One Tough Mudder

Tough Mudder - have you heard of it? Its a mud run but the mother of all mud runs, hence the name. Well I'll be doing one tomorrow.

After my marathon my legs were sore, I wasn't injured just found walking up and down stairs tricky. Two days of compression tights, two massages, a cold bath and a warm spa bath and they are back to normal. Just in time for the mudder. Trouble is I am now fighting with a cold grrr!


I reckon i'll be ok, I'm not going to race it and its only 19km - a cinch compared to the marathon. Sure it has some obstacles like burning hay bales and electric wires but the only thing i'm really worried about is the monkey bars. I have poor upper body strength! and below them is ice cold water.

Well I shall update you on Sunday as to whether I succeeded or failed. In the mean time the below video made me laugh and summed up Monday for me pretty well.

CK.x

Sydney marathon race report

Last Sunday I completed my second marathon. Here is my race report:

I didn't do as much training as I should have. Part of me is using moving house as an excuse but I know really that it only really used up two days of my life and I had plenty of time to train. I'm just a bit lazy sometimes. Plus I find it a bit of a waste of my weekend to spend 3 hours pounding the pavement, its not that I struggle its just I think of the other things I could be doing. I guess if its an interesting pretty route you don't resent it as much but if you are covering 30+km its tricky to do it all in a scenic environment.

Michael-clease decided he was happy to come with me and busy himself while I was running and I was happy to have the company on the journey. I got up at 5:45am and had my usual breakfast of champions,
Porridge, banana, sunflower seeds, chia seeds and honey, and we left at 6:15am. We arrived at the start line at about 7:15 for the 7:30 start. The website had said arrive an hour early, I know from experience that thats not normally necessary unless maybe theres a big group of you and it takes a long time to get organised. 15mins was maybe not quite enough time as I didn't have time to go to the toilet!

So after just a few minutes we were off. The first part of the run is over the harbor bridge, its a great start! Great views, you feel happy to be alive and wonder if this is one of the great races on earth. I found myself next to the 4hr15 pace group and ran along happily. Little did I know Michael-Clease was watching from the foot path! I was going strong, the 4:15 group didn't seem as strong so I sped up a little. I ended up near the 4:00 group. I dared myself to wonder if this could turn into a sub 4:00 marathon, sure my training hadn't been that fast but i'd carb loaded and this was my second one!
As we headed up Oxford street 4:15 pace group caught me, turns out I was struggling a little already. I must have been about 8km in.

We reached Centennial park and boy that was tough! Lots of rounds and there and back agains. It did give us a chance to see the leaders which is always inspiring and give them a little clap as they came by, I doubt they appreciate it really but we tell ourselves they do.

Midway though the park at around the 21km mark I wondered if I really could finish this run. It is a long walk back to the finish line so I had little option but to keep going for now. If I am still going by the 30km mark, I thought to myself, I won't give up.

I think it was towards the end of the Centennial section, 28k, that the 4:30 pace group overtook me (hangs head in shame). I persevered through Hyde park and into the Rocks. At around 32km I could see Circular Quay, my hip was a little sore. I moved over the edge of the road limping a little, I started to stretch out my hip. It didn't need it. The shame of giving up was too much to bare, I couldn't tell my friends that I had quit. The only good excuse was an injury so I was playing along in my faux injury charade.
I snapped out of it! I have put in hundreds of kms of training to give up 10 from the end!

Little did I know the next 8 where the most boring 8 you will ever run! Lucky I didn't know! I slogged it out, running for 5minutes and allowing myself 1min of walking in between, I stuck to the shade as by this time it was nearing midday and getting up to 22C.
Finally I made the 40km mark. I managed to run the rest. The section round circular quay was amazing, crowds were cheering my on, I felt like an elite athlete. After 4hrs 42mins I crossed the finish line, unlike my first marathon I vowed I would be back again! And this time it would be a PB!

Sorry Marathon-photos I do plan to buy the official one but just haven't yet

Bad smell

Well I bet you didn't expect to see me here ever again! But like a bad smell I keep wafting back.

Like a difficult run I am going to set myself small targets in my blogging life and just try to get to the next one without giving up.

• Blog at least twice a week
• Blog continually from now until Christmas, thats only 26 posts!!
• Enter a few events to give me something to aim for
• Take better pictures - wow the pictures on here are sucky! Composition chubby katie!
• Get creative in the kitchen - design a healthy receipe a week

Well I think that is enough challenges for now.

Let me briefly update you with my goings on since my last post (February). I have run a second marathon - race report to come, I have moved house. Well I guess thats about it, explains why I have not blogged much, my life has not been that interesting!

Ciao for now.

Chubby Katie

Appy days

I went for a run today. It's been a while I'm afraid. As usual my exercise comes in bursts! But today I was feeling livelier.
Anyway I'm still not that familiar with the area and if I want to do a longer run and not just go there and back on the main roads I have to plot my route first.
So today I started plotting on mapmyrun.com and I realised it has an app. Unfortunately the app doesn't seem to allow you plot a route before you leave but I guess you don't need to if you have the computer. It does however track your route using gps and tell you your speed. There are probably lots of apps that do this, including the Nike plus, but this one is free and doesn't require purchase anything extra. Of course it is also handy for me to be able to pull out my iPhone if I am not sure which way to go!
So I can tell you I ran for 34.50mins, covered 5.21km and had a pace of 6.43min/km. I know I know its not fast! But I am jousting getting back into it after some illness and some laziness.

I've been making some muesli bars recently. There are lots of recipes out there but this one suits me quite well. The basic recipe can be found here http://ohsheglows.com/2012/01/20/on-the-glow-basic-oatmeal-squares/ but I've adadpted it a little.
I use one cup of oats, blended to oat flour and then one cup of untoasted muesli. This way the the nuts and dried fruit is already included. Instead of using a banana I used half a mango cut into very small pieces. I also used honey rather than syrup as I didn't have any. They are not really sweet bars but once you get past thinking of them like usual overly sweetened shop bought bars I find they are pretty tasty.

Apologies for the less than perfect picture!

Banana lollies

I saw a thing in a magazine recently saying how good frozen bananas are. I'm a pretty big fan of bananas anyway and apparently they get sweeter when they are frozen.

I think in America they do frozen bananas but they cover them in chocolate and sprinkles and all kinds of (tasty) unhealthy stuff.

It got me thinking about making ice cream from then and putting it in those plastic lolly makers. So I blended together 2 bananas, a teaspoon of peanut butter, a few splashes of milk and some chocolate powder and heres the result. It was pretty tasty, it's worth experimenting with proportions and I might add some honey to sweeten them or some blackstrap molasses when i finally get hold of it to up my iron intake. It's a pretty tasty post run treat on a hot day :)

The old Iron issue

Iron has been something on my mind a bit for the past year. I consider myself quite a naturally tired person who needs at least 8 hours sleep every night to function properly, so my fatigue since i've stopped eating meat (well cut down significantly) hasn't caused me too much concern. Put my mum, dad, sister and me on a train for more than 20minutes and we'll all be asleep!

I probably should go to the doctor and have my iron levels tested but I tend to think if I am careful to eat things high in iron then I should be ok. So when I came across this article and recipe I took note:

http://lavamagazine.com/training/plates-not-pills-iron/#axzz1iSvEZ4oK
http://lavamagazine.com/training/recipe-iron-poppers/#axzz1gGrJgr1X

I think I have mentioned before about my reluctance to take vitamins and pills. My logic is that they mostly contain things that with a balanced diet you should get anyway, unless of course you have any specific medical conditions.

Unfortuntely I am still struggling to source any blackstrape molasses but I will let you know how I go when I get some and manage to make these babies!

Katie.x

Some piccies

Its been a while since I posted any pictures and since my healthy eating and cooking is going quite well I thought it was a good time to share some images of the recipes i've been knocking up.

Healthy falafel made from pistachios and baked rather than fried. The recipe called
chickpeas but I had borlotti beans opened so I gave them a try! I'll be making them up
using some sauces and lettuce leaves instead of pita.

Mushroom and peach burger with guacamole and home made sweet potato fries.
This was super tasty! And Micheal-Clease loved the sweet potato fries. And yes
that is a party popper left over from NYE!

I got both these recipes from another new site i've found. Its www.greenkitchenstories.com  Check it out they have lots of tasty vegetarian recipes.

I'm trying hard to source all my ingredients from small independent shops and farmers markets but it takes some work. The pistachios, for example, where rosted and salted as thats all the local grocers had. I rinsed them quickly to remove excess salt and didn't add an extra.

Yesterday Michael-Clease and I went for a long cycle ride. It was quite tough as I haven't been riding for ages and body was not used to it. We also went for a surf but the waves weren't so good. I think I still worked my shoulders though as they are aching today!

Ciao

A fresh start

Happy new year!  I'm excited about this year. Despite waking with a hangover I do feel that's it's going to be a good one.

Over the last month my health and fitness has been a little neglected. Too much wine has been drunk, too many chocolates have been eaten and I am generally looking unhealthy, feeling fatter and am pretty moody. 
Now it 2012 that's all gonna change! Theres been a lot on the new recently about new years resolutions. How unsuccessful they are. I think the statistic was something like 40% of people fail before February and 95% before the end of the year. This is why I have decided to have new year mantras. Little sayings to remind me of the way I want to be living. 

The first mantra is finish what you started. I have a number of courses and little projects hanging around waiting to be finished, this year I want get them all done and if I start something new persiver until its complete. 

 The second is be more respectful. This originally was talking about the planet and my keeness to be more green but i should use it in all aspects of my life  The green bit came about when we went to visit Michael-cleases grandparents over christmas. The live in a big rural property which has no rubbish collection. They have to find other methods of deposing of it, either putting it on the compost, incinerating it or driving it to the local rubbish dump. Putting rubbish in a bin outside our house it is easy to forget how much we through out where it ends up! My aim to be greener will involve trying buy things with less packaging, using less plastic bags and shopping around rather than at the big supermarkets (this one might not really help the environment but it's still something I'm keen to try). 

My third mantra is glow from the inside. I stole this phrase from a blog I've just discovered www.ohsheglow.com. I've decided to really concentrate on my diet this January and hopefully some of it will carry on through the rest of the year. I want to not drink alcohol, not eat meat, eat as little dairy as I can and generally eat super healthily. I also plan to get back on the exercise bandwagon!

Anyway I started my morning with quite a hangover  :( some definite healthy eating was needed! On the Oh she glows website there is a link to it's sister site Green Monster Movement. The green monster is a smoothie that uses greens such as kale or spinach so I knocked myself up one of them.  I added spinach, chia seeds, banana, soy milk and some water and whizzed it all up. It doesn't sound too tasty but as the banana has such a strong taste compared to the spinach it was actually quite tasty. 
Given my hangover that's about all I've managed today but as you can see all the plans are in place for a better me. 

Chubby Katie. X