Category: Eating

The one where Jess runs a long way and most definitely hates running but it’s ok because there’s brunch

Jess Guth1 Comment

Sunday, that means weigh-in day. I woke up when our kitten jumped on my head about 7.45. I don’t think he meant to, he was just running loops rounds the house and the loop took him across my head. Wish I had that much energy. Anyway, the scales. For once they were quite friendly and spat out reasonably agreeable numbers. I have lost 4 pounds since last Sunday. I really haven’t done anything special with food – can’t say I’ve been trying that hard but we have been out running a fair bit and it seems to me that moving more has always worked better for me than eating less. We are also eating pretty healthy meals overall with virtually no processed stuff so that will be helping too.

Sunday also meant a long run. 6.5 miles to be exact. I had a banana and some water and then we did 15 minutes of yoga just to get moving. My legs and hips felt tight doing that. I don’t really quite know how to desribe the run without swearing lots. We warmed up with a short walk and then a couple of short jogs. Then we set off. Then a very very very long time passed and we had got to a mile. One piddly little mile and I felt like my lungs were going to explode and my legs, well let’s just not talk about my legs. Then another eternity passed and we got to 2 miles. Two stupid miles. Completing the 6.5 miles seemed rather unlikely. Onwards I plodded. We got to three miles, my lungs had sorted themselves out, not sure when – somewhere between 2 and 3 miles. We turned round just by Bingley 5 rise locks at just over 3 miles. I do like turning round and heading for home. Amazingly we got to 4 miles. No idea how. Then 5 miles. I was taking every walk break as it came and my legs felt stupidly heavy. At 5 miles my back was aching a little and I know I was losing form and running completely inefficiently. Lungs were ok though and I’d come this far, it seemed silly to stop with only a mile and a half to go. We passed 6 miles. I took the walk break which finished at 6.1miles and then I just went for it. Not fast but determined because, frankly, we’d been out for long enough already and it was time to get it over and done with. So, 6.5 miles (10.4ishkm) in one hour 26 minutes and 57 seconds. Pace of 13.23 minutes per mile. Hated 6.4 miles of that. Loved 0.1miles of it and was quite excited about having done it.

We got home, had a bath and then the muchies set in. We had what is billed as a South American brunch to try and re-fuel (get me – running lingo!) and help with recovery. It’s basically a fried egg served on quinoa and back eyed beans topped with avocado and a spring onion and tomato dressing. The recipe is originally Jamie Oliver and we haven’t made too many changes to it really. We use packet quinoa which can just be done in the microwave in 45 seconds and usually a tin of black eyed beans but other beans will do. We don’t add any salt and we don’t add chilli sauce. It’s delicious and it looks like this:

South American Brunch

Enjoy.

Calf niggles, eating crap and running in the sun

Jess Guth2 Comments

I was looking forward to a run after work on Tuesday – that never happens! I walked up the hill from the bus stop, got changed and we set off. For the first time since my injury we set off from home rather than heading for the canal bank. The first stretch is a slight downhill. Great. Then a bit uphill, fine apart from the huge gust of wind that nearly knocked us over but certainly took our breath away. As we turned the corner and started on the next little downhill section I felt my right calf complain a little. I finished that 2 minute run, walked and then set off on the next run, it niggled some more. The next walk came quickly and we set off to run again and the niggle turned into a twinge and I stopped. It was so frustrating. We’d been running a consistent pace of just over 12 minutes per mile and I felt strong even on the uphill bits. My calf however is not yet ready for hills!

No running Wednesday, instead I curled up on the beanbag (no sofa still), drank a glass of red wine and tried not to think about the utter crap I’d eaten during the day. It started well with porridge (finally found some in sachets that isn’t too sweet) but then went down hill from there with sarnies from work and chips and biscuits and stupid amounts of coffee to get me through the 13 hour day I did. Oh well Thursday was meant to be another day altogether…

So today I didn’t have to be at work early. We did half an hour of yoga (balance for beginners – or in my case unbalanced) and had pancakes and a big bowl of fruit salad. Then I made my way to Leeds. Things fell apart at lunch with crisps, chocolate, more sarnies, more crisps…  Not holding out much hope for the Sunday weigh-in this week. After a day in Leeds I was ready for home and after being stuck on a commuter train packed like sardines I wanted to be outside. I wanted space and I actually sort of wanted to run. We went along the canal for 30 minutes in our 2minute/30 seconds patters. It’s warm. Our average pace was 12.58 minutes per mile. It felt good, I felt ok, my calf muscle is behaving itself. I like running in the sun!

-1.5 pounds, sunday dinners and stupid dog owners

Jess Guth1 Comment

It’s Sunday. I used to like Sundays. Sundays were for lazy mornings reading in bed, for pottering about, for spending time just watching our flock of sheep and for playing with the crazy kitten…. actually that is still exactly what Sundays are for but they now have the added dimension of the Sunday weigh-in. It was uneventful this morning. I was just awake enough to pop the scales on before standing on them and my eyes had adjusted enough to see I’d lost a pound and a half (and a bit but we’re only recording halves). So right direction after an indifferent food week (with a biscuit or two too many at my work writing retreat).

We’ve just come back from a Sunday dinner at Kath’s mum’s. A beef roast with amazing yorkshire puddings and with chocolate pudding for pudding so I can now safely write about the food plans for the rest of the week without making myself hungry. We’ve got some falafels, some koftas and other bits and pieces for a little picnic tonight, just in case we actually ever want to eat again and we’ll do the same for lunch tomorrow. The rest of the week we have pasta bake, beef stirfry, greek salad, baked spuds and salmon and veggies planned for main meals, the usual mix of eggs, mushrooms on toast, porridge, pancakes etc for breakfast and mostly left-overs and salads for lunches. Kath made some lovely cereal bars last week and we still have a few left so that will do for nibbles.

I’d rather not talk about this morning’s 30 minute run. Horrible horrible horrible. Not made better by some idiotic dog owner not keeping his rodent sized mutt under control. It ran alongside Kath for a bit – I was behind her freaking a little bit – then it was called back and stopped dead – right in front of me. It nearly ended up launched into the canal but instead I managed a rather inelegant hop over it. It then started running after me and you know me and dogs, I freaked a bit, well a lot. In fact I should check whether there is a spike in pace, there probably is. Anyway, Kath ran and I plodded for 30 minutes this morning, let’s just leave it at that.

Happy Sunday everyone

Sunday Weigh-In: back in the right direction

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It’s Sunday, that means its weigh-in day in the Guth/Self household. I’d lost just short of a stone pre injury, then I put 2.5 pounds back on and then stayed the same for one week. I’ve not had a brilliant week in the run up to this weigh-in either. There was that piece of carrot cake, there was the chicken tikka wrap at work, a chocolate or two, an icecream at Bempton Cliffs during the week and the popcorn last night while watching Eurovision. I have been running again though. So I rolled out of bed not really quite sure what to expect, toddled into the bathroom, had a wee and got the scales out from under the bathroom cabinet. Then I stood on them. Then I realised I hadn’t turned them on. Eventually I got the reading and I have lost just about 2 pounds (an ounce or so off if my maths serves me right, I’m better thinking in kgs but the numbers look far too high so I’ll stick to stones and pounds for weight!). Happy with that.

We have had a pretty good start to the week food-wise. We had porridge with blueberries for breakfast and a stirfry with wholemeal wraps for lunch. There was a little bit of an incident with the chilli which means we’ve also drunk plenty of water! We weren’t very organised for shopping and haven’t planned out our meals for the week but for main meals we’re thinking quorn chilli, greek salad, pasta and tomoato/veg sauce, tuna on quinoa and a home made chicken curry. For breakfast we’re not that adventurous and tend to stick to the same stuff every week so there will be scrambled eggs, mushrooms on toast, toast with peanut butter, cereal, porridge, pancakes. We’ve been trying to make our own snacks and puddings etc so we still get a treat but have a bit more control over what is in them! We have great recipes for courgette and dark chocolate buns and for home made cereal bars and whenever we have left over bananas I dig out mum’s banana loaf recipe. For the coming week though we have a load of rhubarb which we really need to do something with. Ideas other than rhubarb and apple crumble (did that last week) are much appreciated but I think Kath also found a rhubarb cake recipe.

So as you can see we are not going all out diet to shift the weight. We’ve tried that and we last about a day before giving up grumpy. We’re just trying to make slightly better decisions and take a bit more control. We’re also drinking less. Not that we ever really had much alcohol but we did often nip to the local and have a couple of pints or share a bottle of wine at the weekend and then have a beer or a glass of wine every other evening or something. Now we’re mostly not drinking, not religiously or obsessively, just thinking about it before opening a bottle. Having said that we’ve just bought a load of wine on a supermarket offer on the basis that the offer was too good to miss and we don’t have to drink it just because it’s there. It will last us a long time – so our reasoning – we shall see. Of course we will have to think about nutrition etc as the runs get longer and if we’re serious about this training lark we will have to cut out the booze completely and that is the plan – but, as they say, one step at a time.

2 pints and a packet of crisps…

Jess Guth2 Comments

…does not make for happy running. We got back on track and finished the week 7 runs on Thursday of week 8. On Friday we went to the pub and had a couple of pints and a packet of crisps and I’d also had a pretty crappy food day. I’d been at a meeting in London were there were sandwiches for lunch and then on the train journey home there were more sarnies… Bread overload basically and I have no willpower and I like sarnies. Anyway, crap food day.

On Saturday morning we started week 8 with a 30 minute run. Bloody hell. I felt so sluggish and heavy and generally rubbish. We set off from our house towards our sheep field and were going to do our usual 30 minute route that starts at home but then decided to turn back after 15 minutes to save time as we had lots to do. But turning back meant having to drag my butt up the hills that we’d come down on the way there and they are evil. Not particularly steep but just slow steady climbs. Urgh. From about 10 minutes in the whole thing just became a mind over matter thing to finish. Sometimes it felt like I was going backwards. So 30 minutes and 2.11 miserable miles later with an average pace of something over 14 minutes per mile we arrived back home. Lesson learned. Eating right doesn’t just make a difference, it makes a huge difference. It’s the difference between actually feeling like I am running and just desperately trying to drag my butt to the end.

Thinking back over the week, I can’t really remember how bad or otherwise I’ve been with the healthy eating thing. I wasn’t very good at taking my lunch so ended up buying wraps at work and I had a chocolate bar with that. Oh and when Kath was away overnight I couldn’t be bothered to cook just for me so lived on cereal. Unsurprisingly then I didn’t lose any weight this week. I haven’t gained any either though and today has been a much better day. We got up at 6ish this morming because we had to move our sheep at 7am (More on them here if you’re interested). We had breakfast afterwards – a south american brunch recipe that I think might have come from the Jamie Oliver via the Running Bug. It’s quinoa and blacked eyed beans with avocado and a dressing of tomato, spring onion in a vinegarette. We had lunch at a Garden Centre – we both had a road beef dinner and this evening we had a big salad. So while not perfect, much better than most of last week.

We also went for the second of the week 8 runs – 30 minutes. This one was much more like it. I was in danger of falling asleep on the sofa this afternoon but instead we set off from home, went past the sheep and down onto the canal. It looks like we are back on track with an average pace of 12.36 minutes per mile.