Post Run Refuel: Vegetarian Bolognese

This bolognese is both super cheap and super delicious. It works best if you let it bubble away for a couple of hours but if time is tight it’s still good after half an hours quick blast. I replace the meat with dried soya mince because it is cheaper, but you could use frozen quorn mince or bulgar wheat if you were going for a full on carb overload!

Ingredients:
200g soya mince (soaked in 600ml boiling water for 6 minutes)
Onion, chopped
Garlic, 2 cloves crushed
Carrots, 2 chopped small
Courgette, 1 chopped small
Mushrooms, a few chopped small
Tin of tomatoes
Tomato paste, a good squeeze
Red wine (optional!)
Veg stock if it’s too dry
Basil/mixed herbs
Bay leafs, 2 (these add the real bolognese flavour)
Salt and pepper

Method:
Soak the mince. Fry the onion until soft then add the garlic and cook for a couple of minutes. Add the veg and let it cook in its own juices for a few minutes until softened. Add the wine, tomatoes, tomato paste, mince, herbs and stock if using.

Leave the lid off for a few minutes to let the alcohol boil off the wine then cover and cook on the lowest temperature for as long as you can leave it.

Before you serve this take the lid off and bubble off any excess liquid so its nice and reduced.

Serve with either white or wholewheat pasta and grated cheese.

New kit, new start

I went back home to Cumbria last weekend and managed to get a lovely run, despite icy conditions, round a short route near my house. It’s only about three miles but it goes from Helton, through Askham and round along the river towards Whale along both road and tracks.

Normally I run on the fell when I’m home but the weather was so cold and miserable I couldn’t face the sparce, unsheltered wilderness that is Helton fell on a grim day.

But that’s not the exciting part of the trip. In Shap, about eight miles from my house, there is a New Balance factory outlet where I have always bought my trainers and some kit, although it’s still expensive even at knock down prices. But this weekend they were having a half price sale and amazingly still had stuff in my size on the Saturday.

I got a new pair of New Balance 1064s, which I paid about £70 for last time for £35 and a pair of trail/fell shoes for £20 as well as two t-shirts at a few quid each! I now feel fully prepared for the marathon…sort of.

Although of course it has been too wet and muddy since I bought them for me to actually wear my sparkly new trainers. It’s always the same, you put off wearing them or you wear them only on nice dry road runs. Then one day you are caught in a freak storm, the shiney design is splashed with irremovable mud and your inhibitions vanish.

New trainers, become only trainers and you can enjoy them to the full. But I am still treasuring mine! Afterall, they were an incredible bargain!

New year, new challenge

As I ushered in the new year with champagne and cocktails all I could think of was what the new year really means for me… the beginning of training for my first marathon in May.

I have picked Edinburgh, mainly because it is the flattest in the UK, and because London seems impossible to get into. And because I moved to Glasgow in September and that is when I signed up for a race that’s not too far away.

Over the holidays I rested and maintained my fitness by running just about everyday at a gentle pace. This is my favourite kind of running. Just enough to fight the Christmas calories and get the adrenaline pumping, but not enough to leave you sore and exhausted afterwards.

It did mean that getting back to the club this week, and being met with the marathon training schedule, has come as a bit of a shock to the system.

I am going to train with Chi and Michelle from the club and Bob, who joined Bellahouston Road Runners as his new years resolution. We have not yet made a definite training plan but I think roughly it will involve a steady 7-10 miler with the club on Monday, rest/ swim on Tuesday, speed work at the club on Wednesday, a jog and circuits on Thursday, rest/recovery run on Friday, long run on Saturday, and rest/ short run on Sunday.

I am hoping to built endurance, a bit of speed, and avoid injury. I trained hard in 2009 for the Leeds Half Marathon and ended up with an overuse injury in my heel which healed just in time for me to run the race doped up on ibuprofen. I don’t want the same experience this year.

We plan to do a 10k in a few weeks and then a half marathon in March as practice runs.

We will have to see how it goes…

Happy Birthday to Parkrun Polok Park

Saturday saw the two year anniversay of the parkrun and, despite the snow, loads of people turned out to run it. The course had to be changed to a flat circular route across fields which was lapped three times to make up the 5k distance.

The snow was hard going- I wasn’t sure what surface we would be running on so I only had my road trainers so I couldn’t grip easily.

I didn’t time myself but I know I got the slowest time I have ever got- I arrived late and slightly hungover after a few too many glasses of wine the night before.

Everyone was chilled out though- the front guys didn’t even seem to notice the snow as they bounded past like festive deer in shorts and vests, lapping all the mere mortals on the way. Everyone else took it easy. Bundled up in leggings and trackies, hats and gloves, they patrolled round in a single file line, following the compressed snow that had been carved out by the front runners.

Afterwards there was coffee and cake in the Burrell Collection tearoom- the cake was parkrun themed and very cute.

The weather is turning into a nightmare for runners. But when you see everyone braving the cold and getting out no matter what it is heart warming. Although, I think it will be the treadmill for me for a few days, if the gym opens!

Circuit Training

Circuit Training

Yesterday I went to circuit training with Bellahouston Road Runners, today I feel like I’ve run into a brick wall.

We did an hours session in a small, hot room, with someone’s two month old baby playing with a little toy with a bell in the corner.

I went with my two friends from running and it was only watching them staying strong that kept me going. It’s the same always with sport- if you have someone to train with or keep running with then you improve faster because you are always working to keep up with the other person and they compete to keep up with you.

The room, a church hall just down the road from the Ski Club at Bellahouston, only had one CD so we had to hold the plank to Tom Jones’ Delilah- that song will forever mean excrutiating pain for me.

Just to rub salt in the wound we were asked to tell a joke and one guy started a really long one about a policeman. Needless to say the punchline came only as a relief and no one found it funny at the time.

The circuit involved sets of tricep dips, squat-thrusts, burpees, crunches and a whole array of exercises that seem to have used muscles I didn’t even know I had.

Strength training, not just for legs, but core and upper body as well, is important for improving running technique. Having a strong core and upper body improves your technique and keeps your posture strong and upright.

Unfortunately I have been rather lax in this area and so suffered, through my own fault, at the training. However, it remains to be seen, once I have recovered, what benefits it will bring.

Most of the things in the you tube video are moves we do at training- have a go and see what you think!

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