sunday catch up!

Happy Sunday!  How have you been?

I've just been trying to wrap up the past week and prepare for this one.....I feel like I did heaps but I probably didn't!!  It's mostly been getting back into the swing of training for not two halfs in two weeks, but three in three weeks!!

Yes, I found out last week that I'd won myself a spot in the Ikano Robin Hood Half Marathon....which happened to fall on the weekend between the Helly Hansen Beauty and the Beast and the Royal Parks Foundation Half!

I've wanted to do Robin Hood since I read about Maria's Robin Hood Adventure challenge last year so I'm really stoked to have got in....starting to question my sanity.....but stoked all the same!!

And when I think about it, when I was training for the Big M I was doing the equivalent of a half pretty much every weekend anyway....so perhaps it's not so crazy!  I've even started thinking "well, I'll be so fit, maybe I should look for a marathon to do in October...."......we'll bring you more on that story as it develops.

Of course now that I've started trail training, as the Beauty and the Beast is a trail half marathon, I'm questioning whether I'm fit enough to do anything!  It's so different training this way!  I'm going to start my first of what will be a regular training diary this week, so I'll go into a lot more detail about the training I'm doing and how I'm going with it, but let's just say there's a lot of work for me to do and it's going to get me out of my comfort zone big time!  Today I did a bit over 12km all up, which was about 5km at the national trust parkland (hills, trails, no cows to dodge today though!) and then 7km home on roads.  I was utterly shattered afterwards.  But I kept telling myself as I hobbled along the bumpy windy trails "if you keep this up, in a few weeks you'll be flying through here!" and given what I've proven I can do in the last year I don't doubt it....I just need to keep showing up and doing the work :)

I'm sad the Olympics is coming to an end tonight - I have absolutely loved it!  We even went into the city on Friday to catch some of the action:

London has an amazing energy at the moment - we loved being there and soaking up the atmosphere!

I'm still going with gluten free as well - apart from Friday night at a party where I had some beer and lots of bread based things, but I noticed the effect very quickly! - and have discovered some really delicious new favourite things!  One of them is fresh chickpea pasta:

It's made from ground chickpeas rather than flour and has such a nice nutty and savoury taste.  This brand was Dell'Ugo and I found it at Waitrose quite by accident....I love happy discoveries like that :)  I've made it both with roast vegetables and as above which was a version of the vegemite spaghetti, but with Marmite instead.  If you love chickpeas, you'll love this pasta!

I also found some Genius pita breads on sale at the local Tesco when doing the weekly shop and couldn't resist - I got two flavours, tomato and herb and garlic and chilli.  Both were divine but I think we liked the tomato and herb best:

I'm also enjoying all the lovely summer fruit:

I hope you had a happy, delicious stimulating week (and weekend!) as well :)

Who's watching the closing ceremony tonight?!  It might be another 1am bedtime!