Dirt Bulbs & Ginger...

A new appliance has just taken up residence on the kitchen bench. It has pride of place in all it's shiny newness. And the rest of the bench is taken up with an abundance of fruit which will need to be bought in great quantities in order to keep this beast fed.

It's a new juicer, bigger and better than the sad pathetic plastic creation it is replacing. It has jaws of steel and was bought not just to consume fruit in large quantities... but more importantly, to be able to squeeze the innards out of the humble dirt bulb... the beetroot.

This keen interest in juicing was brought on by a recent holiday where the local cafe served the most delicious freshly juiced juices I've had in a long time. My favourite was the Veggie Delight - beetroot, apple, celery, carrot and ginger.

Chosen each morning as my juice of choice as I had recently read that beetroot was one of the 'super foods' and a great addition to an athletes diet. While I don't consider myself a serious athlete I thought it might be good for my return to running as it reportedly helps athletes perform for longer, helps with inflammation, is a good anti-oxident, is full of iron (among other things) and helps lower blood pressure (not that the last one is a problem for me).

So far the beast has produced a simple fresh apple juice on day 1, and a zesty apple, orange, lime and ginger delight on day 2.

And the best thing of all - it's pretty easy to clean and it extracts so much juice from the fruit that the pulp left over is almost dry so there's hardly any mess to remove.

Tomorrow I look forward to a concoction of veggies... including dirt bulbs and ginger.

Green Light Mean Go!

This is the day I have been waiting 12 months for. The green light to run again.

That has to have been the longest 12 months of my life - and even though Christmas, as always, came around quicker than you can say Jack Robinson it still crawled by at a snail's pace as the wait to run again stretched out agonisingly as the weeks and months rolled slowly by.

All the pilates, stretching, strength training, eliptical training, walking and knees-to-wall has got me through but I was hanging out for a run. And today my physio said the magic words... 'have you been running on your ankle?' So... with his obvious permission, and instructions on how to go about a return to it (his confidence in me being able to run 2km was heartening but not likely) I ventured out into the windy day and took my first running steps since last July.

To be honest, as is mentioned in the posts below, I did actually attempt a few trial runs back in October/November before my back prolapsed again. But they were no good. Any my back and ankle had other plans for me anyway for the first half of this year too. So this was the first real attempt. Back in October before any real strength training or pilates had taken place the 50 or so metres that I attempted were a disaster so I started out today not overly confident...

And rightly so. My form is shocking - not that it was great when I was running regularly - but I was well and truly back to beginner status. My legs felt like lead for the first half kilometre. I was back to heel striking instead of mid foot, my running shoes have worn out and I sounded like a flat-footed duck, my lungs burnt, the uphills were a no go putting too much strain on my back, and my thighs need more strength... but it felt GOOD! And, I even managed 2.5km in bursts.

I could have cried tears of joy. And in fact after grinning like an idiot for a fair amount of my walk/run (and no doubt scaring everyone going in the opposite direction to me), I think I did.

Now, fingers crossed tomorrow brings a good result and no inflamation... when I will probably cry tears of joy again!