Morning you fabulous people. Does anyone else feel like there needs to be a day in between Saturday and Sunday? A day to catch up on all the things you think you’re going to get done over the weekend but actually don’t. How many times has clean the kitchen floor been on my to-do list??
The weekend started off nicely, with a cheeky little trip to Nando’s on Friday night with my parents and Ben for a whole lotta chicken.
So many choices of sauces! I went for mango and lime
I went for half a chicken, corn on the cob and side salad. How very Paleo of me (is that Paleo? Potentially…) 😉 I also got to eat Ben’s leftover chicken as well. Yum.
Saturday morning we were up and at ‘em to help set-up Parkrun at Netley Abbey.
It was the cricket pitch course again (five laps…snore). But I was determined to beat my time from last weekend (22:30). The weather was better and the course a bit drier.
It was quite nippy so I made sure I warmed up a lot – lots of walking lunges, high knees and strides. Then go go go!
There’s me in the pink top and shorts. I felt really strong and just kept pushing. My pace dropped as I went along but I managed to maintain a speedier pace than last week.
In the end I got a time of 21:27 and was first female 🙂 Almost a minute off last week and I beat the lady that beat me last week, which was quite nice. And my lovely pregnant friend who is still running despite being fairly pregnant wasn’t far behind – I mean seriously, how inspiring is that?? I hope that’s me one day!
I foolishly did not prepare well for the next day’s long run. I ate a really big dinner and a lot of fudge the night before and felt very bloated and not too well when I went to bed. How stupid can I be?
Ben and me were planning to join up with our running club’s long run on the Sunday and for various different reasons, we managed to get there too late (by 5 minutes). This was really annoying as I was looking forward to running my long run with company and hadn’t brought my headphones or anything. Ben and me decided to part ways and just run on. I was aiming for 8.30-9min/mile pace and Ben wanted to do 9.30min/mile so we couldn’t really run together.
Anyway I headed off with the vague and optimistic hope that I could catch them knowing that a part of the group would be running Ben’s pace. This kept me entertained for about 8 miles thinking “Keep going, they’re just around this corner”. Happily I had no idea I got their route wrong and was going a completely different way…
I’d say it sort of went OK. I had some serious stomach cramps and moments when I thought I’d have to dive into a bush which wasn’t great. I had also brought only a tiny water bottle which disappeared by mile 10. And my legs felt very heavy and tired from the day before. The last two miles were spent mentally pushing myself and fantasying about a cold glass of water.
Basically I’d say 60% of the reason why the run wasn’t brilliant was because of the day before (hard Parkrun and bad preparation), 20% was my IT band feeling tired and niggling my knee (not major though) and 20% was mental. Not running with any music, podcast or conversation really put the focus on running and the miles counting down. It was nice to have that quiet time and focus but I’m not used to it for such a long run.
When I got home I had a glass of water within seconds. Best drink in the entire world. Then I stretched like a madwoman, had a huge bowl of porridge and then screamed the house down by having an ice bath.
I have to wear socks as my feet get so so cold. It took ages for them to warm up afterwards! Ben had to hug them for about five minutes. That’s love.
Then the rest of the day I somehow managed to get the ironing done, walk Alfie, prepare my lunches for the next few days and make Mars Bar crispie cakes for work! I then promptly collapsed onto the sofa and did nothing. Heaven.
I made the cakes for work to sell in order to raise some money for the charity (Make a Wish) I’m running for on Sunday’s Reading half marathon.
I went for the simplest baking I could. But still, what an arm work out! Stirring up melted chocolate with rice crispies is no small feat.
I made sure to save Ben one though when I cut them up this morning to take to work 😉
So a productive, tiring but brilliant weekend.
Now to relax a bit at work 😉 At least physically!!
What is the easiest thing you bake? I find everything hard to bake 😉
How do you recover after a long run/hard workout? All the foods!!
What’s your sauce of choice: hot, spicy, mild, sweet…? Sweet and spicy is one of my favourite.
**If you did want to sponsor me and my little team for the Reading Half you can find out fundraising page HERE. No donation is too small.**