Half Marathon Blog 5: Nutrition

On Tuesday afternoon I had a timetable clash. I was supposed to go for a run but I also had to get ready for visitors. They were expected at afternoon tea time. Weary from their five hour car journey and I wanted to bake something good to revive them.

I thought I’d share the recipe for what turned out to be a delicious pudding.


Self Saucing Lemon Sponge Pudding

½ cup self raising flour
1 cup castor sugar
75g mixed peel
½ cup orange juice
½ cup lemon juice – about 4 juicy lemons, depending on your lemons.
Zest from lemons
125g butter
1 cup milk
3 eggs (separated)
icing sugar to dust

Find an oven proof dish that will hold 6 cups of liquid. Then find a roasting dish that the oven proof dish will fit into. (I had some issues with this but only after I’d already got the mixture into the dish.)

Pre-heat oven to 180. Lightly grease a 6 cup capacity oven proof dish. Mix flour, sugar and mixed peel and lemon zest in a large bowl. (If you have orange zest then add that too)

Melt butter and mix with orange & lemon juice, egg yolk, and milk. Beat into the flour mixture.

Whisk egg whites until stiff and then fold gently into the sloppy batter mix.

At this point you have a sloppy mess, pour it into the ovenproof dish and put it into the roasting dish, half fill with water and put it in the oven.

Bake for about an hour or until the mixture feels firm in the centre.

Serve with a light dusting of icing sugar and some whipped cream.


You would be highly unlikely to find this recipe on the nutrition page of runners world website but personally I think it fits well into a runners life, it’s a high carbohydrate (sugar) food which is quick to prepare and with that hour in the oven allows time for a run.

Sorry, I don’t have a photo – the pudding was eaten far too quickly .

Half Marathon Blog 4: Research

[photo: looking back towards the start from the finish line]

After a lethargic Saturday, glued to the sofa only occasionally looking up from a book to confirm the sky was still flat grey. I knew I needed serious motivation to get going for a run.
Sunday morning was a repeat of Saturday until I finished the book I was reading. Then I noticed a vaguely familiar glowing yellow ball in the sky – the prodigal sun? It was a sign. I headed out in the car, not the environmentally friendly form of running but during my sofa time I’d done some research which needed a follow up visit.
I drove to Port Chalmers, it is a real port town near the mouth of the Dunedin Harbour and the finish point of the Marathon and Half Marathon. The route takes in a 5km lap around the town and I’d heard rumours of a hill somewhere near the end.
I started at the finish and ran as far out of town as I could in the opposite direction of the half marathon route, the pavement ran out after about a mile then I turned back and ran less than the final third of the half-marathon course. After about 18km of paved road the route heads up a dirt road right on the water’s edge, it felt authentically New Zealand.



[photo: dirt at about 18 km]

This outing was supposed to get me psyched up for the big day, 10 weeks away. I think I had forgotten to inform my body that I had only run the last bit not the full 21k around the harbour.
In the car on the way home I convinced myself that having a bad run was a useful wake up call. Excellent motivator, blah, blah, blah. Not sure its had the desired effect but at least I remembered to take my camera so I can share the picturesque setting of my future suffering.

Half Marathon - Blog 3: Running Not Jogging

Something has changed. It was deliberate but I am surprised by the effect.

On Sunday afternoon Pete offered to join me for my long run. I explained I was planning an outing of 100 minutes. [I prefer to say the time in number of minutes rather than '1hr 40mins'. It feels less daunting.] We agreed that since he hasn’t been training he’d come for an hour or so and then I’d carry on alone.

Pete has some natural ability as a runner, unlike me, so without 13 weeks of build up he’d probably survive a 100 minute run. I wasn’t solely concerned about him. On the one hand, it’s good for me to have him along breathing easy bouncing along while I’m feeling energised, but I know that towards the end of my long haul mission I prefer to suffer alone.

As on previous runs he let me set the pace. Several times he commented on how much faster I was since we last ran together, about 6 weeks ago. I could claim that all the hours and miles I have put have delivered this transformation, but no. What I have done is take bigger strides.

Last week, for variety, I consciously started taking longer steps while keeping the same pace. I discovered my body mostly measures effort in steps per minute (and gradient of hills). It is far less concerned about how long my stride is. If only I’d know it was so simple, I would have done this ages ago. I feel I have finally graduated from jogging to running.

After over an hour I was flagging, my body obviously had figured out my trick. During a brief water stop at home Pete bowed out gracefully offering to make dinner while I completed another short loop. Alone for those last 20 minutes I was distinctly slower than with his company but I finished happy knowing that I have moved up a gear.