Good Deeds

Evening my loves! Happy [Horsey] Humpday! I hope y’all are having a good one I am! In fact, I’ve done a number of good deeds today, but I’ll get onto all that laterz like.

—-

Mr Marathon Plan told me to do 8 miles today…..and that is what I did. 8 long, HOT, tiresome miles…..but I am oh-so addicted to that feeling after know what I mean!? The run was made mildly easier by some fabulous fuel before hand:

Bear granola nibbles and a Nakd bar – about 40g of carbs, more than a slice of bread. LOVE.

The run itself was, as I said, VERY hot. I started off pretty strong – 8.30miles, but my last mile was just over 9minutes! The heat takes it outta me :s but the whole thing was finished in 1hr10, so not too bad

Breakfast:

See, I’m making the most of my strawberries from yesterday

After breakfast, I did Good Deed Numero Uno – I made my mumma (who was outside teaching in the blazing sunshine) a banana, strawberry and pumpkin seed smoothie:

Then, Good Deed Numero Duno: I baked a lovely banana spice cake, as requested by a lady she works with:

Which picture!?

It was PACKED with dried fruit, dates, coconut, walnuts….so much good stuff

Next, Good Deed Numero Three-o – I made my mum a nice fish sandwich, as she was working right through her lunch break

The poor woman, she works about 18 hours a day! She deserves a medal quite frankly; but I don’t have one, so me making her lunches and doing the dishwasher every day make fine substitutions

The rest of the morning was filled with random..er…stuff?

I made seitan:

Which came out proper crumbly!! Last time I made it, it held together, so I could actually slice it..not so today….I have no idea what I did differently!!? Any seitan makers out there care to shed some light on why?

Bah. I had the BEST (and most massive) summer lunch EVER though! Check it out:

Ooohh yeah baby! An apple, cereal mix, peanut butter puff things (puggets have returned!), strawbs, fresh figs, roasted corn/bean mix (packed with carbs, and in the case of the corn, 73g of protein per 100g :O), cantaloupe melon, yogurt and cinnamon. Oh it was a joy to eat, a true joy….all my favourites packed in there!

Dessert was some of this:

Hemp seed chocolate :s I couldn’t taste the hemp seed :/ and the chocolate wasn’t that incredible either…oh well. You win some, you lose some right!?

The afternoon included a Poppy/reading walk, pretending to stand like a ball boy whilst watching Wimbledon for 20minutes, and experiencing the most gross thing EVER. Kovac brought in a mole (!), which he left under the table. During the day, my mum and I spotted it – she lifted it up to take it out, and do you know what was hiding underneath it? Only about 100 MAGGOTS!!! How sick is that!? No wonder he didn’t eat it! Gawsh I hate cats sometimes….

Anyway, moving swiftly on!

Snack:

A blueberry and vanilla O bar; fabulous, simple ingredients list and counts as one of my 5-a-day – what could be better? It had quite a kick to it too!

Dinner – one of my favvvooouurrite meals! Tofu/peanut butter/carob powder sauce, with wholemeal spaghetti and lots of veggies….

From this:

To this…:

To this!

Good gracious.

Time for Poppy’s second walk now!

———

Mahah, I didn’t forget it was Horsey Humpday Though today I was thinking, every day is gonna be Horsey H-Day! It seems LOADS of you love seeing pictures of Chika and Tig and everyone, so I thought at the end of each of my posts now, I’ll put a picture or two up of Chika or whoever (and a little bit of writing too ), every day – the fun never ends over at BCR!!

Sooooo, here’s the first (a still, taken from the video camera):

That would be Chika, the day she arrived back in February 2005. The rider is Hannah. Confused?

Well, the day Chika arrived, my aunt and grandparents all came over to see her. I of course was freakishly excited, so I rode her about for everyone to see. Then (and in hindsight, this was THE dumbest idea known to man), Hannah wanted to have a ride too, so she popped on. But let me tell you it from poor Chika’s point of view – she was rising 6 years old (so a bit of a baby still). She’d had one home since she was bred, and then was suddenly uprooted in the middle of a FREEZING winter and sent somewhere new. She hadn’t been turned out for a full week (bar 7hours), because the ground at her previous yard wasn’t good enough – so you can imagine the stress and emotions she had building up :s Anyway, the poor girl was obviously really stressed and upset, and in the end, having Hannah on board just threw her over the edge! Which resulted in a big bucking/leaping fit….it was horrible to see! Needless to say, Hannah didn’t ride her for a long time after that. But thankfully, Chika doesn’t do that anymore – she’s a very settled, content and happy girl now

She’s also worked her butt off for me – 3 regional championships, and over 200 points in affiliated dressage (to get 1 point, you have to get over a certain % score. The max you can get from one test is 7, and that’s if you do a really freaking incredible test!! So you can tell we did a LOT of competing :p)

Oh! One other random side note, which I thought I’d just put out there while I’m on the topic; so this year, my focus has been running, which will end up with me doing a marathon in October. After the marathon though, I want to take a step back from long distance running. I want to be unfit!! I want 3miles to be a challenge again, instead of having to run 6 before I feel I’ve actually worked!! So I’ve decided to change my focus, post-marathon. To what, I hear you scream!? Back onto Chika!! 2009 was somewhat wasted, 2010 will be running, but from Oct 2010 onwards, Chika and I will make a comeback heck, I may even have to change the name of the blog, to Vegan Rider or something

ANyway, that was random…but there you go watch this space!