Energy gel territory

Evening all, hope you all had a fab Saturday.

At Christmas my Dad put together a box of running things for me and Andy- as well as a running top each it also included things like various energy gels (he said he had so much fun choosing all the things and was told by the lady in the shop that we would need to try different ones to see which ones we prefer). I have been a bit chicken about trying them, but today I decided to start. I took with me 2 clif shot bloks in a sandwich bag (did not want to be faffing with the packet)- this went in the pocket in my waist pack.

I thought they would be all joined together, but they are seperated in the packet already, which would make them easy to eat on the run. The plan today was 11 miles, and I decided that instead of looking at the time on my Nike+, I would look at the miles instead, as I can get a bit obsessed with the time at where I think each mile marker is. After about 7 miles I took one of them, and was pleasantly surprised- they were soft, like a soft fruit jelly whereas I thought they would be really chewy like wine gums or toffee or something (not keen on that). The flavour (mountain berry) was yummy too. I duly had water after (well nuun but that counts I am sure) and then at about 8.5 miles I had the second one. The pack says 3-6 every hour, but I wanted to try first. I did not feel like I got a rush of energy or anything, but interestingly my speed did pick up during those miles- the first one is fairly steep downhill so that may be why. Anyway, I had no side effects and felt good, although I did feel tired and the wind was so cold it felt like my bones were frozen and my face is still sore now. In the end my route was 11.4 miles, which took me 1 hour 57 mins (including several road crossings). Again, I was tired when I got home, but not shattered, and I did not feel like I was limping home, I managed to end feeling pretty strong. 🙂

I am quite impressed with the ingredients too- brown rice syrup, evaporated cane juice, brown rice syrup solids, pectin, citric adic, colour, flavour, sunflower oil and glazing agent (nothing sounds too scary or chemically)- each “blok” is 33 cals, 8g carbs and 4g sugars, 23mg sodium and 7mg potassium so good to know they replace some of the lost salts too.

Andy was off to the football in the afternoon (Southampton) so we had a fairly big lunch (he had run 11 miles before his breakfast)- some spicy bean soup and some mozzerella, pesto and pepper quesadillas. Plus some nuts.

(The quesadillas are super easy- spread a small wholemeal tortilla with basil pesto or basil puree, sprinkle on chopped pepper and some mozzerella, top with another tortilla and grill on a griddle pan thing, flip, then serve. Normally I do not add the peppers as it made it all lumpy and very hard to flip, but we had a spare one in the fridge).

This afternoon I made a birthday cake for Andy’s Dad- using some delicious Green and Black’s cooking chocolate and a Rachel Allen recipe.

Apparently it has more cocoa butter in it for easier melting- mmmm.

Stirring the melted chocolate (in a little bit of milk) into the batter-mmm some more!

I made the caramel frosting from Veganomicon for something a little different I hope, although it went all stiff like fudge and was very hard to spread! It will taste better than it looks I am sure! Anyway, I go for the rustic look- then we know it is home-made!

I also tried making my own cereal bar type thing this afternoon, using rude health oat puffs, some PB, rice syrup, dried cherries, spelt flour and a few other things. I had one with some tea this afternoon, but it was not quite right. I am not sure if it just was not quite sweet enough, or if the oat puffs burnt a bit in the oven. Anyway, it was alright, and I have a few ideas of how to improve it.

I am going to lay down in front of the football now -night 🙂

Pumpkin pasta by popular demand

Evening all

So here is rhe recipe first of all, for the Tofu pumpkin pasta. I think this was recommended to me by Alison, from this blog.

So, first I cook 150g wholemeal pasta (but make more if you want a bigger portion). Then I wilt 100g spinach (or however big the packet is) in with the drained pasta.

Then blend up 300g pumpkin (most of a normal tin which are currently by the tinned fruit in my local Waitrose- not the canned veg for some reason) with a packet of silken tofu, and a few chopped sundried tomatoes- maybe 25g. This blending takes a while as I only have a mini chopper!

Stir the tofu mix in with the pasta and spinach, and then share into 3 oven trays- I get the foil trays as then they can be frozen easily. Cook in the oven for about 25 minutes and serve (or freeze, defrost when you want it and then cook). The first time I had this I put some goats cheese on the top, as I love pumpkin and goats cheese, but I actually love it without cheese, it is so creamy and delicious. Enjoy 🙂

Last night was body pump, which was fab 🙂 A lot of the newbies from last week were back again this week, which is always good to see. I also managed to maintain the shoulder weight (there is a girl there- I say girl, I think she is in her 50’s- who does the same weights as me, and when she saw that I put the lightest weights away right before the track, she said to me that I might want to swap to them half way through, but I said to her that I managed it last week so I was going to make myself do it!) and today my shoulders have not been too bad- not as bad as last week anyway.

Post body pump was a yummy bowl of chocolate yoghurt and cashew ginger crunch cereal from Nature’s Path– can you see the massive cashews I got in it?

Chocolate and ginger go so well 🙂

Today was a rest day and when I got home I was really looking forward to a cup of tea. During the week I often get home and spend 5 minutes changing before I head out for a run, or aerobics, and I really look forwards to just having a sit down on a friday.

This is another type of delicious chai tea 🙂

Love it!

Now I am relaxing and drinking lots of water ahead of my long run tomorrow- enjoy the start to the weekend peeps 🙂

Snacks continued!

Thanks for all the comments! It was clearly an issue a lot of people felt strongly about! I must say that I am not offended by what people say to me, but I do think that some people with more food issues could be driven to being more anxious around food, so I do think people need to think about what they say! I think that as I work with a lot of older women who are constantly on diets (but never exercise), the issue of food is often discussed. Glad everyone else loves their snacks too! I think it’s the best way to fuel exercise, and also to stop me from getting so hungry that I stuff myself.

Onto today; I was most excited to have a delicious breakfast

Last night I put a packet of apple porridge in a bowl with some Kara coconut milk and a sprinkling of allspice. This morning I cooked it and then added a tsp peanut butter, and also added some cinnamon. Totally delicious!

After work (and a clif bar- I orderd some oatmeal raisin ones from Wiggle and they arrived yesterday, randomly with some haribo sweets in the box too which I took into work and were gone in a few hours!) it was run time. At the end of aerobics last night my calves were feeling really tight, and on my run today I had to stop a few times to stretch as they were getting quite tight again. The plan was 6 miles,with 2 in the middle slightly faster. The warm up was fine (in the drizzle though) and then after that I sped up a bit. The aim was 9.30 miles, and the first one was just over 9 mins, but this one is downhill! The next one was around 9.30, so I was pretty pleased. I do look forward to the lighter evenings where I can stray a bit further- the two mile loop is getting rather boring now! I am getting a lot of ticks on my plan which is feeling more satisfying as it goes on!

Once home I had to make my pumpkin pasta- I thought I had one more in the freezer, but no, I had to make it today. Before my run I weighed out the dry pasta and left Andy a note to cook it for me if he got back before I did (which he did). So once home, I quickly added the spinach to wilt it, whizzed up the pumpkin, tofu and sundried tomatoes and mixed it in, and then it was ready to bake while I had a shower 🙂 Served with some green beans and beetroot it was very tasty indeed. I have 2 more for the freezer so the next few weeks will be back to the easiest dinners ever!

Now, off for an evening snack 🙂

Night

Snacks

Evening all

I am a lover of snacks, as I sure you have all gathered by now. I have introduced a mid-morning snack to keep my energy levels steady and stop me munching sweets before lunch, and I normally have a snack in the afternoon to give me energy for my exercise before dinner. I sometimes have a snack later in the evening too. I am perfectly happy with this way of eating , and think that my meals and snacks are balanced. Today I had some funny comments at work about my snacks- almost as though other people thought that I should only be eating 3 meals, and that snacks are “naughty” in some way.  Mid morning I had half a graze box, which consisted of a couple of brazil nuts, some dried mango and some dried cherries (hardly unhealthy but I got some funny comments about fatty nuts and sugary dried fruit). During my staff meeting I ate 2 clementines (and got a comment “oh dear, that’s healthy” from the people eating chocolate so perhaps they were feeling guilty? Not that they should feel guilty.) and when I got home my lovely Teapigs Mint tea and a Cocoa mint nakd bar, before aerobics. I think it is strange that the majority of people who are trying to lose weight (most of the people who comment are people who are constantly on a diet) see snacks as something so bad. For me, planning to have snacks during the day means I am much less likely to eat a biscuit or chocolate or anything else. It is days when I don’t have a snack planned that I tend to eat more. Anyway, I didn’t mean to ramble on about that, but I try very hard not to judge or be preachy, but it does annoy me when people make funny comments about what I eat.

Aerobics was fun- lots of newbies again and I had to be the high impact example!  The instructor normally does low impact as a demo but the person that normally does the high impact was away- eek! I even had some extra people in my line this evening- pressure! But it was fun.

I also had a late evening snack;

Some Mighty muesli- this time with milk. It was soooooooo good! It tasted like the muesli I remember from when I was little! No yucky powder, just lovely chewy oats, loads of seeds… yum 🙂

Are you a snack monster? What are your fave snacks?

I will like intervals!

 

(If I keep repeating it, then it might come true!)

Evening all

Thanks for the comments on yesterday’s post- I am going to try and remember to do a little roundup each week, as for myself it is quite satisfying to see how I have been getting on, and will be easier for me to look back on too.

Actually, today I did quite enjoy the intervals. Shock! I was down for a 4 mile run with intervals, so I did a mile warm up, then spend the next 2 miles going faster for 3 mins, then jogging for 1 minute to recover. The very last interval was uphill and really hard work, but at least I knew it was the last one and could slow down after that. The last mile was a cool down, but faster than my warm up as seems to be the case at the moment. Altogether it was 4 miles in 40 minutes, and I know my first mile was 11 mins, and after that I forgot to look, but I know that the intervals are making me run those miles a little faster. Plus they help mix it up and stop be plodding along at the same speed the whole time.

Then it was time for some more lentil stew– it was so delicious! Plus 13g protein in one serving is not half bad.

So today I am curious about your listening habits. When I started running, I did not listen to anything because I had to concentrate on looking at my watch for when to walk and when to run (my plan is here if anyone fancies giving it a go- go on you know you want to 🙂 ). Then once I could run for 15 minutes, I started listening to music. I love listening to music, and I would sort out a folder of music that was all fairly upbeat to keep me going. But a while back someone posted on WLR about listening to marathon talk (do you think I can now go for one post without mentioning it?) and so I started listening to podcasts instead on my long runs. This has now taken over, and I always have podcasts in. As well as marathon talk, I like a lot of the radio 4 ones- Friday night comedy, the food programme (not so good when you are hungry), sometimes medical matters ( although I get a bit queasey when they talk about blood and hearts), infinate monkey cage…. It’s all quite entertaining. But mostly I think it has helped my pace even out and become steady. I always felt that when I was running to music, I had to run to the beat, which is good in races if a song comes on to gee me up the hill or something, but not so good if it turns out I am struggling as I am running a little too fast. I was talking to Andy about it, and on his long runs he now doesn’t listen to anything, as he found that music was making him slow down to be in time with the music, and now he likes the time to think about things. I prefer some sound as the sound of my breath is very alarming- once I hear my breathing I start to think about breathing, which means it stops being natural, and I start shallow breathing and panicking, or wheezing and gasping, whereas if I don’t think about it, my lungs know exactly what to do and I am fine. I almost need noise cancelling headphones which just cancel out my breathing sounds! I do love the music at the exercise classes I do, and when a cheesy tune comes on it does give me a bit of a lift.

Anyway, what do you all do when working out?