Wordpress!

Not entirely happy with it yet so expect a lot of tweaking over the coming days, but my blog is now on my domain with Wordpress. (New domain name should hopefully be up and running tomorrow - ahealthiermoo.com)
Click here to visit it!

A little control

 This week I have been really hungry in the build up to lunch time.  Well, pretty much since leaving home in the mornings!  I guess this is due to the reduction of my breakfast meal sizes lately.  I was really not enjoying work earlier on in the year and often put off getting ready for the day by having a bit more at breakfast and staying on the couch.
I managed to wait until 12pm to have the rest of my pizza from last night and then my salad of sugar snap peas, mixed leaves and cherry tomatoes with ceasar dressing at lunchtime.

 It was a pretty busy day with lots of teaching followed by a fully booked year 8 parents evening from 4:30-7.  I had little voice left afterwards and was REALLY thirsty!
When I first started at the school they used to put on a range of bread rolls, different muffins and a glass of orange juice for everybody.  This year, they started providing a cooked meal (because it works out much cheaper and they can get away with serving on tiny trays that actually only hold three tablespoons of a dish!)  The first meal they served us was a curry heavy on onions.  The second meal contained a slice of garlic bread.  Luckily people spoke up and the meals have not been quite so smelly since!  We have to spend nearly three hours talking politely to parents...much nicer when not letting garlic spread through the air towards them!!!
Tonight though, the meal was lamb roulash.  I'm not a massive fan of meat anyway, especially anything as chewy as lamb.  I asked for the vegetarian option and was told I could get a plate of plain pasta in about 20 minutes and a cup of cheese to go over the top.  Rubbish choice, so I found one of the less hard cheese salad rolls from today's student stack and nibbled on this instead.

I had my running club committee meeting straight after at 8pm about 45 mins away.  The club secretary always brings in beautiful cakes which large chunks are taken from and munched during the meeting.  I decided, as I would not be able to photograph the wonder of Karen's cakes and as I had already gone nearly seven hours without anything passing my lips that as I was getting petrol I would pick up a muffin which would prevent me from getting drawn into the cake pile later on.  This worked.  I felt satisfied and in control!

SEVEN weddings!

Yesterday in the post we got this beutiful invitation to our friend Dee's wedding in May.  We had already had a Save the Date card so knew we were going to be invited, it wasn't a surprise.  The wedding details were on a lanyard and the invitiation was a ticket.  Her and her husband-to-be are big festival goers (that's actually mainly how we became friends) so this was a really fitting invitation!

 This now means that in the next two years we have a minimum of SEVEN weddings to go to!  This is my calendar for the next three months...

MARCH - Vicki and Alex's engagement party (they were the couple that went to New York with us for New Year and got engaged).  We also have Helen and Sam's wedding reception to go to (invitation in Dan's car) - they ran off to New York to get married at half term and are celebrating at the end of the month.

APRIL - Amy and Brett's wedding.  I'm witness for this one so also need to attend the rehearsal (and spa day!) two days before.

MAY - Dee and Ian

Is it just my age that all of a sudden I'm being invited to so many weddings?!?!

I had forgotten about the upcoming spa day as part of Amy's wedding.  I am considering starting Jillian's 30 day shred DVD on Saturday.  I have only heard good things about it.  I will take measurements and pictures on Saturday and try and complete everyday and see how I get on with it.

This morning's breakfast was take 2 of porridge for the week!  I took Maria's advice and let my porridge soak in milk overnight in the fridge and then cooked as normal this morning with a tad more milk.  She was right, looks a much bigger bowlful and am now nicely full!  :)

Busy day today - parent's evening after school, followed by running club committee meeting.  It will be a late one tonight especially after packing for Norfolk for tomorrow.

Things don't always go to plan!

 My snack this morning was a Salsa Fresca Graze box.  I do love Graze.  I have a box of four snacks delivered each week and it makes it really easy to grab a snack if I'm in a rush before school in the morning.  This box only has 51 calories in.  Great!

 I did sneak a puffy thing with vanilla inside at breaktime from the staffroom though.  Free food always draws me in.  :(








I had the same lush salad for lunch that I did yesterday but there wasn't any remaining goats cheese so I used a matchbox sized piece of cheddar cheese instead.  Why do they always compare it to a matchbox?!  The matchboxes we have at home to light the fire are HUGE!  (I just had a small regular matchbox sized piece of cheese!)

This is the super cute lunchbox my friend Vicki bought for my birthday last year.  I think she got it from Paperchase.

 Almost forgot to take a picture of my afternoon snack, but here is the remainder of my tangerine!  My stomach was growling for some reason at 3pm, so I grabbed this then.

 I was supposed to be tidying my desk, although I didn't get very far this evening!  This is how it started out.  That pile of folders on my desk is just one class of year 7s to mark.  I have four classes that each handed in large homework projects this week that I need to get marked before next week.  It's going to be a busy weekend!  Hopefully tomorrow I will have an 'after' picture that looks much better!

I left tidying and had a meeting at 4:30-5 before driving home to fit in a run before Dan got back.
I have two sports bras.  One was in the wash and the other has been rubbing on the front of my chest recently.  I couldn't find any vaseline in the house so decided to whack some sudocrem on the front to hopefully stop it rubbing when I got home for a run (it worked!)
I had a really good run again, although didn't get as far as intended - just 5 miles.  Tonight was supposed to be our night together and I had seen Dan drive past at the start of my run.  I felt a little guilty, as I dont seem to have seen him much just lately again so when my first loop finished at mile 5 I called it a day.
My legs had felt very tired at the beginning of the run, probably due to the speedwork we completed yesterday but I continued with an easy run.  Again, keeping with my recent tradition of not looking at my watch until returning home.  Again, I was surprised at the speed of a run I found easy, especially with such tired legs.
Mile 1: 11:07 (inc warmup)
Mile 2: 10:36
Mile 3: 9:55
Mile 4: 9:35
Mile 5: 9:58

My focus is obviously the upcoming MK marathon, followed by the Shires and Spires Ultra - although I'm not worried about time for this, just completing.  I would then like to complete the Summer season and get some new PBs for the shortest distances.  Fingers crossed!

On returning home I said to Dan that I would just grab a quick shower and then start on tea so we could go bowling (our pre-agreed night together).  I had actually been looking forward to tea all day.  I wanted to have another salad wholemeal pitta and experiment in making my first batch of sweet potato chips on the side.  Dan seemed confused though and seemed to think that we had planned both Dominos pizza and bowling.  I don't remember this!  The other day he had mentioned that we hadn't had takeaway pizza for about five years and I had suggested that one week we would have that as our night together.  I just didn't think he'd assumed the same night as bowling!
He went off to get two medium pizzas while I grabbed a shower.  I had the veggie supreme to still get lots of vegetables in.  I didn't eat all of the pizza.  Last year I would have sat there until I finished but I'm proud of myself for stopping (although probably should have stopped a little earlier!) and now have some leftovers for lunch tomorrow.
We didn't get to bowling.  I was too tired in the end, but instead we curled up on the couch together and chatted, and watched a bit of QI on TV.  Much better than going bowling!

Licking the lid!

The best bit about having yoghurt in the morning is getting to lick the lid right?!

I was looking forward to breakfast this morning.  I had picked up some tins of fruit on my shop at the weekend and this morning I poured out half a tin of pear halves with juice which I then topped with a Muller light vanilla yoghurt.  This was actually a lot more filling than I thought it would be and I'm now laying flat out on the couch trying to muster up some sort of energy to get into work today!
Tonight should see the first of my longer runs mid-week in the build up for the marathon.  I'm hoping to run 8-9 miles tonight after school so am going to drive myself in today with the hope that I can make it back while it's still semi light and not have to do three laps of town!  Dan announced yesterday that he is having friends up on Friday night whilst I'm away so tonight will also need to involve the tidying of the horrific mess we call our home!

180 steps per minute

My mid morning snack was a Graze box Summer Berry Compote.  This was lovely and sweet and just what I fancied this morning.

 I was excited about my lunch all morning (because I'm a loser!) I haven't really had proper lunch at school for a long while because lunches were making me feel really sleepy in the afternoon, although I now know this is because I probably wasn't always making the best choices.  I also worry about eating too late in the afternoon when I know I'm running with club in the evening, I prefer to run with very little in my stomach.
This salad though, was extremely yummy and contained mixed leaves, cherry tomatoes, goats cheese and right at the bottom, which I had forgotten all about until I reached that far were a handful of sugar snap peas!  I spent ages looking for my balsamic vinegar pot this morning, but couldn't find it so had to settle with ceasar dressing.  Still yummy, but not AS yummy!  Didn't feel overly sleepy this afternoon from the meal and my stomach was fine with tonight's run.

 When I got home from school I grabbed another Graze box to snack on...Bounty Hunter.  This is the best one!  Chocolate, cranberry and coconut.  Picked at this for about twenty minutes whilst I was getting ready for club.
There were only eight of us in my group tonight, including Heather, the coach.  We're really lucky in Group 4 because the coaches are fantastic and always have a focus for our sessions.  Tonight Heather played a metronome sound at a speed of 180 beats per minute and we had to try and focus on getting our feet to hit the ground each time a beat was played, aiming for a quicker pace over intervals.  We ran a couple of miles out to a warehouse unit, which does not have much traffic, but a nice long curving road.  On the side of the road there are markings every 100m up to 1k.  Our session tonight was quick leg pace out and recovery jog back to the start.  We did 200m (and back), 400m (and back), 600m (and back) then a quick two minute breather before repeating the exercise again.  We covered 5.32 miles overall, with my fastest pace at 6m59s.  I knew most of my speed reps had been in the 7minute miles.  How amazing would it be to eventually get a 5k PB at 7mm?!  I burnt off 676 calories on tonights run.

 Dan had cooked a curry again tonight.  Another tikka masala, this time with prawns and rice.  No naan.  I wasn't really hungry when I got back from club, just tired but knew I had to eat.

This picture makes it look like I ate a whole bar!  I swear it was only two squares!

I also grabbed two squares of white chocolate whilst I was doing the washing up as I fancied something sweet.  Just looked back over my snacks though and realised how sweet they all were today.  I shall pull out some fruit for tomorrow's snacks before bed!

I am working on a Wordpress site currently.  I'm visiting my parents this weekend so hopefully I shall have a bit of time to work on it then and get the blog transferred over soon.  Exciting times!  :)

Weighing breakfast!

This morning I had decided I would have a small bowl of porridge for breakfast.  Yesterday in Runner's World I was reading about Raynaud's, which is when the blood in your body does not always reach your fingers.  My hands have always been quick to change colour in the cold and turn a sort of bluey-purple colour within minutes, but the last few months I have lost all feeling completely in the tips of a couple of my fingers.  The article in Runner's World mentioned foods that could help with this condition, and included oats.
I know my portion sizes have probably been a bit off-whack so I decided to weigh the oats before cooking them this morning.  40g was hardly anything in the bowl and I was really shocked how big the bowl still looked!

Plans scrapped for oats this morning and instead I had a toasted bagel with crunchy peanut butter and several glasses of water.
Now about to put together a salad for lunch...