Running - AnnaTheApple

December 31, 2015December 31, 2015

Christmas – lots of food and parkruns

So Christmas has been and gone far too quickly! Depressingly quick. It’s still nice to be off and enjoy the time to relax and see friends.

Rolling back to Christmas then, the morning began with me dressing up like an idiot in fancy dress (with Alfie) and heading to the Netley Abbey parkrun. I was staying at my parents and before I left I somehow managed to persuade my dad to take a photo of me. I was heading there early to help set up which is why it looks so dark.It was so lovely seeing everyone and wishing them merry Christmas. Lots of people had dressed up too so it felt very festive.The run itself was tough. I felt like I was plodding the entire time. My body just didn’t want to go any faster. Luckily my friend Mike felt similar so we ran together, taking it easy, dreaming of the turkey to come later 😉 I managed 24:58 which I wasn’t too happy with (considering Mike and me had said we’d aim for an easy 24…whoops). Sometimes it just doesn’t happen. And when I’m dressed in a tutu on Christmas day I’m not going to complain about it!

Alfie loved his time at parkrun and got ridiculously muddy. He also managed to get his little Santa outfit off at the end as well, bless him. I think he felt a little ridiculous in it. Can’t understand why personally…

We cleared up quickly and parted ways, everyone heading off for their respective Christmases. I went straight back to my parent’s house where I first had to get Alfie in the bath and clean. My parents thankfully took over so I could go and shower and not delay the celebrations. I enjoyed a cheeky glass of Bucks fizz with my porridge and then we opened presents.

I got some lovely gifts which I was rather chuffed with. My parents had bought me some Nike pro shorts (I’m obsessed), some bits and bobs and some items for my new flat.

The ‘A’ is battery powered so I can turn the lights on and off.

Then I helped my dad cook the Christmas meal. We both really enjoy cooking so it was quite fun. We had Christmas music on, peeling carrots, scrubbing parsnips and just enjoying the day. The food, as always, was awesome. We had a prawn and salmon starter and for main turkey with all the trimmings.

It rocked my world. I probably say this every year, but Christmas day is my favourite meal of the year. I just love it. I requested for broad beans as one of the veg as it’s one of my favourites (I know I’m weird). And we had Monopoly crackers!!!

After dinner we went for a walk with the dogs. The weather was so mild but fairly windy. It was great to see all the houses all lit up and people enjoying Christmas. Walking on Christmas day is one of my favourite things to do. It’s a shame we didn’t go down the beach but it was just ridiculously windy and dark so we kept it simple with round the block.

When we got back we had pudding. Normally you’d have Christmas pudding in the UK but no one really likes Christmas pudding in my family. So my mum and granddad had a panacotta and my dad and me had giant portions of a melt in the middle chocolate pudding with ice cream. LITERALLY THE BEST THING EVER.Then we played the Logo Game which we’ve now played for the third time in a row at Christmas. I love it. I stayed at my parents over night, which meant I could get into PJs and watch some Christmas TV into the evening with them (where I enjoyed round 2 of Christmas dinner with the leftovers…because it’s Christmas!)

The next day, Boxing Day, was the proper parkrun as it was Saturday. My tummy didn’t feel in too great a shape to run it must be said…All that food. But surprisingly I felt far better running than the day before and I managed to shave almost a minute off my time (24:12). I felt myself getting stronger as the run continued as well which was great. I usually warm up into a run about five miles in… I’m a slow burner I think (and probably why I hate 5ks and 10ks).

I spent the rest of the day at my parent’s again and my sister, her fiancé and little girls came over. It was manic but lovely. Ellie, my little niece who I ran the kid’s race the other week with, loved her Nike leggings I bought her. She even asked me if one day we could run together and I could run at my top speed and hold her hand so I could pull her along. Bless her!

So Christmas this year was very chilled, a little bit different to normal but full of fun, happiness, family and (let’s be honest, the best bit) GOOD food. Now it’s New Year’s Eve and I’m going to be heading to my friend’s house for a chilled evening of lots of food, films and games.

How was your Christmas?

What’s your favourite Christmas food? Mine is the whole turkey dinner.

What are you/did you get up to on New Year’s Eve?

December 23, 2015

Christmas and the year ahead

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!

What are your Christmas plans?

What do you hope to achieve in 2016?

What races do you have planned?

December 16, 2015December 16, 2015

Those buns were made for running…

If I could only give one piece of advice to a new runner it would be: work those glutes. So many running-related injuries are caused by weak glutes. When your glutes aren’t working this means your hips are dropping and other muscles are over-compensating to take on the unnecessary strain.

I’m not a physiotherapist or a qualified sports person but I’ve had I fair few injuries. Last year I was consistently plagued with one thing after another: hip issues, groin issues, knee issues and IT band issues. My physio said to me my glutes (specifically my gluteus medius) weren’t playing ball when I was running and this caused a whole chain of compensations and over-working of muscles that shouldn’t be working so hard.

I took time off of running and hit the gym. My physio gave me some great exercises to specifically focus on improving my glute strength and hip stability and I scoured the Internet and magazines such as Women’s Health to further supplement my training (they actually had a great article in their December addition giving good focused moves to help strengthen your buns).

Big compound moves can help improve overall lower body strength:

Squats (single leg variation are great for addressing imbalances)
Romanian deadlifts
Regular deadlifts

Whereas accessory moves can specifically target the glute areas:

Glute kickbacks
Bridges
Lateral leg raises
Clams

And obviously overall core work is essential with running in general:

Planks
Russian twists
Leg raises
(The above compound moves help target the core too)

Obviously I’m still not immune to injuries (hello 6.5 weeks of not running because I make stupid choices and do too much), but I can say that my glutes are far more strong than they used to be. I can physically feel them working when I run. The telling point for me was after my first marathon (before all the strength training) my quads were on fire. After working on my glutes, the aches were more general. My quad dominance had hugely decreased as my glutes were taking on more work.

Getting my PB (3:24:06) at the Liverpool Marathon earlier this year

And it made me realise that I do actually enjoy going to the gym. Aside from PBs and running strong, there’s nothing better than lifting heavy weights at the gym and feeling like a superwoman!

**Full Disclosure: My subscription to Women’s Fitness is provided for free from magazine.co.uk as part of being in their blogger network. All opinions and content are my own.**

December 14, 2015

Working on my winter insulation layer ;-)

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!

How was your weekend?

Do you snooze your alarm or get up straight away?

What’s your favourite dip?

December 9, 2015

Windy running and feeling content

I can’t begin to tell you how much I love my little home. I’ve gone from being all blasé about weekends and evenings to being really excited. There is so much to be done, organised, bought, arranged… I can’t wait!

To roll back to the weekend gone, I was shattered after moving in on Friday but I really struggled to sleep. I’m a very light sleeper (to the point I have to wear an eye mask at night) and any unusual noises will keep me awake or wake me up. It was just a whole different environment than I was used to and it took me so long to sleep, and then I woke up for AN HOUR in the middle of the night.

It didn’t help that I was ridiculously hungry either (as I missed lunch the day before and my body was only too happy to remind me. Apparently cake doesn’t quite work as a compensation for me in terms of satiety). The next morning the first thing I did was have breakfast. This is really abnormal for me as I can go a fair few hours without anything in the morning before I’m ready for food.

I would say I treated myself to breakfast in bed but seen as how I have no table or chairs this is how I’m eating all my meals right now

I would have given parkrun a miss on Saturday if I hadn’t have had the cones and the keys for the storage cupboard and gates… This meant I had to go in order for parkrun to go ahead. It was ridiculously windy and I was tired. I wasn’t looking forward to it. But it was the 200th Netley Abbey parkrun and it was a onesie and pyjama themed event so I’m glad I went in the end.

It was actually easier to find PJs to run in than actual running gear in my box-filled flat

I found the run easier than last week. I was slower but the effort was less and with that RIDICULOUS wind I was happy to get 24:58.

I don’t think I can expect a huge amount of improvement on this winter course as it’s fairly gruelling with two hills you do three times. I hope to get close to 23-22 minutes as the weeks (or months!) go by.

After a lovely little hot drink and a moving-in celebratory bit of a freshly baked cheese scone bought by one of my parkrun friends, I headed home to test out my shower for the first time. Shower quality is SO important to me because if they’re just a dribble then I’m looking at a future of bad hair washing experiences as my hair is so long. Thank God it’s really strong (stronger than my previous one!!) and SUPER hot. This is like the perfect combo for me with my asbestos skin.

My parents came over soon after and we headed to the Mecca of furniture that is IKEA.My mum had never been before (my mum, by the way, is the biggest snob known to man so I was interested to see what she thought). She LOVED it. It’s funny because they really only came to assist me but left with their own trolley stacked high. I defy anyone to leave IKEA without buying anything.

I had already done a bit of research beforehand to know what I wanted so I was quite focused, but I too found so many extras that ended up coming home with me.

This giant bowl will fit my salads perfectly… I’m not joking

By the time we got home and got my chest of drawers up the stairs, unpacked and then semi-built it was almost 8pm (this was one of four items to build). I had missed lunch once again and was about to eat the cardboard it came in. My dad said they’d return the next day, bless him, to help build the other items.

I slept a bit better that evening (after a good dinner and another slice of cake from the freezer – this time a chunk of rocky road) but still struggled with noises. It’s not that my flat is noisy, I’m just very sensitive. Previously my bedroom had been looking out onto a school field, whereas now there are noises from surrounding buildings and occasionally bumps from the other flats around me.

Sunday morning I got up and did my first run from my new home. I’d planned to do six miles but as I got outside it was ridiculously windy and I was finding it really tough. So changed to five miles. Only to get my route wrong and do seven.

Jesus, it was tough. I almost gave up at six miles to walk back but realised it would take ages and my parents were coming over mid-morning. I stopped at seven miles and had a short walk back to my flat. How lovely to have this scenery so close to my home! This will be where I’ll be walking Alfie 🙂

I just hope he doesn’t jump in the pond!

The rest of the day was flat-pack hell. My dad and me got a great routine going. He’d show me how to do something (like build a drawer) and I’d just get on until he showed me something else.

I’m not a picture person when it comes to instructions so I was lost with working it out myself. I need demonstrations! This was apparent when my dad left me to build a bedside table while he sorted electronic stuff out and I buggered it up. Seriously. ONE THING.

My flat is still a work in progress, as you can imagine, but it’s getting there. I have so many ideas for it and I’m looking forward to buying all the little things to decorate it and make it into a proper home. I might take some photos and share them on my blog when it’s a bit more organised if you’re interested. My flat is tiny, but it’s all mine and it’s becoming home 🙂

Do you like IKEA?

For instructions do you prefer words, pictures or demonstrations?

How soon do you need breakfast after you wake up? At the weekend breakfast can be anything from 9am to 11am depending on what I’m doing.