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Hi everyone hope you’ve had an amazing weekend! I apologise if this post is very hyper, I’ve eaten a full bag of cinder toffee followed up with a packet of energy bites, you could peel me off the ceiling!

Today I joined 54,000 other people and ran the greatest half marathon on Earth and it was bloody awesome! I completed it in 1hr 52 minutes and 11 seconds, and considering that I’ve been dealing with an injury for the last month and have only run a few miles I am utterly elated! That time is also 15 minutes faster than my time last year!

Last night I got in some quality carb loading with this huge bowl of whole wheat spaghetti and courgette noodles in some of my Roasted Tomato and Red Pepper sauce with some brown noodles mixed in served on top of steamed savoy cabbage and topped with nutritional yeast and fresh basil:

Nom!

This morning I fuelled up with my favourite pre race breakfast of banana porridge with nut butter:

I went for some drippy almond butter and added some coconut nectar as a sweetener and for extra energy!

My work colleague helps to run a youth football team and some of the parents were running the race to raise money for them so we ended up being able to get a lift on their mini bus. James accompanied me as my official supporter bless him!

On my way to the start having just got off the bus

After a long wait at the toilets and eating some dates, aka my rocket fuel, I made my way to my starting area. Last year I ended up right at the back as I’d missed the gates closing so I made sure I went with plenty of time to spare. This year I was placed much further up the field so I was hoping that I would miss a lot of the congestion I’d experienced last year (unfortunately it made no difference, I spent the whole race dodging people!)

We were really lucky with the weather too, it was a perfect bright autumn morning! The gun went off and it took about 10 minutes to cross the starting line. I was so happy to wave to the amazing Mo Farah!

I was happily running along just about to get onto the Tyne Bridge when someone tripped me up. I went flying on to my face and hit my injured knee pretty badly.

Can’t believe my fave running pants are ruined. Good job I was wearing my knee support as that fall could have been a lot worse without it to cushion the blow!

If I hadn’t been wearing my gloves (I have terrible cold hands) I would have had very badly scraped hands too. Some lovely woman helped me up, and for a fleeting second I wondered if I should continue. But when you get knocked down, sometimes you just have to get back up and keep on going!

Obviously with my injured knee I was really worried that I was going to get the bad pain and tightness back, but I’m very happy to report that apart from a painful stinging from my fall, I didn’t even get a single twinge!

I managed to keep to a pretty solid pace for the whole race and when I checked my pace at 7 miles I knew that only a serious problem would prevent me from finishing in under 2 hours. The rest of the race just flew by, I enjoyed it so much! We did get some heavy rain but it had been getting quite warm so the rain was lovely and refreshing!

Crossing the finish line in the time I did, after dealing with my injury and having that fall at the start was just amazing. I felt invincible!

Cheesy pic alert!

After the race we waited with the guys from the football club for all the other runners to come in. I downed a carton of coconut water, more dates and a Clif Bar but when I was still hungry I had only one thing on my mind – chips! I also got a bag of my old favourite sweet treat, cinder toffee. It was delicious although I feel like all my teeth might fall out ;-)

I’ve just eaten this delicious Thai Red Tofu and Vegetable Curry with whole wheat noodles (none of my usual greens as I just didn’t fancy them for a change):

I’ve also has this amazing and very tasty smoothie:

This contained a frozen banana, frozen strawberries, vanilla rice milk, vanilla sun warrior, a lot of peanut butter and for toppings some PB&Co White Choc Wonderful and chopped Reece’s Dark Chocolate Miniature cups. Since I’m already high as a kite off the sugar I’d might as well enjoy it!

I’ve had an absolutely amazing day, I never thought I’d be able to top last years race but I think the fact that I’ve had a few obstacles to over come has made this years race even more special to me.

I’m off to soak in the bath now and have a lovely early night (plus eat more chocolate!) Hope you have a great week ahead :-)

The Red Arrows display was amazing, I loved this so much!

Hello there, hope you are all having a great week! I’ve been feeling a little flunky today, the last couple of days have been very quiet and filled with just the same old stuff, I have to say the weekend can’t come fast enough for me at the moment!

On Monday I really enjoyed a tasty breakfast of fresh strawberries, Dorset Cereals High Fibre Muesli and home made almond milk:

Big bowls of muesli make me very happy, especially with home made almond milk … as do smoothies, however for a change this one was not green!

Strawberry and Rhubarb Smoothie (serves 1)

• 1 heaping cup of frozen strawberries
• 1 serving of Rhubarb and Orange Compote
• 1 cup of milk (I used home made almond milk)
• 1 tsp of mesquite (optional but adds sweetness)
• 1 tsp of ground flax (optional but I added for healthy fats)
• 1/2 tsp of xanthan gum (optional but adds thickness)

Blend all ingredients and enjoy! If you have a sweet tooth you would probably want to add some agave to this too.

I had my smoothie in a bowl (of course) with a little granola, accompanied by a slice of toasted quinoa and amaranth bread with cashew butter:

Just wonderful!

In an attempt to free up some space in my packed freezer lunches have been Courgette and Watercress and Pea, Broccoli and Pesto Soups accompanied by fruit. I’m glad I have used the soup up as I’m hoping we are now firmly into salad weather, then again both these soups are quite spring like!

Today’s snack was really good:

Two Clearspring Black Sesame and Tamari Rice Cakes with tahini and sugar snap peas. Seriously these rice cakes taste amazing!

Dinner has been a bit of a mish mash of a meal. A couple of weekends ago I received some tomatoes in my organic veg box. I’m not a fan of fresh tomatoes so inspired by my roast tomato and red pepper soup recipe I made a tasty sauce:

Roasted Tomato and Red Pepper Sauce (makes 4 servings)

• 6 large tomatoes, chopped into quarters
• 1 very large, or 2 medium red peppers, deseeded and roughly chopped
• 4 cloves of garlic, with the skin removed but left whole
• 2 large white onions, roughly chopped
• 2 tbsp of olive oil
• 1/2 tsp sea salt

Pre heat the oven to 200c. Add all ingredients to a large roasting tray and toss in the olive oil and salt. Roast for 30 – 40 minutes until the veggies have softened and gone all syrupy. Transfer to a bowl and blend with a hand blender until smooth (you could also use a regular blender, but be careful if hot). Use as a sauce for pasta, veggies etc. This also freezes very well.

I added some lentils to the sauce and served it with some spelt tagliatelle spiralised courgette, yellow pepper, green olives, fresh basil and nutritional yeast plus a side of steamed greens:

This was blooming well lush! So full of flavour and massively filling :-)

Yesterday’s dessert was some 80% Intense Conscious raw chocolate with strawberries:

This chocolate had a much harder crunchier texture than the other Conscious varieties I have tried which have a more truffle like consistency. I still loved it and its fantastic deep bitter chocolate taste. Tonight I’ve had a Peppermint Stick Luna Bar and a tasty pink lady apple, me needs the 9g of protein in the Luna Bar to help recover from Body Pump!

Speaking of which, my workouts have been the usual: 30 minutes of intervals on cardio machines, 30 minute spin class and abs and core yesterday, and Yoga for Runners this morning with Body Pump tonight. Body pump was awesome as usual!

Yesterday I received these tasty samples to try:

Thai Taste Thai Red Curry Kit, Thai Taste Yellow Sweet Chilli Dipping sauce with ginger and Pomegranate and Elderflower Sparkling Presse limited edition Breakthrough Breast Cancer Charity Bottle. I’m looking forward to making a tasty Thai Red Tofu Curry with this kit and saving the bottle of presse for Easter Sunday lunch. I adore Thai Curries, and I especially love the Thai Taste brand as the curry pastes are suitable for veggies as well as the company supporting a community project in Thailand. I love their Thai Green Curry paste and still have some stashed in the freezer!

I have a bit of a strange work day tomorrow so instead of my usual gym based treadmill run / cardio intervals first thing I’m going to try doing a very early morning outdoor run before work and then going to the gym to finish up with the cardio and abs and core stuff after work. I’m not sure how I’ll fair working out hard twice in one day (I know I sometimes do yoga and then a workout later but I don’t think of that in the same way with it not being so intense) but I didn’t want to run after work as I never seem to enjoy it very much that late in the day. I did read in Ultra Fit magazine that this method of splitting your workout up and working out at two different times in the same day can be a good way to improve fitness and burn more calories in a short period of time because you are raising your heart rate and metabolism twice instead of just once in a day, although its not a technique I’d make regular use of, it could be useful to break through a fitness plateaux.

Do you ever workout twice in one day or split up your workouts like this?