Unexpected encounter!

Pancakes were on my mind during my run- made with the last of my Orgran Buckwheat pancake mix, with a cooked apple, flaked almonds and some chocolate pb.

So on Sunday morning we were up and out running by 9am. It was windy. It was really windy. So windy in fact that when the wind was behind us it was blowing us along- normally I don’t notice the wind behind me.

We chatted a bit at first, and then as it got tougher this changed to Andy talking to me, and me replying with one or two word answers. I managed the first 6 miles fine, although I had only taken two tissues with me and my nose was running a lot- not so good. The next few miles were tough with combinations of hills and running into the wind, so I slowed quite a lot. Then, our encounter. We were about 2 miles from home and a man walking along the pavement stopped us (I thought for directions or something- wrong)- the conversation went like this:

Him- Do you run often?

Me- Yes.

Him- Have you heard of Parkrun UK?

Me- Yes.

Him- Have you heard of Danny Norman?

Me- Yes, I listen to the podcast (for those of you who don’t know, Danny co-presents The Parkrun show, which is available on the marathon talk website).

Him- I’m his Dad (he then got out his wallet to show us some kind of ID as if people would usually challenge this).

He then proceeded to tell us about the history of Bushy Parkrun, about how Danny went to school in Hatfield, and a few other bits, asking me which Parkrun I go to, before saying “You’d better get on with your run then”.

I love that his Dad is out promoting Parkrun to runners- I do hope that he stops lots of people to share the Parkrun love!

Although starting up running again was so tough- my legs felt like lumps of rock (we were stopped for 3 mins according to my Garmin)- at least I was smiling for the last two miles. I was very impressed with my estimating of distance too- last week I did a little over 10 miles, so I thought adding an extra little loop at the start would make it up- the loop was .88 miles, and literally as we got to our front door my Garmin beeped for 11 miles on the dot. Even with that stop we did the route in 1 hr 47, with an average moving pace of 9.55. I did stretch when I got home, but for the rest of the day I felt pretty wiped out. Luckily I had done most of my work on Saturday so only had a small bit to do. We popped to see Andy’s parents, then watched an episode of Elementary for some chill out time.

Later on I decided to make a clementine cake using this recipe as we had a batch that were very hard to peel.

You had to boil them first for 2 hours, so my plan of having tea and cake in the afternoon went out the window. Later on I read in the comments that someone just microwaved them for 10 minutes instead- I think I would try that next time.

Then you whizzed them up, and then added the other ingredients (sugar, ground almonds, eggs, baking powder) and whizzed again. (I then realised I had no baking powder so improvised with silver foil- think it worked OK)

It smelled so good when it was baking.

We both enjoyed a big slice in the evening- replenishing those carbs after our long run. It was lovely- not too sweet with that almost bitter tang from the clementines as well as the lovely texture from the ground almonds.