Race Pace, er, Saturday? Tears for Fears - Shout

I've been terribly lazy this last week and haven't run since Tuesday.

I tried to do 3 miles at my race pace of 8 min/mile and failed miserably. I got a mile before I had to drop my speed. By the end I was gasping for breath, that horribly raspy breathing when I can't open my throat up enough to get the oxygen my body needs. I ran 3 miles in 25:26, which is slightly slower than my 5k PR of 25:31, but not shabby considering. I'm worried that with 11 weeks until my 10K race I won't be able to run it in under 50 minutes. I'm beginning to wonder if under 50 minutes, considering I can't run a 5k in under 25, would be too ambitious and that I should aim for under 55 minutes. I don't think I can do it under 50 minutes, but I'm going to try some hated and dreaded interval training to help me get quicker. 1 minute at 6mph (10min/mile) jog followed by one minute at 8.1mph (quickermin/mile)

Either way. Driving home tonight 'Shout' was on the radio and I spent a while wondering what I could do without. These include:

• Me being lazy.

• Worrying so much about running I avoid running. It doesn't matter, despite having told friends, family, colleagues etc I want to run the 10K under 50 minutes, if I don't. No-one apart from me will actually give a monkeys if I fail.

• An incompetent colleague being promoted despite failing quite hard as they were shunted from team to team because no-one wanted them.

• An irritating colleague who barely works on my team, hates the work, and want to stop helping us out anyway taking accolades my team earned, without us finding out until afterwards.

• Open season being declared on Pippa Middleton by some sections of the media. Presumably Kate's off limits since she's married now and there's that uncomfortable legacy from her husband's mother's relationship with the media.

• Me not being bothered to eat healthily for over a week now.

• Dresses you can't wear proper bras under (sleeveless dresses, dresses whose backs go too low to wear a bra underneath, strappy dresses whose straps don't cover bra straps I'm looking at you)

Anything you could do without?

Parklife - Easter Run, Simnel Cake.

You should cut down on your pork life mate get some exercise!

I drove home to see the family on Friday, this song came on the radio and I was transported to being a teenager again. Awesome. 

In the boot I had a slowly cooling simnel cake that I'd spent the morning cooking. I managed to forget to buy light muscovado sugar despite it being the first ingredient in the list so had to substitute dark muscovado sugar and golden caster sugar, which left the cake rather richer than it should have been. I also forgot to buy more ground ginger, but since you use stem ginger that wasn't so much of a problem. There is a lot of chopping involved, but the cake was delicious. 

Oh, and finish off the unused marzipan in the Estonian way - chopped into slim strips to be dunked in strong black coffee and eaten while hot.

It's just as well I took my running gear with me and did a 3.88mile run on Saturday morning. When I got back home my dad immediately asked me if I wanted a glass of cold water. Thanks, Dad.

Freewheel

Yesterday was supposed to be Race Pace Thursday running 5k at 7.5mph at the gym, but as I got to there I was feeling all kinds of stressed out and just couldn't do it. I wasn't in the right place mentally, I wasn't breathing well enough, I was worrying about my stiff left calf, worrying about getting a stitch, worrying about the traffic home, and the traffic on the way to the gym. After about 2k I packed it in and cycled instead.

I'm beginning to wonder if I can hit my goal of 10k in 50 minutes, considering I could barely run 2k yesterday. Maybe I should give myself a break and aim for 55 minutes instead. Maybe I should give myself a break and remind myself I have about 13 weeks until the race which is plenty of time to improve my fitness.

Anyway, the song is a very cute song with a very cute video that always cheers me up and energizes me.

Chilli

My partner, Mr Scientist, made a chilli to go with the polenta I made. I would blog a recipe and picture of the delicious chilli but apparently it's 'not good enough' and 'just like a student chilli' so you don't get to see the masterpiece that was his chilli.

It was darned tasty though.

World Vegetarian : Soft Polenta Mixed with Cheese and Spring Greens with Garlic

Imagine silky soft polenta with a hint of cheese underneath gently blanched spring greens that were then sauted with garlic, mustard seeds, and onions. Mmm.

The spring greens should have been broccoli di rape, but Tescos didn't have any of that, and a quick google showed that broccoli di rape looks a bit like spring greens so I thought eh, close enough. This would also work with curly kale, and I think the curly kale would mimic the slightly bitter taste of broccoli di rape that Jaffrey mentions in her introduction to the recipe. At least it would if I liked curly kale. Oh another thing - halve the amount of oil/butter that Jaffrey lists in recipes. I didn't, and that's why the greens are so shiny.

I used the oven method of cooking cheesy polenta - you mix polenta with water, bring a pan of water to a boil, add the polenta mix and grated cheese, bring to a boil until it starts to thicken, then bung in a pre-heated 200C oven in a greased baking dish for 50 minutes. Jaffrey recommends 60g of parmesan, but since that's not vegetarian I swapped it for Northumberland oak smoked cow's milk cheese, which is made with vegetarian rennet and has a lovely delicate smokey flavour. The recipe made a lot of polenta and it only had a slight taste of cheese, which is due to me swapping the cheese as the oak smoked isn't as strong a cheese as parmesan. However I 'tidied up' the leftovers to make a neater line in the baking dish (ahem) this afternoon and it tasted a bit stronger, so it's one of those recipes that improves with a little age.

We're eating the leftover polenta with a kidney bean and quorn mince chilli tonight, yum!

Adagio for Strings

Today's cross-training and my left calf was feeling a little tight so I decided to go to my local pool for a swim. Over the speakers they played all sorts of thumping techno music, which made the pensioners grumble a bit. One of the tunes was this drum-thumping mix of Adagio for Strings which copies what William Orbit did, but overpowers the melody with a generic drum beat. Listen to it, it's awful.

I find Barber's original movement difficult to listen to while sitting still, but the languorous chords makes it very difficult to settle into a rhythm while running, unsurprisingly since the piece is supposed to be played slowly.

Some may find this sacrilege, but I like William Orbit's remix perfectly well, and the added beat makes it easier to find a rhythm when running. He speeds up the tempo a tad and uses a basic trick of splitting the longer notes into repeated shorter ones. It's a simple trick used to great effect to create movement in the remix while avoiding making it farcical by increasing the tempo too much.

Starry Eyed

Well I was planning a 3 mile run this afternoon. Not owning a GPS thing I'd plotted a simple out and back run along a disused railway line on Walkjogrun but turned back too early and ran only 2.88 miles. I don't own a watch and also forgot to check the time before I went out so the run took somewhere between 30 and 26 minutes, I think. Gosh durn it!

I also had to abort my first attempt because I'd put on some thigh-length running shorts that tried to creep up my legs to be bum-length shorts as soon as I started running. So I had to turn back and put on some knee-length leggings that are a bit tighter.

There's enough pain and suffering in this world without exposing it to my upper thighs.

Either way it was a glorious run with bright green grass, bright blue sky, bright yellow oilseed rape in the fields.