I started off Saturday morning with a beautiful bowl of fruit. A kiwi, five strawberries, a pear and some grapefruit.
Went down perfectly with a big dollop of vanilla yogurt on the side!
I was still pretty full from our meal out the night before. Dan had requested that we headed out for a Chinese to celebrate our seven year dating anniversary on Friday night. I had satay chicken to start and then bamboo shoots and water chestnuts with some of Dan’s egg fried rice for mains. Normally I like to have a starter followed by dessert when we go out. I like to finish on something sweet but when we go for a Chinese I’m not really bothered as I know all of their desserts are purely items straight from a freezer packet.
Dan bought me some beautiful flowers and we enjoyed a few chocolates and a glass of rosé when we got home.
I was working on Saturday, helping with the school craft fair in Northampton. I thought I would only be there a couple of hours but in actual fact I ended up getting there for before 9am and didn’t leave until gone 3, then I ended up stopping off at our Race Director’s house as he couldn’t download a race .gpx file onto his Garmin so I offered to give him a hand.
The craft fair really wore me out! It ended up being really busy… We took £200 on the tombola alone! I think I was so worn out from my attempts at greeting everybody in a really bubbly manner and placing a constant smile on my face!
There were some fab stalls. I loved these knitted hats…
And this wine holder policeman that had been donated to the tombola.
After I sorted out the Race Director’s Garmin I headed out for a four mile easy run. Despite feeling so tired in myself, my body still felt good but as I had planned a long trail run with a friend for Sunday morning I kept the run easy.
This morning my alarm went at what would have been 5:30am but due to the clock change was 6:30 instead! I can’t winge though as I will be appreciating the light nights and extra opportunities to run trail runs over the coming weeks! Laura wants to run the Go Beyond Shires and Spires 35 in June this year and was hoping to learn the course before the race itself. This morning, armed with map and Lucozade we met at the finish, where we left Laura’s car and then drove in my car to checkpoint four of the course. (13 miles from the finish) Here we got out, left my car and headed back towards Laura’s. I was surprised at how much of the course I could remember and I’m pretty confident that I would be able to run the route mapless during the actual race in June. We took it pretty easy, walking up the steep hills like true ultrarunners! At one point a herd of fifty or so sheep chased us across a field leaving us both pretty uneasy and racing to get to the stile at the other end of the field first! The downside to running trail!
It’s been quite a busy weekend so far and I’m back at my parents’ to sort out my old bedroom tonight. It could take a while… Wish me luck!
Do you always run up every hill on a long run?
I do run up hills, but very slowly! A couple of the hills I hate have traffic lights at the top so I do hope for a brief red light to give me a rest though!
Maria @ runningcupcake recently posted…Deep Heat and Deep Freeze patches
Haha! I’m always one way or the other for traffic lights. Some days I’m desperate for them to stay green so I don’t have to stop my run. Other days, (and probably every day if they were at the top of a hill!) I’m crossing fingers for red and a breather!
Wow…running the whole race without a map? That would be very impressive – I don’t think I’d make it more than a mile without getting lost. My map was mangled to pieces by the end of the race because I was trying to double and triple check everything.
I always run up the hills…except for at the Shires and Spires! It’s the only race (actually the only run – I’ve never walked during training) where the general consensus seemed to be that I would die if I didn’t walk the hills, so slow down I did. On a different day it might not have been necessary, but in that heat? Absolutely. It was weird though, and I had to give myself a good talking to because I felt so guilty that I was walking up a hill at mile 6!
xxx
I’ve already run the route twice and this section was for the third time. I think most of it you could probably work out from following every footpath sign that pops up! I would be much less confident if I hadn’t been running with Kev last year though and my map and me would be a mess!
I’m usually a hill runner too. I think the majority of people walked the bigger hills, and it’s nice to know you did too! There are quite a lot of biggish hills on the course and I’m pretty sure I would have died if made to run the whole 35 miles without walk breaks up the bigger ones! That mile 6 hill was a killer…and still with 29 miles to go?! And, like you say, the day was incredibly hot as well. Will you be returning?…
Oh I do love a good craft fair! That bowl of fruit and yoghurt looks delicious as well
I love looking around and picking up some great bargains, although love getting ideas for items to make myself as well.
That’s cool you helped out at a craft fair. Looks lovely!
The only trail race I’ve done is Cheddar Gorge. I tried to run up as many hills as I could but when it got really steep I walked them, saving my energy. I think that’s the most sensible way to do it! Running up a steep hill you probably wouldn’t go very fast anyway!
Anna @AnnaTheApple recently posted…Being part of a team
I’m pretty sure some of the walking I did was faster than any running I would be doing at points! The Cheddar Gorge race you ran looked like loads of fun. I love these type of races!
Congrats on 7 years of dating! I love those hats so cute!! To be honest I don’t go on very long runs these days but I always run up the hills on my short runs!
Tamzin recently posted…A Great Weekend and a Great Smoothie
Thank you!
We have a steep hill literally from our fence down into the town and some of my killer sessions last Summer were ’40minute continuous hills’. I would ALWAYS run those, but it was nice to be a little more relaxed this weekend on the run.
I do try to run hills, but London is so flat, it’s difficult to find them, I know when I ran a 20 mile trail race in Feb it had the same elevation that I had covered in something like 28 runs of training before hand- not really ideal prep!
Lauren (@PoweredbyPB) recently posted…Ultra Training Week 12: Reverse Taper
We’re quite lucky in some respects that there is easy access to quite a few hills in a wide range of steepness levels. Might not be loving it in training but my body appreciates it come race day! It might be worth driving out of London every so often to practice some different terrain? Some of my best hill sessions come from a steep hill outside my house that I literally run up and down for 10 min blocks at a time.