Pleasant Weekends

I'm back! It's been ages, I know, but this weekend was so pleasant that I had to write about it :)

I know this is a completely obvious statement, and I am not unique in this way at all, but I really love weekends. Time to sleep in a bit, read, get to the farmer's market or the green grocers, do some baking, go for a walk...all great, great things! This weekend I even managed to get in some surfing (I am so bad, but it is so much fun!) AND the sun made an appearance, so I headed out to Rhossili on Sunday afternoon and spent some time at the beach. It was absolutely perfect :)

As for this weekend's cooking, I've been trying really hard lately to watch what I eat and keep track of how much I'm consuming, in my efforts to stop eating like 10 grown men and to start eating like a normal single female. I'm not going to lie, it's been difficult! But I love finding recipes that provide good food and are actually fun to make. Especially right now, when there's so much great and reasonably local produce available, it's a great time to be cooking! So this weekend I made ratatouille and Scandinavian Rye bread, both of which will be dinner for the week. In my efforts to create a balanced meal, I added lentils to the ratatouille for protein (I'm a weekday vegetarian, as I'm too lazy and cheap to cook meat every night). If you aren't as lazy as me, and do cook meat regularly, I think the ratatouille (minus the lentils) would go really well with grilled or roasted chicken, lamb or sausage - it's fairly versatile, really, since it's basically vegetable stew!




Ratatouille
2 tbsp olive oil
3 medium onions, roughly chopped
3 - 4 cloves garlic, smashed and roughly chopped
1 medium aubergine (eggplant), quartered and roughly chopped
2 medium courgettes (zucchini), quartered and roughly chopped
1 large red pepper, roughly chopped
1 large yellow pepper, roughly chopped
4 - 5 large, ripe tomatoes, roughly chopped
3 sprigs fresh thyme, leaves only
Sea salt and ground black pepper
5 - 6 mushrooms, roughly chopped (optional)
150 g lentils, soaked (if dried) or canned and drained (optional)

1. Heat the olive oil over low - medium heat in a large pot and add the onions, stirring occasionally for 5 - 7 minutes, until onions are soft and transluscent. Add the garlic and cook for an additional minute.

2. Add the rest of the vegetables all at once and give it all a good stir. Turn the heat down to low and simmer for at least 45 minutes, until all the vegetables are soft and melty.

**If you have time and the desire, you can also roast the vegetables before combining them into the pot to stew - this will allow individual flavours to come through a bit more, but it's entirely up to you!



Scandinavian Rye Bread

175 mL whole milk
175 mL water
2 tbsp soft dark brown sugar
7 g active dried yeast (1 pkg)
250 g rye flour
200 g strong white bread flour
2 tsp fine sea salt
2 tsp caraway seeds

1. Combine milk, water and sugar in a small saucepan and heat, stirring continuously, until the sugar is dissolved and the mixture is lukewarm. Remove pan from heat, add the yeast and let sit for 10 minutes, until foamy.

2. In a large bowl, combine rye flour, white flour, salt and caraway seeds. Form a well in the centre, and add the yeast mixture. Stir until all the liquid is incorporated, and then tip out onto a lightly floured surface.

3. Knead for about 10 minutes, until the dough is soft and consistent in texture, but not sticky. Lightly oil the bowl and return the bread to the bowl, turning once to coat. Lightly oil some clingfilm/plastic wrap and cover the bowl and let stand in a warm, draught-free place for 90 minutes, or until the dough has doubled in size. *If, like me, you have no warm draught-free spaces in your house, you can also preheat your oven to 150F, then turn the oven off and put the bowl in there instead. I've had much more success with dough rising since I started doing this! Just make sure the bowl is heatproof, and maybe use aluminium foil instead of clingfilm.

4. Once the dough has risen, knock it back with your knuckles a bit before tipping it out onto a lightly floured surface and kneading briefly. Shape the dough into a round and place on a greased cookie sheet (or greased parchment paper). Deeply score the dough 3 times, then cover in clingfilm and let stand for another 45 - 50 minutes (or until doubled in size).

5. Once the dough has risen again, bake in a preheated oven at 180C/350F for 35 - 40 minutes. You'll know it's finished when the bottom of the loaf sounds hollow when it's tapped. Let the dough cool for about 20 minutes before slicing.

10k Training Schedule

The Forest of Dean 10k is in just over 2 months! YIKES!! It's not like I haven't been running, I have, but not nearly enough, and I definitely haven't been pushing myself very hard. Clearly this needs to change if I stand a chance of finishing the 10k, let alone achieving my hoped for time of 60 minutes. That'll be difficult enough already!

So - in light of this realization, I've found a training plan that will hopefully work. I have a training buddy for at least one run a week, probably two, so that would just leave one for me to be self-disciplined about. Totally doable...(right?)


Here's the plan:

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday  Sunday Week 1 REST 2M easy, then 4x400m, with 400m or 3 min jog recoveries, then 2M easy REST REST REST 2 - 2.5M easy, 2M faster, jog to finish 2-3M easy   Week 2 REST 2M easy, then 4x600m or 2 min, with 400m or 3 min jog recoveries, then 2M easy REST REST REST 15 min easy, 15 min fast but controlled, jog to finish 3-4M easy   Week 3 REST 2 - 2.5M easy, then 4x800m or 3 min, with 400m or 3 - 4 min jog recoveries, then 2M easy REST REST REST 30-40 min relaxed, inc hills 4-6M easy   Week 4 REST 2M easy, then 8x400m or 70 -80s, with 400m or 3 min recoveries, then 2M easy REST REST REST 5M, first half at 70%, second at 85% 5-7M easy   Week 5 REST 2M easy, then 8x500m or 90-100s, with 400m or 3 min recoveries, then 2M easy REST REST REST 35-45 min fartlek, with varied efforts and recoveries 6-7M easy   Week 6 REST 2 - 2.5M easy, then 5x800m or 3 min, with 400m or 3 min jog recoveries, then 2 - 2.5M easy REST REST REST 6 -7.5M gradual acceleration in 2.5M segments, ie 70%, 80%, 90%.  7-9M easy   Week 7 REST 2-3M easy, then 10x400m or 70-80s, then 400m or 2 -3 min jog recoveries, then 2 - 3M easy REST REST REST Warm up, then 4 x 1M or 5 - 5.6 min, with 3 -4 min recoveries, then cool down 7-9M easy   Week 8 REST 2 - 3M easy, then 5 -6 x 500m or 90 - 100s, with 400m or 2-3min jog recoveries, then 2-3M easy REST 4-5M easy REST REST RACE
I'm not deluding myself - this is going to be difficult. But I have to start somewhere, right?
It helps that this is along my running route :)

Russian Honey Cake

Our department secretary retired this week, and we had a retirement lunch for her on Friday. It took me ages to decide what kind of cake to make for the occasion, because I've noticed that not everyone in the department loves chocolate cake, and someone else had said they'd bring a coffee and walnut cake just in case a lot of people showed up. So, rather than go with perhaps the more traditional option of a Victoria Sponge (which would have been great, but a bit predictable, in my opinion), I found this on 'Time To Cook', a food blog from one of the bakers from 'The Great British Bake-Off' (such a great show!). I was intrigued by the idea of baking a really dry sponge and having it soak up the moisture from the cream filling, and Mary Anne said that a slight caramel flavour comes through as the cake slurps up the creme-fraiche. I was not disappointed! Not only was the cake relatively easy to make, it looked fantastic and everyone loved it! It's definitely more light and delicate than rich and dense, so it's a good option to bring along when not everyone is all for the Death By Chocolate-type recipes. This recipe is a combination of Mary Anne's and some others I found online during my hunting, so I'll just give you mine. Enjoy! Ooh - and google pictures of Russian Honey Cakes! Some people can make them with 15 super thin layers! I don't know how they do it, since I had enough with 6, but it would be worth trying.

Russian Honey Cake

3 large eggs

225 g caster sugar

100 g unsalted butter

3 Tbsp honey (either stiff or runny honey is fine)

1 tsp baking soda

500 g plain flour

1 L creme fraiche

4 Tbsp icing sugar

splash vanilla extract

1. Melt honey and butter in a bowl over a pan of simmering water. Add caster sugar and eggs, whisking constantly until mixture is smooth and sugar has dissolved. 

2. Add baking soda and whisk for another minute until thoroughly combined.

3. Remove bowl from heat and add flour in batches, stirring well between additions. The dough will become somewhat stiff, either like a putty or a soft rolling dough. Divide dough into 3 to 4 equal portions (you want the dough to be spread thinly in the tin, but the number of portions will depend on the size of your pan and on how many layers you want, so you'll end up figuring this bit out for yourself).

4. Preheat your oven to 180C/350F. Grease and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Spoon in one dough portion and spread it to the edges of the pan. You may find that frequently wetting a silicone spatula and pressing the dough into the pan works best.

5. Bake in the preheated oven for 4 to 5 minutes, or until the sponge is evenly golden brown and stiff to the touch. Let cool for a minute or two (until it's not too hot to touch).

6. Turn the parchment and sponge onto a cooling rack and peel the paper from the cake. Replace the parchment in the pan and spoon in the second batch of dough, pressing to the corners. Repeat steps 4 through 6 until all dough has been baked.

7. Stack the sheets of sponge and cut to desired size. I cut mine in half lengthwise and made 6 layers. Trim all the edges so every sheet is equal; reserve the trimmings.

8. Mix the creme fraiche with the icing sugar and a splash of vanilla until smooth. You want the creme fraiche to be sweet but still to have that tangy bite to it.

9. Lay one sheet on the serving dish and fit 4 strips of foil around the edges to catch any dripping cream. Spread a thick layer of cream over the first layer (be generous - the cake is going to absorb a lot of it!), then lay another layer of sponge over the cream. Continue alternating between sponge and generous cream layers, and finish off by covering the top, sides and ends. 

10. Crush the sponge trimmings in a food processor or by hand. And this next bit is up to you - the other recipe I was using sieved the sponge crumbs over the top of the cake, and it looked very pretty. But I didn't love the sides of mine, mostly because I hadn't kept enough cream back to cover the sides and ends evenly, so I went with Mary Anne's suggestion and pressed the crumbs onto the sides and left the top clear.

11. Once you've finished adding the crumbs, carefully pull the foil strips away from the base, removing all the left over crumbs and dripped cream.
 

12. Et voila! Now cover and leave the cake in a cool place to set and absorb all the creamy goodness for at least 12 hours. I made mine the day before, so it sat for 24 hours, but it was fine - not too soggy or anything. All together, I think the cake took about 1 1/2 hours to make, so it's definitely doable in an evening.

Baking Machine

There's nothing like being without a kitchen for a while to make you appreciate cooking for yourself, and over the past week I've made lasagna, welsh cakes, soup and the following extra special treats...

I had some friends round for brunch over the weekend, for which I attempted Challah bread, a fantastic Jewish egg bread that makes really nice french toast. The Smitten Kitchen recipe makes 2 loaves, so I made one large one for the french toast, one small one for myself, and then used the rest of the dough to make cinnamon buns, as I'm on a never ending quest for the best cinnamon buns in the world! I think the challah dough is actually the top contender, so I'm going to make it again and post step by step photos next time.

We also celebrated a friend's birthday on Monday, and I took advantage of our peanut-allergic friend's absence to make these: chocolate peanut butter mini-cakes. These were adapted from another Smitten Kitchen recipe (I love that blog!), but instead of making the triple layer cake I made a dozen small cupcakes, trimmed the tops to make them flat and then sandwiched them around the peanut butter cream cheese frosting. It worked out really well! And because the cake was rather rich, it ended up being the perfect amount - I wouldn't have wanted any more in one serving.

Up next, baking a cake for the retirement party of our department secretary...I still haven't decided what to make, but I'm debating at the moment between a Russian Honey Cake and a Honey and Lime cake...

February Wrap Up

February was a busy but excellent month for me, especially as it ended with a trip to Portugal! Officially I was there for research reasons, meeting some other researchers in Coimbra and Porto, touring some labs and trying to figure out if there would be any opportunities for collaborating in the future. And while I'm still not sure if I'll be able to get to work in Portugal during my PhD, I met some great people and realized that until now I have never seen a well-equipped soils lab! It was so good to meet some Soil Scientists and hear about the work they're doing, and it's made me think a bit more about what I want to do afterwards. We'll see...

Of course I managed to fit in a bit of being a tourist as well, and the last two days of my trip were in a town called Guimaraes (North Central Portugal), and they were meeting free and just for fun. All three of the cities were great, but I think my favourite was Porto.

I'm still enough of a North American to get overly excited by the novelty of going anywhere in Europe (even within the UK). The sight of a 'Porto' stamp in my passport made me inordinately excited. And another highlight - getting to use my very rusty high school French! The taxi driver and hotel receptionist in Guimaraes had no English, so we spoke in French instead, and I was actually able to carry on a whole conversation! It was such a great feeling to have a second language to fall back on - I will never again bemoan my French classes, even if it is Quebec French and not France French. It's still usable! 

So now I'm back in Swansea and trying to sort out the rest of my year...working in Portugal, writing up by December, what to do afterwards...it all seems to be building up right now and it's all still a massive question mark. I'm ok with that, and not too stressed, but I'm beyond curious to see what happens!

Chocolate Roulade

I've been lucky to find friends here who love cooking (and talking about cooking) as much as I do, and we seem to have unintentionally established a tradition of weekly/biweekly dinner parties. It's never anything overly fancy; sometimes one person makes everything, but usually we're each assigned a course to bring. I usually bring desserts or bread, because while I do enjoy cooking, I really love baking, and I like trying out new recipes :)

This week was an extra challenge because one of my friends has had to go temporarily wheat-free, a circumstance that has drawn much sympathy from the rest of us allergy-free, bread-loving gluttons. However, this circumstance also provided me with the ideal opportunity to try out a recipe I'd been curious about for a while: chocolate roulade. Naturally wheat and gluten free!

The Great British Bake Off (I cannot express the extent of my love for this show. It's the only tv contest I can stand watching, mostly because I can empathize with a baker when their bread hasn't risen properly) contestants had a lot of trouble with this cake, and I was expecting many challenges and little success. But! Surprise! Success! And such success! It looked good AND tasted good - I think even Mary Berry would have been proud (which is all I could think of when I was folding in the egg whites). This recipe is very slightly adapted from hers, which you can find here. I think the next time I make it I'm going to crush some raspberries and mix them right into the whipped cream for extra oomph.

On to it then:

Chocolate Roulade
Makes 10 slices (not counting the end bits you'll have to trim off...those are bonus slices for the baker)

175 g good quality dark chocolate
175 g + 1 tsp caster (super fine) sugar
6 eggs, separated
2 tbsp cocoa powder
400 mL double (whipping) cream
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp icing sugar, for dusting

1. Preheat the oven to 350F / 180C. Grease and line a large rectangular cookie sheet or a jelly roll tin with parchment paper, making sure there's a bit of excess on all sides. Grease all sides of the parchment paper.

2. Break the chocolate into pieces and melt slowly in a glass bowl over a pot of boiling water, stirring frequently. Once the chocolate is completely melted, remove from heat and let cool slightly (should still be runny, just not hot).

3. Beat the egg yolks and 175 g caster sugar together until light in colour, then add the cooled chocolate and stir until well mixed. (Your batter will likely be rather dense at this point).

4. Beat the egg whites until stiff (but not dry and shiny, like meringues). You should be able to tip the bowl over without the egg whites sliding or falling out.

5. Fold one large spoonful of egg whites to the chocolate mixture, and mix until well combined. Then gently fold in the remaining egg whites and sift in the cocoa. (You'll want to be very gentle at this point - the cake batter has no other rising agent, so the fluffiness of the egg whites is the only thing adding height to this cake. If you're over-enthusiastic in your mixing, you'll lose the light airy texture you want in the finished product.)

6. Once all the egg whites have been added, tip the batter into the prepared tin and gently level the surface. Bake in the preheated oven for 15-20 minutes, or until firm to the touch. Once the cake is finished, remove from the oven and let cool for at least a few hours (overnight is fine too) covered in a clean damp tea towel. (Don't let the tea towel touch the surface though - put a cooling rack or something between the tin and the towel.) The cake will likely sink a bit, but don't worry, this is normal!

7. Whip the cream, 1 tsp vanilla and 1 tsp sugar together until stiff.

8. Dust some parchment paper with a bit of cocoa and icing sugar, and when the cake has cooled completely, tip it onto the parchment. (This make take some finagling...I had a bit of a contraption with another icing sugar-dusted baking sheet holding the cake in place as I turned it so it wouldn't fall out and break.) Remove the greased parchment paper.

9. Spread the whipped cream evenly over the cake. Then, using the parchment paper underneath, slowly start to roll the cake into a semi-tight jelly roll. It will crack a bit, but that's okay - it's supposed to!

10. Keep the parchment paper underneath the roll and transfer to a serving dish. Trim off each end to tidy up the look of it. Dust with a bit more icing sugar or cocoa powder and refrigerate until serving (at least 30 minutes). I served this with raspberries, but I think some strawberries and mint would also be really good.

Bagels

I've been wanting to make bagels for ages, and this weekend I finally did! It was surprisingly easy. There are a lot of good looking recipes out there that require sponges and two days of effort, but the recipe I found (New York-Style Bagels) was really straightforward and low fuss. Most importantly, the bagels turned out really well (if I do say so myself!), although I need to work on my dough ball making skills - shape and size consistency was fairly low :)

New York Style Bagels

 Makes 8 medium bagels

2 tsp active dried yeast

1 1/2 tbsp sugar

1 1/4 cups warm water (you may need another 1/4 cup)

3 1/2 cups very strong white bread flour

1 1/2 tsp salt

Optional Toppings: sesame seeds, coarse sea salt, pumpkin seeds, poppy seeds, cinnamon, raisins

1. In a small bowl, add sugar and yeast to 1/2 cup warm water but don't stir. Let sit for 5 minutes until frothy, then stir until yeast and sugar are completely dissolved.

2. In a large bowl, mix together flour and salt. (If you're making cinnamon bagels and you want the cinnamon mixed throughout, as opposed to marbled swirls, add 3 tsp cinnamon and 1/2 cup raisins now.)

3. Make a well in the centre of the flour. Add the yeast and the remaining 3/4 cups of warm water. Stir until just combined, then tip out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 10 minutes.

4. If you're making cinnamon bagels and want cinnamon swirls throughout the dough, sprinkle the cinnamon and raisins onto the dough now. Knead briefly to combine.

5. Set the dough in a lightly oiled bowl, turn to coat, then cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place for at least 1 hour, or until doubled in size.

  

6. Once the dough has risen, separate into 8 equal pieces. 

7. Roll each piece into a smooth, round ball. **This is where I had trouble. A skin had formed along the top because I'd forgotten to turn the dough. The skin made the dough tough to roll. If this happens to you, I found oiling your hands a little bit and working that into the dough helped, but probably the best is just to prevent the skin from forming in the first place :)

8. Poke your thumb through the centre of each dough ball, then widen the hole slightly by wiggling your thumb. Cover the bagels with damp paper towel and let rest for 10 minutes.

9. Put a large pot of water to boil and preheat the oven to 220C / 425F. Cover a baking sheet in parchment paper, and spray the paper with non-stick spray. If you have cornmeal or semolina flour, you can sprinkle a bit of that around the paper as well.

  

10. Once the water is boiling, use a slotted spoon to lower each bagel into the water. Let the bagels boil for 1-2 minutes (2 minutes for extra chewiness), then turn over and boil for another 1-2 minutes, depending on the desired chewiness.

11. Use a slotted spoon to remove the bagels from the water and place them on the prepared baking tray.

  

12. If you're adding any toppings, use an egg wash to coat the tops of the bagels and apply the toppings. 

13. Bake for 20 minutes, or until evenly browned. The bottoms should sound hollow when tapped. 

You can eat them right away (mmm...so good!), but set whichever ones you don't eat on racks to cool.

Rhossili Beach

One of the absolute best things about Swansea is the beach. I cycle along the coast to campus every single day and I still never get tired of it. On sunny days, nothing beats going to the beach and taking a walk. Nothing :)

When summer comes, there will be multiple beach barbecues to look forward to, but as it's still winter, my friend and I just went for a hike at one of my favourite beaches along the Gower Peninsula - Rhossili. The tidal range here is incredible, and the beach stretches on for miles. Today was even a little sunny (!!) so it was extra fantastic - we saw wild horses, sheep (of course), and a seal (well, it was a seal carcass, but it was still evidence of seals being not far away. So I will include it in my wildlife count for the day. You have to take what you can get here, I think). Afterwards, as with all good walks, we stopped for tea.

Anyway, I mostly just wanted to share the photos of the day - it was so pleasant and sunny, I just had to share.

Motivation

I feel like I start each year with the same blind optimism with which I started the last. I happily list my New Year's Resolutions (or goals, as I tried tricking myself into thinking of them as this year) in my journal, and tell myself, 'This is the year I'm going to get it together. This is the year I make great strides towards having a healthy and happy lifestyle. I'm going to become a real life version of the smiley woman on multivitamin packages and granola boxes, just wait!'

The sad truth is that too often and too soon my optimistic list becomes a record of my failure to change. And it's so frustrating - because I really do want to stop biting my nails forever, I want to get more than 5 hours of sleep every night, and I finally want to make it  through one non-fiction book in a year. I don't feel like I'm setting an unrealistic bar here!

Unfortunately, my problem is that as soon as I have a bad day where I miss some of my goals, everything goes down hill. I end up sabotaging myself and feeling frustrated and guilty about things until the next year when the whole cycle starts again. This can't be healthy.

This week has been fairly typical, which is not what I was aiming for, and which is why I'm writing this post. I had big goals this week - in bed by 11, up by 6, running 3 times a week, no food after 9 pm, at school by 9 am...I was going to be disciplined and energetic. And everything went perfectly well on Monday, but then yesterday happened. And then today. And now I can feel my spiral starting and I want to stop it before it goes any further.

I feel like I should acknowledge (in a somewhat public way, rather than just to myself in the bathroom mirror every morning) that yes, there will be missteps, and I will not meet my goals every day. Goodness knows chocolate can only be refused so many times before one spontaneously combusts...but I'm going to try to not give up on things this year, even when they start going wrong and I feel like I'm failing.

These photos were taken (by the amazing Bente!) in New Mexico, and have no connection whatsoever to the theme of this post other than they make me happy and remind me that things can be excellent (like the chili hot chocolate that was in that cup, or the hot air balloon ride over the New Mexico desert! Life can be SO GOOD!). But they seemed appropriate once I reasoned them out that way to myself.

I did try to find a picture that fit better with the theme, but all I could find was this. Which is, actually, appropriate, but not quite with the spirit of things :)

Happy New Year!

I hope your holidays were excellent! Mine were - I was able to go back to Edmonton for a few weeks and spent Christmas and New Years with my family. I won't be going home this summer (things will be too crazy at school - I'm writing up this year) so I won't see them again for a year...perhaps the longest I've gone without seeing my parents, now that I think about it... Needless to say, it was so very excellent to be able to catch up with friends and family, and to just have time to relax and be busy in the kitchen :) Here's a sampling of this year's experiments - the photos should all link to the recipe, and I think I can highly recommend them all, actually - great successes all around!

Anyway, I'm back in Swansea now, jetlagged and excited to get back into things. This year's going to be crazy, as I mentioned, but I think (I hope?!) I'm ready for it. I have to submit my thesis by December 2012, which is both terrifying, as it requires writing a thesis, and exciting, because I'm really looking forward to whatever is going to happen once I'm finished with all of this. The question of what I was going to do next came up frequently over the holidays, which is understandable but also somewhat frustrating. I've been trying to keep a fairly open mind about jobs and plans post PhD, and while I have a lot of ideas, I have no real expectations as to where I want to be or what I want to be doing directly afterwards.

I've been extremely fortunate up to this point in my life in that opportunities seem to present themselves when I get close to the end of a phase of my life, and I'm hoping/praying that this trend continues. When I first started university in 2001, I had planned on going on to med school and becoming a doctor. I realized fairly early on that that plan wouldn't pan out, and one semester a geography class was the only course that fit into my random 'keeping my head above water' schedule; it turned out to be my favourite course of all, and lead me in a direction I'd never considered. I hadn't planned on doing an MSc, but the chance came up right when I finished my BSc, and as a result I was able to travel and do some of the most interesting work with some of the best people I know. Similarly, a job filling in during a maternity leave became available exactly when I finished my MSc and wasn't sure what to do next, and while that job was beyond frustrating at times, it also taught me a lot about myself and what I could handle. The chance to move to the UK for a PhD literally fell into my lap when that job finished, and it's another chance I'm glad I took - while I feel like I got off to a bit of a rocky start, I have definitely come to love my life here.

All I mean to say by all of that, is that so far nothing has worked out according to any of my plans, and ultimately things have worked out better than I could have anticipated. So I've decided that rather than have any set plan, I'm just going to keep my eyes open this year and see where life takes me. Not in a crazy hippie kind of way - I do have ideas for jobs I'd like afterwards, I just don't have my heart set on any one thing in particular, so in that sense I'm going to keep an open mind.

As well as keeping an eye open for various jobs and opportunities, I'm focusing on getting fit this year - I turn 30 in April, and that, combined with the thesis and everything, it just seems like it's time to find a good lifestyle that will keep me energetic and fit and happy for the foreseeable future. So! My goals (I won't say resolutions, because if I do I won't follow them - I have a horrible track record!) for this year are:

- run 3 to 4 times per week
- run Forest of Dean 10k in < 1 hour (May 26th!)
- finish hiking the Three Peaks (I've only done Snowdon - I must do Scafell and Ben Nevis!)
- stop eating like 6 adult males and start eating like 1 adult female (However, I should be clear that I will not cut out anything from my diet -I  don't know if it's possible to live without bread, cheese and chocolate, and all diets seem to exclude these items...but I am going to try to eat less of things. That seems reasonable. Especially if I want to ever be able to buy a pair of boots that fit over my calves. Blasted German man calves...)

I have other goals for the year, but these are the ones I'll probably end up talking about most, so I thought I'd share them here. I'm off to a decent start I think, I went running this morning and I'm planning to go again tomorrow...we'll see how long I can keep it up!

Good luck with any and all of your goals and resolutions - and I hope 2012 is a great year for you :)

13 Miles Later...

Today was Half Marathon Day, and I think it is very safe to say that it was a success!

I knew going in that I wouldn't be able to run the entire thing, just because of my subpar training, but my goal was to run the first 7 miles and then alternate walking/running for the remaining 6 miles. I'd hoped to finish within 3 hours, since I'm not super speedy :) Of course the ultimate goal was just to finish, the chance of which I was rather doubtful of last night, but I'm happy to say 2 out of 3 goals were achieved!

I ran the first 7 miles straight through, and then stopped at 7 and walked a mile, ran a mile, walked 2 miles and then ran the final 2 miles - so in total I ran 10 of the 13 miles!! I thought my legs were going to spontaneously detach at the hips by the end, but the point is I made it to the end!! I came in at 3:02, which is a bit longer than I'd hoped for, but almost on target. It's annoying to think that if I'd just pushed myself a bit harder at the beginning, or walked a bit faster during the walking bits, I could have been in under 3:00. NEXT TIME!!

I'm not going to lie - the last few miles were tough, especially given my fear of spontaneous amputation, but that feeling when I could finally see the finish line, and I knew I would make it to the end, was amazing! I also had a super cheering squad of some friends from Swansea, whose crazy loud yelling gave me the energy to pick up the pace for the last 350 meters. Never again will I underestimate the power of cheering spectators!

So, there we go - this goal has been achieved! Now I have to pick another race...I want to work on my time, so I'm thinking some shorter ones so I can focus on getting faster rather than distance. I'll keep you posted :) In the mean time, here are some photos from the day...

Cardiff Millenium Centre: site of the longest lines for port-a-potties in the history of the universe. Also, the starting line.

Me and Alex (my super fast running buddy - 1:55!! Go Alex!) before the race. My lovely friend/his lovely wife Anne was our early morning cheering squad, emergency contact, photographer and supply carrier :)

Stretching out our pre-race jitters...

There were 15000 runners there today!

Go Wales! They love all sporty things and dragons.

Almost finished!! 350 metres to go...

I just found the Swansea cheering squad - hence the smile. Trust me, by this point I would not have been smiling if I hadn't seen them!

Medals! And free massages! Fantastico!