3.5 miles

I ran 3.5 miles today - which is the furthest I've ever run.  Whilst it was a good achievement, I can't help feeling slightly disappointed because my average speed was down from what it has been recently - and the nasty side stitch made an evil return today forcing me to walk briefly twice.  Looking back, I know I started too fast - my Walkmeter beeped at mile one telling me that my speed was 5.14mph.  Almost immediately after this I had to take a walk break because the stitch flared up.

On the one hand I think I'm being too hard on myself - I only started running in June and have come on leaps and bounds since that time.  However, looking back I could have easily slowed my pace during the first mile and thereafter to avoid both walk breaks and stitches.  It is a lesson learnt.  My expression in the photo below shows I'd just checked my stats and wasn't entirely pleased!

This was my first trail run in two weeks - last week I did my long run on the road because I was getting ready for Decorex.  I'm sorry for moaning, I am just a bit disappointed :(.  The bonus of this trail run was that there were no weird animal antics today (no feral cats stalking me!).  My next long run will be 4 miles!

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I weighed myself on Saturday morning for the first time since coming back from Decorex and I was nearly exactly the same as I was before I left - 182.5 lbs - up 0.4 lbs.  I've been quite strict with myself these past few days, so now that the Marathon Weight Loss challenge has finished, I'm reverting to Wednesday as my weigh in day.  I'm hoping for a bit of a loss this week.  I have also reduced my calories to 1518 per day, because when I set my daily calorie allowance I weighed more than I do now and I think maybe those extra 100 or so calories may have been contributing to my plateau.

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Last night my husband and I went to a ball!  I've never been to a ball before, but my boss bought a table (raising money for a local hospice) and invited us to go.  The theme was 1940's, but I wore my 1930's dress - and then dressed my husband up as best I could without spending a dime!  He looks a bit like Al Capone!

We had a great time, though we didn't do any dancing.  It might sound shocking, but I've never danced with my husband - not once.  Dancing is not Rob's greatest talent.  I've seen him dance once and, well, I'm still traumatised!  Actually I've seen him dance twice - he danced to "Take on me" on the Wii Just Dance at Christmas and I even took a video of it - but it mysteriously disappeared immediately!  Even without dancing, we really enjoyed the evening.  It's not often I we get a chance to dress up and go out for the evening!  Today was Rob's birthday - so I made his favourite roast dinner - Roast Lamb.  I also baked a Victoria Sponge cake for dessert (I think this is my best cake at the moment, and not too bad for the waistline as there's no icing!).

Decorex

I feel like it's been ages since I posted.  It has been a long week!  I left for Decorex early on Sunday morning - too early (7:30am, but seriously, on a SUNDAY!) and we were on the stand for 10am.  I've probably mentioned before that the company I work for make mirrors and furniture - it's all quite high end stuff and we supply interior designers in London.  Decorex is a trade show in Chelsea where manufacturers, such as ourselves, and other interior design suppliers, exhibit their new products. Even though it's rough standing on your feet for 10 hours a day, I love it.  This year our new Belmont collection was inspired by the 1920's and 30's - so our designer had the idea that myself and my boss should dress as "flapper girls" - well we loved the idea!  We each had two dresses and headdresses made and in all of the stress of getting ready for the show, going for fittings were our only moments of light relief!

On Sunday night we were fortunate enough to be invited to the House & Garden party - this is THE party to go to at Decorex and it was our very first invitation!  I was incredibly excited because basically anyone who is anyone in interior design would be at this party!  I'm afraid that my goal of not drinking too much kind of flew out the window on Sunday night - so much for determination, huh?  I didn't have too much to drink, certainly, but I didn't have too little either!  The food was amazing - they served these delicious canapes, they had mushroom risotto served in little copper dishes and the best part - a sushi bar!  We had a fabulous time and near the end of the evening the editor of House & Garden actually complimented us on our outfits!

Monday night was another, less exclusive, party - which I was planning on skipping, but I decided to go just for a short while.  I ended up meeting a girl who works for one of our leather suppliers and is originally from Chicago - we chatted for ages about mid-West life.  Every night when I got back to the hotel, I soaked my feet in a nice hot bath.  I bought these cute little black heels (see picture above) - very 1930's, however after standing in them for 10-12 hours per day, my poor little tootsies were swollen and aching.

The whole exhibition was a great success and our new collections seemed to be very popular.  Our "neighbours" at the exhibition were Andrew Martin - who always, always, have an outrageous stand!  Last year they had ice sculptures, this year they had the actual set from the film Prometheus!  Included in that were various props, so in a moment of madness our designer Peter took one of the guns and did his best "Charlie's Angels" pose!

I got back late Wednesday evening and have been trying to catch up ever since!  My running schedule has been all screwed up for this week, so I did my first run of the week last night (Thursday).  It was 2.5 miles, in the rain, and I was sluggish and just generally poor.  My pace sucked and I just wasn't feeling it.  Not running for five days will do that to you!  I decided to go ahead and do my second run of the week tonight and do cross training (which will be my Jillian Michaels DVD) tomorrow.  Tonight was a short, sweet 2 miles and my speed was rockin :-D

Yep - that's the fastest yet!  My run on Sunday will be my longest yet - 3.5 miles - eeek!

To end my rather fabulous, but tiring, week, my husband and I are going to a ball tomorrow night!  My company has bought a table at a charity ball to raise money for St Francis Hospice and my boss kindly invited myself and husband to attend.  It's a 1940's theme, but we are going to wear our flapper girl outfits.  I've also been putting together my husband's outfit, including a fab Humphrey Bogart style hat!

I'm trying to catch up with all your posts in my reader, but it's going to take me sometime.  I've been missing Twitter too!  Can't wait for next week when life will be relatively back to normal.

Another plateau

My weight seems to be stuck again.  I'm still 182 pounds despite tracking all my calories (and staying under my calorie goal) and exercising practically every day.  I'm now very nervous about going away for four days because when I'm working at this exhibition, healthy food is not exactly readily available. In addition to food, there is also copious amounts of wine and I'm just hoping that I will have the willpower to resist!  I really don't want to gain weight while I'm away.

Quite what I'm going to do about this plateau will have to wait until I get back late on Wednesday night.  There are two things that I did this week which could have contributed to the plateau - I did have a few glasses of red wine, I had a pasta dish twice for lunch and a different pasta twice for dinner (probably too much in one week), and I missed two cross training sessions - so basically I've had two unscheduled rest days.  If I change these things next week I'm hoping it will make a difference.

Despite being stuck with my weight, my running progress continues to be good.  Today I did my long run in the 8k training - 3 miles.  I was toying with the idea of going to the park to run those three miles on the trail - but there was lots of things to do at home to make sure the husband and kids were organised for the week, so I just did a three mile loop at home.  I ran 3 miles in my fastest time ever - 36 minutes!

So, I'm getting together the last few bits and pieces for our design exhibition starting tomorrow.  My boss and I collected our special "flapper girl" dresses yesterday and I can't wait to wear my dress!  Yesterday I tried hot rollers for my hair along with one of my headdresses:

I'll put up some more photos next week of the complete outfit - this is just a preview!  The whole theme of our stand is 1930's - so hopefully we will look the part!  I hope you all have a fab rest of the weekend and a good week next week.  Please cross your fingers that I manage to keep to my plan of eating as healthy as possible and foregoing the wine!

Running Faster and Lizi's Granola Giveaway WINNER!

As I get closer and closer to this design exhibition, work just gets crazier and crazier.  Without giving away too much, we are basically working with a theme which includes my boss and I having two vintage style dresses made - this has been our only light relief in an otherwise chaotic environment.  Today, I went to try on one of my headdresses (I will post loads of photos - promise!) and was literally blown away, I cannot wait for Sunday!

In addition to working full time, I have also sold some of my "fat clothes" on Ebay and it was getting to the point where I'm sure I would get emails from people saying "hey where's my stuff?!", so when I got home from work tonight it was a case of throwing together the ingredients for braised meatballs - shoving it in the oven, packaging up the remainder of the clothes I had to send, literally ran over to the post office (thankfully just around the corner from my house), post those, come back home, check the final proof of our new pricelist for work - email it back, put the linguine on - and then serve the food (keeping mine aside for post-run) before getting changed into my running clothes.  My daughter has Girl Guides on Thursdays (that's the British version of Girl Scouts), so after I dropped her off I did my 2 mile run.

Frankly, I was happy to be running to try to melt some of the stress of the day away.  I honestly think I just switched off during tonight's run and that's exactly what my brain needed - some downtime!  Now the past two runs I have had an annoying side stitch just after the first mile - on Tuesday it was quite painful, so much so that I had to walk briefly twice (which I hate!).  Tonight, thankfully, I just kept the pace steady and slow (when needed) - but when I finished the two miles I was TOTALLY thrilled to see that for the first time since I started running on 17th June, I have busted the 5mph average speed barrier!  OK - this may sound slow to some of you more seasoned runners, but when I started running my average pace was 3.95mph - yep, that's barely faster than walkin!  So to see my speed improve like that is really encouraging!

My next run is actually scheduled for Sunday, but of course I will be at this design exhibition, so I'm going to do this week's long run on Saturday.  Next week will require a bit of juggling too and I'm toying with the idea of taking a Jillian Michael's DVD with me to the hotel in London - I may not have any energy but at least if I have it with me, I will have the option of doing it.  I have a feeling that my running next week might have to be three days on the trot, which isn't ideal, but needs must.

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So - thank you to everyone who entered my very first GIVEAWAY!  Thanks again to Lizi for giving me the opportunity to share her wonderful granola with one lucky reader!  Without further ado, the Random Number Generator picked comment number 14:

Which was:

Congratulations!  Please can you email your name and address to me: pilliepop@aol.com within 24 hours and I will make sure that lovely granola is on it's way to you by Saturday!

Lizi's Granola GIVEAWAY!

I am THRILLED to be hosting my first ever GIVEAWAY and even more excited that it is the FABULOUS Lizi's Granola!  I have blogged previously about my love for this granola (you can read about that here) and Lizi has generously agreed to give one lucky reader 3 boxes of her yummy granola (that's 36 individual servings!)!  Thank you, Lizi!  If it is possible - I love your granola even more now!

So - what is so fabulous about Lizi's granola?  Where do I start?!  Not only is it literally the most delicious granola I've ever tasted, but it is low-GL (that's Glycaemic Load), which means that it releases its energy slowly making sure you stay filled up until lunch.  In addition to that, the ingredients are all natural - there's no rubbish (or anything unpronounceable!) in this granola!   And my favourite part?  It's packed neatly in individual serving sachets of 40 grams each - which means that you can confidently open a fresh pack every morning knowing that all that weighing and measuring of portion sizes has been done for you!  I am utterly convinced that a large part of my weight loss success is due to Lizi's granola and this ingenious packaging solution (for greedy little piggies like me!).

Lizi's Granola is available in five utterly delectable flavours: Treacle and Pecan, Pink Apple & Cinnamon, Belgian Chocolate, Original and Organic.  I have tried every single flavour (apart from the Organic) and love each one!  My personal favourite is the Treacle and Pecan.  I have this every morning with a big dollop of natural organic yogurt (or organic strawberry yogurt, whatever I've got in the fridge) and it honestly fills me up until 1pm when I have my lunch.

One lucky reader will receive one box each (that's 12 individual sachets per box) of Treacle & Pecan, Pink Apple & Cinnamon and Belgian Chocolate.  You're basically going to be set up for breakfast for over a month - you lucky duck!  All you have to do for your chance to win is:-

1. Be a follower of my blog.  If you're not already a follower, it's easy to join, just click on the 'Join this site' button up in the right hand corner.
2. "Like" Lizi's Granola page on Facebook.  That way you'll be kept up to date with granola news!
3. Finally, leave a comment below telling me how you enjoy eating granola (with milk, with yogurt, standing on your head, etc!).

I will choose a winner from the comments below using a random number generator on Thursday, 20th September 2012 at 20:00hours (British Standard Time) and the winner will be announced that evening.  The winner will then have 24 hours to email me with their postal address.  Good Luck!

Here's the facts: I am a loyal Lizi's Granola customer, so much so that I contacted Lizi and asked if she would agree to donate some of her wonderful granola for a giveaway on my blog.  Lizi kindly sent me the three boxes of granola to post to one lucky reader.  I have not received any payment or free granola for hosting this giveaway, all opinions expressed are purely my own.  I simply want to share the granola love!

A run in the woods (and crazy animal escapades!)

I just want to start this by saying a huge thank you to everyone who has commented on my last post, both here and on Facebook.  I truly appreciate your encouragement.  I know helping my daughter to be the healthiest person she can be will be a very challenging journey.  But I also know, having nearly reached goal myself, that it can be done!  I will keep the blog updated regularly with our progress, so watch this space!

Today my 8k training programme called for a 2.5 mile run and this was also going to be my trail run for the week.  The temperatures have dropped here over the past week, so I was really looking forward to a crisp, cool run this afternoon.  We had our usual roast lunch today (today was roast chicken, with potatoes, carrots, broccoli and stuffing, followed by raspberry trifle - yum!), so I had to wait until later in the afternoon to do the run.

I got my iPhone, armband, headphones and water bottle together at just after 5pm and drove to the start of the school trail.  As soon as I arrived, I had to go to the toilet (again!) - so walked up to the sports hall.  This was my own fault - I'm so paranoid about getting a dehydration headache after my run, that I drink like a fish before my run - but need to remember to leave a wee bit of time (pun intended) before I actually head out the door to make sure it's all out of my system!  Having given birth to two kids, my bladder is not what it used to be (apologies - TMI) - so I'm not wanting to get caught short on a trail!

The start of the trail

The sun was shining just above the tree line when I started running and the wind seriously kicked up!  Why is it when I am running and there is wind it is most always a headwind?  Just once, I'd love a really strong tailwind!  I got about 1/3 of the way down the trail when I encountered the "Essex Lion" - ha!  No, seriously, it was a big ginger tomcat and he was creeping in the grass right by that hill I've nicknamed "The Bastard" - as if the Bastard wasn't bad enough, now I have cats stalking me there?!  I was worried he was going to jump and pounce on me because he was crouched down like he was stalking his prey!  He was there for the whole run - glaring at me every time I ran past!  Thankfully he never pounced!

When I got round the trail once I thought it seemed pretty quick, but when I had completed the 2.5 miles and checked my stopwatch I couldn't believe my speed!  On Friday, I ran 2.0 miles on the road with an average speed of 4.79 mph - today my average speed was 4.96 mph!!  Now to you seasoned runners, 4.96 mph probably sounds like a snail's pace - but I'm thrilled with it!  More to the point, I am thrilled that my speed is getting faster!  That means I'm getting fitter :-)

I never expected it, but I'm starting to think that trail running really suits me!  If I can make that big of an improvement in my pace simply by changing the running surface, I think that's pretty amazing!  Next week my long run will have to be on Saturday because Sunday I'm working at this design exhibition in London.  I'm thinking about doing the trail run at our local country park.  This will be a true test of my fitness as there are lots (and lots) of hills... We'll see - I haven't made up my mind yet!

Me after the run - you can't see how RED my face is in this pic!

On the drive home, there was a small squirrel trying to cross the road up to the school.  I stopped and waited for him - but he just kept running in front of my car!  When I started driving again slowly - he just kept running in front instead of going off to the side!  Eventually he discovered the grass at the side of the road and ran off (or at least I didn't feel a lump under my wheel as I drove past, sorry animal lovers!).  What a crazy animal day today!

For my kids

Autumn is just around the corner - the days are still warm, but there's definitely a chill in the air.  The blackberries and elderberries have started ripening and some of the leaves have started to turn.  I love this time of year.  I'm looking forward to my autumnal weekend runs where I can take in the beautiful scenery.

Today, I took my daughter out for a walk.  We walked just over three miles and though I had to bribe her with a new magazine, she didn't complain and kept pace the whole time.  We even broke into a jog three times.  It didn't burn as many calories as my Jillian Michaels DVD, but it was totally worth it.  I've mentioned before that my kids are like chalk and cheese.  Josh is crazy about sports, always active and he loves it.  Verity generally doesn't like sports, she would happily sit and watch TV all day and not be active at all - plus she loves food.  All of this put together means that I have an overweight child.

Verity has always had a bit of a tummy since she was quite young, but in the last couple of years the "little tummy" has expanded.  In addition to not being very active, she does overeat and this is something that I really struggle with trying to control.  She's 10 years old now and much more independent.  She will regularly go into the kitchen and help herself to food.  It's got to the point now where I don't buy anything that she can snack on.  However, she will still find something - a piece of bread, a piece of fruit, yogurt, etc.

I guess because I feel like now I've got control over my own overeating and my own lack of doing any physical activity that my next priority should be to make sure my kids are as healthy as possible. I know how it feels to be overweight and to just have no energy.  Verity is 10 years old and should have bags of energy - yet today when we went on our walk she was struggling to keep pace.  She should be running circles around me, but instead I was holding her hand in order for her to keep up with me (and I wasn't going particularly fast).

Although I was never overweight, I was teased and bullied as a child (and a teenager!).  We moved to a small town when I was 9 years old and I just never fit in - I guess everyone's way of dealing with me was to tease me.  My nickname in high school was "the freak".  It hurts a lot being different and there were times when I was in high school when I thought about taking my own life.  I don't want my kids to go through anything even remotely similar.  We are blessed in that our kids go to a private Christian school with small class sizes and thankfully Verity hasn't yet been teased about her weight.  But I'm very aware that as the kids get older and start to go through puberty that things could change.  Not only that, but Verity will be more aware of how she looks and I want her to be a confident young lady!

So - this is my mission.  Having discovered for myself how to lose weight and get fit, I'm now focusing my attention on my daughter.  This explains one of my autumn goals - making breakfast for my kids everyday.  I want to teach her healthy habits - breakfast is not a time to have a big bowl of cereal, then a piece of bread, then a pot of yogurt - it's about having a wholesome, healthy start to the day in a right portion size.  In addition to a healthy breakfast, I'm stopping the needless snacking.  This one is going to take some discipline (and hearing like a bat! sometimes she will sneak into the kitchen and eat something while she's in there - I can hear rattling of packaging, so I know she's eating something!).  

I also want her to find an activity that she enjoys.  At her age, she needs to have fun - heck we all need to have fun with whatever exercise we do!  I don't want to force her to do an activity that she doesn't enjoy - but she must get some regular exercise.  And this is where some good family time can come into it - if we find an exercise that we can all do as a family.

This is going to be a learning curve.  It's one thing getting yourself motivated to lose weight - but it's a whole different story motivating a child.  I haven't shared this before because I've been working through in my own mind about how I can tackle it.  I would be really grateful if anyone reading this has any constructive suggestions on how to help.  I love my kids so much and want them to be happy, healthy people.