Tag: Pizza

Janathon 2015 – Entries Are Open For Janathon’s 5th Birthday!

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Janathon 2015

Yeah, Janathon is 5 – where did that time go? As it’s the fifth birthday, it’d be great if as many of you as possible would sign up and make it the best one yet. Remember, you don’t have to blog every day – microblogging is fine, so if you’re feeling a bit typed out, just tweet (#janathon) or post on the Janathon Facebook page what you’ve been up to exercise-wise (you can post what else you’ve been up to, too, if you like, we’re all friends here).

With the help of Deputy Helen, we’re hoping to get some fabulous prizes lined up to give away in a draw open to all participants. So far we’ve got fitness writer Julia Buckley’s bestselling book The Fat Burn Revolution  to give away and I’m going to be adding prizes to the website as they’re confirmed, so keep checking to see what’s up for grabs.

Not one to get my priorities muddled, I’ve set the date for the post-Janathon meet up. As in previous years, it’ll be held in the Holborn branch of Strada. More information on the Janathon website – I hope you can make it.

So, have you signed up yet? Remember, slacking is not an option. Enter Janathon 2015 here.

Janathon Day 12 – it’s all going well

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I’ve always been a fair weather cyclist, only venturing out for a leisurely ride on hot days, usually poncing about the countryside on my pink Pashley Poppy.

pashley_poppy

Since getting my Boardman though

boardman

and feeling guilty with it spending most of its time in the garage (although not as much time as my little Raleigh Shopper which I haven’t been on for years),

raleigh-shopper

as my £30-from-gumtree mountain bike

mountain-bike

is the one that gets the most use, getting me to the station and back or taking me into town, I’ve taken the opportunity when it’s arisen to get out for a longer ride on the Boardman.

Over the last few weeks, these rides have been a trip to Wye and back (around 20 miles), 28 miles last Sunday and then a record ride for me – 40 miles yesterday.

I was feeling mega-super-hardcore about my 40 miles, until I remembered @naominf RAN 45 miles the day before. Mega-mega-super-super-hardcore.

Although my Janathon exercise effort was to be applauded,

cycling

my diet certainly wasn’t. My food intake for the day was:

Breakfast: satsuma, nectarine, plum

Lunch: Creamy hot chocolate and a toasted teacake

Post-bike ride: 2 x hot chocolate (I was freezing) and 3 biscuits

Pre-dinner snack: 2 x Ferrero Rocher

Dinner: pizza and garlic bread

Post-dinner: 1 piece of peanut butter fudge, 3 squares salted chocolate, Tesco mint thin

Think I need to go and make some granola bars so I have something a bit healthier I can munch on instead of Christmas leftovers.

I also need some cold-weather cycling kit as the three-quarter length cycling tights I bought in the summer weren’t quite up to the job of keeping me warm. Any suggestions?

Marathon training day 1

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Okay, how many of you thought I was going to slack off my first day’s marathon training, huh? I’ll be honest, I almost did. If I hadn’t burnt my mouth on a pizza on Saturday, I wouldn’t still be in pain now and I wouldn’t have had to go to Tesco to get some stuff to put on the red raw roof of my mouth and, as Tesco is opposite the gym, it’d have been silly (not to mention incredibly slack) not to go in.

And yes, I know the gym isn’t the same as going for a run but I did my scheduled three miles on the cross-trainer, and going on the the cross-trainer is as near to running as you can get without actually running, isn’t it?

As for the marathon, the more I think about it, the more I know I definitely don’t want to do London. So, after I came back from the gym, I had a look for other marathons around the same time as London and came across the Bewl Water Marathon which is a small, scenic race about twenty five miles down the road from here. I emailed iliketocount at work and said I’m going to do this marathon instead and he emailed back and said looks good, we’ll go and check out the route over the Christmas break.

It’s a tiny race (only 60-odd runners this year) and it’s likely I’ll be last, but that’s fine with me. My main concern was whether I could wear my iPod or not but according to the FAQs, I can.

Yay.

Hangover? Tough.

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I spent the day yesterday making everyone (well, about two people anyway) jealous by telling the entire world that I was going to BAFTA for the Miranda Masterclass. It was brill. And I was in the second row and close enough to poke her (not that kind of poke, you mucky pups). And after I’d been to the brill Miranda Masterclass, I went off to meet my friend Gary for drinks and food. The plan had originally been beer and Mexican food, but somehow that turned into wine and pizza. As I hadn’t had any wine for over a month, I was a bit worried about getting the last train home but all was fine. I even made the second from last train home (although that was due to the fact that the bar in the station, although open, would only give us four minutes to drink up if we bought a drink. Duh.)

Usually after an evening drinking wine, there’d be no chance of me going out for a run, but this is Juneathon and slacking isn’t an option and no matter how hard I searched Hal Higdon’s website, nowhere does it say that I’m allowed to not stick to my schedule just because I’ve been out on the piss.

Bah.

So off I went for 3.5 miles and listened to the Audiofuel Pyramid 180 Max intervals and took the walking bits very seriously indeed. Then I thought Thru the Gears might give me a bit of a boost but I ended up just listening to it as I strolled in the sunshine.

A bit of a lame Juneathon effort from me today then. But I still did it, so there.

Stats
Distance: 3.5 miles
Time: 44:51
Pace: 12:49 m/m
Calories: 328
Miranda Masterclasses: 1
Beers: 0
Wine: Lots
Mexican food: 0
Pizzas: 1
Hal Higdons letting me off due to being hungover: 0
Lame Juneathons: 1
Juneathons run so far: 7/7

Er, don’t know

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I asked Shaun for a title for my blog, and he said ‘er, don’t know’, so that’ll have to do.

Yesterday evening saw me do an extra Juneathon after my run by cycling to the Good Intent pub 3.2 miles away for beer and food. And what fantastic food and service it was, too. There was a mix up with my meal (they’d put the apple crumble topping on my leek and Wensleydale bake instead of the topping it should have had) and said I wouldn’t be charged for it. As my meal was replaced so quickly and efficiently and charmingly by the waitress, I was happy to pay for it, but the manager refused my money. How impressive is that?

Anyway, after our pub visit, I stayed up drinking more beer and watching Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and once again going to bed in the early hours, only once again to be woken up before my government recommendation of eight hours sleep by someone ringing a bell and telling me to get up as they wanted to go to the supermarket. I replied by saying I was doing Juneathon first and so Shaun went to the supermarket by himself and came back with what appeared to be the contents of the fat bastard aisle. Pizza and cream cakes for dinner it is then.

I said to Shaun I was going to run up to Tesco, then back through the little park to home which is about half a mile but he said I had to do more than that and gave me another route and I said but that’s about two miles and he said it’s about one point eight miles and so I measured it on Gmaps and it came out at about one point six miles and so I thought ok then, that’s probably a better Juneathon effort and so I went out into the rain and the wind and the cold and burnt off about half the cream cake I will be eating later.

Stats
Distance: 1.57 miles
Time: 16:11
Pace: 10:20 m/m
Calories: 164
8 hour sleeps: 0
Contents of fat bastard aisles: 1

equivalent_050611

Crisis Square Mile Run 2009 race report

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This year’s Crisis Square Mile Run started off a bit differently from other years.  About 60 miles differently.  Instead of walking up the road after work to take my place with the rest of the red t-shirt brigade, I get on a train for an hour and meet Shaun, who’s been on a course in Ye Olde Londone Towne (well, Brentford to be precise), at London Bridge outside the cycle shop and he points and says what do you think of that

Pashley Poppy hybrid bike

and I think it’s the prettiest bike in the whole wide world and it’s got a silver pump and a bell and everything and Shaun eventually tears me away from the window and we walk up to St Paul’s and I say I’m hungry, can we skip the running bit and just do the beer and pizza  bit and Shaun says ok then but I don’t think he means it and I go into Pret to get some water and accidentally buy a packet of Croxton Manor Cheddar & Red Onion Crisps which I scoff in about three seconds and we get to Paternoster Square and I get my red t-shirt and Shaun queues up for his as he didn’t get a registration pack but they’ve got his name down and I go to Corney & Barrow to get changed and Shaun strips in the street

Strip

then we go to St Paul’s station to wait for Bernard who’s not running AGAIN but is going to be the official bag looker afterer again although he’d been emailing me all day to say he wasn’t a donkey, and even sending me a picture of a donkey

Not Bernard 

just to reinforce this fact and Gary turns up and says he can’t run as they’ve lost his registration and I say are you going to run anyway? and he says no, he’s got a dodgy knee and the run’s about to start and Shaun takes his place with the speedy types and the gun goes off and I’m not sure where I’m supposed to start so I wander over to the pens and it says fast runners only and I look at the people there and I think no way are they fast runners, especially the middle aged woman with the fashion rucksack over one shoulder and so I start there and we get over the start line and people have started to walk already and I think YOU COULD AT LEAST RUN OVER THE FLIPPING START LINE and as usual the first half a mile is a bit of a stop/start but not as bad as previous years and we don’t stand under London Bridge for quarter of an hour this time and at 0.8 miles I get a stitch and I think oops, maybe I shouldn’t have eaten those crisps and I think I can’t stop to walk after a mile, I’ll look like one of those annoying walking people but the pain gets worse and I have to stop and walk and it eases and so I start running again but I’m quite tired and it turns into a walk/run kind of thing and then we get to the London Eye and I walk across the grassy bit as I don’t like running on grass and then I see an upside down cow thing and I wonder what that is and it says bar open and I think AN UPSIDE DOWN COW BAR, HOW COOL IS THAT?   and I want to go to the upside down cow bar and we get off the grassy bit and I start to run again, happy that I’ve seen an upside down cow, and we go over Blackfriars Bridge and a girl behind me asks a man where his sister’s from and he says Cheshire and I think shut up, I don’t care where your sister’s from, stop talking and I’m getting really tired and want to finish and go and get a pint and a pizza and I wonder what route this is going to take as I can’t see it finishing any time soon and I’m a bit confused and then there’s a  girl on my shoulder and I want to shake her off and so I speed up to lose her but then she’s there again and I think get off my shoulder and speed up again and I eventually lose her for good this time and then we’re going over Southwark Bridge and I think maybe this is the finish as we’ve done three miles now and usually the route is less than the advertised 3.5 miles and usually under 3 and I don’t want to go any further and I think is this ever going to finish and I thought it ended over the Millennium Bridge but that’s far away and it’s going to be way over 3.5 miles and I eventually get to the Millennium Bridge and my Garmin says we’ve gone 4.17 miles and I think HALF A MILE EXTRA, ARE YOU TAKING THE PISS OR WHAT? and Bernard sees me coming over the bridge and takes my photo

Crisis Square Mile run finish

but Shaun misses me as he’s busy inspecting the contents of his goody bag and we go to the pub and have a couple of pints, the second pint making us a few minutes late to meet Megan and Meg (sorry we were late, great to meet you both) at an inexplicably empty Harry’s Bar for more beer, garlic bread (with and without cheese) and pizza.

Route

Crisis Square Mile Run 2009 route

Stats
Distance: 4.17 miles
Time: 48:59
Pace: 11:45 m/m
Calories: 415