Halloween parkrun at Havant

I make no secret about the fact that I love fancy dress. I especially like fancy dress when it comes to running. I don’t know why but I think it feels more fun and random.

So Halloween is obviously a good time for this. Quite a few local parkruns were doing a fancy dress themed event and originally Kyle and I were going to go to Lee-On-Solent parkrun on Saturday but as I was at Kyle’s Friday night and we were both quite tired from a long week we decided to just stick to the very local Havant parkrun. Happily they were doing a Halloween themed event so that worked out perfectly.

Kyle’s sister, Laura, is a super talented make-up and hair stylist extraordinaire (she’s actually going to be on the Bodyguard stage show tour soon – how cool) and amazingly was happy enough to do my make-up Saturday morning for me. I wasn’t really sure what I was going to go as but I had a sparkly black tutu. I’m creatively challenged so I left it in her capable hands to decide what my face should be like. She had so much make-up – like the proper stuff, not what you find in Boots (I don’t wear make-up other than the occasionally eye liner or mascara so to me it’s all very much Greek). And had a bag of different blood make-up – I mean whaaaat.She even had a pot for pus and a pot for blister make-up. This is serious stuff. Anyway, she went with a Joker-esque theme and it looked AMAZING. So we headed down to parkrun and turned up to find about four other people had dressed up. Ahh well! But I honestly didn’t mind because I was having good fun. The marshals had dressed up as well so that was cool. I didn’t look completely out of the ordinary at least.
Kyle wasn’t running parkrun as we did 8.6 miles the day before with the Wiggle monthly run but he was a solid support crew for me – even if he did freeze standing watching me, bless him.I’ve only done the Havant parkrun once before and, granted it was after a 13 mile run, but I found it very tough. It’s a lot of uphill and a break-neck downhill you do twice. The ground underfoot is solid and rocky so quite uneven. But this run they were running the parkrun backwards, which meant a terrible short uphill but a mostly downhill course – far better sounding to me!It was very cold. I immediately regretted not bringing my gloves. I also regretted wearing my mesh sleeveless top. I found myself trying to run fast just to get warmer quicker. The marshals were lovely, shouting support. One of them shouted “well done you! And not for your running – your make-up is great!” which made me laugh. And another marshal complimented my sparkly skirt.The course is mostly trail but it is really uneven underfoot which means you have to concentrate hard where you’re putting your feet. What was great though was how downhill the course was and it did feel far easier than my previous time there.

Then the giant steep hill… jeeze it is hard-work. But I’d much rather a short sharp hill than long stretches of incline. It just meant a short period of time of burning legs before reaching the flat again. The course is two and a bit loops (the bit being at the start) which was nice because it meant I saw Kyle a good few times. He’s great at cheering (and taking photos!) but it was tough to see where he actually was because the low sunshine was pointing directly at us as we came round the corner.The second loop felt better as my body got a lot warmer, but my hands were freezing. It felt really uncomfortable. But finally we got up the horrific hill again and headed to the finish.
My time was 22:20 which I was pleased about – much better than 24:03 of last time.I wasn’t cold when I finished but my hands were like blocks of ice. Bless Kyle, he was freezing stood waiting for me. He’s a very god egg indeed!After a few silly photos (got to be done when you have such cool make-up and a sparkly tutu!) we headed home where I had a wonderfully hot bath. Ahhhh so nice.

Then we headed to Morrison’s cafe for one of their amazing breakfasts with Kyle’s mum and sister. Unfortunately Kyle and my meals were seriously delayed (like a good 20 minutes after Sarah and Laura’s meals) but when it came it was a good spread!Despite the bean contamination, it was delicious 😉 I swapped my hashbrown for extra bacon (the correct decision in my eyes) and felt warm and full.

And then Kyle and I drove to Bristol.My friends Kate and Jay had invited us up for early dinner so to make it worthwhile the 2 hours of driving up there we went to the amazing Cabot Circus to mosey about the shops. I was really chuffed to be able to use a Hotel Chocolat voucher and get a free white chocolate skull lolly, which was delicious, and then, because I had the app, a free Krispy Kreme glazed doughnut (mainly for Kyle but I did have a few bites of course). I do so love freebies!

We then headed to Kate and Jay’s to have a WHOLE LOTTA Mexican food with our other friends Shell and Rob and their little one, Eloise.You know you never go hungry when Jay is cooking. We had fajitas, tacos, nachos and all the trimmings. Kate introduced us to the “Double D” tacos where you make a taco and then wrap the taco in a tortilla. Genius! No mess 😉Followed by chocolates, a Bakewell tart and a cheesecake. Needless to say we headed home stuffed!

The next day I had my final long run before the New York Marathon next week. I like to do between 13-16 miles depending on how my training cycle. If I haven’t had a great lead-up then I’ll probably run 16 miles, whereas if I think I’ve got enough long running in I’ll do 10-13 miles. So Sunday I decided 13 sounded good to me and went with that.

It was ridiculously windy and cold, but sunny. I remembered to wear my gloves and decided a long sleeve top would be in order. As I got going inthe sunshine I did wonder if the long sleeves were unnecessary but as I got onto the seafront I was happy with my choice. The wind was quite brisk.

As my route goes past a lot of farms, I saw a lot of “pick your own pumpkins” going on which was cool. So many orange blobs in the distance and kids and families running round. It’s definitely become a bigger thing to do this over the years.My legs felt strong and I was happy to clip along to a podcast and chill out. It didn’t feel a slog thankfully. However at about 8.5 miles the heavens opened up on me and I got soaked with cold biting rain. I was even more glad for my long sleeves and gloves then!As I got towards  home it backed off and bright sunshine started again which was a nice way to end the run.

So a solid weekend and now less than a week to the Big Apple!

What distance do you do as your final long run?

Have you done any pumpkin carving?

Do you dress up for Halloween?

Eye update and Halloween adventures

So my eyes are five days out from having had LASIK laser eye surgery.

They’re feeling pretty damn good I have to say. My vision is clear and I can see perfectly. The only thing I’m noticing is a bit of dry eyes, which is normal and probably exacerbated by having to stare at a computer screen for eight hours a day. I also still have very bloodshot eyes.

I take three different types of drops four times a day (5-10 mins apart) which is annoying to remember but I have an alarm set on my phone (always funny when you forget about that and leave the office to go to the loo and get back and everyone is staring at you as your phone has been going off for the past five mins…).

I managed to solve the hair washing conundrum as well. As I’m not allowed to get my eyes wet at all, washing my long hair is a bit of an issue. I’ve been using goggles for non-hair washing days but really my hair can only last three days before it really needs a wash. There’s only so much dry shampoo can do when you go to the gym as often as I do.

Instead of goggles (as that would have been impossible) I decided to use my eye guards that I have to wear at night. I attached them to my face using the special medical tape and jumped in the shower. I was very careful to not fully submerge my head as the guards aren’t that secure and have holes in them for ventilation but it protected them enough for me to get the job done. Whew!

Also, wearing sun glasses outside has been somewhat embarrassing when it’s not sunny at all and rather overcast. I look like I’m avoiding the paparazzi and am about to screech, “no photos!” at any moment. And it’s very tricky walking Alfie in sun glasses in the evening when it’s pitch black. But only a few days left to endure this – and it’s fully worth it.

It still stands that the worst day post-surgery was the few hours after surgery. I never did fully recap that evening…It was Halloween weekend and I’d planned on going out with my friends for some pub crawling adventures and as I originally thought the surgery was Friday I thought I would be fine to go Saturday night. But as my surgery was actually Saturday this did make me wonder if going out was a good idea…

But I wanted to go. I’m trying to be more of a “yes person” rather than the more comfortable hermit I’m inclined to be. Plus I hadn’t gone out drinking for months. It’s not something I fully enjoy doing, but once in a while it is good fun (and enough to remind me why I don’t do it more often). Plus I love fancy dress.halloween-witchI was going for witch fancy dress… It was such an easy costume. All I did was buy some cheap striped tights from Amazon and then spruced up a black dress I already had with a black sparkly tutu I found in the children’s section in Sainsbury’s (elasticated waists for the win – and only £11!).img_6067I had some black sparkly heels (not too high thankfully) and then added a black belt and boom! Done.

The night out was fun. My friends all dressed up too and we did a pub crawl along Albert Road in Southsea. It was all going well (a few cheeky shots here, a few G&Ts there) until we got into a place called The Wedgwood Rooms, which is a club/live music place. It’s a bit more of an indie/rock scene which I don’t mind but what I did mind was that we were the oldest people in there by quite a few years. The average age must have been 20. Nothing makes you feel old than being in a university drinking scene. Also, annoyingly, it was very smoky in the room with the aggressive use of a smoke machine. This was really not good for my eyes. I avoided the main room where the smoke machines were and hung out in the bar. My eyes were not feeling great in this place and I was starting to feel nervous. A couple of my friends who hadn’t just got drinks decided to move on with me to the next pub instead and we’d meet the other guys there when they finished.

My friend casually mentioned that a Scoops Gelato place was nearby and this peaked a bit of interest. Oh reeaally?? Important question: Would they still be open?  It was half 11 and amazingly they closed at midnight. We ditched the pub and hightailed it to Scoops as fast as we could and got there with 10 minutes to spare. Sadly the were only offering ice cream and not the waffles and pancakes on the menu (obviously as they were just about to shut shop) but this was good enough for us.img_6213I chose white chocolate Oreo (I’m so into white chocolate at the moment) and mint Oreo. A stellar selection if I do say so myself. As we headed back to meet the others at the next pub while munching happily away at our ice creams we agreed that we kind of felt a bit old for this “going out” business now. We much prefer house gatherings with hot beverages, snacks and movies. The rest of the evening was good but my drinking enthusiasm had now diminished and my bed was calling me…

It was a fun night and quite handy that it was Halloween as my bloodshot eyes and weird sunglasses-wearing tendencies fitted nicely in with all the other people in fancy dress. Fortuitous you might say!

How did you spend Halloween?

Do you like fancy dress?

What’s your ideal evening with friends? Mine probably involves getting food and then going back to someone’s house and chilling out there.

Rants and Raves #23

Hello! It’s the middle of the week, hurrah! I’m working from home tomorrow so it kind of feels like Friday, but only in that I get a bit of a lie-in tomorrow rather than 5am for the gym. Woop! I’m seeing my Physio again tomorrow so I hope to have another post about my injury (oh the long-standing saga that it is, I’m sorry) another day. But for now, I’m ranting but mostly raving.

Rave: Workout clothes. I can’t stop buying them. It’s becoming an issue. To be fair though, other than food, I really don’t spend my money on much else. Forever21 is my go-to place for good quality and inexpensive gym clothes. Though I do like treating myself to Fabletics some months.

I bought the below ‘muscle tee’ from Forever21 which fits amazingly. It’s perfect for my strength workouts as my arms are nice and free and the side slits help keep me cool. It says ‘No Days Off’. Not true, but still cool.

Forever21

I bought another muscle tee, a crop-top, a crop-top sports bra and two pairs of Nike Pro shorts (not from Forever21 but Zalando). ENOUGH NOW, ANNA.

Rant: Planning my weekends is so tricky at the moment. I still haven’t moved. My solicitors said it could be this week but then who knows. It depends on some enquiries… This is annoying as I’m meant to be seeing my uni friends in Cardiff this Saturday but now I don’t know if I can or not. In fact, we’ve had to rearrange the whole thing because I was going to give one of my friends a lift back and can’t guarantee it anymore. *Sighs*

I’m also just living out of boxes and reluctant to buy any sort of extra condiments or bulk purchases (which I like to do to with items I use regularly to save a bit of money).

Boxes

I’m not using my downstairs toilet anymore because it’s a great place to put boxes (especially food items and crockery) so Alfie can’t get to them. As you can see, my Hello Fresh boxes are very handy!

And I have nowhere to work when I work from home as I sold pretty much all my furniture (I live life on a bean bag with a £5 Ikea side table). I’ve had to use my kitchen to work in. For my standing desk obsession it works quite nicely.Standing desk

Rave: Speaking of Hello Fresh (yes, I know, I’m obsessed)… I finally received the hallowed Recipe Journal. My parents, who also still get Hello Fresh, have two! I introduced them to it first! Anyway, I have one now and it’s already almost full up.Hello Fresh recipe folder

It makes me really proud how may recipes I’ve done (I’ve had 23 boxes – each box contains three recipes). I love it! I eat so many different foods each week and it makes life so much easier cooking a meal and then having another portion of it for the next night.

A few weeks ago I had a lovely warming Mexican broth…Hello Fresh Mecican Broth

With a good dollop of soured cream. Yum.

If you fancy £25 off your first box I have a referral code ZVUM4A (which would also give me £12 off my next box). I’m not affiliated with Hello Fresh, I just love them.

Rave: I’ve recently bought some BCAA formula, AminoX, to help with me at the gym. It isn’t a stimulant but rather it’s designed to support my strength workouts and recovery. It contains essential amino acids, L-Alanine, Taurine and L-Citrulline.AminoX

You just mix one scoop with water and give it a mix. Don’t do what I do and shake it in a bottle vigorously as when you then go to open the lid, it explodes like a foamy volcano. Gentle stirring is required! I got the green apple flavour and it’s really yummy, though luminous green. I can’t say I feel a huge difference but I am lifting heavier weights than ever before – though considering how often I go to the gym and focus on this, that’s not surprising really.

Rant: Alfie’s Halloween costume came last week. Obviously too late for Halloween…and actually too small. For a fiver though I’m not upset.

Dog halloween costume

I’m wondering if I can cut the sides a bit and see if he could fit. He may never forgive me though.

Rave: This ice cream.

Oppo ice cream

It’s called Oppo and has the fabulous tagline of “Eat like a whale, look like a mermaid”. I got the salted caramel flavour. The ingredients are far better looking than Ben and Jerry’s and so are the nutritional stats for 100ml:

  • Energy (Kcal): 77.3
  • Fat: 3.8g (saturates: 2.8g)
  • Carbohydrate: 7.6g (sugars: 6.7g)
  • Protein: 3.2g
  • Sodium: 0.1

I’m a volume person when it comes to eating (more food = better) and will happily admit I ate the entire tub in one sitting, which was around 400 calories in total. That’s comparable to a slice of cake. Though cake always wins in my eyes, this was such a nice treat for a Friday night.

Rave: I saw this picture on Jamie Oliver’s Instagram…him with Orlando Bloom.Jamie and Orlando

Be still my beating heart. I have such a crush on Jamie Oliver it’s ridiculous. I just think he’s so lovely. And I used to be obsessed with Orlando Bloom during his LOTR days. It’s like a dream come true to have them side by side in a photo… *sighs*.

Who’s your celebrity crush? Who did you fancy when you were younger?

What’s your favourite ice cream and ice cream flavour?

Do you cook from scratch every evening?

Rants and Raves #22

I can’t believe how quickly October is flying by! It’s almost Halloween – I thought that was ages away until I realised I had a Halloween party this weekend and didn’t have a costume… Anyway, here are my latest rants and raves.

Rave: I forgot to mention in my post about my trip to Wales that I got ID’ed for entering one of the beer tents at the Food Festival!! This made my day. I’m only 27 so really this ins’t that big a feat but in my head I believe she thought I was under 18 😉 Bahaha!

Rant: Since realising how close Halloween actually is I’ve just bought a costume for parkrun. I have no idea if I will be able to actually wear it to run in though and I’m thinking it will be too cold to stand and marshal in. *Sighs* Well it’ll do for the Halloween party anyway on Saturday night so it’s not a complete waste… I also bought a (very cheap) costume for Alfie as well. “Costume” sounds quite elaborate, but it’s really more of a jumper. If I can’t run and wear my outfit then Alfie will be coming to parkrun again and will be wearing his. He doesn’t know it yet 😉 I reeeeeaaaalllllly wanted this one but they didn’t do his small doggie size.

Halloween dog costume

Plus I’m pretty sure he’d pack his little bags and leave if I attempted to put him in that (but how cute, seriously??).

Rave: These little chocolate cupcakes are so scrummy!

Salted caramel chocolate

I wish I’d bought more from the sweet shop in Wales. The salted caramel one was to die for.

Rant: DNS’ing the same races I’ve DNS’ed for the past two years. How weird is that? I’ve now been injured at this point in the year three years in a row. It’s getting a little silly now. I wouldn’t have signed up so far in advance but these are really popular local (and cheap) races. Who was I to know Bournemouth would cause me such an issue? (Probably every other sensible runner in the world who suspected I was running too many marathons too close together…).

I’m desperate to run the Gosport Half marathon (in a few weeks time) as it’s literally where my parents live and where I’ve done so many long runs before. It goes along the coast and has the view of the Isle of Wight, which is rather nice. But it seems this one, as with the Lordshill 10 mile this weekend, it’s not meant to be.

Rave: I’ve entered the Chester marathon for next autumn. I know, I know. So far away but it was cheaper to enter now than to wait and I like having things down in the diary.

Chester marathon

I was tempted to do Bournemouth again as it was such a disaster for me this year, but marathons aren’t like 5ks or 10ks that can just do at a drop of a hat and I want to do lots of different ones rather than revisit the same ones. Chester was voted as the UK’s number one road marathon by Runners’ World in 2012 and 2013 so should be good. I can also time it nicely with a trip to Shropshire with my grandparents and parents (that also means more parkrun tourism, wheee!).

But next year I will not cluster marathons together either and ensure I have proper breaks afterwards. Oh the wise words of an injured runner…

Rave: I signed up to Tribe Pack to test out their snack boxes.

Tribe Pack

The concept is like graze where you get a box of snacks delivered weekly/monthly/etc. and it’s a surprise what you get. The range of snacks include things like seeds, dried fruit, cereal/protein bars, etc. all made by Tribe. In a box you get two bars, two trail mixes, a ‘discover’ snack and a Tribe Life magazine. My box contained Tamari Seeds (sunflower, pumpkin,  hulled hemp and chia seeds and tamari), Tumba trail mix (pumpkin seeds, almonds, organic goji, toasted coconut), Organic Mountain Berries (sour cherry, raisin, goldenberry, goji, aronia, barberry & wild blueberry) and a Baobab bar (superfruit energy bar) and a Wild Apricot, Pecan & Lucuma bar.

Tribe

Use the referral code TRIBE42383 which will get you a pack like I got for £1 (I would also get my next Tribe Pack for free).

Rant: Still no running. I could go on and on (as you can imagine). I had an extremely deep and painful massage on Monday though which I’m still feeling the effects of so I really can’t judge. The person I saw said try in a week but I won’t unless it feels absolutely fine walking, which at the moment it (intermittently) doesn’t.

Rave: I’m hoping to see Spectre tonight. And I have six free cinema tickets from my bank as part of the bonuses I get with my account. I foresee lots of film trips happening… I’m actually not a huge James Bond fan but the film does look good and I feel like I need to see it because I’ve seen so many of the others. Plus, Daniel Craig. And Nandos.

Rave: When I was in Wales I bought myself a pack of four pastry forks.

Pastry forks

Basically they’re little forks with a sharp edge that you use to eat cake. As a regular cake eater I thought it would be nice to have the proper utensils to fully enjoy the experience. I’ll be keeping one in my handbag at all times of course.

What are your rants and raves of late?

James Bond: yes or no? Who was the best Bond? I like Daniel Craig. Less cheese but still a lot of smooth moves.

Are you doing anything for Halloween? Any costumes?

Cake not children any day

Happy Monday, we’re here again. I don’t know what happened to me over the weekend but I was shattered! I even had an hour long nap yesterday afternoon, which is crazy for me! I’m back running consistently so this is probably the case. My foot seems to be fully OK now, whew!

Friday night Ben and me decided to go out for a meal to our recent favourite find (Zippers) and we invited my parents and Ben’s mum to join. Funnily enough my mum and dad had already booked to go to there after we’d raved about it! Happy days.

I went for my salad duo which, once again, rocked my world: salad bar starter and then chicken, avocado and bacon salad.

Zippers salad

Apologies for the poor photos – it was dimly lit in the restaurant

And because it is the best chocolate fudge cake I’ve had in ages, I had it for pudding again. Consistently good – and I think I’m qualified to say that now having had it three times! I didn’t take a photo because I’ve already got two photos of it…

Needless to say I think we’re done with Zippers for a bit. We’ll be back for definite but we’ve OOT-ed it recently as you can imagine 😉

Saturday morning I finally got back to parkrun. I haven’t been for soo long due to being busy, injuries and marathons. I really missed it. I went down early to help set up and caught up with the parkrun crew. It was the Halloween special which meant people had dressed up in fancy dress for the occasion which was brilliant!

Netley Abbey parkrun Halloween Skeleton morph suit!

The costumes were brilliant, from pumpkins to zombies, morph suits to masks. I love stuff like this. Sadly all I had to offer was a black sparkly tutu and my colourful RunMummyRun compression socks but it felt fun wearing it.

IMG_8317I took parkrun nice and easy and chatted to lots of people on the way round, which I always really enjoy. Unfortunately talking so much gave me such a nasty a stitch – that’ll teach me! I got just over 25 minutes which I’m happy with for a social run wearing, as it turns out, a rather itchy tutu.

IMG_8315 Check out the costumes behind me – amazing effort with the face paint!

The rest of the day was spent just doing the chores, walking Alfie and watching some trashy television watch (*whispers* Made In Chelsea) which Ben and me embarrassingly like to watch and Gogglebox (I’m a new comer to this programme but I am fully addicted – it is HILARIOUS).

Sunday I got up and ran for 50 minutes (Kyle confusingly works in minutes not miles…this makes route planning quite hard!!) then rushed about getting ready to go to church to see my friend Louise’s baby’s Christening-but-not-Christening thing. Basically it was a “welcome to church” kind of thing for their baby, Jacob, but not an actually Christening because they want him to decide on his faith later. I won’t lie, I did not sing at all. No one wants to hear me sing especially if I don’t know any of the songs! Louise is an incredible singer though and is part of the church band so she rocked it.

After the service we headed back to Louise’s parent’s house for “nibbles”. Let’s just dissect this word for a moment…we thought crisps and snacky things, which were out on the sides when we arrived. We nibbled away and had some fizzy pop and were quite content. But Louise’s mum is just amazing at hosting these sorts of things and suddenly an hour later BOOM there was an entire buffet of food. Then after the buffet there was a pudding buffet of lemon tart, chocolate tart, meringues, jelly (all home-made!) and ice cream. Wowza. And of course cake afterwards!

IMG_8322 

I won’t lie. I went a bit crazy having a slice of both the lemon and chocolate tart (let’s call them slithers shall we? They weren’t huge…) and a couple of slices of cake.

IMG_8324 All home-made by Louise herself. Vanilla sponge for the main cake and chocolate for the little trains and square blocks. My reputation preceded me as Louise came over after the first cutting of the cake and handed me a chocolate slice saying “I knew you’d want more”. Full sugar coma commenced afterwards (and an afternoon nap later).

Most of my school friends were there too so it was nice to catch up and have a laugh with them. Mostly taking the mic’ out of my fear of small people and how awkward I am around them. It was actually quite scary how many children were there – Louise has a HUGE family. Needless to say, it’ll be a few years yet before I have the desire to have one!!

Do you go to church? I’m not religious but don’t mind going to these sorts of things.

What are you doing for Halloween? We do nothing. Mainly hide behind our curtains and hope no small people come knocking.

Cake or dessert? I think I’d go with cake.