Heatwave!

(Well, maybe not quite, but it’s been very summery).

I love this weather, although I don’t love it for running quite so much! This week looked like this:

Monday- walk

Tuesday- got up at 5.30am so I could have a short run before work, avoiding the heat (club run was cancelled for the evening anyway)

Wednesday- walk plus yoga- we spent the whole time outside again and it was brilliant. We worked super hard with lots of tough warrior poses and lots of side planks and twists, so the final relaxation at the end was even better with the breeze gently rustling the leaves on the trees above us.

Thursday- yoga at work (we were introduced to the downward dog pose this week and I managed to impress everyone by doing it properly, lifting alternate legs up and going into a plank- it reminded me that  the yoga on a Wednesday is a lot of strength work and must be doing me some good). Plus 2 miles around town on my way home.

Friday- a walk in the park, a visit to The Waffle House and then a walk with Andy once I got home.

The lake in Veralanium park

Saturday was my dad’s choice of parkrun as it was his birthday. He had thought of going into Wimbledon Common (as we did last year) to meet up with some of the other tennis officials, but in the end only one of them might have been going, so we stayed local. We met at Panshanger, ran together (well, until the end when I told him to go ahead for the final 200m or so as I was struggling), I had a shower at home, and then we headed over to theirs for a birthday pancake brunch. All is good in the world when we can do parkrun together and then Mum makes us pancakes! Dad is now up to 21 UK courses, so officially a UK parkrun tourist, so I presented him with a cow cowl (tourists can wear them to identify each other) ready for our next outing.

This morning I went out on a 10k run, but it was super hot. After about 4 miles I just felt so boiling, so I walked for a while to cool down.

I love how brown all the grass verges are at the moment. It adds to the feeling of a long hot and dry spell of weather, something which we seem to rarely get any more. It reminds me of summers when I was little, but you know that all it takes is one day of rain for everything to turn green again (don’t get me started on people watering their lawn- our neighbours have set up a sprinkler system and seem to water their lawn for a good 3 hours each day- why???????).

We’ve been having some water woes at home with an overflow pipe first leaking onto our driveway (plus a saga with the first plumber cancelling as his van broke down, rescheduling twice but not coming, then another guy coming a few times to try and troubleshoot)- then last night a different pipe from a different overflow started leaking out the back. The hot water also stopped working (so after parkrun yesterday I managed to put shampoo on before it went freezing cold!) but luckily the immersion worked today.

The garden is still looking happy though- it seems that the dry weather is keeping the slugs at bay, and the bees seem to like these lovely blue delphiniums. I’ve even got a hibiscus flowering so I can pretend that I am in Hawaii.

Finally, a couple of new finds:

First up, these have been on offer in loads of shops. As a veggie I don’t usually eat jelly type sweets as they usually contain gelatin. These are a vegan recipe though, and are the perfect balance of sweet with a sour coating.

And then these- Coconut Collaborative already make amazing little dark chocolate pots, and then these popped up. They basically taste like some sort of amazing caramel cake frosting. The pots are fairly small, (not yoghurt pot size or anything like that) but they are so rich and tasty. Mmmm.

And finally, can I just say how amazing watermelon is? In this weather especially there is nothing better to eat after a hot run.

Are you enjoying this hot weather?