Running - AnnaTheApple

July 27, 2016September 17, 2020

Rants and Raves #34

Oooh I have a few ranty points today. Can’t beat some cathartic ranting, am I right?

Rant: I love parkrun, as you may well be aware (!), and I think people who are anti-parkrun are insane. Literally insane. But I can understand that people who don’t understand its magical properties (community spirit, getting outside, promoting volunteering, promoting health and well-being, inspiring people to do great things, etc. etc.) may not be as on board. On Saturday everyone who parked their car along a residential road next to Netley Country Park where the Netley parkrun takes place had their car keyed.

This is disgusting and there is NO REASON that this should happen. OK so a herd of cars appearing every Saturday and parking up your road could be annoying – I fully understand that. No one wants their road blocking up (by the way, the cars don’t block the road, they just park LEGALLY). But to do something as destructive as that? That’s awful. If the person responsible was so angry then surely they should have left a strongly worded note or come out of their ~~hole~~ house and spoken to the car owner’s – LIKE AN ADULT. Seriously what is wrong with people to think this is an acceptable way to deal with what they see as an issue?

(It was reported to parkrun and they’re investigating)

Rave: Onto more happier notes. You know I’m an idiot and booked my flight home from my recent Spanish holiday twice (read about that wonderful saga HERE)? Well, the lovely people from Expedia read my blog and sent me a very nice email. They offered to refund the ticket I booked by mistake! Happily they didn’t think I was an idiot (though who could blame them if they did?) and said they could relate to the mistake and wanted to give me a happy ending by refunding me the money. Ahh so nice of them! I hardly need to sing Expedia’s praises (most of my holidays are booked with them because, hello savings) but this has made me feel all warm and fuzzy about them

Rant: Having to take Alfie to the vets for a teeth clean. I say teeth clean but this involved him having to be anaesthetised…

He’s a sensitive soul and doesn’t like change. For example, being in the car causes him to shake (I have no idea why, he’s had no bad experiences in one!) so being at the vets is really not his cup of tea. It was quite heart-breaking to drop him off and say goodbye. The nurse told me to leave rather than her take Alfie away so it wasn’t quite as brutal (still felt it). Apart from Alfie’s displeasure of course, the two worst parts were a) the nurse calling him “borderline senior” at seven years old. WHAT? He’s going to live forever!! and b) it costing over £300. OUCH. But he’s worth it of course.

Rave: I have a bit of a resistance band addiction it appears. I now have no less than five. One is a long one I use for assisted pull-ups (as mentioned in a previous post), the other is a cheap one that I’ve tied together and use round my ankles for crab and monster walks and the other three are new purchases.

I got them from Amazon very cheaply. And they come with their own little bag which is handy. They come in three different strengths. They’re a lot shorter and don’t require tying so are perfect for using doing things like clamshells and leg lifts (all about that glute activation!). And they seem a bit more hardy.

Rant: I now dread part of my walk with Alfie in a morning. As I get closer to the pond I just hope the duck lady isn’t there (the one that yelled abuse at me). Some mornings she is and some she isn’t. When she is she glares at me. She honestly stands there looking at me with this horrible look on her face! It makes me feel so uncomfortable. I refuse to put Alfie on his lead as 9/10 he doesn’t go after the ducks, but I spend my time praying that Alfie keeps his interests away from the pond. I’ve seen other dogs chase the ducks so I don’t feel quite as awful as clearly Alfie is not the devil incarnate (or more likely, I’m not a terrible owner) but it still makes for an unpleasant experience. One funny morning was Alfie running over to her and eating all the bread she’d thrown. That made my morning.

Rave: New trainers! It’s funny because I was checking on Strava the other day and noticed that the trainers I’d been using after Boston were well over 300 miles. Now I realise that to some people (you lucky souls) that’s no issue but for my last few injuries it’s always occurred with trainers that are over 300 miles. Perhaps this is entirely coincidental but I do know that most of my injuries occur because of my fallen arches (as my physio keeps telling me and stressing me to do my exercises every day). Remember when I wore those old trainers for that fateful failed 18 miler in Wales? Well, anyway this called for new trainers to be bought immediately and something I will pay stricter attention to in future.

I kept to my trusty Mizuno’s Wave Paradoxes. I’ve used them pretty much since I started running. I’m a fan of Asics, Brookes and Adidas too but generally it’s Mizuno for the bulk of my mileage.

Rant: (at myself) For buying the wrong size *face palm*.

Rant: The real aggression there is out there for Pokémon Go (I promise I’ll stop bringing this game up in my blog). What is the issue for a bit of harmless fun? (Let’s ignore the few and far between stories of the idiots who take it to a different stupid level). My parkrun friends did have a good laugh at me though when I was playing while we were setting up on Saturday morning. They suggested a more useful game for me would be “Boyfriend Go” but the Pokémon thing was probably hindering that. Fair point.

Cinnamora Drink Review

I was contacted via Twitter by @CinnamoraDrink to try out their new cinnamon infused drink Cinnamora. I thought “why not?”. It sounded a bit weird but I was happy to give it a go.

Basically it’s a still soft drink that, well, tastes of cinnamon. It’s almost zero in calories, contains no fat, no added sugars and made from ceylon cinnamon. The ingredients are cinnamomum zeylanicum extract, citric acid, sucralose, and water. Apparently cinnamon is widely used in ayurvedic and traditional Chinese medicine for conditions such as diabetes, high cholesterol and indigestion.

My thoughts? I won’t lie, I really didn’t like it. The flavour just didn’t sit well with me. To be honest I think that’s because of the cinnamon associations I have. For me cinnamon means Christmas, hot drinks, gingerbread and Christmas cake. To drink it as a cold beverage just messed with my brain a bit. It’s not an unpleasant taste or disgusting, it’s sweet and refreshing – it’s just personally for me it didn’t work. I gave a few cans to some friends to see their thoughts and they were a lot more positive than me, but they still thought it was a bit odd.

I think that this drink would probably work better in the States as they have such a huge cinnamon love over there, whereas in the UK, cinnamon really only comes out in baking and Christmas time. I could be very wrong though!

What’s getting you riled up lately?

What are your thoughts on cinnamon?

When do you buy new trainers?

**Full Disclosure: I was sent the Cinnamora drinks for free in exchange for my honest review.**

July 25, 2016December 31, 2019

Sunny parkrun and I’m long running again!

This weekend was nice and chilled. Sometimes you need a weekend that you don’t do much and catch up on life, you know?

I headed to Netley Abbey parkrun on Saturday morning. I got there early, as usual, to help set-up the course. The chapel is being renovated for the next 18 months so the course has to change due to where the construction is going on. This meant a bit of confusion and rushing around as it wasn’t our standard set-up. Both the start and the finish were in different places and though the general route remains largely the same (still have that hill we have to do three times) it is a bit different and meant that we had to put our 1k markets, cones and arrows in different places.

I’d brought Alfie with me as I knew my friend Mike wasn’t going to be running and said he was happy to look after him while I ran. I always feel mean if I leave Alfie behind when the weather is so lovely. So it was nice to bring him and give him chance to race around when we set up.

It was quite warm so the run wasn’t that easy and there seemed to be a lot more exposure to the sun on the new route.

I listened to some music for once, which I haven’t done in ages but as I had my Aftershokz headphones I thought it might be a nice change. They still let me hear my surroundings so I don’t feel as ‘locked in’ when I run.

Each lap I waved to Mike and Alfie. Alfie at first didn’t really notice me and then when he saw me his little face just looked like “where are you going? Come back!”.

My time was 23:10 which I was chuffed with as I did put some effort in (it was about a minute quicker than I’ve been doing recently). I think the course is a bit easier than it used to be though as it has less turns but I’ll take it!

Then I headed back to Mike and Alfie to cheer some of the others in. The weather was just beautiful but I was a sweaty mess!

There were some great milestones achieved this parkrun: a few 50s and a 250th! And course that meant cake…

Very tasty! Then we headed to the cafe for a drink. I had an ice cold sparkling water instead of my peppermint tea as it was far too warm and I treated Alfie to some dog ice cream!

Basically it’s frozen fruit puree with a few other relatively normal and human-safe ingredients so we all tried a bit. Not especially creamy but nice enough. Alfie certainly liked it (though I had to ‘mush’ it up for him as he couldn’t be pigged to spend his time licking away it).

Then it was back home to have some breakfast, shower and then head to my parent’s house. They’re currently on holiday and had asked me to check in on the house and water their plants. As I was also meeting up with some friends that evening who lived in the area I planned on spending the night as well. It also meant my run the next day could be along my favourite coastal route.

I took Alfie down the beach for a nice long walk and it was just bliss.

I bought an ice cold Fanta Zero from the ice cream van and was in heaven. The walk took about an hour and I listened to a podcast and might have played some Pokémon Go Though this absolutely rinsed my battery.

I went to my friend’s house a bit later on and we ordered in some takeaway and had a very nice chilled evening watching the old classic, Wall Street. It was a lovely relaxed evening.

The next morning I got up and headed out for my first longish run in a while. I planned to do eight miles as I’d run five miles previously and if I’m planning on doing Chester marathon in the beginning of October I need to be increasing my mileage. I didn’t want too big a jump but I felt eight would be good.

Though it was overcast the run was still hot. I felt fairly comfortable though and the miles ticked by. I briefly thought about a tap that I knew was at the beach and would be at mile 6ish. I probably could have survived the run without water but I couldn’t get it out of my head. When I got there I couldn’t see anywhere that it said drinking water (nor that it wasn’t drinking water). But I knew people used the water for their beach huts – though I wasn’t sure if they boiled it first or not. In the end the desire for water was too much and I decided to risk it. It was nice and cold. Finger’s crossed I’m OK!

Somehow I’d gotten my route wrong (how do I always manage this?) and ended up going passed 8 miles. I decided to continue on to 8.5 miles then walk home. But then when I reached 8.5 I still felt good so pushed to 9. Then I stopped and walked home, which was about less than half a mile. I felt good though definitely like I’d run 9 miles, of which I haven’t done in a good few weeks!

It was so nice to have a run that felt good. My hamstring is pretty much back to normal. After seeing my physio a couple of times and, as I’ve said before, he didn’t think it was my actual hamstring that was the issue. He worked on loosening my back (which was probably tweaking my sciatic nerve) and realigned my pelvis. So things have been a lot better. I’m back to squatting and deadlifting at the gym again (though not stiff-legged deadlifts just yet).

The rest of the day was life admin and chores. I also had a wonderful nap in the afternoon, perfect Sunday chill time. So basically my weekend was quiet but lovely.

Did you go to parkrun this weekend?

Would you drink from a suspect tap if you were thirsty?

July 20, 2016

Pomphrey parkrun and my favourite foods

One of my favourite things about parkrun is the fact that you can do it all over the UK (and many other countries!). Two of my friends, Kate and Jamie, have recently taken up running and came down from Bristol and did their first parkrun with me. Nothing makes me more proud and happy than when my ‘non-running’ friends get excited about running.

So it made sense for me to go to Bristol to do their local parkrun, Pomphrey Hill, with them. It would be their second and the first time I’d ever done this particular one. I’ve done Little Stoke which would have been super local for them (being a five minute drive away) but unfortunately we all know what happened to that parkrun

Anyway I drove up after work on Friday and Jamie cooked us all dinner. Jamie and me have very similar tastes and appetites, so I felt very happy to let him decide what we were having!

Amazingly he had slow-cooked three turkey legs with a BBQ glaze for us each and also a beef brisket…because, why not? They also had lots of dips and salads (bless them, they know carbs aren’t big in my world!). It was delicious needless to say. Afterwards we had a slice of red velvet cake (carbs I can easily get on board with) and watched some telly. A perfect Friday night!

In the morning we got up and got ready to pick up another of Kate’s friends and headed to Pomphrey Hill, which was about 20 minutes away.

We didn’t really know much about the course other than it didn’t have a huge mammoth hill that the other Bristolian parkrun, Ashton Court, had. But we overheard a few people discussing the route and found that it definitely wasn’t flat.

We did some warm-ups and then heard the first timer briefing. It was so friendly (isn’t it always?) and the lady who instructed us was very charismatic and funny. She then asked for any tourists to line up for a photo.

Photo credit: Adrian Grimshaw

I kind of wish I’d worn my Netley parkrun top now but hey ho. I saw someone wearing a Little Stock one and it made me a little sad for that lost parkrun. The cafe near the start was cooking bacon and the smell was amazing but not really welcome considering none of us had had breakfast nor had money for post-parkrun food!

We then headed to line-up. It’s funny because since Kate and Jamie have started parkrun they highlighted something to me that I hadn’t really noticed before. Us runners just love being self-congratulatory. We clap for anything and everything: “any first timers?” *clap*, “well done to the volunteers” *clap*, “any 50ths?” *clap*, “any tourists?” *clap*. Though they agree that it’s a nice thing and adds to the friendliness and all-inclusivity.

Jamie and Kate have done so well to lose so much weight – check them out in this old post for a comparison!

The run director then gave us a quick briefing where we heard a bit more about the course. He left a pause after he said “and then you go…” and everyone shouted “up Pomphrey Hill!”. Uh oh. If there’s a motto for the hill you know it’s going to be bad.

It was three laps which included a small hill/incline going past the finish and then relatively flat swinging around the field and near a lake and then “up Pomphrey Hill!” which was horrifically steep but thankfully wasn’t that long. It did require a battle of wills though to not walk it. Then happily it was flat and then a lovely downhill round the corner back towards the finish again for another two laps.

Photo credit: Adrian Grimshaw

I found it really tough, I won’t lie. The hill was knackering but the down hills were nice. It was just hard to keep a good pace going seen as how I’m so unfit (in running terms). But it was an enjoyable run with lots of smiling marshals cheering us on and lots of people (338!) running to keep you motivated.

I felt stronger as the run progressed and didn’t walk the hill which I was pleased about. Towards the last lap I kept overtaking and being overtaken by one guy. At the end I managed to burn away from him and get to the finish just before him. I turned around and jokingly said “you almost had me!” and he completely blanked me. Like he heard what I said and chose to ignore me. It was just a bit of gentle banter – I was going to say that given 10 more seconds he’d have overtaken me again but clearly he didn’t want to talk. I chatted away to someone else instead.

I finished in 24:01, 4th female and first in my age category. Damn those two seconds! But I was really pleased with that as I’ve been sitting around 24 minutes for most of my parkruns lately.

I know how tough I found that parkrun so I wasn’t sure how Kate and Jamie would find it as they don’t often run hills. Lee on Solent parkrun was dead flat so I hoped they were OK. Kate’s sister had come down with their parent’s 14 week old puppy to watch and cheer so I headed over to her to cheer Jamie and Kate in.

They both finished almost two minutes faster than Lee on Solent! Clearly their running is coming on in leaps and bounds. They found it very tough though (as did I) and we were all pretty shattered afterwards.

But we were all really pleased with ourselves. Jamie and Kate were over the moon. It made my day to see them so happy!

Lola, the puppy, enjoying the attention

Kate’s friend, Catherine, finished just after them and, it being her first parkrun and 5k, did a stellar job. What a parkrun to do as your first though!

We then headed back to shower. Now I will fully admit that I am a Pokémon Go convert. I’m a nerd at heart and used to play Pokémon (both on the Gameboy and as the collectable cards) when I was younger so this is right up my street. Thankfully Jamie is also into it so the two of us were like little kids playing on our phones while Kate looked at us in exasperation. Happily we went on a walk with their adorable pug, Doug, to a Starbucks to grab a coffee and Jamie and me got our Pokémon fix. We could see a lot of other people walking around doing exactly the same, both old and young which was quite amusing. I think it’s a great idea to get people out and about (though the less said about idiots taking ridiculous risks the better…).

For lunch we’d planned on going to Spitfire again but the centre of Bristol was quite busy with a harbour festival going on so we went somewhere else instead. Jamie had found a pub, called Upton Inn, that had an “add on” smokehouse (Voodoo Q). We were intrigued.

The smokers

It was just a regular pub but out at the back there was a little sheltered outhouse thing being manned by a single guy. There was a separate menu for the BBQ food. We questioned him a bit about the different foods and he definitely knew his stuff (says the BBQ connoisseur, ha!). On the menu it said a rack of ribs was to share between two people. Jamie and me were sceptical – don’t they know of our rib eating prowess? Was it really a sharing thing? But after informing us that 1.2kg of ribs was probably a bit much for one person we were inclined to agree!

In the end we ordered one and half racks of ribs, beef brisket and 10 chicken wings. J also ordered some bean and chilli sides for him and Kate. The guy was amazing. He’d hosted a chilli party the night before and had a few “leftovers” that he said he’d chuck in as well for our eating pleasure. Amazing!

Everything was indeed amazing. The ribs were insanely huge and had a really smoky taste which was nice. The chicken wings were really good – best I’ve had in a good while. I didn’t manage any of the brisket (choose your battles). He’d given us four different home-made sauces as well to try. As we munched along, the guy then brought out some pork loin and sausages for us to try! It was never ending I tell you. But it was so good. The guy (I wish I’d gotten his name) wants to go into competing and just really loves people enjoying his food and that really shone with his service. If you’re in Bristol it’s definitely worth a visit!

On the way back to Kate and J’s (all feeling very full but content) we stopped by Kate’s parent’s house to pick up Lola, the puppy. Such a adorable dog.

Really cute.

Then it was time for me to head back to Southampton. Needless to say a brilliant weekend. I know my BBQ food obsession has got a bit out of control lately but I just love it!

What’s your latest food obsession?

Do you enjoy BBQ food?

What attracts you to different parkruns? The course? The locality? The people who’ll be there?

July 12, 2016January 5, 2017

Wedding recap and back to reality

I’m back! After an amazingly epic week away in Spain at the BTN Fitness Retreat I am home safe and sound. I got back Friday and then sadly was struck down with some awful illness for about three days. I couldn’t even make it into work on Monday and spent the entire day pretty much in bed sleeping. I feel a bit better now but still not hundred per cent. Hey ho!

I’ll do a full recap of the fitness retreat soon… it deserves a good coverage. It was a fantastic week and I learnt a lot about myself (both good and bad). Before going to Spain I had my friend’s wedding as well. I’m the genius that books to go on holiday the day after a wedding!

The wedding was so good. It was my close friend, Shell, who I know from university and her lovely partner Rob. The wedding was held in Dumbleton Hall near to Cheltenham. As I live in Southampton this is quite a drive so I stayed with my friends in Bristol, getting the train from work on the Friday. We went to a fantastic Lebanese restaurant, Lona Grillhouse, on the Friday night which rocked my world.

We shared a platter of different meat, including lamb cutlets, king prawns, lamb kuftas, shish taouk and lots more Lebanese-style meat. It came with couscous, chips, nan bread and salad. Very tasty! There was also free Turkish delight at the end when you paid your bill.

The next day we got up fairly early to go and do some running. Kate and Jamie have recently just gotten into running (they came down to do the parkrun the other week with me). Though we’d have loved to have done a parkrun, sadly the nearest one was about 30 minutes away now Little Stoke is no longer there. And we just didn’t have the time with the wedding being at 1pm.

They took me to their local park instead which was basically a 1000 metre track. It had 100m markers and went in a loop. It was exactly 1km.

We did that five times (not the most exciting of runs but very cool to have the markers) and then we got ready for the wedding.

The wedding venue was literally perfect. The weather was good – sunny but not too hot. All in all it was a fantastic day. Shell and Rob are such a lovely couple as well and we were all so happy to see them get married.

It was also nice to have another get together with my university friends and just laugh and chat like we always do. And so nice to put a dress on and be all fancy

There were lots of garden games as well to keep everyone entertained. And a hog roast sizzling away for the evening’s buffet… yessss!

Jamie and I were very pleased about this

Shell’s dress was beautiful as well. She looked amazing.

And of course the food and cake was amazing. Probably the best food at a wedding I’ve ever had. And I have a very good friend, Charlotte, who traded half her pudding with me so I could try both

I had soup to start, lamb (very tasty!) for main and then half an apple tart and half a chocolate mousse thing. The wedding had a Japanese theme as they both love Japan. The favours were these very pretty tea light holders as well as some homemade Welsh cakes (as Rob’s side of the family is Welsh). Lovely touches.

I’m not going to lie. I did drink a fair bit (for me). I wanted to let my hair down and relax. I rarely ever drink… unfortunately I didn’t really stick with a type of beverage and went from Pimms, to a Bud, to sparkling wine, to red wind to then gin and tonics. It tasted great at the time… The cake was delicious (obviously) with a carrot cake layer and chocolate layer.

We all had a good time boogying the night away as well. It was a great evening. My lovely parents came to pick me up at midnight and it was time to go home. I felt rough on the way home. A combination of all those different drinks and too much food (read: cake) meant I might have had to have stopped (*cough* twice) on the way home to be sick. Much to my parents great amusement. As I said, this isn’t something I normally would do! Oh the shame…

I had my alarm set for 6am and arrived home at 2.30am (ouch). And for whatever bizarre reason I woke up at 4:59am and got up! I was so convinced my alarm was going to go off at 5am. So I got showered and ready and then at 5.45am wondered where my taxi was… The penny then dropped that I was a full hour early. Needless to say I reset my alarm and went back to bed (fully dressed).

I have to say I have never felt so ill in my life from alcohol. On the plane I was freezing cold. I asked for a blanket but they didn’t offer them (well, it was FlyBe…). I felt unbelievably rough and it only reconfirmed to me why I don’t drink excessively. And sadly my first night in Spain, after meeting everyone at the retreat, was spent missing dinner and going to bed early. You know I’m not well when I miss a meal time!! Serves me right I know.

Do you enjoy getting dressed up?

Do you drink? When was your last hangover?

What’s your tipple of choice?

June 29, 2016

Climbing, running and eating

The weekend seems a long time away now, doesn’t it? There’s some crazy inverses time law I think whereby time moves quickly at the weekend and slowly during the week. Saying that though I don’t actually mind weekdays. I always think it would be awful to hate five days out of seven. Or maybe my weekends aren’t that interesting in comparison?? Who knows!

I made my way to the Netley parkrun on Saturday morning. It felt like forever since I was last there. It was nice to see the set-up crew again, albeit missing a few people due to holidays and injuries. The weather was really nice and made me think of those horrific times during the winter months where I was bundled up in a thick coat and dreading the time when I’d have to de-layer.

Recently I was asked to take over the Twitter account for Netley parkrun and I happily took the job. I’m a big fan of Twitter (follow me if you like!) and the person who was doing it before was getting a bit tired of looking after it and said I seemed like the right person for the job It’s fun because I can tweet out motivational messages, information about Netley and parkrun in general. But I did have a moment where I got confused with the accounts and retweeted a humorous tweet from what I thought was my account but turned out to be Netley’s. It wasn’t offensive or rude but it was a bit random (a funny meme about football) so I quickly deleted it. It is tough though managing the two accounts post-parkrun when there is a lot of Twitter activity happening!

Anyway, my hamstring was feeling better than has it done but still not right. I did a warm-up and then stood umm’ing and arr’ing about whether to run. In the end my friend Chris said to try a slow lap and if it got worse stop. So this is what I did.

My hamstring did niggle but it didn’t get worse. It was just a discomfort in the back of my mind. I kept it slow. Jeeze how tough three miles feels when you haven’t been running much! It felt like it went on forever. I’ve lost a lot of endurance for definite. Afterwards the hamstring felt niggly but not significantly worse and actually the hours and days afterwards it felt no worse. *Shrugs*. I’ll write some more about that in another post anyway as I saw my physio on Monday.

I was happy to have run parkrun though and it was nice to be in the sunshine with lovely people.

Later that day I had a climbing induction booked at Romsey. As I drove there the weather took a turn for the worse (ridiculously worse) and pelted it down with rain. When I arrived the people looked a bit confused and said I’d booked on the supervised auto-belay climbing wall. They said it wasn’t an issue but really I didn’t need to be supervised. I thought I was going to be taught about climbing! But apparently not. The website wasn’t entirely clear…Though, let’s be honest, this isn’t the first time I’ve booked something wrong.

An auto-belay is really very simple and the supervised sessions are more for kids so after the instructor showed me what to do I was fine to do my thing on my own, switching between the different belays to try different problems.

It was basically like bouldering but higher and with the comfort of having a safety net (or a safety rope as it were). The auto-belay would ‘catch’ you if you fell backwards then lower you quickly to the floor in a controlled way. It gave me confidence to try reaches I wouldn’t have done during bouldering which was great!

You could climb down or throw yourself backwards and let the auto-belay catch you as it tightened up under your weight. But it feels loose when you initially let go of the wall so it feels like you’re going to fall as you don’t feel any of its support until you put your weight into it. Honestly it took me a good few minutes to get over the fear and allow myself to fall. It’s genuinely terrifying the first time. I had to do it from a very low height just to convince myself I’d be OK. Afterwards though I was fine, though in the end I actually preferred climbing down as this provided more opportunities to improve my ability (and grip!).

‘Falling’ using the auto-belay

I had a lot of fun though I was disappointed not to learn a bit more about climbing, like tying certain knots, attaching the harness and belays. But I’ll definitely be planning some proper lessons soon.

And because I’m so thoroughly addicted (and running is not enjoyable right now) I got up Sunday and headed for some more bouldering at Red Spider. It opened at 10am and I was in pretty sharpish to get as long as I could there before going to a BBQ with my friends later on.

I thoroughly enjoyed myself and managed to conqueror some of the problems I was unable to complete the last time. It felt hugely satisfying. I like that there’s a ranking of the problems as well (V0, V1, V2…V6 etc.) and I’ve found I can do up to V2s without issue and V3s are hit and miss depending how much over-hang there is. When it’s like a cliff jutting out and you have to get from below it to over it I really struggle as it pushes my body out and I’m terrified I’m going to fall (see below my pathetic little stick-man drawing).

But anyway, it was fun. I wish I could have stayed so much longer but I had to quickly head home, shower and head to see my friends. And also, my arms and hands don’t quite have the strength and endurance yet for mammoth bouldering sessions – especially having done a session the day before!

For the BBQ, my friends and I were a bit worried about the weather (given how bad it had been the afternoon before) but it held out thankfully. It was a weird day of lovely sunshine and then overcast chilliness.

I basically just brought chicken with me (two types of skewers and drumsticks). It was a lovely afternoon just chilling. Though we did have a collective moan about the EU result…How adult we all are now, discussing politics and how it affects our lives. I think we can all agree though that there are uncertain times ahead. A nice weekend though nonetheless!

Do you discuss politics with your friends?

If you have an niggle do you prefer not to run at all, or try a gentle run and stop if necessary?

Are you afraid of heights? I used to be, but I don’t seem that bothered anymore. I remember a time when I went on a school trip rock climbing I cried at the top of the climbing wall refusing to abseil down because I was so scared. I had to be lowered down! Pathetic child that I was.