I think it should be a law somewhere that after running a half marathon (or any race really) you should get the next day off from work. I’m going to save my race recap for my next post purely because this post will just be huge otherwise.
On Saturday morning I woke up at 6am (whhhhhy??) but decided to just stay all snug and warm and doze a little rather than get up out of bed. I ended up laying in bed just thinking for an hour. Planning what I needed to do, obsessing over the race the next day…stupid stuff you really don’t need to ponder over for that long. Anyway I then fell asleep at 7 until my alarm went off at 7.30am for Parkrun. Ben and me headed there with a friend and the weather was chilly but not raining so that was good. Perfect race conditions.
I was happy with this! The first mile felt OK, then the next two just felt like a hard slog. My intention had been a negative split. Yeah that clearly didn’t work out haha.
Then we headed home, had breakfast, got all the house work done, had lunch…then drove up to Bristol. I was shattered!!
We were staying with one of my uni friends and her fiancé (and their adorable pug, Doug).
Look at that face. How cute is he??
When we arranged it ages ago my friend, Kate, suggested we go to the local pub for dinner. Perfect! When we driving up I asked Ben what he’d fancy tonight to eat (am I the only person that does this? Start looking forward to a meal hours in advance??) He wasn’t bothered (typical Ben – he doesn’t get excited about these things). I said I just really fancied a chunky beef burger.
Anyway, when we’re there Kate said they’ve had a change of mind about dinner. They wanted to take us somewhere else. I was intrigued. They wanted to take us to a place called Atomic Burger. How weird is that?? I hadn’t told them my burger desire. Very strange. I was clearly very up for it.
Unfortunately Atomic Burger was fully booked (*shakes fist at better organised people who pre-book*). But we found a lovely little pub and we all ordered burgers as that’s all we could think about.
It was amazing. I had mine with bacon and it rocked my world. But the chips (fries) were served in a ramekin. A RAMEKIN of chips. That’s what you serve a handful of nuts in. Not chips. We were all quite disgruntled so I ordered a side of chips (“can I get a side of chips with my, er, chips?”) and it came out in a bowl. So we were all suitably full and Ben and me fuelled for the next day.
We ended up chatting for ages after the meal. So nice to catch up with them! And the funny thing was that Kate’s fiancé, Jamie, is exactly like me with food. He gets really excited about cooking and eating. We both could talk for hours about our favourite meals. Whereas Kate and Ben were just indifferent. We concluded that if Ben and Kate lived together they’d probably starve or be malnourished, whereas Jamie and me would be massively obese haha.
They then pumped up the world’s largest air bed. When I say they pumped it up, by that I mean they turned it out and it self inflated. Genius.
It took over their lounge pretty much.
It was very comfortable! Exactly what you need the night before a race.
The next morning we got up at 6.30am and had breakfast with them (they’re strange people who get up ridiculously early at the weekend) and then headed to the Park and Ride to get to the race start.
Now it’s back to work and back to reality…for four days. Then Mexico – which looks crazy with all the storms. Uh oh! 
Do you have a pre-race ritual you always do? It’s always harder when you’re not at home so you can’t eat exactly what you want, go to bed at a perfect time or sleep in your own bed, but it was so lovely to see our friends that it just made us less nervous and we really relaxed.
Do you get really excited about food or are you not that bothered? Jamie and I got really into a conversation where we were discussing our ‘last day on Earth’ meal. BBQ ribs. Yes.
What’s your perfect burger? Mine is a big home-made beef burger with lots of toppings, like bacon, ketchup, lettuce, tomatoes…goat’s cheese. Anything goes really 
Though I do like chunky veggie burgers.