Glasgow Harvest

Isn't the "twitter-verse” wonderful!?!

I came across a blog that’s all about my local areas through someone on twitter last Friday.

The Precious East is all about the life of Jolene and her family living in the east end of Glasgow and all the great activities they find to do to keep themselves entertained! I’ve grown up in the East all my life and I’m ashamed to admit the Jolene has found more stuff to do in the few years she has stayed here than I ever have! I guess you just need to be looking for the adventure!

Well I went for a little adventure on Saturday thanks to Jolene’s blog!

A wee five minute walk from my house is some allotments and on Saturday it was their Harvest celebration.

It was a nice day weather wise, so was great to get out about for some fresh air.

We had a wee walk round the opened allotments looking to see what everyone has been growing! I really need to get the hang off growing things, it seems so cool to be able to grow your own food in your back garden!

First time I've seen Corn on the actual plant.
Never thought it would be in Glasgow!

Nice pair eh? ;)

I got to try some lovely home-made carrot cake and even got a recipe for vegan leek & potato soup, along with a nice sample! I can’t wait to try and make it myself, soup is always so easy to make and tastes so good for the effort required to make it!

There was lots of how to sessions teaching the basics on gardening, which I would have attended if I was by myself but there was a group of us and we had my little 9 month nephew with us so we left after a bit to come home for a nappy change & some pureed veg for the wee one!


Look who practically followed us home after we fed it some bananas!

I will be trying to keep up with the things that are going on in my area in future, it's a great excuse to be get out and about doing something different!

Do you make the most of your local area?

10K Done and Dusted!!

Great Scottish Run 2011 Tshirt & Bib

My first official 10K was a blast! Woohoo!

When I started running at the start of the year I thought it would be a bit of a breeze, I mean I know lots of people who go running all the time and if they could do it then why couldn’t I?

Well a wee jog round the block trying to do 1 mile and thinking I might be sick afterwards soon changed my mind! It was a slow process and it was hard to keep myself motivated to go out running a couple of times a week and try and improve on my time or mileage!

BUT... on Sunday when I crossed the finish line 1 hour, 5 minutes and 54 seconds after I crossed the start line, I felt so elated.  All the hard work was worth it! I really did want to cry... or be sick; actually it was more a mix of both! But the pride I felt overcame all my feelings and there was only one word to describe me... CHUFFED!!

 

Official Chip Time



I was finished... I actually did it! :D



The race itself was amazing, everyone was extremely cheerful and the people all along the course cheering you on were amazing! I’m slightly disappointed that the next run I go on will be just me on my wee lonesome and no one about to cheer, clap , give me water, play the bagpipes, bang on their drums or even to shout out my bib number on their karaoke machine as I run by their house!!  



Me & Ryan at the start line



I had a wee running partner for the first half of the race, but Ryan is much faster than me and I tried to tell him to run on ahead to get a good time! His response was “we started together, we’ll finish together” which was really chivalrous of him! But I knew I was holding him back, so I stopped to walk, telling him to keep going  saying I would catch up, but I knew full well I’d never catch him.



He finished 5 minutes ahead of me. :D

This is how the breakdown of my pace looked on my run keeper app once I had finished!

I can remember that only a couple of months ago I was struggling to get my pace under 11 minutes per mile and that was only doing about 4 miles! So I was really happy to keep it under the 11mins per mile mark for most of the race, even though I really didn’t think I was going all that fast!