Race for life takes on new meaning...

Thursday was my 36th birthday.  I spent Wednesday evening baking some divine cupcakes to take to work.  There is a fabulous blog called Sweeta Polita that has the most delicious cake recipes and I knew I could find a cupcake recipe here that would not disappoint.

I settled on some Chocolate Cupcakes (recipe below) that looked rather fabulous as they used Nutella (amongst other ingredients) for the frosting - yum!  I did plug in the ingredients to My Fitness Pal and these little beauties will set you back 524 calories per cupcake - so definitely a special, very occasional treat!  But, they were delicious, and it was my birthday!

Chocolate Birthday Cupcakes with Nutella Cloud Frosting

Last night, Rob and I went into London to see our favourite play, "The Woman in Black" - we have seen this together, and independently about 15 times and still it makes us jump!  If ever there were a perfect stage play, I believe this is it!  The play is staged in a very tiny theatre - but this adds to the whole ambience of the production.  I won't ruin it, but suffice it to say it's a ghost story and there are certainly some jump out of your seat moments!

As we wanted to make an evening of it and belatedly celebrate my birthday, we also went for a meal at Carluccios in Covent Garden.  Knowing that my cupcake the day before had taken me over my calorie allowance, I was keen to try to be as good as possible, so I chose a salad starter, followed by a fish main - as it was I only ate half of the main course because there was a bit too much of it, and this made the ice cream I had during the interval of the play feel much less guilty!

Beautiful Bluebells today

Today was yet another country park training session and having nearly reached the magic 3.1 miles during our last outing, I felt sure I knew the way to add the much needed extra mileage!  There were four of us today.  In addition to my friend Annabelle, I was also joined by two of my Race for Life teammates, Nina and Gill.

We had a dry morning for our walk, but yet again the path was exceptionally muddy from the recent rain, so my glorious new Asics trainers are now a glorious colour of brown!  The great news though was that my add on route gave us the much needed milage and we hit not 3.1, but 3.2 miles!  Woohoo!  The tragic part however was that we were nowhere near my original target of 45 minutes - we were a full 22 minutes over this, and with less than 3 weeks to go til race day, I'm thinking that's now not a realistic target.

Walking along country paths is just not comparable with urban walking, and so I think this has somewhat skewed my goal.  However, just taking part in the race and finishing it is a fantastic achievement, so I'm just looking forward to that.

Earlier this week I received some sad news that a friend of mine who had been given the all clear from breast cancer, is back in hospital.  She has two tumours in her brain and further complications meaning the outlook is now very bleak. When I first signed up for the Race for Life, it was of course to raise money for cancer research, but also I thought it would be a good motivator for me getting fit.  This friend was in the back of my mind, but at the time we all believed the cancer was beaten.

Now, as I draw closer to the race date, she is lying in a hospital bed.  It's quite a surreal feeling and my thoughts and prayers are with her and her family at this time.  In my Race for Life pack there is a banner included for your back which says "I race for... (blank)", so when I take part on 26th May, my banner will be dedicated to my friend Diane.