All the food and 18 miles

And now we have the long grind until Christmas… I kid, I kid. It’s just sad that it’s our last Bank Holiday for a good while.

But such is life. I’m actually quite happy tootling along right now. Work is good. Life is good. Running is good. SOMEONE TOUCH WOOD. I’ve got to get Zary parkrun planned at some point but it’s looking to be October now because I’m fairly busy during September now. It will be done by the end of the year though, 100%!

My Bank Holiday weekend was a really good one. On Saturday I was finally back to Netley parkrun. I took Kyle along so he could see what I’d been harping on about for ages. His home parkrun is Havant, which I’ve yet to do, but is apparently VERY tough. It’s always fun seeing your home parkrun through a tourist’s eyes.Everyone, of course, was super friendly as normal. The sun was shining but it wasn’t too hot. I was going to run with Kyle and we were going to take it relatively easy because he was only just coming back from an annoying shin niggle. We started off nice and gentle and chatted as we ran round. My legs did feel quite heavy though. I’d run 11 miles on Thursday evening with my friend Kim and they weren’t feeling as rested and fresh as usual.But my plan was to keep Kyle going a bit slower (we’re both bad at not going slow when we need to) which was ideal for my tired legs, but as we warmed up into the run this clearly didn’t pan out as we both increased our speed to the end.I did advise Kyle not to do some crazy sprint finish though because that’s usually when terrible things happen like injuries. He resisted the temptation and just maintained the speed. My time was 23:21, which I was happy with! We helped clear away and then had a coffee. It’s still nice enough to sit outside and enjoy a drink, but soon we’ll be squirreled inside again with all our layers *shudders*.

For lunch we headed to The Rockstone pub in Southampton (by the time we’d had coffee and gotten sorted it was lunchtime!). I’ve been to The Rockstone before and loved the burger I’d had there last time. They’re renowned for their giant portions and crazy sounding burgers.

For starters I had the loaded nachos (still loving my nachos). Hands down, best nachos I’ve ever had. Pulled pork, guacamole, cheese, sour cream, black beans…it had the works.It was giant! I probably should have shared them and I would assume most normal people would but ehhhh. Kyle had some insanely good chicken goujons as well.For the main, this time I went for the Black and Blue burger, which was a beef patty, mushrooms, black pudding and blue cheese. I love black pudding and blue cheese so this was right up my street.I wasn’t fussed about the chips but was keen to try the chicken wings (the nachos had won in the starter battle) so I ordered three chicken wings as a side (just three this time…). Kyle said he’d eat my chips.

Well the size of the burgers (and the size of my starter!) meant that neither of us touched my chips. I also decided to forgo most of the bun because honestly the burger was huge and the filling is the important part in my eyes. The bun was one of those floury baps as well which isn’t appealing to me at all (give me a brioche or a pretzel bun any day).

The burger itself was a little overdone but the blue cheese and TWO pieces of black pudding were delicious. The chicken wings however were plain and very boring. The main meal itself was just a little disappointing I must say. A lot of quantity but not much taste. We rated it 6/10… but the starters a solid 8.

I had every intention of suggesting a trip to Sprinkles afterwards but both of us were so stuffed we really didn’t fancy it. So instead we headed to Manor Farm Country Park for a nice long walk. The weather was still sunny but not too hot so it was perfect.It was exactly what we needed to help the food baby situation going on! I forget how pretty Manor Farm Country Park is. I only ever run around it when I’m in that area (I used to run there a lot more when I lived in Hedge End).The next day I had 17 miles planned. I was meeting my two friends, Martin and Mark, in Titchfield at the delightful time of 9.20am. Now that’s my kinda running time! Cheeky little lie-in, no stress. I ran two miles down to meet them and then we did my usual 10 mile route from Titchfield, to Lee-on-Solent, to Stubbington and back to Titchfield. It’s lovely and flat and goes along the sea front. It was a bit windy and rainy but thankfully nice and cool.Martin only wanted 10 miles so we dropped him back to his car before heading off for another three with Mark. We did a little out-and-back and were both feeling the grind. The weather was turning and it was getting very overcast. After the three with Mark, I realised I could get my run to 18 miles if I ran slightly longer on the way back.By this point the heavens had opened up and it was tipping it down. This helped quicken my pace! By the time I got home I was drenched through. But I was so happy to have gotten 18 miles because usually that’s quite a daunting run. But it honestly didn’t feel like 18. For the rest of the day I wasn’t overly tired and my legs felt good. Woohoo! Hopefully this means the training is going well and I’m running strong.Monday was a far more chilled day. I felt good so went to the gym and did a Sweat class (basically circuits for 45 minutes) and then had a lovely pub lunch with Kyle.Yes, yes more nachos. I can’t be stopped. A more manageable portion size this time! And Kyle catching me take awkward photos of my food 😉This time we did have room for pudding! I had a delicious rocky road sundae. Kyle had a really tasty looking chocolate orange “crownie” (a cookie brownie) which looked amazing but as I hate chocolate orange I gave a miss.We had another lovely walk and a chilled Bank Holiday Monday. Solid weekend!

How was your Bank Holiday weekend?

What food can’t you get enough of at the moment?

Are there any popular food flavour combos you don’t like?

On to new things…

So I finished my last day at work last Wednesday. It was definitely a bittersweet. I’ve worked there for over five and a half years. I remember joining and being this timid, terrified girl…unsure of everything, so quiet and afraid. I walked out of there on Wednesday confident, self-assured and ready for my next challenge. I’ll miss so many of the people I worked with but I’m looking forward to working with a new bunch of people and hopefully making some friends!

I had Thursday and Friday off, which was just amazing. I haven’t had a proper couple of days where I literally have nothing planned for ages. I decided to do a day of sorting schizz out in the spirit of new beginnings and all that. I also agreed to help my parents sort out their garage and under-the-stairs cupboard (a blackhole for shoes, bags and coats).

My dad took off the Friday as well and hired a skip which helped the situation. I mean, I love my parents but they just seemed to hoard so much junk. I’m not even joking when I say we took FOUR black bags of shoes to charity. Who has time to wear that many shoes?? And their garage is just full of random rubbish and charity-shop worthy items that for some reason my parents thought to keep hold of. NO ONE NEEDS THREE TOOLKITS. This is probably one of the main reasons I’m not a sentimental person when it comes to physical things and mementos. There are few items I’m irrationally attached to. All about that minimalist lifestyle (leggings aside of course. You can NEVER have too many leggings. Honest).

Found some rather hilarious old photos of my sister, mum and I.

AnnaTheApple childI mean, those hair styles…

As I was still not running it meant I could have some lovely lie-ins and then go to the gym at a more reasonable time than I usually would. I was given an Amazon gift voucher from work as part of my leaving present so I decided to buy and download some movies I’ve been wanting to see so I could make time on the elliptical machine far more bearable.

Cardio entertainmentI’ve got through Get Out (really creepy but really good) and the Lego Batman Movie (very funny). It’s actually a really good way to stay motivated on that god-awful machine. It also makes me keen to get back on it as I’ll only allow myself to watch these movies on the elliptical machine. Happy days…

On Friday night I went out to a fantastic burger place for some food. I’d heard that The Rockstone pub in Southampton literally did the best burgers around and so was fairly excited to go and eat stupid amounts of food, and of course spend time with good company.

I ordered the “BBCK” burger which was a 10oz burger with Brie, streaky bacon and a cranberry chutney. I also upgraded my fries to bacon dust fries. I mean, seriously.

The Rockstone BurgerMy partner in crime ordered the “Ban Ki-Mmm” which had Korean pork belly amongst other treats on top. I did get a little food envy on seeing his but mine was SO tasty it was only very brief. He upgraded to sweet potato fries. I have to say, usually I’m not a huge burger fan (I prefer more toppings/protein to carb ratio…), but this was heavenly.

We were both more than happy (and fairly full) on finishing our burgers. By the way, they were impossible to pick up. I did try but failed miserably. 10/10 for effort…not so much for getting covered in sticky cranberry-ness. Though we were full we decided to forgo the pudding on offer at The Rockstone and instead go to the handily located Sprinkles just down the road. Just a small pudding, eh? 😉

Sprinkles sundaeI got a cookie dough based sundae (zomggggggg) and he got a baked skillet cookie with ice cream. Mine contained hot cookie dough at the bottom, chocolate and vanilla ice cream and vanilla gelato as well as cookie pieces and molten white chocolate and regular chocolate drizzled on top. Dear god it was good. I couldn’t quite finish it all. For once my stomach said no. But I gave it my best stab! I prioritised the best bits!

So my time off was pretty damn good. I did manage two miles on Sunday to test the leg out… it felt OK but I’m not entirely convinced. More updates on that soon. Things are going pretty well right now (let’s ignore the small car accident I had Tuesday morning *sighs*, again more on that another time!)

My blogging is going to be a bit off-routine for a bit while I find my footing in my new job and adjusting to a new routine. But in the words of Lego, EVERYTHING IS AWESOME

What’s your ideal burger?

What’s your ideal sundae?

If you use cardio machines, how do you motivate yourself to stay on them?