I have to eat while I run?

So apparently when you go on long runs, you should have a "nutrition and hydration plan" for any runs greater than 1 hour. So, my first run that was over an hour, I pulled out an old water pack that I already had at home and popped the drink bottles filled with water into the freezer overnight. This worked well, I had plenty of water for an hour long run. Plus a spot for my iphone, where I track my runs and

Source

However, when I was planning for longer runs, up to 2 hours long, I realised that I might need something more than water to keep my butt moving for all that time. So I turned to my friend who will forever be known now as Ironwoman, she advised that I should give some gels a try. The lovely guy at Northside Runners filled me in on the basis behind the gels and when to have them while working out and was kind enough to put together a bit of a "party pack" (his words, not mine) of gels for me to try out.

Personal Photo

So, a few weeks ago, on a Saturday morning I set off bright and early and very excited about trying out my new "hydration plan" as I was calling it. I then proceeded to get absolutely saturated when the great Sydney weather took its toll. As I run with my iPhone, and my underwear was wet, I turned around about 10 minutes from home and tried again on Tuesday.

I set off on a 90 minute run armed with 2 frozen water bottles, 2 gatorade bottles and 2 gel packs that I randomly chose from my bag of tricks. Everything was going well and around the 40 minute mark I opened my first gel pack. The guy at the running shop told me that I could eat and run at the same time, but im guessing he has a much smoother running style than me because it took me all of 2 seconds of running while trying to eat it before I just stopped and walked. I was going uphill at the time so really the walking time wasnt exactly going to make much of a difference to my already immensely slow pace. I think it worked well, although I am looking into alternative options to the gels because to be honest that texture is pretty damn nasty. I have done a little digging and apparently jelly beans or dried fruit are equally as effective. I will honestly take any excuse in the world to eat jelly beans, especially the black ones!!

Valentine's cupcakes

In the interest of trying out the Chocolate cake recipe handed down from my husband's grandmothers recipe for Chocolate cake, which according to him is the only cake made "with love". This was a great cake to try out in order to use for the Birthday cake that I am making for my lovely friend Laura in a couple of months

So, I got out the beautiful Kitchen Aid and got myself stuck into some beautiful cooking, and may have enjoyed licking the bowl a little too much.

Ingredients (makes approx 50-60 mini cupcakes):

3 cups of Self-raising Flour

2 eggs

250g butter

4 tablespoons of cocoa

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 cups cold water

1 cup caster sugar

Cream together the butter and sugar, then add the eggs

sift together the flour and the cocoa

Mix it all together, restrain yourself from licking the beaters while they are moving.

Bake for 30 minutes at 180 degrees celcius, add a buttercream and there you have some cute little cupcakes, perfect for your valentine.

You can also add some pretty sprinkles if you are so inclined, I always am!

Happy Valentine's day to all my lovely readers, I have saved you a cupcake!

Training Race - Sun Run

So, up bright and early on Saturday morning,  I did my first race since I started training for the half-marathon 4 weeks ago.

View from Dee Why Beach the morning of the race (around 6:15am) personal photo

I did the Sun Run, a 6.5km run along the Northern Beaches of Sydney, with the start line a few kilometres from my parents house. Based on my current pace, I thought I could push a little harder and finish in under 50 minutes. I just forgot about one thing... the hills. Oh deary me, I run a lot of hills around home which is inevitable when living in an area such as mine with many hills, none are super steep, but they are alway there. It became quickly apparent that my training technique of "run as far up the hill as you can then walk to the top, then start running again" was a good one, but I got swept up in the lure of the crowd and didnt follow it. So, I found myself running most of the ways up the hills then being out of breath at the top and taking a little walk rest before I could get going again.

This would be fine, except my "running" up hill speed is so ridiculously slow, im actually certain that people walking were going faster than me. Then I would get to the flat or even downhill and I would need to walk? That is where I (obviously) run my fastest!

Anyway, in the end, I ran a 50'49", So I was precisely 50 seconds behind my target time of under 50 minutes. A long way behind the leading female who ran more than twice as fast as me! Later that day though I felt rather good, I was doing the shopping, cooking, stretching and using my foam roller a little. I didnt get particularly sore or  tired and the next day I think my training paid off when I went for another run on some quite fatigued legs.

So, after my first training race, I have learnt a few things;

- Ensure you have your race number out the night before (very unlike me to be looking through my diary at 5:15am!)
- Go at my own pace, particularly up hills
- Charge phone the night before
- Bring my own water bottle to avoid crowds and trip hazzards at water station

Photo courtesy of the Sun Run Facebook Page

Any racing tips out there to help me prepare for my next race? A 10km in Canberra in April.

My poor little toes

I have a long standing foot problem, it usually manifests itself in the ever popular pointed shoe and I would like to think it associated with the Australian lifestyle. I have very wide feet. Apparently it can be caused by not wearing shoes a whole lot and I will be honest that in summer I do not wear enclosed shoes almost at all. Even right now, I am in the airport coming home from a work trip and I have already slipped out of my heels and I am sitting here in thongs (flip flops). Lucky for me, my brother in law is a podiatrist! Not lucky for me, I showed him my toes a few months ago and he said "wow, I have never seen anything like that before!" Not reassuring.

Anyway, this wide foot problem causes my feet to often squash my little toes on the outside of my foot and for some reason the little toes actually turn underneath the second toe (hence the weird reactio from little bro) and get some wicked blisters on them. This has come to manifest itself quite badly considering how much I am running. This has led me to a laborious task of not only wrapping bandaids around my toes and the second toe, but also wrapping strapping tape around them to keep the bandaids in place. For the moment this is working but I am not sure how long this can hold on for because I am now getting the problem of a blister developing on the second toe in, I can only presume from the continuous rubbing of the bandaid from the pinky toe.

The remedies that I have tried to date include new socks, I now wear lightfoot socks because I thought it might have been a sweat issue making the blisters. I also have wide fitting shoes to allow my feet the most amount of space a womens shoe can possibly afford. 

Does anyone get little toe blisters and have an amazing remedy for them?

Getting creative in the cake department

I recently attended a friends 30th, where her family had made her a cake from bright blue fondant. After too much time spent watching Cake Boss and Charm City Cakes, I really thought that it looked pretty darned easy so that has led me to believe that I would be more than capable of achieving such a pristine look to a cake that the lovely marzipan icing can create. I just so happened to be standing next to a friend whose 30th birthday is coming up when I was blatantly flipping around how EASY this would be. Before I knew it I was saying "sure, yeah, ill make your 30th cake". The only ideas that she has put forward at this stage are shoes - which I promptly dismissed!

So, I need to get some design ideas flowing, to come up with a great cake to celebrate her 30th - don't worry, it isnt until May so I have plenty of time! I fully intend on doing a nice little practice cake in the next few weeks, just so I can see exactly how difficult different techniques are. I am however quite decided on one element, that the cake will be a maximum of 2 teirs tall. I also am pretty limited to a circular cake, as that is the only tin I have at home. Mind you, I do just have the one tin, so I will need to buy another one to make the smaller cake so im open to square aswell.

I am either thinking something in a simple two colour technique similar to these cakes:

Then again, I am also drawn to these amazing fun cakes with bright colours:

Then for inside the birthday cake, I would love to do this amazing rainbow cake that I saw recently over at CakeSpy;

Has anyone done either a rainbow cake or a marzipan/fondant cake before - what do you think, square or circle and bright or simple colours?