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!

Weigh in, measurements and the weekend dissection

Weigh in first - I lost 2lbs. Yay!!! Still a shade above 14 stone, but I'm still pootling along in the right direction.

Measurements - I seem to take these at completely haphazard intervals. This time it was prompted by the start of the Summer Challenge that Ang is running over at Get Fit After 40, and if I'm going to do the challenge I should do it properly with the measurements as well as the scales. So since I had the tape-measure out anyway, I thought I'd update them on here (numbers in brackets are the previous measurement):

Hips: 44" (46")

Lower Waist (at belly button): 43" (44")

Upper Waist (at narrowest point): 36.5" (39")

Chest: 44.5" (44" - don't know if this because I had a different bra on this time!)

Upper Arm: 12.5" (12.75")

Thigh: 26.5" (26.5")

There are some losses in there since last time which is great, but I think the nicest thing about those, is that for the first time, my hips are smaller than my bust - wooohoooo!!

On the other hand my waist measurements need some work as all the running and biking is taking the weight off my hips and not my waist - I'm going to start looking like an egg on legs at this rate!! lol

And so, finally, down to the weekend. I have a confession to make - I got to Saturday, and honestly I didn't think too hard about points. Hmmm ... I know .... not the best idea I've ever had. It could have been a lot worse, as including the over-run I had on Monday at the picnic I finished the week at 19 points over, but I did indeed drop the ball. Actually, I take that back, because I've just thought of something else I didn't point up - DAMN!

After my lovely lunch on Friday with my Dad, I was up super-early (for me) on Saturday to tootle off to London. I had breakfast before I went, but I think that was the last thoughtful piece of eating I did until Sunday morning. I met one of my school-friends for lunch in Clapham, where we sat in the sun sipping vodka tonics and munching on a panini for long enough that my shoulders were decidedly pink. Strolling to and fro across Clapham common was about the most exercise I did, although I loved how good I felt about myself in my lovely knee-length denim shorts, gladiator sandals, loose-ish vest top, trilby hat and sunnies (and a healthy smattering of chunky jewellery!), even next to Koks whose a size 8 and 5 foot 3 if she's even that!

Back across the common to the boys flat after lunch, grab some more long, iced vodkas and I settled in to watch the rugby with them and pretty much stayed in that position on the sofa all evening right through the party! I never even got changed into the nicer clothes I'd bought along for the evening or put any decent make-up on, which is rather unfortunate since I later found myself happily chattering away (and drunkenly talking complete bollocks) to a rather lovely guy. lol - always the way.

Yesterday was better - straight back on the points, and even managed to wangle in a pub dinner with dessert in the evening without completely stitching myself up.

On my way back from London, I detoured to Bristol to swing by the Snow and Rock store there. Turned out to be quite an ego boost! I wanted a new waterproof for Norway, and some walking trousers. I didn't find the walking trousers, but when I tried on the size 16 North Face jacket that I wanted, it turned out to be massive, so I got a size 14 instead! I know it's just because it's cut really big (and indeed the reason I didn't get trousers was that they were all cut really small), but it was still lovely buying something with a 14 on the label. I also got slightly distracted by the cycle shop there, and thought I'd have a peek at the cycle shorts as I've been wanting a pair of baggy mountain bike ones for ages now. I thought it would be quite a traumatic business buying them, but the first pair I tried on were a perfect fit in the 16. In fact they're cut so loose, and the fabric is so stretchy that if they'd had a 14 in stock I'd have probably tried and got them instead so they'll last longer, but it wasn't to be. Still - I have my lovely new shorts, and I can't wait to try them out. Think I'll probably be living in them over the summer as they also double up as decent looking general outdoors shorts and I should make the most of them while they fit!

Also bought a new bike helmet to replace my slightly battered one, and a new drinks bottle for running, as well as random miscellaneous spare parts for the bike that I needed. An expensive but altogether satisfying shopping trip.

Since I'm off on my trip on Thursday and the first half of the week is going to be pandemonium whilst I try and pack and organise last minute stuff for the trip and navigate my way through month end at work, I'm just going to try and eat sensibly each day until I go and get in the exercise where I can. I've also got to go for my final physio appointment tonight (ouch - going to be expensive!). Once I'm away, I'm going to be away from the internet, so I'm just going to have to wing it. I'm not going to stress it too much - just going to try and make sensible choices and not go nuts because it's holiday, and hopefully there'll be loads of walking and cycling and possibly some swimming to offset that.

Day 4 (Week 2) - Status Report

I'm still here (more or less awake), I'm still capable of walking (just about), and I'm still planning on going mountain-biking on my own this afternoon (eeeeeeek!).

I went along to running club for the first time yesterday. I'm torn between saying it was lots of fun and I did good, and that it was hell on earth and there ain't no way I'm doing that again. At least until next Thursday.

Firstly, there were about half a dozen other ladies, and I can confidently say that I was the youngest, and completely middling in running ability and general size in the group. Everyone ran at different paces - I wasn't the fastest or the slowest, and it was quite weird for me to be running a section, then stopping to stretch, or waiting for others to catch up. When we were stopped for a minute, I found myself restlessly pacing because I was scared that if I stood still that would be it and I would just seize up and grind to a halt.

The route was more testing than something I would have chosen to run as it featured some quite steep up and downhill sections, and I couldn't believe that I voluntarily found myself doing shuttle runs up and down a short gentle hill section, in public, without feeling really embarrassed or self-conscious. That was hard, doing the shuttle runs, knowing I was out at the furthest point on the run, and therefore still had to run back. Mark, our instructor was quite cunning as when we got to that section he told us what we were going to do, but not how many. The instructions were to put all the effort into running up the hill (a short distance of maybe 75 metres to a specific lamp post) and then to just really gently jog back down. So we did the first 2, and then he told us we were doing another 4. So 4 more we did. Then he said just to head back the way we'd come, didn't matter what speed, but to keep jogging rather than falling back to a walk, and he'd meet us back at base. I interpreted that as back at the gym, so traipsed all the way back in one long run. By the time I was near the end, it was a matter or pride to not walk so I just kept mechanically going along. There were 4 of us at the front of the group, and although we took slightly different routes back (2 sides round the square type scenario), we all arrived back more or less together. It was then about another 5 mins until the rest of the group got back. I was probably really annoying for that 5 mins as I was still pacing up and down, unwilling to just stop, although I did stretch.

Mark's heart rate monitor, said he'd been running for 56 mins, so adjust for the fact that we got back 5 mins before him (he was running with the slower runners) and we were out for about 50 mins. Obviously not all of that was running as there were a few breaks, and we were walking for 5 mins at the start as a warm up, so conservatively, I reckon I was running for about 35 mins or so. Maybe a little bit more. In that time we covered roughly 3.5 miles, which is about 5.6km for the metric folks.

Surprisingly I feel no after effects at all this morning, not even sore legs. I've said I'll meet them again next week for the Thursday run, which is going to be up on the hills proper, although we are driving and meeting up there, so we don't have to run all the way up there first! I'm quite looking forwards to running up on the open grassy trails of the hills.

So yesterday, in summary:

• Points eaten 20.5 with 2.5 saved. I had quite a points heavy lunch which didn't leave much left for the evening, but I made lovely home-made soup again which I had for dinner. Also means I've got another bowl for lunch today which is yummy and low points.
• Fluids - enough for the now familiar smiley face.
• Exercise - running, and probably more of it than I ever thought I'd be able to do.

Now we're on Friday, and this is where it all starts to go horribly wrong. I've had my usual healthy breakfast of cereal with skimmed milk, and a glass of orange juice. I've just inhaled a cereal bar as I'm starving, and I've got healthy soup and a yoghurt for early lunch. My bike's packed in the car with my kit, and I'm going to head over the Forest of Dean when I finish work at lunchtime and brave some singletrack on my own. I don't know whether I'll do one lap, or 2, or chicken out and just go for a cardio work out on the family trail. I guess it depends on the weather, how much time I've got when I get there, and how busy the singletrack trails looking. But I'm hoping to do one circuit of the singletrack minimum which should take about 40 mins if my last performance there is anything to go by (it's a 3.7 mile circuit, but very technical and with some vicious climbs in it).

From there the plan is to grab a shower at the bike centre (assuming the visitor's showers are open!) and then change quickly back in to my normal clothes and head down to the Cotswolds to meet the girls from my old work for dinner. Dinner will be a challenge as I've seen the menu and it pretty much all look really good, or evilly bad, depending on which way you look at it. After that I shall head home, grab a good night's sleep and then I'll be up bright and early to head off to the wedding tomorrow via Jo and Lissa's house to dump my car and overnight bag there for tomorrow night. I'm going to leave my bike in the car, and shove in some clean kit, and I'm hoping to ride out for a bit in the Wyre Forest on Sunday, to kill off a bit of tomorrow's excesses.

That's the plan anyway. God knows how it will pan out! I shall report in on Sunday with a full account.

Day 1 (week 2) - status report

So here we go again for the week. It was a funny old day yesterday as I spent most of it in town either at the opticians for various appointments or lurking / shopping waiting for my glasses to be made up. For me, that means that it's great for snacking as I'm busy and not thinking about food, although does mean making a sensible choice come lunchtime (god bless Caffe Nero and their healthy choice paninis!).

All in all, not a bad day yesterday:

• Points eaten - 21. I ate an extra point over my 20 purely because I didn't have any normal size jacket potatoes left in the house when I was cooking dinner and have to have a larger one, but I think I can live with that. I was absolutely gagging for some dessert of some sort in the evening, so I resolutely spent about an hour and a half doing some much needed tidying of my room instead to distract myself.
• Fluids - tick. I was coming up a bit short on this as I went into the evening so I chugged my way through 2 pints of water whilst I was tidying. Good - but not wholly conducive to an unbroken nights sleep!
• Exercise - Body Pump class. I was typically late to get there as I thought it started 15 mins later and arrived in a dishevelled, flushed mess and had to try and squeeze my workstation in to the packed class. I hate being late as it means most of the kit is already in use and you have to make do with what's left. So no 5kg plates left, and a weirdly annoying bar end (the gadget that keeps the weights on the bar). It was a tough class as I miscalculated when loading my bar for Squats and ended up with more weight than I usually have, which is hell when you hit the bottom half only squats and your legs are screaming. Definitely seeing some improvement in other things though - I can just about manage the tricep dips which are my nemesis, and actually doing full plank in the abs track rather than doing a cheat-y knees on the floor plank.

So on to day 2. Been back to the optician's this morning and they've said that there's still an interruption in the cornea but it seems to be healing clearly. I've got to leave my lenses out for 5 days and then see how I go, which by my calculations means I can put them back in on the day of the wedding (yay!).

Got healthy food with me today, and tonight's my night for running. Bridget's asked to come out with my this evening on my run, so we'll see how that goes. I was just thinking about the weekend, and I reckon I might take my bike over to the girls' house with me, before the wedding, and I can go try out the trails in the Wyre Forest on Sunday then.

Day 7 - status report

As promised, this will be a proper update of the weekend. It's been a blast, and I'm a tad knackered now. The pic on the left is me hoofing it down one of the paths at Llandegla yesterday, which was awesome fun. But the biking comes later, so rewind 24 hours.

I was pretty good up til Friday lunchtime, with the exception of the giant chocolate chip cookie that I had on Friday morning. Can you classify yourself as being good if you still make one bad choice? Everything else was good anyway. Friday afternoon passed in a blur of last minute packing, panicking over which dress to wear (and the inevitable final decision to go with something completely different than originally planned) and just about being ready when my lift arrived.

The journey up to North Wales was tediously long as we got stuck in traffic, so we ended up just making it with 10 mins to spare before dinner started and all dived in the loos to get changed quickly out of jeans and into dresses and heels. This is Bridget and I in all our posh dress glory.

Dinner was probably about a million calories - it didn't start too bad as there was soup and bread rolls (with actual proper butter - god that stuff is good!), and then pan-fried chicken with loads of lovely veg, stuffing, and roast potatoes. So far, so good. The main was enormous, so I loaded up with veg, ate til I was full and left some of the potatoes and chicken - a good habit for me to practice. Then there was dessert which was profiteroles with fresh cream and a light and dark chocolate sauce. This is why I'd been saving points all week and it was well worth it. There were probably about 4 or 5 glasses of wine with dinner, and then 2 glass of sparkling wine afterwards - in other words: many, many points.

After a fun night, and a late finish (I think we got to bed about 2am), we were up bright and early to split up into a biking party and a walking one. We rocked up to Llandegla in the rain, and as expected B looked a little bit mutinous at the prospect of the weather. We cajoled her to at least come to the cafe for lunch first (the best bacon baps in the UK they claim, and to be honest they were pretty damn awesome - I had mine with extra mushrooms) and luckily once we'd refuelled the weather was looking a little less fearsome, so we kitted up and set out. That's my baby in the pic below - expensive but worth it! And then a general pic of us getting ready.

This particularly cheesey shot, is me looking smug that we've got to top, and a tad excited about where we're going - i.e. the fun downhill bit in the forest below that I'm pointing out. We were only doing the blue run as B wasn't feeling up to trying the red, but the long swooping runs down were just awesome and as they weren't too technical I was able to hammer it on the speed front which felt fantastic.

The shot above is Bridget showing off her mud collection. I wasn't quite as bad as my bike sports some rough and ready mud guards which fend off the worst of it. The trails were still pretty wet, and in the big version of the opening shot in this post you can actually see the spray being thrown about 6 feet in the air off my rear wheel, although I doubt you can see it on here. The best thing about the trails, really though, was that I found the climb up during the first couple of miles pretty easy going - I felt good and not too strained. I am sooooooo tackling the red route next time I go there!

Once back down to the centre, we jet sprayed the worst of the mud off the bikes and reassembled the jigsaw puzzle involved in getting 3 bikes, some luggage and 3 people back in a medium size car. Then a long drive home, and I admit that I wasn't as good as I could have been with my evening food choices. I was going to have home-cooked stir-fry before realising I had no stir-fry veg. Then since I was feeling tired and hungry I was going to go and get some take-away since I didn't feel like waiting round for something to cook, but didn't have the energy to leave the house either. Finally I remembered that one of the local takeaways delivered, so ordered some vegetable chow-mein to be bought to the house. Not ideal, but also not the worst choice I could make.

I have pointed up everything from this weekend as best I can, and as at this morning, I had pretty much broken even. Today's been all about running around. I had to retrieve my overnight bag back from the boys as it got bought home in the walkers' car from Wales, then go over to B's to get my bike back, then shoot down to Bristol for a first date, which lasted over 3 hours (we only met for coffee!). Just need some tea now, and then I'm going to have a quick tidy and collapse.

My right eye is killing me - it's been sore all day, but I've just taken my lenses out and now it feels worse. I'm praying I haven't got another ulcer on my cornea as I remember it feeling like this when I did just before Christmas. It won't stop watering like crazy as well as being overly sensitive to the light. Might have to go get an emergency optician's appt tomorrow if it's still feeling a bit off.

So in summary:

• Food eaten - way too much - about a million calories, but it was good. Although rich food doesn't agree with me so much anymore.
• Fluid intake - plenty - but mostly alcoholic, or post-ride Lucozade - errrrr, perhaps a little more water required.
• Exercise - one awesome bike ride, and then not enough today.
• Time spent off plan - about 12 hours longer than intended, but I'm back on it now, for next week.

And then repeat all over again starting tomorrow for the wedding next weekend!

• Weekends enjoyed - 1 really good one!!!
  

Day 4 - Status Report

The highlights are as follows:

• Points eaten - 19 - 4 saved, which makes up for my little indiscretion with the ice-cream yesterday (that sounds kinky somehow doesn't it?!).
• Water drunk - lots! Smiley faces on tracker - 1.
• Exercise - errrrrr - I don't suppose playing Shaun White Snowboarding Tour on the Wii balance board really counts does it? Ok, so I might have dropped the ball a little bit here. I admit it, I got home, it was cold and miserable outside, and I just plain couldn't be arsed to go out again to go to the gym. So I kinda, sorta had a night off *looks a bit embarrassed*.

On the upside the scales say another 0.5lb off, so that's 2.5lb off this week. On the downside, all bets for maintaining that loss til Monday are now off as it's Ball Day today. I doubt I'm going to have time to slip in any exercise this afternoon between getting home, packing and heading off to Wales, so I've just planned my food til lunchtime, and we'll run from there. I have no idea what's on the menu tonight, so I'm not going to stress it.

Tomorrow morning we're heading off to Llandegla for some mountain biking action. The weather's turned a bit pants today, so it could well be pretty muddy up there but that doesn't particularly bother me - just part of the challenge. It won't bother Tim either as he's a pretty hardcore biker, but I'm hoping it won't put Bridget off as she's probably not as in to this getting on the bike come rain or shine malarkey as she's still a pretty nervous rider. Really, really don't want to get the bikes all the way to Wales and then find it's called off because of a bit of rain and mud ....... fingers crossed please!!!

p.s. is it wrong that I'd like to mountain-biking with my friend's boyfriend, but without the friend occasionally, because it would faster, harder and more exhilarating??? I feel it would be somehow.