Horse racin' and bunny chasin'

Sue 1 Weekend 0




Just about.

I've had a most excellent weekend, and now I'm knackered. But I'm proud of the choices I made, and I managed to lose a lb this week, so all is good.

After Friday's model choices, I was up early on Sat (7am - far, far too early for a weekend) to drive the boys down to Bristol, pick up Hannah and then head over to join the birthday party at Ascot. A slight error in dress code, based on my judgement of the weather first thing in the morning, meant that I was feeling pretty underdressed compared to the rest of the party who had rocked up in little cocktail dresses and heels, but I got the last laugh when the rain caught up to us, and we had a loooong walk to the restaurant in the evening, when my long flat boots trumped everyone else's heels lol.

We had a fabulous day. There were 40 of us in our party, so we claimed a whole little section of the grandstand for ourselves, which was mostly sheltered from the rain, and from there it was easy to make our forays out to the bookies, and we had a great view of the whole finishing straight.



I am very pleased to report that I did not eat an Ascot burger in any way, shape or form. Success!! In actual fact, we'd stopped at the supermarket on the way out of Bristol in the morning, and I bought a Weightwatchers chicken wrap and some fresh mango, and I had that for my lunch whilst everyone else chomped their way through their picnics or the burgers. I also showed restraint in the presence of big bags of sweets in the car on the way there and back, and I limited my alcohol intake to a moderate level - enough to enjoy without feeling deprived, not enough to kill off my common sense.

I'm telling you - if you looked up self-restraint in the dictionary this morning - there'd just be a picture of me in place of the definition.

To add to an already lovely day, I had a really good day gambling-wise, and won on 5 of the 7 races, meaning I walked away with my modest £20 stake in tact (I worked out what I could afford at the beginning of the day, and that was what I gave myself to play with - mostly it was £2 or £5 bets though - last of the big spenders, huh?), plus an extra £30 in my pocket, which rather conveniently paid for the post-races dinner! How nice is that?!

I was also really proud of myself at dinner. Apart from the drink that someone bought for me without asking (but it was a vodka and slimline tonic - how well do my friends know me?), I stuck to water with the meal. We had massive platters to share for starters, so I just took one of each little thing and stopped at that (which was about 5 mini tid-bits I think), and of course I had already pre-booked my healthy main, but I also kept to plain rice.

And the birthday cake? One piece, which I shared with my two neighbours at the table. Incidentally, it was freakin' amazing! Chocolate, with raspberry filling and blueberry icing - heaven!

So, I stumbled home yesterday, just a few points over for the whole week, but not having counted all the walking from Sat, as I couldn't even begin to work it out. I got home absolutely starving, and then promptly committed the cardinal sin of eating too much as a result. Once I'd digested a bit, I thought I'd go for a run to feel a bit better, and then remembered I'd put all my kit in the washing machine. Rather than admit defeat, I used it as a reason to finally take my newly fixed bike out for a spin, and I'm glad I did - it blew away the cobwebs and was just what I needed. I did just over 5.5 miles in 40 mins, and my loop took in both commons in town (they're at opposite ends of town), so I got to go off-road down across one, and enjoyed the slow climb back up across the other.

As it was late evening, I virtually had them to myself and as it was so quite all the rabbits were out on the second one. As I slowly climbed, I ended up almost herding the rabbits with me up the hill as they all just slowly hopped along for a bit in front of me, had a little nibble and then hopped a bit further - I had a bow-wave of bunnies!

I also picked up a cat at the bottom of the hill, who seemed to want a fuss, and weaved in and out around me for about half the length of the common - I felt like I was walking a dog, except for her being small, black and feline!

All in all, a lovely way to finish the weekend! Well, except for losing a lb - that was a good way to finish the weekend.

Going to be having an early weigh in on Sat this weekend before I head off to Scotland for holiday, so let's see if I can improve it just a tiny bit more!