CUPCAKES FOR BREAKFAST?

I made an incredible Beef Wellington on Friday night. Yes I am blowing my own trumpet but Nick did say it was the best Beef Wellington he had ever eaten! yessssss. It's certainly a treat to have once in a while. Char and Nick stayed the night after food comas set in. It was really nice having them over! Char had brought over amazing looking cupcakes to have for pud, unsurprisingly we didn't get around to eating them on Friday night. Char suggested we had them for breakfast!! Not such great pre-run food but I shared an oreo cupcake with her anyway.

Followed by toast with peanut butter and banana- much better running fuel.

I get so bored running the mile from my house to the river but love running on the towpath, so I thought that cycling to the river then running a 4.5 mile loop back to my bike would be the perfect solution. It would cut out the boring 2 miles back and forth, plus would be a nice warm up/cool down.

I try to set myself a challenge for each run, sometimes it's just to get out of bed and get the miles done! Today I wanted to see if I could run 3 miles in under 30 mins- I actually managed 4.5 miles in under 45 mins. So pleased. One of my splits was 9.18 for the mile. Maybe it is possible for me to get faster.

Still sticking to my healthy challenge of the week,

Day 3
1 banana
2 clementines
asparagus
broccoli
1 apple

Day 4
1 banana (half before the run, half after)
2 clementines
mushroooms
carrots
4 prunes (they may have been stuffed with goats cheese- delish)

Off to watch X factor!

THE PRIMROSE BAKERY

So it feels a little wrong writing this post just two days after my blog post about becoming healthy. But I am sticking to my weekly healthy challenge, I promise.

First let me tell you about the lovely Primrose Bakery.

I met up with my friend Guy after work and we headed towards Covent Garden. I had heard about The Primrose Bakery and really wanted to try it out. All the cupcakes were so cute with flavours such as Mocha, Maple and pecan and Rose- definitely trying that one next time.

There were also some cool Halloween themed cupcakes. I went for a Pumpkin cupcake with creamcheese icing, it was delicious and had a really cute pumpkin face on the top

I made Guy get a Halloween cupcake as well as his chocolate cupcake (he was slightly embarrassed by the pink flower on the top of it!).

I loved the Frankenstein on the top of his cupcake- so sweet. Unfortunately his Halloween cupcake was not as fresh as the other cupcakes, we thought that it had been sitting out a while.

I'll have to come back to The Primrose Bakery now that I've found it, I'm sure I can find lots of friends that will help me try out the other cupcakes.

Back to the healthy challenge; eating five pieces of fruit and veg a day. I have been using 'Less Meat, More Veg'  by Rachel de Thample to work out how much of each fruit and veg I need to eat to count as one of my five a day, hence some seemingly random amounts!

Day 1
30 blueberries
2 clementines
1 banana
2 carrots
Salad
Sweet potatoes

Day 2
1 apple
1 banana
1/3 cucumber
salad
2 clementines

Please ignore the mess on my desk! 

I have heard that you have to eat 5 DIFFERENT pieces of fruit and veg for them to count as your 5 a day, and that they have to be a balance of fruit and veg, so I have been trying to think about this when planning my meals and snacks. Do you think my pumpkin cupcake counts? No thought not.

ONE THING AT A TIME

I used to think that I had a pretty good, well balanced diet.

Turns out I was wrong.

I eat fruit/vegetables with every meal but truth is that is the extent of my ‘healthiness’. I love all the wrong things; chocolate, crisps, cream, wine, gin, deep-fried stuff, cheese, biscuits, cake- you get the picture. My major problem is I just can’t seem to say NO! And since starting my job working in the food team at a magazine (dream job!) I have realised that I am snacking a lot, and the rubber ring around my stomach seems to be ever-inflating.

It is also possible that I drink too much...

The thought of becoming ‘HEALTHY’ is a slightly overwhelming one- for me anyway. It brings back memories of diets, hunger, headaches and the eventual giving in and stuffing my face with the nearest naughty foodstuff. I also get overwhelmed trying to decipher differing advice on what foods to eat and when. One minute we are told that fruit is full of sugar and to avoid it, the next we are told we should cut out carbs and gorge on meat. I don’t know what to believe!

I have been reading Daily Garnish, a healthy, vegetarian blog for a while now and although I am in awe of Emily’s healthy transition it felt just too much like hard work. (congratulations to Emily and her husband for their new baby boy!)

Until I found Healthy Tipping Point and Carrots’N’Cake, two blogs written by more healthy, fit girls. Tina, from Carrots N Cake seemed to me to have a great balance of health and exercise, she eats meat, cookie dough, ice-cream and cakes but has a balanced diet and fits in a lot of exercise to counter-balance her treats. Plus she looks great.

Caitlin of Healthy Tipping point is another vegetarian blogger- something I am not willing to do (at the moment, if ever!) but she has a great philosophy on healthy; she suggests you give yourself one healthy challenge a day and stick to it. This seemed a lot more realistic than becoming ‘healthy’ all at once.

So I have given myself a weekly healthy challenge.

Week #1: Eat 5 pieces of fruit and veg a day.

And I am going to stick to it.

NOT QUITE A SURPRISE

After a rather heavy Friday night out for a friends birthday, Saturday was not particularly productive.  I may not have left the sofa until 1.30pm (and that was only to go to Sainsbury's!) I did get up properly a bit later to head over to my friend Helena's surprise party organised by her lovely parents. When we got to Helena's house we were told that the party was no longer a surprise as earlier in the day she had announced that she hated surprises!

It was lovely to see her and a number of other friends. Helena's mum had put on a brilliant spread including a lovely cheesecake birthday cake.

After a less heavy Saturday night, I convinced my friend Anna to come on a 3 mile run with me around the river.

We stretched then set off. Anna was quite nervous as this was the furthest she had ever run. Anna did so well, it was so hot and we were running pretty fast!

It was really nice to have a running buddy, and the 3 miles flew by.

Anna did really well running at pace for 2.4 miles, I was so proud of her.

I ran past the car and up to the bridge and back again to clock 3 miles on the garmin, meaning the final mile was 9.49 pace. Although this is not fast, it is pretty fast for me.

I'm really looking forward to doing more long runs with Anna.

BACK UP AND RUNNING

Quite literally.

Once again I am in training for the London marathon. After last years knee injury and subsequent withdrawal from the 2011 marathon, the people at MIND were kind enough to let me roll my place over to the 2012 marathon.

This year I have decided to use Hal Higdon’s training plan for Novice Supreme runners, a 30 week (yikes) plan starting with 1.5 mile runs. Whilst I don’t think of myself as a ‘Novice Supreme’ runner after getting up to 18 miles during last years training, I have not run in 6 months and felt that the extra weeks of short runs would help build up muscle strength and speed.

Although Jack isn’t running the marathon this year, my friend Loz from Uni is running it for Alzheimer’s. We have already been on a 5 mile training run together, although it may have been a little premature as we had to walk after every mile.

I am also hoping that I will be able to go on training runs with my friends Anna and Emily. Anna has never really run before and is signing up for a half marathon in Feb, Emily on the other hand is a seasoned runner and completed a half marathon last year.

My training runs so far have been going quite well. After the first few runs when I thought I was going to hyperventilate and had to ‘stretch’ rather more times than I would like to admit!

I missed two weeks of training runs due to illness but am back at it now and haven’t missed any more runs, despite a few efforts to talk myself out of running.

I have been setting myself daily challenges so that I can focus on something during each run.

I loved running in my new Yeo Valley t-shirt of The Churned for a training run last week where I set myself the challenge of running 1.5 miles in under 15 minutes.

I am slightly concerned with how slowly I am running at the moment. I think I am going to have to incorporate some speed sessions into my training.