Back to basics (and blogging)....

....in which not everything is going to plan.

It's now 4.5 months since I ran Greater Manchester Marathon, and I didn't realise I hadn't written a post since then; they've been quite a busy few months as I was working in Manchester on a contract for 3 of them. 

About 2 weeks into working there I ran Shrewsbury Half Marathon; as I had quite a lot of free time prior to that I was able to do 4 training runs a week. In combination with the GPS watch my wife got me for Christmas, that made a huge positive difference to my training and pace, so I ran it in 1:35:36 (my target was 1:40).

Unfortunately, it turned out that a marshal had sent runners the wrong way so the course was about half a mile short; this was really gutting as I think I'd have been around 1:38 and that would have been a really good time (especially for someone that could barely run a mile at the start of last year).

The Manchester contract has finished now, but it's left its legacy; it's a 1.5 hour commute from here to Manchester (45 minute drive followed by a 45 minute train journey). It turns out that being really tired (both from travelling and work) is not conducive to having willpower to resist snacking in the evenings or maintaining an exercise regime, so for the last 3 months I've been consistently gaining weight most weeks (or at best maintaining or losing a little, only to put more on the next week).

I'm now 1 stone over my target; I haven't really been in my target range since just after Christmas except for the odd week, but this is the heaviest I've been since last year. I'm still much better off than I was at the start of last year, but I don't want to gain any more weight as I want to get back to running, and hopefully get a good time in my next race (I haven't decided what that's going to be yet, but I need to sign up to something to keep me motivated).

So I've decided decided that this week to try to kick start I will go back to basics and stick to the SW plan 100%, and I thought I'd keep a record of what I'm eating here as part of that...so here's today's planned food:

Healthy A: 250ml Semi-skimmed milk

Healthy B: 60g wholemeal roll

Breakfast

Apple, satsuma, nectarine, fat free yoghurt (0 syns) (note: not all fat free yoghurts have no syns, but I checked the ones I had using the app and they are free).

Coffee with milk from HEA.

Second Breakfast (yes, that's a thing)

Bacon (all fat removed) on wholemeal roll (HEB) with fresh tomato (0 syns)

Lunch

Chicken drumsticks (skin removed) with salad (0 syns)

Dinner

Sticky Chicken (~2 syns) with Slimming World chips and salad

Snacks

Pickled Onions (free/speed)

Yoghurt (free)

Speed fruit (strawberries, apples, plums, nectarines)

Exercise ("Body Magic"):

3 Mile run