlier would hinder my process in making a dent in all of the buffet food on offer here. You would be wrong. My capacity to eat a lot of food still astounds me. Sheryl made this amazing cake and she let me have a taster piece before she sent out slices to everyone – you know, just to make sure it was tip top quality 😉 I then proceeded to have another slice afterwards. As if I hadn’t already eaten enough cake for one day…
The birthday boy (Photo credit to Sheryl)
It was a lovely evening. Towards the end after some people had left, there were just a few of us and we just sat around chatting about all things running and funny stories. Such a great party!
That night I woke up in the middle of the night not feeling well at all. That’ll teach me. I never learn though. I regret nothing! If you can’t enjoy good food with good friends then something is very wrong.
I was going to recap Sunday but this is far too long now!
Have you ever been to a surprise birthday party?
Are you good at being on time? I am awful. I never leave enough time or contingency time when things invariably go wrong.
Down South at the moment the weather is actually quite good. OK a bit rainy at times but it is so mild. It does make me genuinely nervous about global warming and the environment. It can’t be good. Also, does this mean winter is going to stretch out longer in 2016? I realise weather talk is boring but us Brits have a compulsion to discuss it at any given opportunity. It’s like an uncontrollable spasm, it just happens. If in doubt, talk about the weather.
I know I keep going on about my flat but well, let’s be honest, nothing else big or interesting has happened to me lately so… I’m not that creative or good with decorations but I’ve impressed myself on how much I love the way my flat looks right now. For my last home we didn’t really do much in terms of decoration or coordination with furniture as we assumed we wouldn’t be living there for a long time (well, half of that was true anyway in the end…). We bought cheaper stuff so we could easily move later on without having spent too much. It was a lovely home, don’t get me wrong, but we didn’t really do too much to it.
For my new flat it was really important, as you can imagine, that it turned into a home that I could look forward to going to and feel safe, comfortable and surrounded by stuff that represented me and my future life. I don’t know what the future holds but for now I assume I’ll be living here for a while. I’ve really thought about what things I wanted, where things went and basically an overall theme. Even the small details, like changing door knobs to match my furniture.
I also bought a vase to put some decorative balls in (I saw it in IKEA and it looked really cool). Unfortunately I bought a vase one size up from what I’d see and then didn’t have enough balls to fully fill it…
Still looks OK I think. I just don’t know if I can bear to go into IKEA to just buy more balls.
I’m still into Hello Fresh but I’ve paused it over Christmas while I get myself together and with Christmas meals and going out it’s just not worth it right now. What I have done though is ordered a meat pack from Muscle Food. I’m not affiliated with them, I just like them. That said if you do fancy ordering anything from them, I do have a referral code HERE which gives you, for free, any of the following when you order with them:
– Two Free Award Winning Horse Fillet Steaks
– Two Free 6oz British Beef Hache Steaks
– Free loaf of Protein Bread
– Free Chicken & Pepper Protein Pizza
– Free 250g Whey Protein Concentrate 85
I always see adverts for them on Facebook and I bit the bullet and ordered myself a box full of meat (with a Black Friday discount it was £10 for chicken breasts, hache steaks, burgers, chicken sausages, beef meatballs, chicken meatballs and lean bacon). As you probably already know, I’m a big lover of meat so I was keen to fill my freezer up with handy protein items that I use for random meals. I can heartily recommend the hache steaks and the chicken sausages. I also bought a litre of egg whites which I love adding to stir fries and scrambles because it just boosts the protein. They’re cheaper on Muscle Food compared to getting them at the supermarket (or wasting egg yolks).
This was a random meal of chopped up chicken sausages, egg whites and Laughing Cow Blue Cheese triangles and it was SO good. Obviously I went overboard with veg because I can’t not.
I’m loving my local area as well as it’s perfect for walking Alfie. Just a minute or so from my flat there’s a beautiful park where I can let Alfie off and he can run free. Before I had to keep him on his lead for most walks as there were too many roads nearby, but this is perfect. Though I did get concerned when he looked like he wanted to go and chase the birds near the little lake (pond?).
It just makes me so happy that Alfie can properly race around and stretch his legs every morning and evening. And there are so many other dogs about as well. It’s funny though because I think Alf is similar to me. He’ll go and say hello to a group of dogs but he’ll run back quickly to me and not want to spend too much time socialising. He likes his own company, that or he’s a mummy’s boy 😉 The only dogs he likes to spend lots of time with are my parents. Like me he struggles to push himself in social situations and prefers to stick with who and what he knows.
When I was at Whiteley on Sunday for that INCREDIBLE meal (which I keep dreaming of) I noticed that some of the animal statues they have dotted around the place were dressed up for Christmas. Check out this otter:
Very sweet!
And my last random titbit… I saw this on RunEatRepeat’s Instagram and it really made me chuckle.
So true! For me I’d hope to be wearing comfy leggings and a nice hoodie. Comfort over appearance is crucial if it’s eternity you’re talking about!
Tell me something random but interesting!
What outfit would you choose to wear for eternity?
I am so chuffed. My flat is coming along so nicely!
My little home is very small, but it’s perfect for me. I thought that going from a house to a flat (apartment) would be really hard but actually it’s great. My previous house was a two bedroom end terrace so it was quite small anyway but just for me I didn’t need all that space. My new place is only one bedroom but it has enough space for all my things and storage room (which was always the worry for me if I went for somewhere smaller). I could have gone for a two bedroom but for my budget it probably wouldn’t have been in as good an area or would have been too far from my usual commute.
Anyway I had Friday off and got some bits and pieces sorted like getting my Internet hooked up and the delivery of my table and chairs. FINALLY I can eat at the table again after so long perching on my bean bag or my bed.
Friday evening was my friend’s Christmas party. It was planned for the week after but after a change of venue it was moved forward a week. Annoyingly this was the same evening as my running club’s awards evening and Christmas party 🙁But I had good fun with my friends anyway at a new Chinese restaurant. I’m not a huge Chinese fan but the food was good.
There was a sharing platter to start, this had chicken skewers, spring rolls, dumplings and salted squid. Normally sharing food gives me anxieties 😉 but there was an equal number of different items per person so this was fine. It’s when it’s like a free-for-all that I get worried. Fear of missing out on food!
Good friends
For main I had chicken teriyaki and rice, which was tasty but quite sweet. I was glad I didn’t have the duck as I tried some of my friend’s and it was ridiculously sweet. I like sweet stuff but this was a bit too much (for savoury anyway…). For pudding there was another sharing platter of brownies, doughnuts and ice cream things.
Tom, you’re famous! 😉
The next morning my alarm went off at 7am and for the first time in a long while I considered snoozing it. I rarely ever snooze alarms as once they go off I’m awake and that’s it. But I wanted to snuggle back down and sleep. I checked the weather and it didn’t look too bad at 11-12 degrees (centigrade). When I got to parkrun though it was tipping it down and I was glad for my wellies.I was happy to take the rain over gale force winds though! A few people were feeling rather delicate due to the awards the night before. Luckily I hadn’t been drinking at my do, but I was still tired.
My friend Chris tried to persuade me to run with him, but he was aiming for 22 minutes and I’m no where near that yet! I did give it my best though and was happy with 23:14!
It’s annoying because I can’t remember what my best time for this course is (as on the parkrun results it just says Netley Abbey – and there are like four different courses we can do through the year) so I’m not sure how well I can realistically aim to do as the weeks continue. The six hills really do drain you dry whereas the normal course only has three smaller hills.
Anyway, it was fairly muddy but thankfully the rain had stopped when we were running. The temperature wasn’t too cold either (thanks, global warming!).
The rest of the day was deja vu to last weekend where I went to IKEA again with my parents and then spent the rest of the afternoon constructing bits and pieces. I’m DONE with IKEA now. No more!! I have pretty much everything I need now (apart from my new bed being delivered this week).
I was really chuffed to find a sofa I liked and when I ordered it they told me it could be delivered later that day. Unfortunately I failed to realise it would be delivered in four pieces. When the delivery men turned up I asked them if they were going to construct it and they almost laughed in my face. Of course not. It’s IKEA after all. Anyway, it’s all sorted thanks to my dad and me who are now like IKEA pros.
Sunday I had a lovely 6.5 mile run which went far better than last weekend’s. It still felt hard but I didn’t feel like walking so there’s an improvement (though it wasn’t as windy). My endurance is s.l.o.w.l.y improving.
I’m starting to think I should be adding in some speed work but I think I’ll leave it with a tough parkrun each week for now. When I move to four runs a week then one of those might be a fartlek or intervals…*shudders*.
Sunday lunch was amazing. Literally amazing. I’ve found my new favourite restaurant. Coast To Coast in Whiteley. Dear God it was good. The menu was insane. I was torn between four different choices (burger with pulled pork, calzone, ribs or chicken wings). In the end I went for wings but instantly got food envy when I saw a woman get a HUGE rack of ribs.
My dad and me shared the BBQ platter to start (ribs, wings, chicken tenders with blue cheese, battered prawns and chorizo). It was so good. I traded him some prawns for chicken and chorizo for ribs so I think we were both satisfied 😉
My Kentucky wings and sweet potato fries for my main were awesome. I’ve never actually had wings as a main before and it rocked my world. It had some great dips as well – one of them was like a blue cheese thing which I could have swum in if I’m honest.
I’d already seen the pudding menu and had earmarked the mint chocolate chip Oreo sundae but I was stuffed. It wasn’t even a “oooh I could make room” kind of stuffed, it was a meat sweat kind of stuffed. Just too much protein. I needed a nap 😉
Pretty damn awesome. Needless to say dinner wasn’t necessary!
But I had good fun with my friends anyway at a new Chinese restaurant. I’m not a huge Chinese fan but the food was good.
