Filed under: British Military Fitness, circuits, food, recipes, running, spinning | Tags: banana and ginger bread, banana bread, British Military Fitness, circuit training, food, Hastings, Pulse8, running, spinning, West Hampstead
I was told off this evening at British Military Fitness for not updating my blog for nearly a week. Ooops. Contrary to popular belief, I haven’t been sitting around being a lard-arse – honest.
- Friday – spinning with Matt at Pulse8. Best instructor there by a country mile, because he really uses the music to motivate the class.
- Saturday – DIY circuit training in West Hampstead. The teenagers doing community service are still painting the railings and they’ve made staggeringly little progress since last time we were there.
- Sunday – down in Hastings, a very uppy-downy four-ish mile run around the cliffs breathing in the sea air. Hard but good.
- Monday – British Military Fitness with Dan
- Tuesday – rest day
- Today – British Military Fitness with Hayley
So, rather than bore you with the finer details of those exploits, I’ll make a suggestion as to what to do with over-ripe bananas. Although I love greeny yellow young bananas, I can’t stand them when they start going brown – they actually make me want to vomit – so I frequently end up with one or two looking forlorn in the bottom of my fruit bowl. Last night I had two manky ones, and time on my hands to do some baking.
Banana and Ginger Tea Bread
- 175g self-raising flour
- 1tsp baking powder
- 40g butter or margarine
- 50g soft brown sugar
- 50g stem ginger, chopped
- 60ml milk
- 2 ripe bananas, mashed
- Preheat the oven to 180°C. Line and grease a 1lb loaf tin.
- Sift flour and baking powder into a mixing bowl. Rub in the butter/marg until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs, then stir in the sugar.
- Add the ginger, milk and mashed bananas and mix to a soft dough.
- Spoon into the tin and bake for 40-45 minutes. Run a palette knife around the edges to loosen them, turn the tea bread onto a wire rack and leave to cool.
Easy peasy. And the result went down a storm among my team-mates at work today.
Filed under: circuits | Tags: Business, Clothing, Easter, Fashion, Fashion week, London, Sainsbury, Vivienne Westwood
Haven’t been to the gym in ages what with the weather being so nice, but I decided to go yesterday morning before work for a spinning class – good to do something different with my legs, especially given that I haven’t been out on my bike since the Barmouth-Yarmouth ride at Easter. Was cross that I forgot my swimsuit for the sauna afterwards though – that’s normally my reward for getting up early.
This morning, I’m back in London for the weekend. Phil and I had a night out with friends, thanks to TopTable, at The Winter Garden restaurant at The Landmark in Marylebone. Beautiful building, lots of people-watching (we were open-mouthed at the sight of a Vivienne Westwood lookalike wafting around in lots of pink, lace and trowelled-on make-up – accompanied by four perfectly normal-looking individuals wearing jeans and t-shirts), nice food (three courses including half a bottle of wine for £30 a head). The only downer was paying £9.50 for two bottles of water. It just didn’t look like the sort of place you would order tap water, but I should have done as the bottled stuff left a rather nasty aftertaste.
Anyway, this morning we were rudely awaken at 9.30 by the Sainsbury’s delivery man, and managed to procrastinate over tea and toast for quite some time before strapping on the running shoes and jogging up to the park for a DIY circuits session. The football made another appearance, and I was given some lessons on how to kick the ball while some teenagers doing community service stared lethargically at my pathetic attempts to get the ball off the ground, instead of painting their fence. I narrowly avoided a confrontation myself when I accidentally kicked the ball directly at a buggy containing a small child. Luckily the little hood was up, so the child didn’t actually get hit, and its Dad seemed fairly unperturbed. It did make me wonder though if he would have reacted differently if it had been one of the hoodies nearby that had been responsible for the direct hit, rather than middle-class me.
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Filed under: circuits, running | Tags: ashdown forest, DIY circuits, running, winnie the pooh
I didn’t manage to get out on the bike in the end, what with being away for the weekend. Before setting off for West Sussex, we did a bit of DIY Circuits at the park round the corner. I was feeling a bit feeble after giving blood the day before, but it was good to do something for 40-odd minutes. Better than sitting around with multiple cups of tea.
After some fairly serious rough and tumble with an energetic three year-old, and five bottles of wine on Saturday evening – we felt even less like running on Sunday morning. But we did drag ourselves out for four miles or so around the beautiful Ashdown Forest, home of Winnie-The-Pooh. Didn’t even know this place existed prior to the weekend; a vast expanse of woodland and open scrubland, which is fab for walking, running and biking. Definitely intending to back for a longer weekend.
Filed under: British Military Fitness, Reading Half Marathon, X-bike, circuits, cycling, half marathon training, running | Tags: cycling, running, spinning, X-bike, BarYar, Barmouth, Yarmouth, xdream
Rather foolishly, I have agreed to a two-wheeled challenge over Easter weekend.
Along with a group of friends, I will be cycling from Barmouth to Yarmouth, the so-called BarYar Challenge. When I agreed to this, I didn’t actually realise they meant Barmouth on the west coast of Wales to Great Yarmouth in Norfolk. For those of you who weren’t listening in geography lessons, this is quite a long way: around 250 miles in three days. Yikes. Some of the BarYar group are using this as a training ride for the Land’s End to John O’Groats, and you can read about their exploits over at Girls on Cogs.
I haven’t been out on my bike yet this year- I still harbour some residual fear of cycling after last year’s little topple, and – well, call me a wimp – but it’s been a bit on the chilly/icy/wet side lately. Instead, I’ve been working on my legs in the gym and continuing with Reading Half Marathon training/British Military Fitness.
Mind you, after the Hardwick X-Stream 10k last weekend, I wasn’t fit for anything on Monday.
By Tuesday, the experience was fading to a more distant memory so I went to the gym. There, I hopped onto the Xdream (like the X-Bike spinning machines, but with an interactive screen to simulate a race on various different terrains). I did four races against my imaginary friends and won all of them. But I think this was to do with being forced to race on the “beginner” setting rather than my amazing cycling. I even fell off the imaginary bike a few times. Afterwards some lower body weights for calves, hamstrings, quads, glutes adductors and whatever the opposite of those are.
On Wednesday, I found the British Military Fitness significantly more enjoyable in the slightly warmer evening air – and even got to the end of the class thinking, “oooh, is it over already?”
Finally, I went to a spinning class this morning. The instructor Matt – who normally entertains with an eclectic selection of pop, rock and indie – put one of the manufacturer’s CDs, which guided you through the class at different tempos. It was good and I worked hard, but it was a bit soulless and not as enjoyable as Matt’s normal classes. Still, good to try something new once in a while.
So, this weekend – need to do a good run, and maybe some circuits to work the legs again.Or should I be dusting off the bike?
Spinning on Friday with Matt – featuring an eclectic selection of music including the Fratellis, The Ting Tings and Maroon 5. All good, and much more motivating that last week’s experience with the lethargic Lewis.
A freezing run on Saturday on the fringes of Hampstead Heath where single-men-minus-dogs hang out. Though not on a chilly Saturday morning in January where you wouldn’t want anything hanging out for more than a couple of minutes. Just about four miles, or maybe even less because the gardens were shut. Health and safety or something.
And DIY Circuits this morning, featuring a football. I’m working on my ball-handling skills, but it’s going to be a fairly long-term project.
Filed under: British Military Fitness, bleep test, circuits, running | Tags: bleep test, British Military Fitness, running
Already aching from yesterday’s DIY circuits session, it was with a degree of reluctance that I struggled into my tights, thermal top, windproof jacket, gloves and hat for tonight’s British Military Fitness class. I don’t know what had got into the instructors, but they were really mean.
Very quick warm-up, then straight into hill reps on a steep grassy slope about 30m long (my estimate; could be way out). At the top, we had to do press-ups facing back down the slope, sit-ups facing up the slope, and so on. Basically all designed to cause maximum pain. God knows how many reps we did, but I was seriously starting to flag, when we finally stopped for a quick water break. Ooooh, I thought, half-way – the second half always goes a bit quicker.
That thought was shortlived. Instructor #2 took over, and announced we were going to do the bleep test. BOO.
He’d sneaked out his iPod and a set of speakers in his rucksack and set up little lights to mark out the distance on one of the football pitches. And off we went. It’s fairly easy for the first few levels, then it gets really sodding difficult. Particularly when you’ve done umpteen hill reps, squats and lunges; you’re carrying several kilos more than usual in mud on the ends of your feet; and running on uneven ground. In the dark.
I got to about level 5.6. Pathetic. Particularly because I know I got to 8.7 about eighteen months ago. That was in a gym, with clean trainers. And I hadn’t done a gazillion hill reps first. And it was warm. But still. Three whole levels below where I was and I thought my lungs were going to explode…
Well done to number 19, who almost made it to level 12. He had longer legs than me though. By some considerable margin.
Filed under: GRIM Challenge, circuits, running | Tags: circuit training, GRIM Challenge, running
Phil’s ankle was sore this morning, so a run was out of the question in order for him to be in with a chance of running GRIM Challenge next weekend. I’ve got to be honest, I wasn’t too disappointed not to be doing the uphill slog for two miles to the Heath.
However, after a lush meal at tapas-style Indian Imli last night – and to be in with any kind of chance of squeezing into the glam little black number I’ve bought for the Christmas party – I had to do something today. So we did a gentle jog up to the park and then a DIY circuits session. We used trees, benches and lampposts as stations, and took turns to dictate the exercise – which we then did for a minute before moving onto the next one.
We did tricep dips, press-ups, sit-ups, burpees, lunges, squats, the plank, spotty dogs, back raises, horrid press-ups with feet up on the bench, a bit of sparring and ran backwards round the park. A man out for a jog said “well done” to us as we embarked on another set of sit-ups and some middle-aged people on their way to church looked at us as if we were insane. We managed to avoid any dog poo.
