Filed under: food, recipes | Tags: lime, Patak's Korma curry paste, prawn, prawn and lime pilau, recipe, rice
I resolved to up the recipe count on the blog not two weeks ago, and failed at the first hurdle last week when I was busy being self-absorbed. I shall correct the situation forthwith…
While I love to spend time making curries from scratch, without the aid of a pre-prepared paste, there isn’t always time after a long day at work. This recipe is a great mid-week meal, which is very quick to prepare – it took me less than half an hour to cook and eat! I found it in one of the Waitrose freebie magazines, and it’s also on the website.
Prawn and lime pilau
1 large onion, chopped
2 tbsp sunflower oil
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tbsp Patak’s Korma Curry Paste
250g basmati rice
500ml Cooks’ Ingredients Fish Stock
Grated zest and juice of 1 large lime
20g pack fresh coriander 200g Indonesian cooked, peeled prawns
[I halved everything on this list except the prawns, and that made enough for two as it's quite filling.]
- Gently fry the onion in the oil for 4-5 minutes. Add the garlic and curry paste. Stir for a further minute, then add the rice and mix well.
- Pour in the stock, add the lime zest. Season, then cover the pan. Simmer gently until the stock is absorbed and the rice cooked.
- Stir in coriander, lime juice and prawns. Warm through and season.
Image from www.waitrose.com
Filed under: food, recipes | Tags: BBC Good Food, breakfast, Dorset Cereals, food, granola, recipe
I’ve decided I don’t write about food enough on this blog. Food, as anyone who knows me will testify, is a subject very close to my heart. I am pretty much always thinking about my next meal, get exceptionally grumpy when I’m hungry, and just do not understand people who “forget” to eat lunch. I love cooking, especially for other people, and am happiest pottering about in my kitchen. If I didn’t work in PR, I’d run a tea shop supplying lots of Yorkshire tea, home-made cakes and other yummy snackage.
I am not, it has to be said, particularly creative in the kitchen though. I rarely make up my own recipes, but scour newspapers and magazines for ideas to steal, some of which I adapt as I go along.
So, I’m going to try to share at least one recipe per week, referenced accordingly and with my notes. This week: home-made granola, which comes courtesy from the BBC Good Food site. I discovered this recipe when I realised Dorset Cereals granola costs over £4 a pop and I can easily go down a whole box in a week. By myself.
Good-for-you granola
- 2 tbsp vegetable oil
- 125ml maple syrup
- 2 tbsp honey
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- I also add a couple of teaspoons of spice – e.g. cinnamon, ginger, mixed spice
- 300g rolled oats (I like the jumbo ones that come in big bags in Sainsburys or Waitrose)
- 50g sunflower seeds
- 4 tbsp sesame seeds (I halve this amount, as the end result can be a bit “bitty”)
- 50g pumpkin seeds
- 100g flaked almonds
- 100g dried berries (sultanas work fine)
- 50g coconuts flakes or desiccated coconut (I halve this amount as above)
- Heat oven to 150C/fan 130C/gas 2. Mix the oil, maple syrup, honey and vanilla and spices in a large bowl. Tip in all the remaining ingredients, except the dried fruit and coconut, and mix well.
- Tip the granola onto two baking sheets and spread evenly. Bake for 15 mins, then mix in the coconut and dried fruit, and bake for 10-15 mins more. (I add the fruit right at the end, so as to avoid it drying out). Remove and scrape onto a flat tray to cool. Serve with cold milk or yogurt. The granola can be stored in an airtight container for up to a month (Ha!! like it’s going to last that long).
The end result is incredibly moreish. In fact, the boyfriend pronounced it “better than Dorset Cereals”. Praise indeed.
I did work out the cost, and it came out at around £4 to make 750g. Not that much cheaper than Dorset Cereals then, unless you have a good discount health food store nearby. Which I don’t, that I’m aware of. However, it is very filling – 750g equates to about ten portions (with milk) for breakfast, and staves off the hunger pangs until lunchtime which is nothing short of miraculous. It’s also rather marvellous with fresh fruit and yoghurt as a snack or pudding.
Filed under: food, recipes | Tags: Anna del Conte, food, marmite, Nigella Lawson, pasta
Me on the phone to the boyf this evening (we do talk about food a lot so this is a normal conversation, up to a point):
P: “I’m stuffed – just had round two of the soup I made last night.”
Me: “Nice – I had pasta and marmite.”
P: “Sorry?”
Me: I had pasta and marmite.”
P: “What, together?”
Me: “Yep.”
P: “What were you THINKING?”
Well, what I was thinking when I walked in the door at 8.25pm after British Military Fitness was that I was bloody hungry and I needed to eat within five minutes or I was going to kill someone. I had some fresh pasta, but only root veg which take a flipping age to cook. And I don’t buy ready-meals because I think they’re evil. Then fortunately I remembered reading something by the slight-irritating-but-undeniably-talented Nigella Lawson, recalling a recipe invented by her friend Anna del Conte, the lady she calls the “cook who changed my life”. And this lady used to cook spaghetti with marmite for her Italian-English kids when they were growing up – kind-of based a bit on the Italian habit of using the leftover roast stock a day later as the basis of a pasta sauce.
So, here it is (this is enough for one person). Try it, please…
fresh or dried pasta
25g butter
half to a whole teaspoon of marmite – depending on how much you like marmite. I used half, but will use a bit more next time
parmesan cheese
Cook the pasta according to the instructions on the pack. In a separate pan, melt the butter, add the marmite and a tablespoon of the pasta water. Drain the pasta, and mix into the sauce. Serve, with lots of grated parmesan all over the top.
Ready in five minutes flat. No need for an evil ready-meal. Life sentence for murder averted.
Filed under: food, walking | Tags: Beacon Cottage campsite, Cardiff, Millennium Stadium, Perranporth, Porthtowan, Portreath, South West Coast Path, St Agnes, U2, walking
My parents have taken on an almighty challenge since my Dad retired, and that’s to walk the complete South West Coast Path from Minehead in Devon to Poole Harbour in Dorset – 630 miles of coastal paths in total. They’re doing it in chunks of about eight to ten days, twice a year.
I’ve only seen tiny bits of the Path when I’ve been in Devon and Cornwall so, in preparation for our “proper” holiday trekking around Morocco’s High Atlas mountains later this year, Phil and I decided to spend a few days down in Pastyland. We stayed at a lovely campsite near St Agnes – the Beacon Cottage Farm campsite, complete with chickens. I was probably more excited about the mother hen and her four chicks being let out of their coop each morning than the children on the site.
Chickens at Beacon Cottage campsite
We managed two reasonable walks – one from Perranporth to St Agnes; the other from St Agnes to Portreath and back to Porthtowan (where we got on the bus back to St Agnes). On the third day, the weather was a bit gruesome, so we pottered around the galleries in St Ives (nice) and the Tate (complete crap – don’t bother), and did just a short stroll for an hour or two towards Zennor. It actually took 45 minutes to escape St Ives without a map, so that really was only a cursory attempt to walk off the lunchtime Cornish pasty.
Chapel Porth beach overlooked by Wheal Coates
Anyway, big round of applause to Noddy and Big Ears (my Mum and Dad), as the walking is quite strenuous in places – particularly up and down the steep steps between Porthtowan and Portreath! Still, it has the effect of making you feel like you deserve the Cornish pasties (the best ones we had were from the little bakery in St Agnes), ice cream, wild blackberries snatched from bushes along the way, sausages from the local butcher BBQ’d next to the tent, wine, port and a really quite lovely meal at The Railway Inn one night…
During the course of our stay, I pondered why everyone tells you to steer clear of Cornwall in August. The trip down mid-week was fine, the Coast Path was deserted in places and the campsite showers were always hot.
Then we tried to leave.
Oh. My. God. Evidently, everyone in Cornwall was trying to do the same thing, and the A3o was jammed. So was the M5. And the M4, as we turned left towards the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff for the U2 gig on Saturday night.
It took seven and a half flipping hours to get from St Agnes to Cardiff.
Then we couldn’t get out of Cardiff. Two and a half hours it took to get moving on the M4. By that time, my eyes had stopped working and I couldn’t focus on the road. Into Cardiff Services we went, so I could have a snooze. Forty minutes later, and I’d recharged my batteries sufficiently to get back home.
All credit to Phil for staying awake for the whole twelve and a half hour journey, using his Blackberry to establish a fairly creative route into Cardiff via Newport docks (without which we would have surely missed our date with Bono and co.) and never losing his rag – not even when I hit the steering wheel in sheer frustration and nearly cried with tiredness.
U2 were good though.
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: food, recipes, running | Tags: peanut butter, peanut butter recipes, skippy super chunk, what to do with peanut butter
Peanut butter is one of my most favourite foods. I get colossal jars of Skippy Super Chunk (the best peanut butter in the world) from Costco.
The best peanut butter in the world (source: Amazon.com)
Aside from eating it straight from the jar with a tablespoon, peanut butter is a very versatile foodstuff. Here are my top five peanut butter recipes:
1. Spread peanut butter thickly on granary/multiseed toast. A no-brainer. Fantastic carb/protein boost after a run. Can be a bit heavy on the tummy before a run though.
2. Pop a tablespoon of peanut butter into a blender and whizz it up with a banana, a good dollop of natural yoghurt and milk. A good pre-run energy smoothie that beats the living daylights out of Lucozade.
3. Spread peanut butter on think sliced, untoasted bread, and add green salad (leaves of any kind – I rather like peashoots at this time of year but lettuce, rocket, watercress all works. Cucumber is good too) for an interesting sandwich. It took me a long time to try this speciality of Phil’s, but it is lovely and there is a Facebook group to prove it. OK, it’s only got nine members at the moment, but I think more will join if only they would try this delicacy.
4. If you’re coping with the salad thing, try it on toast again, this time with marmite underneath. It shouldn’t work. But it really really does. I used to eat this at my old job where I frequently worked until 8-9pm and needed something early evening to sustain me until I got home for dinner.
5. Use as the basis of satay sauce – mix a couple of tablespoons with sesame oil, garlic, ginger, chili, lemon juice, soy sauce and honey. Add chunks of chicken breast and leave to marinade, ideally overnight. Grill chicken on skewers and serve with rice and/or salad. Thanks to my friend Emma for this recipe.
I’m looking for a peanut butter ice cream recipe now for a good reason to dust off my ice cream maker.
Filed under: British Military Fitness, food, running | Tags: diet plan, food, irunbecauseilovefood, running
British Military Fitness was so hard tonight, I can barely bear to blog about it. Not sure my legs had recovered from Monday, and it was Johnny again tonight with more hill sprints. I felt sick for the duration of the class.
So onto an alternative subject that is close to my heart: food. More accurately, how to lose weight and still have enough energy for exercise. The Fat Runner has set himself a challenge to lose 6kg in three weeks – a tough one for anyone, but he’s making some progress. Tonight, he asks whether his eating habits would work for other runners.
I love food. Obviously. But I also have a natural propensity to put on weight – my Mum was very overweight for years after having me and my brother – to the point that she joined Slimming World and lost more than four stone. She’s kept the weight off for more than ten years too, but still has to be quite disciplined about what she eats.
I hate diets. For me, maintaining my weight (under 10 stone, and preferably a bit nearer to 9 and a half stone – I’m only 5′4″) means finding the right balance between eating and exercising. I’d crept up to around 10 stone 5 in the New Year, so I wanted to lose a few pounds.
FatRunner thinks the following basic principles make sense:
1) Lots of water – your cells need it, and your liver needs it (and as your liver controls insulin, sugar metabolism and fat storage, it’s a good idea to keep him happy)
2) Not too much alcohol – lots of calories, dehydrates your liver (and makes him unhappy) and makes doner kebabs too appealing to resist
3) Lots of vegetables – generally low calories, and packed with minerals and vitamins and stuff
4) Restrict carbs other than for breakfast – not for any special reason other than (i) they are packed with calories which you probably don’t need at any time other than breakfast, and (ii) when I eat carbs at lunchtime, I feel sleepy in the afternoon
5) Restrict chemicals (processed foods, any drink which isn’t water, tea, or fresh fruit juice) – I’m not saying here that it’s impossible for our bodies to deal with chemicals (as some diets try to say) but that they need to be filtered out someway, which puts more pressure on the liver.
I’m totally in agreement with lots of water, not too much alcohol, lots of vegetables (I would add lots of fruit to that – bananas, raspberries and blueberries for snacking are staples on my shopping list). I’m not too sure about the idea of restricting carbs after breakfast. I feel I need carbs at lunchtime, especially if I’m exercising in the evening. I have gone through phases of cutting out carbs in evening meals, but not seen a dramatic effect in terms of weight loss.
As for chemicals, not sure exactly what FatRunner means here, but I do avoid ready-meals (which are evil) and – where possible – pre-prepared sandwiches and so on. The fat and salt content is absolutely unbelievable, and it’s all the more obvious now that most supermarkets have deployed the traffic light system on packaging.
FatRunner also mentions the following, as areas he doesn’t have an opinion on:
1) Red meat, white meat or fish? No idea. Fish is meant to be good for you but full of pollutants and/or unsustainable. White meat is lower in fat than red, but has less nutrients such as iron. Red tends to have a bit more fat. So I generally eat a mixture
2) Small meals throughout the day, or three standard meals? I always bought the ’small meals keeps your metabolism ramped up’ argument, but I’m not so sure… And apparently new research suggests it’s not true.
I eat loads of fish and avoid meat during the week (though I’m a sucker for a bacon sandwich or a steak at the weekend). And I’m more of a three-square-meals-and-some-snacks kind of a girl, than a “grazer”.
I’ve lost around half a stone since Christmas, and my typical daily food quota looks like this (I’d love to see it in the tube on Supersize/Superskinny).
Cup of tea
Breakfast: a big bowl of muesli
More tea
Snack at around 11am: Some fruit (banana or a big handful of berries)
More tea (and maybe a milky coffee around 11 if I’m flagging)
Lunch between 1-2pm: couple of wraps with avocado/salad, or cheese/tomato. Cheese is a bit of a weakness, but I try not to have it every day. Low-fat yoghurt.
More tea
Snack at 4pm: my energy levels plummet at this time (seemingly regardless of what I eat) and I’m extremely susceptible to the temptations of cake. So I take a little box of dried fruit and nuts (not a massive bag, otherwise I’d eat the whole lot). This is a relatively new addition to my daily food intake, and I think it’s really helping to overcome the I-need-cake-now-otherwise-I’m-going-to-hit-someone feeling that arrives like clockwork every day.
Erm, maybe one more cup of tea – and another banana if I’m exercising in the evening
Dinner between 7-8.30pm: typically pasta/homemade vegetable sauce, fish/salad, couscous/prawns, etc. Another yoghurt.
Evening snack: more of a habit than an actual need for food, but I always have some chocolate in. Sometimes I can get away with a little snack-sized bar; other times I eat half a bar of Green and Blacks. Or a whole Easter egg, on one recent occasion.
I might also have a cup of ginger tea with honey before bed, but no more caffeine.
Oooh, and plenty of water throughout the day – at least three or four pints; more if I’ve exercised before work.
Is that a lot? Not sure – but it seems to be working for me, at least in terms of maintaining a healthy weight and losing the odd pound here and there.
Obviously any semblance of a healthy existence goes completely out of the window at the weekends, when I eat more or less what I like. A (large) gin and tonic and half a bottle of wine with a curry (albeit homemade) on a Friday, bacon sarnie after a run on Saturday morning, hot chocolate and cake at Paul if I’m in town, more wine and another naughty meal on Saturday (I don’t hold back on the starters and desserts when out at restaurants)…the list just goes on and on.
Ah well, nobody can be good all of the time…
That’s according to the Telegraph’s article this weekend, which features this little blog in an article entitled “Wellbeing on the web“:
irunbecauseilovefood.wordpress.com
One man’s challenge to maintain sizeable lunch portions while competing in long distance races. Follow our hero’s brave rearguard action against the spare tyre in this rare health blog that speaks the language of the noughties bloke: “I love food, but I don’t want to turn into a bloater.”
Regular readers will know that I’m thirtysomething girlie girl – but it would seem I write like a bloke. Ah well, I can live with that.
Welcome to all new readers. I’m not sure the blog warrants the attention, but I hope you enjoy what you see and come back for more.
People sometimes ask what I mean when I say I work for a PR agency. Well, this is an account of my day…
06:00 Alarm goes off, hit snooze.
06:10 Alarm goes off again, hit snooze.
06:20 Alarm goes off for the third time. Decide I’d better get up.
06:22 Have shower in the dark (extractor fan linked to light making a terrible racket that I can’t cope with at that hour of the day).
07:10 Leave flat, walk to station with overnight bag, laptop bag and handbag. Discover short-cut alleyway is closed; have to run round to main entrance with overnight bag, laptop bag and handbag to get ticket in time to get train to Reading.
07:40 Eat cinnamon and raisin bagel with Skippy peanut butter (undoubtedly a high point of the day).
08:10 Board train to The North.
08:25 About ready to chuck newly purchased Vodafone “dongle” onto the tracks. It doesn’t work in transit.
09:30 Receive call from office to tell me 4pm new biz meeting in Manchester is cancelled. Panic about hotel booking. Turns out it can be cancelled before 4pm. Phew.
09:55 Have another go with dongle. Get a glimmer of hope around Birmingham New Street.
10:10 Give up with dongle.
11:11 Arrive in Macclesfield. It’s a hell hole.
11:15 Get in taxi with whingy driver.
11:30 Arrive at supplier’s office.
11:32 Am told the person I have come to see is off sick. And has been all week.
11:40 Various people bustle around trying to look like they’re doing something, but actually they just don’t know what to say to me.
11:45 A chocolate teapot takes me to boardroom.
11:50 Someone looking like they might know what they’re doing arrives. Chocolate teapot shuffles off. Have reasonably productive meeting. Hurrah.
14:30 Leave supplier’s office, and get same whingy cab driver to pick me up to take me back to Macclesfield station.
14:50 Arrive at Macclesfield station to see the Reading train pulling out of the station. There isn’t another one for an hour.
14:52 Realise I haven’t had lunch and I’m really really hungry.
14:55 Walk up big hill with overnight bag, laptop bag and handbag – loudly complaining about The North to a colleague at the office. Finally see salvation in the form of Costa Coffe.
15:00 Eat chicken flatbread thing, and naughty slice of raspberry and almond slice (another high point).
15:35 Amble back down the hill with overnight bag, laptop bag and handbag.
15:49 Board train to Reading.
15:55 Get quite irate with the dongle again.
16:10 Find myself sharing airspace with far too many people for one Virgin train, including a man snoring so loudly he wakes up other passengers; numerous people sharing their terrible taste in music with the rest of the carriage, a man ranting down his mobile about having to attend FIVE meetings in TEN days. Feel quite claustrophobic.
16:15 Have another go with the dongle. It still doesn’t work. Woman practically sits on my laptop. I give up and put it away.
16:50 Fall asleep.
17:20 Jump out of my seat as woman-next-door’s mobile goes off at many decibels.
17:45 Try to find the buffet car to get a drink.
17:48 Give up, because there are too many people to make it to the end of the carriage where I suspect the buffet car is.
18:00 Huff and puff quite a lot. Send some text messages. Still only at Oxford.
18: 40 Arrive in Reading.
18:48 Get train back to my station.
18:55 Walk home, still trailing overnight bag, laptop bag and handbag.
19:30 Finally start some proper work while dinner cooks.
20:00 Eat plate of salmon and roasted vegetables.
20:10 Eat half a bar of Green and Black’s butterscotch.
20:15 Go back to proper work.
21:00 Write various blogs.
21:41 Think about going to gym in the morning.
21:42 Decide I’ll definitely go to the gym in the morning, given the levels of bagel, almond slice and chocolate consumption.
Night night.
Filed under: 10k, Reading Half Marathon, food, half marathon training, running | Tags: 10k, Aylesbury, cross-country, food, hardwick x-stream, mud
It hasn’t been too good a week for exercise, blogging or sleep – mainly because I over-committed myself seeing various friends on consecutive nights then attended the bizarre Reading Twestival another evening. As a consequence I haven’t been the nicest person to spend time with this weekend. In fact, I’ve been Little Miss Grumpy.
My mood was not lifted by Carter’s ski shop in Reading yesterday. Having dropped off my skis to be serviced there nearly four weeks ago, I finally had a call to say they were ready for collection and duly went to get them. As I went to hand over the £25 that had been quoted when I dropped them off, then saw a note taped to the top of one ski saying, “couldn’t service – too much wax – would of [sic] ruined machine – £8″. The elderly man behind the counter looked thoroughly confused, as did I, and called someone else for assistance. It transpired that whatever dimwit had been brought in to service the bloody things hadn’t: 1) bothered to do the job that was asked (AKA full service, due to skis being unused for two years, having rusty edges and various scrapes on the base; or 2) had the bright idea to call me to tell me this. Why the f’ing hell they couldn’t manually remove the wax and do their job properly is beyond me. With less than three weeks to go before I depart for my trip, there’s very little I can do about it. Some wax has been dribbled across them, but the edges are still rusty. Luckily I can’t ski very well, so it probably won’t make much difference. I won’t be going back to Carter’s.
Nonetheless, after a very nice Valentine’s dinner yesterday evening and a good night’s sleep – I was actually looking forward to the Hardwick X-Stream this morning. It promised to be a cross-country 10k that would just about keep us on track in terms of training for the Reading Half at the end of March. An August race organised by the same team last year had a stonking 95% approval rating on Runner’s World, so expectations were high.
We arrived in the little village of Hardwick, north of Aylesbury, in good time, to find runners parking cars along roads, in front of driveways and on verges. The locals looked less than amused with this influx of scantily clad freaks. We were directed by marshalls towards a car park at the bottom of the village – which turned out to be in a farmyard, complete with horses, cows and quite a lot of shit.
Undeterred, and vaguely amused, we ambled along to the “Race HQ” at the village hall to go to the loos – all three of them – which involved a 15-minute wait. There were lots of very fit-looking club runners decked out in trail shoes, club vests, shorts and very little else. I had a feeling we weren’t going to put in a terrific performance compared to this lot.
The start line was in a field, with an open gazebo for baggage and a St John’s Ambulance Land Rover, which served us well as a windbreak. I was rapidly losing enthusiasm for the run and that was before a marshall announced there would be a ten-minute delay. Presumably to wait for all the people still queueing for the loo.
Finally, we were off – out of the field and straight into a muddy ditch…where several people lost their shoes. The course skirted around numerous fields, filled with a sticky mud that just stuck to the bottom of your shoes in massive clumps, and made the water crossings almost a relief to jump into because you could get shot of some of the mud. My legs felt like lead pretty much from start to finish and I fell several times along the way as my tired limbs failed to keep me from slipping and sliding to the ground. Although the marshalls were numerous and friendly, there were no mile/km markers and no water stops – so it felt like a very long race. We crossed the line, with only six people behind us – something like 243rd and 244th in a field of 250.
But that wasn’t the end of the story, of course: we had to go back to the car and somehow get changed into clean clothes while standing on a carpet of cowpats and horse manure. That’s when it occurred to me that the people parked on the grassy verges with the icy remnants of last weekend’s snowfall had the right idea all along.
I’ve calmed down now, after two massive sandwiches, much tea, a long hot bath and some homemade (I owed P an apology for my bad mood) banana and pecan muffins. And I do feel as though I’ve done a good run today – but my knees especially estimate the distance at about 10 miles, not 10k. I do wonder what the summer race is like – but I’m not sure I’m going to be brave enough to find out.
