Back To Basics

So I've been away for a little while now, things weren't going well.  I had to stop running because of my shin and when i tried to run after a couple of weeks it wasn't any better and I felt totally rubbish and I didn't want to be on here writing down posts all the time.

slowly things started to get better, and I could run again, only on soft flat surfaces but that was a start.  A few weeks ago I started a new 12 week training plan which will take me exactly up to race day and is based on running mileage instead of running for time.  On one hand its been pretty tough, going out for a run and knowing you have to do 40 minutes or whatever is one thing but going out and knowing that you have to do 5 miles is something else.

I'm settling in to it now ok, I don't really plan my runs before I go, I know that the way I'm going is AT LEAST the distance I'm meant to be covering if not a little more so I'm happy with that and its nice not knowing where I'm at distance wise until I finish and see how far I've gone.

I won't lie its still hard, today my legs ache so much and I am worried that the pain will come back in my shins or maybe somewhere else and then I really don't know what I'll do with so few weeks until the race - but I can't think about that too much it might not even happen.

Food is something else that I've been struggling with during the time I've been away, I guess because I haven't been logging on MyFitnessPal and I haven't been blogging I haven't felt like I've had to "fess up".  Anyway that's changing as of RIGHT NOW and today I've got a load of healthy stuff in my cupboard for when I feel a lull and would have been reaching for the crisps before.

So that's where I'm at at the moment, I'll be blogging more now I'm getting back on track and pretty much back to the mileage I was at before it all went wrong.

Recipe: Cauliflower Cottage Pie

Ingredients (Serves 6):

25g butter
2 medium onions peeled and diced
500g lean steak mince
3 medium carrots peeled and finely chopped
150g frozen peas
3 beef stock cubes
2 heads of cauliflower
Salt and Pepper

Method:

Melt half the butter in a large pan, add the diced onion and cook gently until the onion is soft and not coloured.  Next add the steak mince to the pan and stir with the onion until all of the meat is brown.

Add the chopped carrot and frozen peas and crumble over 2 of the stock cubes.  Make up 300ml of stock with the remaining cube and pour over the mince.  Stir, season and put a lid on the pan and let that simmer gently whilst you make the cauliflower topping (you may need to stir this occasionally to prevent the mince sticking to the pan).

Whilst the mince is simmering remove the outer leaves of the cauliflower discard.  Chop the cauliflower and stalk into even pieces and then steam for around 8-10 minutes or until the cauliflower is soft.  Drain and set aside to cool.

Whilst the cauliflower is cooling, drain the mince (you can use any liquid that drains from the mince to make gravy if you like).  Transfer the mince into a large rectangular oven dish and spread evenly over the bottom.

Once the cauliflower has had a few minutes to cool transfer it to a food processor and blend with the remaining butter and seasoning.  The cauliflower will become a smooth puree, if it is still lumpy after a few minutes blending then scrape the sides of the blender with a knife and blend for a few minutes more.

Spoon the cauliflower on top of the mince and place in the middle of a preheated oven (200c) for about 20 minutes:

Personally I think this tastes much better than potato mash on the top, its really smooth and creamy and lighter in calories and fat as I used much less butter than I ordinarily would and no milk.  I think next time I might try a healthier shepherd's pie with lean lamb mince and parsnip puree.

Calories per serving: 280 (according to MyFitnessPal)
Carbs: 14g
Fat: 15g (of which saturates 7g)
Protein: 23g
Fibre: 6g

Week 7 Round Up

Tuesday:  Training Plan - 40 minutes easy
Time: 43:45
Distance: 7.93km

Thursday: Training Plan - 5 min easy, 5 min HM pace x 4 (40 Minutes Total)

Time: 42:42
Distance: 7.83km

Not very happy with Thursdays effort, seeing as I was running 20 mins of that at a faster pace I should have covered more distance than I did on Tuesday!  Thursdays run was tough, I left my water bottle in the office and it was so warm out I immediately was in a mood with myself. 

The run wasn't a total waste of time though, as I learnt a valuable lesson.  DONT eat ryvita for lunch on days where I'm running!  I had such bad stomach cramp after about 20 minutes and that was all I could focus on my head really wasn't in it and I've never wanted to give up so much as I did then.

On Friday I moved house so I decided I'd use that as my cross training for the week as the programme includes "light weights" as an option.  In the end I'm not sure that lifting sofas, beds, mattresses and the rest of our possessions up and down stairs in 2 houses for a total of 4 + hours necessarily counts as "light" weights but never mind.

I didn't run on Saturday like I have done for the last few weeks I was totally wiped from the move and my parents were staying so Mr D and I went out yesterday instead.

Sunday: Training Plan - 75 Mins easy with middle 20 at HM pace

Time: 1:18:10
Distance: 13:31

My first run from the new house, so that meant a new route! I planned the bulk of it on MapMyRun and decided to take a road I barely even knew about into a wood that I'd never been in either.  As I'd not driven up the road before I decided to look on google maps to get a feel for where I needed to go.  Something I have learnt from this is that there is no sense of elevation on google maps so it was a bit of a surprise when we came round a corner and in front of us was a terrifying hill!  Luckily that was about 20 minutes into the run and I was still running at easy pace otherwise I'd have died - for sure.

Despite the hills of death the route was amazing. As we were going up that steep road you could see the Grove Country Club and Golf Course across the fields.  I can't believe we've lived here nearly 3 years and we'd never been in the wood, it was gorgeous (was also glad of some shade by that point too!):

Just beyond that trail above it opens out onto... a golf course?!  I sped up a bit there to make sure I got well out of the way of the people on the tee, didn't want to get knocked out or anything.  Whilst I was looking for a picture to pop on the blog I have found out that some of Star Wars - The Phantom Menace was filmed in that wood - who knew?

When we got to the edge of the wood we decided we'd run the canal like we normally do as Mr D really loves it along there.  After that we ran up the road past where we used to live which is quite a long slow incline and thankfully that's where the 20 minutes of faster pace finished - I couldn't have gone on at that speed much longer.  From there we went through town, along the road we both work on and then up the main road all the way home.  I don't think I've ever been so glad to hear the voice in my earphones telling me time was up!

Here's the graph for the run:

I'm pretty pleased with that.  You can see where the big hill was (just after 4km) when I really slowed down and you can see a difference in the pace for the middle 20 minutes at HM pace.

You can also see at the top that this was another run that ended with some PB's.  As the run was so long I wasn't expecting it to be particularly fast so that was a nice bit of motivation - here's the stats:

According to the Nike+ app I burned 796 calories which will have come in useful seeing as this week's eating has been so poor.

I did a huge shop on Saturday and all of our kitchen is sorted now so normal service should resume, and it can't come soon enough, I feel bloated and tired and generally rubbish after having so much takeaway and easy food.  Bleurgh.

So that was last week, today is Monday and its time to see how training will look this week:

Monday - Rest
Tuesday - 30 min easy
Wednesday - Rest
Thursday - 40 min easy
Friday - Rest
Saturday - X train
Sunday - 50 min easy with middle 25 at HM pace

Week 8 looks ace to me, only trouble might be my shin.  I haven't worn my compression bandage or taped my shin for the last week or so when maybe I should have as after yesterdays long run I have some serious pain going on.  I spent last night icing with frozen peas and elevating and today its still pretty painful so I'm wearing the bandage at work.  I'm hoping that tomorrow its stopped hurting enough to have my 30 minute run in the morning.  If not I'm not sure what to do???  I really don't want to miss any training sessions but I don't want to make this worse either - guess I'll have to wait and see what tomorrow brings???

A Little Inspiration Goes A Long Way

I mostly seem to be blogging week round ups at the moment which is good from a training plan point of view but not helping me keep accountable for my food choices.  The last few days over lunch I've been mooching about on a few blogs and its really made me miss being organised and eating clean and lean.

A new favourite blog of mine is Francesca's Fitness Kitchen I found this blog through @beatthebinge on twitter.  Incidentally if you do use twitter and are into all things clean and lean she is well worth a follow!  Anyway this is a great blog for C&L recipes, workouts and beauty tips, I haven't nearly finished reading back through all her posts but so far from the ones I've read I can't wait to move into the new house and get in the kitchen.

There's quite a long list of things I want to make once we're in, first of all I'm going to have a go at making my own bounce balls.  After my runs I usually have a protein shake but recently I bought some bounce balls to try and it was nice to eat something rather than glug down a shake.  I can't seem to get hold of their coconut and macadamia flavour so that's what I'll attempt to make - will let you know if they turn out anything like the real thing and blog recipe too.

Another blog I've been enjoying recently is Chocolate and Raspberries, and a week ago the lovely Ffion posted a recipe for date and nut balls which taste like Nakd Bars....mmmmmm

If I could make these myself I think my life would be complete!

The food over the next couple of days is going to be poor, take away tonight as we've packed everything in the kitchen except for plastic forks, will have to get lunch on the go tomorrow whilst we are mid move and then dinner out on Friday with my parents to say thanks for help moving.

The move obviously means that I won't be able to blog for the next few days but I'll definitely be around on Monday to let you know how my long run goes.

Have a great weekend! 

Week 6 Round Up



Six weeks done already?  I can't believe I'm half way through this training plan, on one hand I'm so pleased that I've made it this far but I'm a bit apprehensive as to what the next few weeks will bring.  Anyway I'll get to what's planned this week later, for now lets talk about week 6.

Monday
Time: 32.32 Distance: 5.71km

Thursday
Time: 47.47 Distance: 8.75km

Sunday
Time: 1.04.03 Distance: 11.53km

Here's the graph for Sunday's run:

Not quite as smooth as some runs, this week's longer run was hard work!  About a year ago me and Mr D were walking along the canal and saw a sign that said Rickmansworth 3 miles and I said that one day I'd run there so that's what I decided to do.

Ian came with me again and so we ran along the main road to Rickmansworth, it all started out nicely, down the hill from home to the roundabout and then it went wrong, you can probably see how slow I was from 1-2km that was all uphill and painful.  There is a nice downhill bit just before you come to Rickmansworth which I was grateful for but a bit worried about slipping over as it was rainy and the pavement is covered by trees so the surface is pretty mossy.  Thankfully I didn't fall on my bum.

Running through the town was nice, it was quite busy for 9:30 but all the people were so polite and let us run past without us having to jump into the road or anything scary.  I was quite worried we'd get lost trying to find the canal path or that we'd go the wrong way but Ian ran ahead and spoke to the lock keeper and we were fine.

I've never been along that part of the canal before and I wish I'd thought it through a bit more because boy was it muddy!!  Most bits you could dodge around pretty easily but there was one patch were you either just had to run through so I went for the edge where I thought it would be less sticky.  Instead it was just mega slippery, I skidded a bit, made a weird loud noise (embarrassing) and as my ankle slipped under me I managed to kick it with my other foot which really hurt.  We weren't too far from home then, probably 2 miles so I decided to just keep going.  It's not too painful now so I should be right by tomorrow's run.

I also had a bit of an incident with a goose.  I'm really scared of birds, and it was a bit of a shock when I came round the corner and there was a great big goose in the middle of the canal bridge.  Ian had run ahead so he wasn't there to shoo it away so I had to keep running and sort of coax it away, I went past and thought it had gone in the canal but it hadn't it was running along after me so I did the only logical thing and sped up.  So that was terrifying but worse was that a very fast proper runner came past me laughing, he'd seen my sad run/arm wave over the bridge to scare the goose.  The Shame.

We're moving on Friday so this weekend was mostly spent packing and didn't leave a lot of room for my cross train session.  Last night I decided I'd do a runners stability session from the book "Real Women Run" by Sam Murphy.  It wasn't very long, just over 30 minutes but anything that will help has to count right?

Well here we are - week 7!!  This is what's in store for me this week:

Monday: Rest

Tuesday: Easy 40 minutes

Wednesday: Rest

Thursday: 5 min easy, 5 min HM pace/threshold x 4 (total 40 mins)

Friday: Rest (move!)

Saturday: X train

Sunday: 75 min easy with middle 20 min at HM pace.

What a totally brutal week.

I've done some pinning on Pinterest this week for a bit of motivation and came across these:

Must try harder to remember this, food lately has been pretty terrible.

And this one which I love:

This is my new mantra for when I'm out running and I get overtaken by faster runners it doesn't matter, I'll probably never see that person again and at least I'm out there doing it, the only thing that matters is that I'm improving and sticking to my plan, not anything anyone else is doing.

PB

For once I'm not talking about Peanut Butter - but I'll get to that later.

Monday's run was 30 mins with last 10 minutes at threshold/HM pace.  Now I don't have GPS and even if I did I put my iPod in my back pocket so I wouldn't be able to look at it to know how fast I was going so when its time to do HM pace I just make sure I speed up and try and stay at that pace.

Time: 32:32
Distance: 5.7km

Yesterday the training plan called for a 45 minute run with the first and last 15 mins at east pace and the middle 15 at threshold/HM pace.  I mapped a 5 mile route at lunch going a way that I hadn't been before for a bit of variety - good idea I thought... WRONG.  The 30 seconds or so was downhill which meant I spent the next few minutes climbing, a little drop down then onto the  flat, which was great until I came to another climb to get into town, worse still that was when the first 15 minutes was up and it was time to pick up the pace.

It was raining which I've realised I don't really mind too much when I'm running it keeps you cool and people can't really tell what's rain and what's sweat so that's a bonus!  Also as it was raining there were less people around town which made life a bit easier, less people to dodge and no-one shouted anything out so I'd say that's good news.  I'm not sure if it was because of the rain or sweat or because I just hadn't put it on properly but all of my zinc oxide tape on my legs came off really quickly so I was a bit worried about my calves and shins/

I ran out of town and towards home and started to realise I'd get home sooner than I thought so I went off the main road and up and down some of the side streets to make up distance and finally my iPod told me I'd done 30 minutes and I could slow down.  Some tightness in my calves but other than that everything was fine.  I just kept thinking of that saying " its not your legs giving out its your mind giving up" and that seemed to help.

I did get to home much sooner than I thought so I ran down to the end of the road and back up the big hill and then back round and then I walked up the alleyway to home to stretch out my legs.

Time: 47:47
Distance: 8.7km

I'm pretty pleased with that but when I logged into my Nike + account last night I had a few pop ups which were a nice surprise:

A run full of PBs.  I really love the Nike app when you see things like that it makes it seem like I am getting better at this running lark and I'm feeling pretty positive for this weekends longer run now.

Recipe: Pea and Lettuce Soup

Ok so I know it doesn't exactly sound mind blowing but I promise this soup is delish!

Serves 4
Ingredients:

425g frozen peas (I use petit pois but I don't think it matters what you use)
2 baby gem lettuces
One medium white onion
25g butter
1 litre stock (I use chicken but veg stock would work too)
Juice of half a lemon
Salt and Pepper
Crispy bacon (optional)

Firstly dice the onion, melt the butter and then add the onion to the pan:

Whilst the onion is softening (try to make sure it doesn't colour) chop up the lettuce and measure out your other ingredients - I've found that a half litre pyrex jug filled to the top with peas is almost exactly 425g and loads easier than measuring.

Once the onions are soft add the lettuce to the pan followed by the lemon juice.  I didn't have any fresh lemons so I used some lemon juice in a bottle.  Then add the frozen peas and stock, stir, season and bring to the boil.

Once the soup has boiled turn down to a simmer and put the lid on the pan and let that cook gently for about 20 minutes until everything is soft.  I use a hand blender to whizz up my soups but if you are using a food processor or proper blender allow the soup to cool first before blending.  Taste the soup to see if it needs any more salt and pepper.

If you are going to add bacon then whilst the soup is simmering pop it under the grill until its really crispy, then once cool break up into small chunks:

Sprinkle on top or stir into the soup and serve: