Sunday morning running

As I write this, Graham is over half way round the 2014 Brighton Marathon.  I am obsessively checking his progress via the wonderful, free app the race organisers have provided, which gives me his split times every 5k and a little map with a moving dot which is my husband.  I am sad I can't be there to cheer him on in person, but this app means that I can at least feel some of the excitement of the occasion at home.  I love this sort of technology; it makes the whole experience so much better for everyone.  

My own running is still going pretty well.  As he was resting before his race, Graham yesterday ran parkrun alongside me, at my considerably slower pace.  Because of our wildly different running abilities, it is very rare that we run together - I think the last time was probably on holiday in France last summer.  It felt strange to run together - I missed the music that I usually listen to!  But I loved the companionship, and it made me want to speed up so that we can run together more often.

A month ago I got a new PB by running under 28 minutes for the first time ever.  The sense of achievement when something like this happens is enormous.  I really love the 5k distance - I've got no desire to join Graham in running marathons, but I am determined to knock another couple of minutes off my time over the next year or two, and inch towards the 25 minute mark.

I've done very little running during my A&E placement.  My feelings about this alternate between thinking 'fair enough - you're on your feet for twelve and a half hours at a time', and knowing that really, deep down in my heart, walking around A&E, no matter how fast I walk and how busy I am, is no substitute for proper exercise.  Most of the nurses I was working with were runners, or cyclists and managed to fit exercise into their days off.  A&E was also an emotionally draining place to work, so some running on a day off would be very good for my wellbeing.  After the Easter holidays I start a new placement on an oncology ward, and along with all the nursing skills I want to master while I am there, I also want to get the hang of fitting exercise around my work.

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Well, would you look at that - while I have been writing this blog, Graham has finished his marathon.  In a very good time of 3 hours, 29 minutes and 4 seconds.  I am beaming with pride!

Evolving appetites

Graham is training for a marathon again.  He came home last weekend after a long (over two hour) trail run, and his Garmin showed that he had burnt nearly 1,800 calories while he was out.  Which is an eye watering amount of calories for a single run - over two thirds of the recommended daily amount of calories for a man.  Unsurprisingly he parked himself down at the kitchen table and devoured vast platefuls of food, washed it all down with a banana and oat smoothie and then took himself off for a long nap.

The children too are eating vast platefuls of food and sleeping a great deal.  They are growing almost in front of my eyes...Cam is now within a centimetre or so of being taller than me, and Olivia already taller than her grandmother.  Teenage appetites have arrived in the house with a vengeance.

And so suddenly I find that my years of experience in cooking for four people don't count for much.  My previously precise quantities are all out of kilter, and what used to feed us all comfortably with second helpings and leftovers now barely feeds the children.

Toad in the hole

Baked oatmeal

Potatoes - ready to be roasted for a corned beef hash

Would you like some porridge with your syrup, Olivia?

Cherry and almond cake

I have gone back to doing a big brunch on Sunday mornings, which gives me a break from what sometimes feels like endless cooking and feeding of squawking baby blackbirds.  While Graham is out on a run, the children can lollop on the sofa watching tele, and I can leisurely potter about in the kitchen listening to Radio 4 in peace while I cook and bake.  I try and make at least three big, filling dishes that everyone can help themselves to, and come back to during the day if they feel hungry.  I don't bother making anything for lunch, and then we have supper a bit earlier than usual.  It makes the whole of Sunday feel lazy, indulgent and slow, which is just what I want.

Here's what has made it onto the brunch menu during January:

• corned beef hash
• herb omelettes with spicy tomato sauce
• Amish baked oatmeal (recipe here)
• banana and apple muffins
• huevos rancheros
• lemon and raisin pancakes
• savoury bread-and-butter pudding (grated cheese and bacon instead of the sugar and raisins)
• soda bread
• breakfast pizza (homemade pizza with breakfast-like toppings eg. mushrooms, bacon, tomatoes, eggs)
• spicy burritos
• oat and raisin muffins

We eat brunch at about 11am, but the children can't last that long without food.  While they are lolling and tele watching they are also eating fruit, toast or porridge - whilst waiting for brunch to appear....so basically they have breakfast AND brunch....

10 things

• This weekend, Graham will be racing in Trail Marathon Wales - a marathon through the stunning forests of Snowdonia National Park.
• This part of Wales is one of my absolute favourites, and I am very envious of his three-day trip.  I am staying behind in London with the children, but in a few years I'd love to go with him (not to run - but to walk the course beforehand if I'm allowed).
• We've been eating a great deal of pasta this week.
• Cam has been eating bigger portions than Graham - teenage boys' appetites really are extraordinary.
• As part of his training, Graham has been running home from work semi-regularly.  This is a 22km run from West London to East London, passing all sorts of fantastic sights.  He took photos the other day and has annotated them and put them into a Flickr set which you can see here.
• I went on a little spending spree at Abe Books last week, and picked up four cookery books for under a tenner (including postage).  Goodness, I love this website.  Most of the books were Elizabeth David ones that I somehow didn't have in my collection - she published more than I realised.
• Each day this week I've been into the garden, very early in the morning, and picked all the snails off the clematis, the rhubarb and the tomatoes - and then given them to the hens who shriek with excitement at this bonus breakfast.

• My clematis is looking better than it has done for years.
• I just finished reading The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh, which I loved.  I might have to go an rummage on Abe now for an illustrated guide to the language of flowers - there is a Kate Greenaway one out there, which would be excellent.
• I loved this wonderfully written article about roast chicken.  I often roast chicken in a similar way to this - covering it with herbs and spices in butter, and then serving it with a heavily scented rice.

10 things

• I am very excited to be going camping this weekend.  Old, dear friends, sunshine, good food, celebratory drinks and all the children running wild in the woods.  It will be an excellent weekend.
• Another old, dear friend has started a blog.  Since she moved up north I very rarely get to see her, so I love that I can keep up with what she's been doing and cooking more easily now.  Check out the malteser cupcakes and her Mum's wonderful bread pudding (which I made last weekend and went down a storm with the whole family).
• I am late to the party, but listening to Adele's 21 album at the moment.  It is fantastic.
• I find that I very rarely get sentimental about the passing of a stage in the children's development.  I am always ready for the next stage.  No more crawling?  I just loved that they were walking.  Sad to pack away the cot? No - just loving how sweet they looked in the big bed.  And so suddenly I find I'm excited about C starting High School and the soon-to-be teenage years.  Bring it on.
• In this spirit I made him some new curtains - bye bye to the curtains printed with baby giraffes that I made when I was pregnant with him, and hello to bright, funky, green, abstract curtains.

• G is cycling 180km to Cambridge and back today - the same distance that he will have to do in his Ironman race this summer.  I still find it hard to get my head around the distances involved.  In the actual race he'll already have done a long swim, and when he gets off his bike he'll then run a marathon for the last leg.
• I am still a couple of years off 40, but I suddenly find myself seeing the point of gardening for the very first time.  This feels like some kind of middle-aged enlightenment.  When I turn 40 will I want to get myself one of those kneeler pads?
• I'm baking a great deal of soda bread.  Mainly because it's so quick and easy. Weigh ingredients, stir, plonk on baking sheet, bake.  All done in 50 minutes.

• I've also been making these onion bread rolls, which are delicious - especially with a couple of rashers of bacon and  a squirt of ketchup inside for breakfast.
• How did it get to be June already?

A quietly satisfying Sunday

Yesterday O and I went Christmas shopping and then on to meet Auntie Alison at the Diaghilev exhibition at the V&A, which was excellent.  I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in ballet, theatre or early 20th Century music and art.  O enjoyed it too, although it was a HUGE exhibition and she flagged towards the end.

The family calendar is looking rather full for the next few weeks too.  That'll be Christmas.  Between the four of us we have this ballet, this Christmas market, a school Christmas play, visits to grandparents and cousins, meeting up with friends, celebratory meals and this half-marathon all lined up before Christmas Eve.

So today seemed precious.  An ordinary, quiet Sunday with nothing planned beyond a few household chores and some relaxation.

This morning I raked up the last of the leaves from our poor, mangled, snow-sodden lawn, and I cleaned out the eglu.  As is always the way with garden chores, I put them off for far too long, thinking how cold and boring they will be, and then end up thrilled and energised after I've done them.

This morning as I pulled leaves out of the flower-bed I discovered vivid, green bulb shoots amongst the mess and mud, which were certainly worthy of a photo.

The tangle of bare branches, the wintry pale-blue sky, and my favourite yucca trees had me reaching for the camera too.  It feels so good to see blue sky again after the grey and white of the snow days last week.

Back indoors, there were the delights of a simple, warming stew and freshly baked bread. And then suitably warmed and filled, I could pore over a new, very exciting book.

This is such an achingly beautiful book, crammed full of projects I really want to make right now.  Over the last few years I've made several Clothkits dolls and their clothes for O, and the monsters for my nephew, but that's the limit of my toy-making.  Now I have this book I can see myself expanding my horizons.  The fact that all of these dolls only need small pieces of scrap fabric, and can be assembled so quickly is very appealing.  I love the boy doll on the cover best of all, and the little pink mermaid runs a close second.

And as the afternoon drew to a close, there was a sudden blaze of sunset-sunshine on my quilt, folded up on the back of the sofa.

I ran for my camera, and barely ten seconds after I'd taken the picture the sun dropped behind the houses at the end of the street and the sunshine disappeared for another day.

But there's still the sofa, and the Wee Wonderfuls book, and even a little bit of leftover stew.  So my quiet, satisfying Sunday is not quite over yet.

The marathon training

Supporting someone who is training for a marathon requires many skills:

• Being able to cook pasta on a regular basis, and find new and interesting ways to do so that don't leave everybody else in the family jaded (Jo Pratt in her excellent book In The Mood for Food gives a wonderful recipe for pasta meatballs in chianti which she devised to feed her husband when he was marathon training).
• Being able to recall at a moment's notice where abouts in the washing cycle the favourite pair of running shorts is (there will be three seemingly identical pairs of running shorts, but one will be better than the other two).
• Washing stinky running kit ALL THE TIME (or don't wash it, but then don't moan when someone else leaves it festering for days and then puts it in the machine a minute before you really needed to do an emergency school uniform wash).
• Not laughing, teasing, or taking photos when the marathon trainer does his stretches on the bedroom floor.

• Being tolerant of their enormous capacity for sleep.  Long distance runners are either going for long runs for hours at a time, or sleeping off long runs for hours at a time.
• Concentrating when listening to descriptions of their long runs.  In particular try not to get muddled between kilometres and miles and remember what times they're aiming for so that you can say helpful things like "10k in under forty five minutes?  well done, darling!" rather than unhelpful things like "so are you going any faster yet?".
• Nagging them to rest and do yoga or swimming for a couple of days whenever the knee support puts in an appearance.

I've not watched many of G's triathlons over the years, and I won't be watching his first marathon in Brighton next month.  But both of us know that a supportive partner is one who is there for all the endless months of training, self doubt, dirty washing and angst that go into such events.  The races themselves are the result of all that training and they are exciting and satisfying for the competitor, but generally pretty dull for the spectators (and especially dull for children). 

So I've recently stopped feeling bad that I don't go along to most of the races.  The supportive role is a deeply unglamorous one, but one that is essential to everyone's wellbeing, and much appreciated around here.  I shall be at home on marathon day, cooking up a big supper for when G gets home.  It probably won't be pasta though.