General ramblings - Maria Runs

Tail running around the lake

So this weekend my car was being serviced (over in St Albans) so when I booked the date I had offered to tail run, as I had to drop it off at 8.30am, a mile from the parkrun start. Perfect. I thought I would potter around in town after (partly why I thought I would tail run as I didn’t fancy wandering around town all sweaty) but it turned out my parents were back from holiday the day before, so Dad said he would do that parkrun, the drive me home for breakfast at theirs. Even better.

It was a rather sticky morning, and by the time I arrived at the start my glasses were fogging up from the warmth- not sure why that happens as they are fine when I run, but as soon as I stop they fog up. Anyway, I collected my fitbit tail runner vest (more like a dress, you’ll see) and chatted to one of the scanners who I work with. Then over her shoulder I saw my dad- they had been in Namibia for over 3 weeks (before our house move) so it was great to see him. My brother had also come along for the run, so we had a chat before the run started. There was another tail runner (tomorrow is the St Albans half marathon so I think they had a lot of offers for volunteers)- I quite like that, it’s happened at Panshanger before and means you can chat and not impose on the last few runners as some of them don’t like you hovering behind them.

There was a big turnout (343 runners) including this person wearing a full on lion costume (in support of the remain campaign). Much respect in that heat!

From their facebook page.

As we started it occurred to me that it was going to be a bit harder, because this route goes along the path to the lake, three laps of the lake, then back along the park. I’ve only even done it at Panshanger which is one big loop. Keeping track of the back runners would be more challenging. One guy told us he had MS and that if he overheated his legs would go numb, so we were not to worry if he was on the ground so long as he was talking. Another guy (who is one of the RD’s) was coming back from a knee operation so wanted to walk it in under 50 minutes. He thought he would be with us for the whole time, but in fact he went a long way ahead as there was a lady with her eight year old son (we learnt he was eight as she was shouting at him after a few hundred metres things like “you are so unfit for an 8 year old, you should be able to run more than 100m/ if you don’t do any exercise you’ll get fat… later someone heard her say “no pudding for a week”- that poor boy is not going to have fond memories of running…)- he was struggling and kept stopping, so we had to stop a bit of a way back because it was a little awkward.

We chatted to the marshals briefly on our way past (it was strange thinking “we will see you twice more”)- one guy was great and cheered on “the fitbits” each time we walked past!

On our first lap my dad and brother went past on their second (or possibly third). I did think then that perhaps a one lap course has advantages. It was nice to look around the lake and see a stream of runners, but as we started our second most of the runners were peeling off for the home straight. On the second lap we came across the guy with MS, who was sat down. He was worried he was at the back, but we reassured him we were only on our second, and soon after he overtook us and headed to the finish. Then the lady and her son decided to stop, so then we had to find the next final runner- he was right at the other end of the lake so in our final lap we had a bit of a speedy run to catch him up. We walked the rest of the way together, and he was very pleased to finish with 49.08- well under his 50 minute target.

See! Look at my vest- more like a dress!

After that we headed home for pancakes cooked by my mum (Andy drove around to meet us there), and a look at their amazing safari photos before I went to collect my car.

I was having a look and the last time I ran at St Albans was March 2015, when I was marathon training- Dad picked me up, we ran parkrun and then I ran home from there. It was the first parkrun I did, and it was my only one until Panshanger started up, so it was good to go back there. I think I should go in the autumn sometime and see if I can get close to my pb, as it is a faster course, but most weeks my local ones are going to win out I think.

(That was run number 71 for me, 21st time of volunteering)

Did you like exercising when you were a child? Do you have a junior parkrun near you? Apparently there is a group of people keen to set one up, but because of all the parks being used for football on Sunday mornings they are finding it hard to find a suitable location.

The house move

The house move feels like it has been in the works for so long. Before Christmas we said that in the new year we would talk about moving house, and at the start of January we put our house up for sale to see if it would sell, and go from there. It turned out that the housing market was very competitive (good for us as sellers, not so good for us as buyers). We sold very quickly, and then began the painful process of trying to find somewhere to buy. Around here all the estate agents host open house sessions (we did for our sale, as that was what they all said they would do)- a couple of hours, 15 minute slots, as many buyers in that time. Once we were looking, it turned out that often the slots would be full on the day of the house going on the market. After a few open houses, one rejected offer, a day seeing lots of houses and none of them being quite what we were after, we struck lucky. In half term a house came up which looked perfect. We rang up and the owners weren’t doing an open house, and even better we could see it on the Friday- if it had not been half term I would not have been able to go. It was perfect, we put in our offer at about 2pm and then had a very nervous few hours before the call at 6.30 confirmed that our offer had been accepted!

Our old house

Then of course came all the boring legal and logistical bits. Our chain was short (our buyers were first time buyers moving from home, and the people we were buying from were moving to an empty property) but of course things were not simple. Originally our moving date was the 12th of May (so we could then book our South Africa trip) but it got pushed back a few times. Anyway, it’s all done now!

As I mentioned before, I found Mary’s blog post very helpful. We had been given some boxes so we packed a lot of things away and left them in Andy’s parent’s spare room. I had a notebook to record what was in each box. We sorted out the internet so we knew we would be having only a few days without it, changed addresses on some things, and set up the mail re-direct (although I didn’t realise it took 5 working days, and only set it up the weekend before so a few things slipped through). We had hired a moving company, so they had given us many more boxes and we ended up stacking them in the garage (and me parking outside) because in our old house once a few boxes were packed there was no way to get around them.

The movers were meant to arrive “from 8am”- so of course we had a late night and an early start frantically doing the last few things (including finding late on Monday night that the plumber who had fixed a small issue with the heating the previous week had knocked all of the Christmas decorations our of reach in the little attic space- we only have a small ladder so in the end had to move a chest of drawers for Andy to stand on so he could get up there and reach them down), but then they actually turned up at 9am. They were really good- they had to carry all the furniture downstairs, plus any boxes we had left up there. They took apart the bed but somehow managed to keep our wardrobe together and got it down the stairs without any of them falling to their deaths- there were some tense moments!). I hovered about with the hoover- I was shocked at how much dust there was behind some of our furniture! Once it was all in the van we had to hang about a bit as they were ready but we could not collect the keys straight away. We headed off to get the keys and they met us at our new house- when we arrived they had already unloaded the plants which was very efficient.

Then the fun of deciding where things were to go started. We had decided all boxes for downstairs could go in the dining room, and all the upstairs boxes went into one of the spare rooms. The movers put the bed back together which was brilliant- when we moved into our first place we had a lot of Ikea furniture to build and one of my main memories of that day was us building the bed late at night so we had somewhere to sleep. At one point Andy was sorting the garden and I was just waiting, so I went around and checked that all the lights worked (another Mary tip)- I found that 1- they love their colour changing bulbs, and 2- there was no switch for the bathroom (and we hunted high and low, in the hall, in the airing cupboard…). It turned out that the bathroom has a sensor, only activated when it is dark, which is rather annoying as it switches off after a couple of minutes- not great when you are having a shower and not near the sensor! The bathroom lights are also multicoloured and colour changing- something we will change quite soon.

Our dining room- looking much better now as most of the boxes are behind and at least we can sit at the table.

The movers finally left at 4pm- we had not stopped all day so had a break for some belated lunch, before trying to unpack the essentials. I had sorted an “open first” box but then with the movers unloading everything it took us a while to find it! I had packed some teabags to last us the first few days, and I am very glad I did as we didn’t find the tea straight away. We went out for dinner later, as we did not fancy cooking!

Our back garden! It’s been lovely to come back from a run and cool down here- our old place had a garden but you had to go through the garage so we didn’t use it much.

The next couple of days were not very productive as I had meetings after work both days, and then we were off on holiday, but the Sunday when we came home was brilliant (only one hour time difference so no jet lag)- we unpacked so many boxes, put the Christmas decorations in the loft, emptied our suitcases, set up my desk in my office and arranged the kitchen. I’ve been ticking off the boxes as we unpack them (I get huge satisfaction from ticking off lists) but we sometimes do forget.

There are many boxes still to unpack here too, but at least I can get to my desk now.

I love the willow tree in our garden. But we also have two (including one massive) leylandii trees which will need to go as they block out so much light.

I now have a whole host of new running routes too, but that is for another post!

How many times have to had to move house? We moved once when I was 12, then when Andy and I moved in together we moved out of our parents homes so that was fairly easy. I lived at home during uni so I really did not have much experience of it.

Packing and parkrunning

Are a bit of a tiring combination!

This weekend was the inaugural Ellenbrook Fields parkrun (look it up if you are in Hertfordshire)- our running club had a lot to do with setting it up, particularly our super coach Carrie. A lot of our club were going to be there, whereas often there are only a few of us at parkrun each week. It was novel for me because the start is jut over a mile away, so I could run there instead of driving. I got up a bit later, pottered about and then jogged up to the start. I wore my hat because it had been raining, but I didn’t need it in the end. There were loads of people swarming towards the start- I knew it would be busy as word seems to spread quickly through our running community- there are lots of running clubs nearby, and plenty of towns with clubs but no parkruns (Welwyn, Ware, Harpenden to name a few), plus they had mentioned it a lot of times at Panshanger as the Panshanger team had mentored the Ellenbrook team and been involved in helping with the start up too.

Our club had a banner out near the start. We love a bit of extra support.

I was there at about 10 to in the end, so had a quick chat with a few of the marshals and runners from our club, before Carrie did a super welcome speech from a fence (as it’s so flat there- no nice hill for her to stand on).

Then we were off! I realised right away I had started a bit too far back, but I wasn’t going for any pb (of course the first official one would be my pb for that parkrun)- I quite liked the idea of beating my time from last week but as I had already run up (and used my Garmin) I could not really work that out. Anyway, the course starts with a little loop (around a km I think), and so during that I took my time overtaking a few people at a time. It was so lovely because I knew most of the marshals (by name too, not just by sight) and so they were cheering all of the OH runners on by name too. I saw a few OH runners up ahead so ran to catch up, and the after chatting for a bit heard someone else call my name- it was someone I used to run at Sweatshop with- I don’t think we had seen each other for over a year, so it was good to have a little chat. Once the first little loop is done, you do the first part of it again before carrying on in a much larger loop. By then it had thinned out and so I could focus on where was best to run (the ground is a bit uneven). I may be biased but the best marshal (the lovely Donna, my run leader) was yelling at the top of her lungs at around the half way point. Her opinion (which I agree with)- no point being a marshal unless you’re going to encourage people on. She certainly did!

Nearly both feet off the ground I think!

Then it was through the cow field, and along a very rutted bit of grass, where I caught up with someone I know a bit through the facebook DRYT (Did You Run Today?) group, and Strava, so we said a quick “hello”. Then (passing two more lovely OH marshals) it was onto the old taxiway (Ellenbrook fields used to be an old airfield) to the finish. I ended up running next to a guy who chatted to me for a bit, and then up ahead I could see a few more OH runners (one of them is a very fast runner so I did wonder about my time at that point) so I decided to try and speed up a bit to catch them. I could not quite manage it, and crossed the line 2 seconds behind one of them (and 10 seconds behind the speedy one) with a time of 27.52. I am rather pleased with that- I have only run quicker than that once this year (my pb at Panshanger) and because of the crowds at the start I wasn’t pushing it as much as I could.

Look at the huge queues for scanning! There ended up being 273 runners, not too shabby for the first event. The tail runner came in at 41 minutes too, so a very speedy one (I think I have been around 55 minutes for my tail running).

I stayed around until the end, chatting to people from my club, and cheering in the other runners. One person gave the RD feedback about there not being any km markers (I had wondered but I also thought perhaps they were there and I didn’t notice them- Carrie said that they didn’t get any as they are not included, but they are in talks with the owners of the land to have permanent ones- I think I have seen pictures from a few National Trust ones which have them, and I think it’s a fab idea. When I decided to head home (packing loomed) I passed Neil and Eleanor Draper (they are from Garden City Runners and I often see them at Panshanger- they were interviewed on marathon talk before – lovely and inspirational people)- so I asked them how they had found it they had really enjoyed the route which was good to hear. It’s strange as since running around those fields with Sweatshop it’s one of my favourite summer running places, but I suppose lots of people still don’t know about it.

Also, I love looking at the results, and it was great to see that it was parkrun number 1 for so many people- hopefully one of many! That was my 8th different parkrun venue (70th run)- I heard someone say that once you have been to 20 different ones you count as a parkrun tourist! A few more to go then! Although there is one at Stevenage starting next weekend, but I don’t think I’ll be able to get up there until July as I am either away or volunteering at St Albans, Panshanger and Ellenbrook. Busy times ahead!

So, onto the packing. We’re moving house on Tuesday this week, and some boxes were delivered on Friday so that was basically our weekend planned for us! We had packed up a few boxes before, but had soon run out of space to store the packed boxes. Yesterday I parked my car outside so we have spent the day packing, and putting the boxes into the garage (I normally keep my car in the garage). We had to pop out to get a few bits of food for the next couple of days, and I bought us a cinnamon swirl from Starbucks to share as an afternoon treat after a lot of packing. This was very much needed- perhaps running 5 miles was not the best preparation. Mary’s page about moving has been very useful and I’ve been writing all the boxes down in a note book (although we are getting a company to actually move the things), and we are now up to box number 40. How do we have this much stuff? And where did it all fit? I’ve also been trying to do things like change my address for a few places- we have signed up to the Royal Mail re-direction as I am sure things will slip through the net.

Any moving tips?

One step behind (trying to find 401 Ben!)

Hey peeps!

That felt like a long week- hooray for the long weekend to make up for it!

This week running has been going well. I had a lovely 9 mile run on Sunday morning- I decided to not set an alarm and just headed out a bit after waking up to warm up a bit, and although it was cold (I wore gloves and a t-shirt) I warmed up just fine and was even thinking about smoothies on my way home.

On Monday I went for a back and shoulder massage which was just what I needed- the lovely masseuse kept apologizing to me as she was pressing certain parts of my back, but I felt so much better afterwards.

Tuesday was a lovely OH run- we did just under 4 miles and it was lovely to chat with people as I ran and I felt much better than the previous week (I had struggled to keep up with them and at times only caught up at traffic lights and things).

I thought this was from my run but I think it’s the park we walked around last weekend. I have done the parkrun there once, so it can stay in!

Wednesday was a rest day (trying to not run on consecutive days at the moment, although that plan failed….) so we walked up to the cinema in the evening to see The Jungle Book- I didn’t think about going to see it until I heard the great reviews on the Kermode and Mayo film podcast, but I really enjoyed it- I was humming songs from the cartoon version all of Thursday!

Thursday I had a 4 mile run after work- it was so windy it felt like I was running in treacle, but it was good and I got some miles under 10 minutes. I’m still worrying about tripping though.

On Friday our running club were hosting Ben, the guy who is doing 401 marathons in 401 days to raise awareness for anti-bullying charities. I first heard about him on marathon talk (of course- that’s where I get most of my running news from)- the interview is here, or you can see his website here. So the club had sorted out his route around Hatfield and Welwyn, and were aiming to finish by Hatfield House at around 4pm. So my plan was to leave work as close to 3.30 as possible- I got everything for Tuesday ready at lunch, and packed up all the rest of my work and shoved it in my boot. I got to the finish point, only to see on facebook that they were a bit behind schedule as lunch had taken longer, and as luck would have it in 15 minutes would be running close to my house. I deliberated for a minute, and decided to chance it. I drove home, raced inside, changed (and noticed a weird red rash all over my chest which I think was from panic), left them a message to say I would be by the shops and sprinted off. I got to the shops, and saw a message saying they would be by the school before the shops, so I leisurely headed up the road to meet them. I waited for a bit, and then tried to work out where they would be as when they last posted they were only 1.5 miles away. I looked on facebook again and it turned out I had missed them. I started running back to the shops- I think if I had waited there I might have caught them, but I was now further away. Then I got to the Hatfield House entrance and no-one was there. I left another message, and they told me they were at the stable yard- I had no idea how to get to that bit and I don’t have a pass (it’s a bit complicated, but there are two entrances, and one you need a pass for, and the other you don’t, but the one that you don’t need a pass for is tucked away and there’s only a road, not a path). Anyway, one of the club ladies happened to run past- she was the one who had organised the route, and Ben had left his van at her house, so she was going to collect him and drive him to her house. She offered to drive me to the right place very kindly! When we got there he was busy taking photos with lots of children, and because I had not run with him (and also I am just very awkward around famous people or people I don’t know), and finally because he was running a bit late, I didn’t ask for a photo, but I did say hello at least!

There were lots of my club mates around, including my lovely run leader who ran the London marathon last week, so I had a chat before phoning Andy and asking him to pick me up. I could have run home, but it was a couple of miles and as I was doing parkrun in the morning I didn’t think it was sensible to do 3 runs in a row of that sort of length.

From our facebook page

So, if you don’t try, you’ll never know. I think I am glad I tried to run with him as if I had waited around I was in the wrong place anyway so might not have even seen the finih their run- navigation and reading maps is not my strong point! Everyone had only good things to say about him. I love how he encourages people to run further than they thought possible. Apparently one lady had only ever run 12k before, but ran the whole marathon with him- amazing!

Is he coming to a town near you? Or have you been lucky enough to run with him? Who inspires you to keep going at something?

How to Make Your Diet Organic!*

I have a guest post for you today written by Matthew Biggin, all about trying to incorporate more organic foods into your diet. As the weather is warming up now, we tend to eat more salads and fruit so it seems like a good time to consider this.

When trying to lose weight you have to realise how important your diet is. This can play a huge role in helping you become a fitter and healthier you. So, you have to think about how to enjoy the best possible diet you can. A great first step would be to look at these ideas and work towards making your diet organic.

Source

Identify What is Organic

Step one in the process of switching to an organic diet is identifying what is organic. Now, the good thing is that this is much easier to do these days. The reason for that is that it’s become more popular these days. So organic foods are more mainstream, and there is much more information about them. Identify what organic products are and then start integrating them into your diet as much as possible.

Don’t Be Afraid to Spend a Bit More

Okay, so organic food is going to cost you a little more than buying non-organic. But, surely it’s worth paying that bit extra for healthier and better quality food. You’ve got to understand that often in this world you get what you pay for. So, you shouldn’t be afraid to spend that bit more to make your diet an organic diet. It’s important for helping you become fitter and healthier.

Image Via Pixabay

Grow Your Own

If you don’t want to spend those extra pennies buying organic produce, you could always grow your own. There are so many advantages to doing this, and you can expand. Come up with your own miniature allotment in the garden, and use this to start growing things like organic asparagus and tomatoes. It’s a brilliant way to enjoy the freshest produce at a much lower cost than having to buy it.

Plan Your Meals

A great idea is to try to plan your meals out well in advance. The problem a lot of people have is that they get home from work, and they are knackered, so they just pop a pizza in the oven. It’s difficult to get the impetus to make something healthy when you’re home late and stressed. So, the best way to combat this is to make sure you plan out all your meals beforehand. That way you know what you’re having on any particular day, and you can prepare.

Perfect Organic Recipes

Another thing you need to do is to work on perfecting organic recipes. The good thing is that you can just adapt existing recipes and replace them with organic foods. So, you can go for a favourite like roasted veggie calzone, and make sure you make all the ingredients organic. You might want to try out the recipes with organic food to make sure it doesn’t affect the preparation or cooking. There are also plenty of other organic recipes you could get hold of and try.

Organic foods are all the rage these days, and it’s easy to see why. They are a delicious and healthy way of having a balanced diet. The good thing is that organic foods are much more available to all of us these days. And you can easily switch your diet to an organic one by following the ideas on here.

What do you think about eating organic? I know that it is good for things that you eat the skin of, like apples, and at the moment I am getting an organic fruit box each week. But often the cost is much higher so that does tend to put me off. We used to have an allotment and I did love growing our own veggies, and I have a few fruit bushes in our garden. Last year I think I got around 1kg of blackcurrants which isn’t bad, as well as a fridge full of apples. Hopefully when we have a slightly bigger garden we will get back to growing a few more veggies too. I need to investigate whether we can grow sweet potatoes over here! Which fruit or veg would you grow in your garden?