November: Meals, Miles, Books and Looks

I can hardly believe that November is coming to close and that next week is officially the beginning of summer.  All the overseas Christmas gift shopping has been done and sent and now I'm looking forward to to putting up the Christmas decorations and getting the house ready for the season.

Meals:

Food has been mostly unplanned this month and therefore poorly selected for the most part.

I got some free samples of Weetbix multigrain after the Auckland quarter marathon and I've been having those most mornings.  I used to have mine with hot soy milk but a friend suggested I try hot water and brown sugar and this is now my preferred way to eat this - its easy and delicious!

Since the weather has been a bit rainy and cold at times I have been having lots of my favourite soup - Kumara and Coconut Cream.  I'm going to have to find out how to make this soup myself!

Dinners have been on the hoof and the dinner pictured is a very simple tuna pasta bake with garlic pepper.

And I finally bought the shortbread pan I have been coveting for about 18 months!  I haven't made shortbread since I got the new food processor and my goodness it's so quick and easy with one of those things.  I suspect we will be having a few more rounds of shortbread over the Christmas and Hogmanay period.

Miles: 22.9km, PBs* 1km, 5km, 10km

I ran 2 races this month and had 2 other runs to stretch the legs to make 22.9km total for the month.  I managed PBs* for 1km, 5km and 10km and I also completed my furthest distance of 11km.  So while it was a low mileage month it was a very successful month!

Books:

I finished reading "Never Saw it Coming" and "Too Close To Home" both by Linwood Barclay and I am currently reading "Field of Prey" by John Sandford.

I did a search for books about the suburbs and was definitely in a murder mystery kind of mood so that's how I ended up with this selection.  I think my next couple of books will be lighthearted summer reads so I'll have a look at some reading lists next week to see what I should order from the library.

Looks:

I am so in love with my beautiful new bike!  I'm on the look out for an equally stylish helmet to wear when I ride it.

They're not easily visible in the photo above, but I got 2 new pairs of leg warmers to wear ice skating and I got to try out my funky purple pair when we went skating with friends on Saturday.  I think it was my magical leg warmers that helped to me to get the front to back mohawk down but it's obvious that my backward one foot glides need more work as I end up going into a bit of a spin!

I got my new glasses and I've been wearing them all week instead of contact lenses as the optician thought that I still had a trace of infection so I got some extra strong antibiotics.  I go back tomorrow so hopefully I'll get the all clear.  My eyes feel totally fine but I trust the experts with my eye health.

The last photo in my little collage is of my tartan leggings!  I'm so glad I had these to wear to the Scottish night since I didn't actually have anything else to wear that was particularly Scottish (except for jewellery - I have a lot of Scottish jewellery).  Our President, Janelle, couldn't believe I didn't have anything Scottish! 

* PBs (Personal Bests) are counted from when I started running again this year.  I used to run 9 years ago and I've a long way before I can catch up to those PBs if I ever can!