Chasing Sportacus

Me and Girl Lacer (4) ran the Sport Relief mile today in a very extremely cold London Embankment and it was fantastic. Girl Lacer ran all the way, pulling me along at points. Sportacus from Lazytown was there (if you don’t know what Lazytown it’s pretty much a global TV show where Sportacus encourage young kids to be active and healthy and at least round here it is absolutely loved). Sportacus was running the mile to and he was absolutely lovely, he was of course mobbed by lots of adoring pre-schoolers and he kept on stopping to say hello and for photos. Me and Girl Lacer started the race by chasing after him, he kept on stopping to grab onto the poles of street signs etc and he’d lever himself up so that he was completely horizontal, just hanging onto the pole, I thought that was a trick on TV and he was stopping to run on his hands and do press ups with kids on his back. He made a lot of little kids’ days.Girl Lacer was desperate for Sportacus to say hello to her and she did get close a number of times (her blonde little head is in the forefront of the second photo above) but she’s a polite little thing (and can be shy sometimes) so what with other more bolder kids (and their parents) pushing in she didn’t really have a chance, but still she got to get very close and although (ssh don’t tell anybody under 7) Sportacus is obviously only a TV character the guy himself who plays him, Magnus Scheving is pretty awe inspiring, an ex-aerobics champion he seems to passionately believe in getting the healthy living / exercise message across and has created the whole Lazytown franchise himself as well as starring in it.

Anyway eventually we had to leave Sportacus behind and run on and soon we came up behind this walking musical percussion band which was also doing the mile, there was just this whole large mass of very noisy percussionists. Anyway as we were running up behind them me and Girl Lacer were liking the music but as we got closer it got noisier and noisier so that when we ran past Girl Lacer had her hands over her ears and as soon as we ran past she’d dive onto the pavement, the band would pass us by and we’d have to run past them again, we did this 3 times and I was like “What are you doing?”, turns out she was terrified this moving mass of very loud people would run her over if she stayed on the road, so when I eventually coaxed her back onto the road, she ran even faster! Anyway with Sportacus being mobbed every footstep of the mile we actually beat him, how many people can say they beat a ‘real life’ superhero in a race! So, a long, tiring but very memorable day, with two little people going to bed very tired but happy (Boy Lacer got to see Sportacus as well from a distance). Girl Lacer actually ran all the way (except when she stopped for Sportacus) and I’m very proud of her, we’ll definitely be doing the next one and maybe Boy Lacer and Mr. Lacer will be able to do it next time to.

I wish I’d had something like that when I was little, I grew up thinking I was ‘no good at sport’ and therefore didn’t do any, it was only as an adult did I discover I liked working out in the gym, kick boxing and running (unfortunately due to budgetary constraints it’s just running at the moment), so it has always been my aim as a parent to encourage physical activity in my kids and also to act as a positive example with me exercising, fingers crossed that Girl Lacer has the ‘bug’.

So, I’m tired now, I don’t ache too bad, I’m a little tender in the legs but that’s principally because of a tough run yesterday however my arm really &*^% hurts! And it’s not a running injury; on the way there today, as I was carrying Boy Lacer onto the train, which had stopped at one of those platforms where there is a really wide gap between the train and the platform and as it had been raining, the floor just inside the doorway of the train was wet, so I’m climbing on the train, a heavy, wiggly 2 1/2 year old in my left arm, door already beeping to close, one foot on the train as I’m about to step up and that foot slips on the wet floor and I’m left virtually doing the splits with one foot skidding onto the train and the other foot on the platform, I had to reach out round the corner with my right arm and haul me and Boy Lacer up using the handle inside the door and felt a sharp shooting pain whilst I did it, must have twisted it ‘cos it still hurts! It’s always fun taking the kids into central London though, Girl Lacer especially, she’s at that age where everything is looked at with wide open eyes and even to me after living here for 10 years London is still magical, I can’t even imagine what it’s like for her.

Where’s the exercise buzz?

A busy weekend ahead so my normal Sunday morning run was today after the kids were back from ballet. I am actually running tomorrow as well but as that’s a 1 mile race with Girl Lacer (4) I don’t think that’s going to count as a proper run!

I’m currently training for a 5km race in May, I’d started running last year but had stopped running over winter, so I’ve been concentrating on increasing my run time, starting at 15 minutes and building up 5 minutes a run, although my Sunday morning run has been my only run each week (although that will change when the clocks change). My run today was a 35 minute run (3.7km, yes I need to work on my speed to), quite nice actually, running a new route across the river, the final few minutes did kill me though and when I arrived home and looked in the mirror I was the same colour as my bright pink Race for Life tshirt. And as the title suggests though, the post exercise endorphin rush has been totally absent today, instead all I’ve wanted to do is crawl back under the duvet, which is bad timing considering the mother-in-law is visiting today. The only benefit has been the usual sensation of my thighs being a few inches smaller (at least in my head) and the constant amazement that I, J. who can’t supposedly run for a bus can actually run for 35 minutes.

So we have a 1 mile race tomorrow for Sports Relief; Sportacus will be there and he may well have to carry me.

And then next weekend, it being Easter weekend, I’ll have more time to run, so should be able to fit in two runs, both planned at 40 minutes each. Once I reach 40 minutes I’m sticking at that and then working on increasing distance covered in that time. With my current speed, which is pretty consistently 8.5 minutes per km, I’ve worked out at that rate I would run my 5km race in May in 42 1/2 minutes, which considering last time I did the race I did it in just over 42 minutes and I walked some of it, is pretty depressing! I would really like to do it in under 40 minutes.

Ham and Cheese Muffins and General Chit-chat

Just to prove I am still cooking (I haven’t done a cooking post for a while – that’s because cooking when you’re meant to be on a diet is pretty dull) but I made these tonight.

They’re the ham and cheese muffins from Tana Ramsay’s Family Kitchen, which I have to say I cook a darn sight more from than the couple of her husband’s cookbooks I own. It’s a simple recipe, basically a savoury muffin with ham and cheese, I’ve cooked it before and it always tastes delicious, however it’s been one of those recipes that have gone back into th metaphysical recipe cupboard, never to be used (until tonight) since we worked out that a lot of Boy Lacer’s problems were due to cow’s milk (sigh, I so miss making macaroni cheese and lasagna, yes I know you can make cows milk free macaroni but it’s a hassle and also more expensive and as for the lasagna, well my favourite, guaranteed to work lasagna recipe involves a tin of condensed cream of tomato soup which well, contains cream). Anyway I decided to dust down this recipe tonight, having to go to the hassle of dividing the ingredients into two bowls, a ‘normal’ bowl and a ‘cow dairy free’ bowl (I used Pure instead of butter and hard goats cheese and goats milk) and making sure I wasn’t going to mix anything up or contaminate anything, I made 6 between me, Mr. Lacer and Girl Lacer and 6 for Boy Lacer (he does have some luck).

All this hassle was because Boy Lacer finally has a psych appointment tomorrow, even though he is now alot happier than he was when he was referred back in November and the appointment is at 11am and is for an hour, so I am desperately hoping the appointment is on time because even if it is it’ll only give me 50 minutes to get Girl Lacer to nursery (who by the way after her morning milking her cold for all it’s worth, was so much better she went to nursery absolutely fine this afternoon). So with a very rushed lunch in mind I thought the ham and cheese muffins would be perfect.

Other than that, may I urge you, if you’re at all UK based and interested in making sure that Shakespeare is taught to our children in a way that is actually interesting, to check out the RSC’s campaign and add your signature, as they so rightly point out, Shakespeare was a dramatist and should be studied as such, not dryly, as purely words on paper. I just hope that when my children get to Shakespeare in school it’s taught by someone who believes in the RSCs principals. Oh I’m getting more and more excited about seeing Hamlet in August.

Oh and one more absolutely final note and on the more immediate future, me and Girl Lacer have just signed up for our first race together (she’s 4), we’re doing the Sport Relief Mile, in central London in a couple of weekends time, she may very just run faster than me.