a week in review

What a busy week last week was!  In the tradition of more random than random posts here on Skinny Latte Strikes Back (!), here's a few snippets of what we got up to:

Hubs and I went to Wholefoods, one of my favourite shops in all of London - it is a foodie's paradise!  We got a few treats - Tom was delighted to see his favourite salt-and-sweet popcorn in stock again, and I was just wandering around openmouthed at everything :)  Got a few staples - quinoa, sprouts, fresh khobz - and a few treaty things that looked appealing.  Not all of my purchases in this picture were winners - lime & sea salt chocolate just didn't do it for me sadly, and the chocolate peanut butter does not taste of chocolate at all (!) but one never, ever goes wrong with Korean Chilli Rice Crackers.  That, my friends, is success! 

A few months ago my work awarded me £100 in vouchers of my choice for apparently going above and beyond :) I gratefully applied for Amazon vouchers, and this week my bounty arrived!!!  Cookbooks are still one of my most favourite things in the world and cosying up with one of them and a cup of tea on a rainy afternoon is a lovely treat.....especially if I've pounded out 14km :)  And do you see a few running books on the pile there?  I started reading The London Marathon last night and I'm not sure it was the best choice for bedtime reading....it has started hitting home what an enormous thing I am doing!!

Went to GBK before going to the Barbican for the theatre on Tuesday.  I decided for a change to try one of their salads, but was very disappointed and glanced enviously at Tom's puy lentil burger for the entire meal, eventually leaving the cold, unseasoned butternut squash to its fate.  Lesson learned: if you're in GBK, just get a bloody burger Phil, it's not the end of the world!  

Coming back from my terrifying interval training sequence on Friday to find Boofle in the hallway, with a note and video message from my Tom.  He is so sweet :) 

Speaking of interval training - damn hard, people!  It began with a warmup which was easy enough, and lulled me into a false sense of security!  Did my stretches at Anita's bench in the park (a bench that I always go to, it's dedicated to a lady called Anita) and then it was interval time.  I had to run  1km in 5 minutes......10 times. It sounds easy enough, but I really had to watch the pace.  My natural style is to start slow, then build up, then drop back.  I had to learn what 1km in 5 minutes feels like (not flat out, but not slow either!) and really work hard to maintain that pace for the entire time.  Sometimes holding my abs in helped, as if pulling my stomach in would freeze my legs in their present running speed!  And I was pleased to discover that1km actually isn't that far.  I loved hearing the voice of the Nike+ lady voice say "halfway point!" and only 2 and a half minutes had gone by.  The first 4 intervals I was so close, just 2 seconds over.  The fifth and sixth I nailed it, and I whooped with joy, much to the amusement of the people around me!  Heh heh.  After that it got a lot harder, and the final interval was nearly 30 seconds slower than I should have been, but my coach Julia told me that regardless of what happened timewise I just had to finish the workout....and I did :)

After a lengthy Twitter discussion about what to do with my newly purchased fresh figs, I had some in porridge, with coconut yoghurt and berries.  A good thing I took a photo of it, as the memory of eating it is very brief :)

Today, after doing my long run (2 x 40 minutes with a 10 minute walking break), I made us a proper Sunday lunch!  Tom said he felt like a kid again, or like it was Christmas!  I must do us a proper Sunday lunch more often.  We walked up in the drizzle to Sainsbury's to get a sheet of pastry, the only thing I didn't have.  I made us a mushroom, walnut, spinach and pesto parcel each, served with roast sprouts and potatoes, and a rather demure cauliflower cheese.  I used to hate sprouts when I lived in Australia, but I love them now.  Also had an unpictured glass of chardonnay.  Marathon training has really made me notice how easy it is to have a drink with everything!  I allow myself to drink the nights before rest days, which are Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.  I figured one glass at lunch time won't kill me, but we'll find out tomorrow.....when I have to do uphill strides!!!

This week sees me starting video blogging (they'll be up on Lucozade's site, I'll let you know the links), planning Podcast No.2, and running a half marathon on Sunday!  I remember how overwhelming the build-up was to my first half, but right now I'm not freaking out about it at all.  Coach has told me to see it as a training run, not a race, and that's definitely helped the mindset.  This may all change come Saturday night though ;)

On that note, I'd better get an early night, peoples!

Hope you all have a lovely week!

before and after

Hello friends!  How was your weekend?  For your Sunday night viewing pleasure, allow me to show you a few before and after photos.

Friday, my pantry:

It had looked like this for months - I didn't even know what was in there any more!!  I just kept buying more stuff at the supermarket every week, and shoving it in on top of what was already there, never thinking that maybe if I sorted out what was already in there things might be easier!

Thirty minutes later:

Not a lot of effort, as it turned out, and look how good it looks now!  Went grocery shopping afterwards and only bought what I needed, saving about £15 in the process, whoo hoo!

And it turned out I had 3 jars of peanut butter.

Saturday, I had a haircut:

Before...obviously!  Hadn't even brushed it!

Afterwards!  Blonder!  Planning to go platinum for the big 30...but we'll see ;)

And now, a trip into the archives.  Who could forget this before photo:

This was me in March 2005.  Holding a cookie dough cheesecake, the most significant accomplishment in my life up to that point.  I was 23 in this picture.  I look about 10 years older than that!

This was me, yesterday:

Still here after five years at goal, going strong, finding new goals to kick.  Training for a marathon, fitter than I have ever been.  Life is far from perfect, I assure you, but I just have happier and healthier ways of dealing with things.  I can't remember the last time I made a cheesecake :)

Do you know what all these before and afters have in common?

Between each before photo and every after photo, there was a choice.

A choice to leave the pantry in its messy, disorganised state so I would continue wasting money by buying stuff I didn't need and wasting food by not storing it properly, or spend half an hour tidying it up to make life a bit easier and to feel good about having one corner of this tiny flat that isn't a pig sty :)

A choice to let my tiger stripe get bigger, my split ends split even more, and continue feeling a bit manky in general, or to mosey along to the hairdressers, freshen everything up and feel fabulous.

And as for the last two photos, well, I still had a choice.  Did I want to keep living a life I was so tired of, where I was bored, bitter, fed up and desperate to be healthy and attractive?  Or did I want to do something about it?  Did I want to end up where I was headed, or did I want to find out who I really was and what I wanted to do with my life?

Eventually it got to the point where there was only one answer!  It took a bit longer than cleaning out the pantry or getting a full head of blonde foils, but I got there, and have stayed there.

It can be as simple as cleaning out a cupboard, getting a haircut, walking to work instead of catching the bus......little choices, a little bit of effort, done continuously....and before you know it, you'll be getting up at 6am to train for a marathon :P (I never saw that coming!)

Every philosopher, poet and songwriter in the world has said it, and it's true.  Lots of little things turn into something enormous in the end.  The power to go from before to after is yours! :)

red wine on a friday night

Original artist unknown, but found via fitterthanchoc

Isn't Emerson fantastic?

He always knows the right things to say.

Sore and tired from marathon training, but highly pumped. Haven't felt this fit in a long time. I'm doing 10k before breakfast!! I never used to be able to run on an empty stomach! Today I ran intervals - I had to run 1km in 5 minutes, 10 times! Sounds easy but it really wasn't!! Sore now, but the bottle of Mad Fish shiraz in the wine rack that is waiting to be opened when Tom gets home will make it easier. YAY for Friday nights - when I can have a drink!! :D

Novel has stalled a little, but I have remedied that by forcing myself to Starbucks at the end of the working day, as per the routine I had going late last year. It's working! Happily into Part 2 now, where things are starting to fall into place for the character. There will be a few more hurdles for her, but I'm having fun deciding what those will be.

Jody Hedlund had an excellent post over at her blog the other day that really made me think. I don't know whether this novel I'm writing right now is any good or whether it will ever have a life outside of my little netbook and the one or two PDFs I've sent to some brave friends - I only know that not writing it is not an option.

How are you all doing?

the winner takes it all

Thank you to everyone who entered my Hazel Courteney book giveaway!  I wish I had something for each of you.  Please be assured I'll do more of this kind of thing in future, it's been lovely to hear from so many of you :)  And I hope you'll continue to enjoy the podcast in the meantime, until the next edition!

But there can only be one winner, so I recruited the services of the impartial Mr Latte:

That is my lucky cap - the one I wore when I ran my first half marathon in August 2009!

Picking......

And who is it.....?

Congratulations Amelia!!

ice cream for breakfast

Well, it was actually a smoothie, but it tasted like ice cream!!

While the days of leftover sticky date pudding for breakfast are well and truly behind me (I wish I was joking about that but sadly not!), breakfast continues to be one of the most delicious meals of the day for me and one I look forward to every single morning.  I especially love it on weekends when I can take my time a bit more.  I'm already dreaming of tomorrow's - there's a block of haloumi in the fridge with my name on it.  (Seriously).  

And even though my choices are far better than they used to be, I still use food to motivate myself sometimes (some things never change!).  During this morning's killer training session (5km warmup, strides and a timed 3km where I had to go as fast as I could - I wanted to keel over!!!) I kept telling myself I had a yummy smoothie to look forward to!  Whatever gets you through it, I say ;)

This made ample for 2 starving people - one who had just proven to herself that she is not much of a sprinter and had subjected central London to whimpers of agony in the process, and the other with a very fast metabolism!  If you have a small food processor or blender, or only want a glass, I'd halve the quantities as you might end up with a mess!

Phil Me Up Smoothie

• 4 small bananas, frozen overnight
• 1 cup frozen cherries (or any other fresh or frozen fruit)
• 1 cup baby spinach (it was probably a bit less than this for me, I was using up the last dregs of a bag)
• 2 scoops protein powder (I used Lucozade's Recovery Powder in Tropical flavour but you could use any flavour I think!)
• Oat milk (or other milk), to taste (depends how thick you would like it)

Put the whole lot in a food processor and whizz until bananas are thoroughly chopped, everything is combined and the mixture is light, airy and gloopy!!

You could put fruit, granola or muesli on top to eat it like yoghurt (or ice cream! Ha ha!) because the protein powder and bananas turn it so thick and airy!!  

I wouldn't have thought so, but this filled me up and it's nearly 2pm and I'm only just about to have lunch!

What's your favourite smoothie?

****

Don't forget, I'll be drawing a winner of the Hazel Courteney book giveaway tonight! 
You've got until 6pm GMT!  Get cracking!!

accomplishment =

completing training run (9.2km in 50 minutes) without injuring self

+

not falling asleep during very boring meeting

+

writing 2000 words of novel in very noisy Starbucks

+

only drinking on the night before rest day


Oh man, is it Friday yet?  I am TIRED :)

an interruption

Hi everyone - just a quick one to let you know that my podcast host server is at full capacity so the podcast won't play for you at the moment!  Very sorry about this - I am sorting it out!  Resuming normal service shortly!

UPDATE: Fixed now!!! :) 

checking in

It wasn't a dream!!  Eeeek!

Hi guys!!  First of all, a huge thank you for the comments and feedback on the podcast! I was especially pleased to hear from people who commented for the first time!  I'm so pleased you liked it! I'm going to do more, and some of the ideas I've been given for future topics are great, so please keep them coming!!

It's not too late to enter the giveaway, it closes this Friday 18th February. Please make sure you leave your email address somewhere so I can contact you!

****

It's been a busy week, getting back into the swing of normal life after a mostly horizontal honeymoon.  I got back into the training in earnest, and needed to don a hat and gloves for the morning runs again for the first few days!!  It seems to have warmed up a tiny bit since then.  I love winter sun.

Friday's running:

20 min run at warm up pace
5 min stretches
10 x 100 metre strides (running/sprinting at 70-80%)
4 x 2km runs at medium pace, followed by a 500 metre walk to catch breath/rest in between each one

I was BEAT!!!

Saturday: rest day.

Hubby and I slept in, chatted to my mate Cilla on Skype (so much fun!), and then we went and did a bit of shopping. I say, a BIT:

We got each other a few Valentine's treats!  Tom got me Run Fat Boy Run!!  I treated myself to my favourite L'Occitane shower gel - the one I'm only allowed to use after I run (to make it last longer because it's so expensive!) and a new shower puff as my other one was getting a bit mouldy.

I got Tom some Coral - the local beer we drank while we were in Madeira, which we discovered we can buy at a Portuguese deli near us! - and a Blu Ray which I had to order off Amazon (I think he got it today!  I love surprising him).

I also splurged on some new yummy teas from Whittard - cinnamon chai, English Rose and Breakfast Earl Grey.

On Saturday night we went to a friend's 30th on the way to see The King's Speech at the Renoir. I had my long run the next day so wasn't drinking. My friend's jaw dropped when she saw a mineral water in front of me, instead of my usual Porn Star Martini.

"Are you pregnant?!" she squealed excitedly.

Well, you can see how she came to that conclusion - newly married, nearly 30, not drinking, what would you assume...?! ha ha.

"No, just got a long run tomorrow and don't want to be hungover!" was my reply!

Sunday's long run was great - well, for the first 40 minutes I was a bit uncomfortable and grumpy, thinking I might as well have got drunk the night before for all the good abstinence was doing me!  But when I looked at the iPod and it said I had done nearly 9km in 50 minutes, I thought to myself....hmmm, wouldn't it be nice to get a 10k PB!!


So I ran myself out of the funk and ended up doing 10k in 54 minutes 28 seconds!!  Four minutes faster than three weeks ago!!!

Work out stats all up (I slowed down a lot after the PB! ha ha!) :

If you run, what is your power song?  Mine at the moment is "Toss the Feathers" by The Corrs!  I never would have thought it would be a good running song, but it has so much energy!  I'd love to hear your suggestions for power songs!

Tom has put together a training playlist for me that is eventually going to morph into a six or seven hour long playlist for the big day.  He has lots of funny songs on there, including a megamix he put together from the closing credits of the movie Planes, Trains and Automobiles.  It's so funny!!

Yesterday morning I was up bright and early for training - still a bit of a struggle to get up with the alarm, but I'm managing!  The park is starting to come alive with the first signs of spring, and as I run past I catch the whiff of sweet blossoms, and can see snowdrops and crocuses bursting forth from the ground.  I never used to love the spring the way I do now!  I had to do a timed run - 1 kilometre - and I had to run it as fast as I could, I managed to do it in 4 minutes and 57 seconds.  Silly person with a dog was distracting me!!

Had some yoghurt, cereal and blueberries for breakfast, and walked to work in the sunshine.  Arrived at work to find two Valentine's Day packages - one from Tom:

And one from my friends at Lucozade! (well, I don't think it was for Valentine's Day but they timed it very well! ha ha!):

I've got Sport Lite (how did they know my favourite flavour is Summer Berries?), gels, energy bars, recovery bars, beans, and two flavours of carbohydrate/electrolyte powder!  Yummo!  Thanks Lucozade!  I'm already a big fan of the drinks, but am a bit of a gel virgin so it will be interesting to see how I go with those!

Tom came home with his arms full of tulips and we had a yummy dinner of risotto, with our favourite New Zealand Pinot Noir (rest day today!!).  I also drew him a little card:

Do any of you play Word Weaver on the iPhone?  I sketched the little monster from that ;)

And so today has been a rest day, but even with 8 hours sleep I have been quite exhausted!!

Tomorrow's training is very straightforward - 50 minutes, plus strides - to prepare for Friday's killer.  Gulp.  I'm also going to try and get to yoga class if I can - I haven't been since before the honeymoon.  A workmate has also recommended a sports masseuse so I might be reporting on that very soon as well.

As well as future podcasts, I've also got a few other ideas floating around - including a cooking video!!  How much Phil can you all handle?!

I hope you've all been having a lovely week and thank you as always for reading!  

skinny latte strikes back: the podcast + giveaway!!

Hello friends!

2011 has been full of surprises for me so far - and so I thought I would give you guys one too :)

Welcome to my very first podcast!

Podcast Powered By Podbean
Finally, a chance for you to hear the voice behind the blog.....oh, don't hold your breath though!  I don't think I am the most natural of presenters, but hey, it's all a bit of fun.  No point sitting back in life and thinking "I'd like to give that a go," and then never doing it :)

The special guest on my very first podcast is health writer Hazel Courteney, who I was privileged to meet in London a few weeks ago.  She has just released a new, fully revised update of her book 500 of the Most Important Health Tips You Will Ever Need.  Hazel has an amazing story - she spent most of her early life chronically ill and led a very unhealthy lifestyle, until she had her penny-drop moment where she knew things needed to change.  She started researching natural and alternative therapies to heal herself, and in doing so, realised that so many conditions can be prevented with the right information and education.  Since then she's gone on to become of the UK's most popular and respected health writers.  She believes in common sense, looking after ourselves and enjoying life - my kind of person, really :)

I had a great time chatting to Hazel and quite easily could have sat with her all day - the woman really is a fountain of knowledge!

And, the Nutri Centre (where the launch was held) is a mecca for health nuts!!  Yoga books!  DVDs!  Shelves and shelves of every vitamin and mineral you can think of!  If you live in London, go, go go!

The book is one of those "dip in, dip out" compendiums, perfect for nutrition nerds (!), and anyone interested in being a bit of a health detective, wanting to explore some more alternative ways of optimising their health.  I really like Hazel's ethos of self responsibility when it comes to our health and well being.  It's amazing what you can do when you're really determined.  Finding the motivation from somewhere deep inside you, the you that wants to live your best life possible, that is what makes lifestyle changes stick for the long term.  I cannot tell you how much my life has improved since making that decision to sort my life out and get happy and healthy - well, I can, and have, in about 1000 blog posts over the years!

You have to want to do it for you.  You can't do it because you think you "should", or to please other people. I know that this is the most cliched thing I could possibly say.  I know you've probably heard it many, many times before.  But believe me, there is a difference between being told you must do it for yourself, and actually arriving at that moment where you KNOW you must.  Sometimes you won't realise that moment has come - it feels like any other time you've stood on the scales, been horrified and thought I'm sorting this out once and for all.....


But in the meantime, why not be happy?  Why not start filling your life with things that will bring you joy?  Start savouring.  Stop watching everyone else have all the fun.  Don't think you have to wait.  Explore.  Laugh.  Take risks.  Go to the travel agents and book a holiday.  Go to a library and spend all day there reading, or to a gallery and lose yourself in someone else's thoughts.  Breathe.  Look around.  Dream.  Think big.  Don't settle.  You deserve to be happy.

*****GIVEAWAY ALERT ********GIVEAWAY ALERT*****

Hazel Courteney has very kindly given me a signed copy of her book that we discuss in the podcast to give away to one lucky reader of this here blog!  All you have to do is leave a comment (please make sure your email address is in there somewhere if you don't have a blog or a blogger profile).  If you're a lurker, this is the perfect time to say hello!  Just say hi, tell me where you're from, and what you might like me to talk about in the next podcast (if you think this one is any good!)

The giveaway is open to all my beloved readers, worldwide.  I will draw a winner on Friday 18th February 2011 at 6PM UK time.  So get cracking!!

Thanks for reading - and listening!!!! :) x

PS: A huge thank you to my wonderful husband for helping me!