Run Away

I did it! I finally managed to get some runs in whilst on holiday.

So many times I have lugged my running kit on holiday, telling my husband (and myself) that I was definitely, 100% going to go for a run whilst away. Then one thing led to another – by that read ‘one glass of wine lead to another’ – and it never happened.

How to have the best answer to the old back-to-school question “What did you do this summer?”

The UK’s first vegan and vegetarian camp for 11-17 year olds, the result of a great idea and a lot of hard work by the peeps behind the awesome social networking site TeenVGN, is taking place this summer in Bristol and it has been so well received that there is now a waiting list of wannabe campers as it is fully booked. When you have a look at the line-up of events set to take place across the 6 day camp, from 23rd-28th August, it isn’t hard to see why! I wish I was 17 again (for many reasons, but let’s not get into that!) so I could attend.

“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food”

Whole foods – why they matter to me and why they should to you, too!

It has come as a huge surprise to me that I am so interested in nutrition, but the more I find out, the more I want to know. I am listening to podcasts by doctors during my runs, reading journals, medical studies, books and articles, watching documentaries, keeping a notebook and pretty much lapping up any nutrition information statistics and research I can get my hands on and understand with my very basic scientific knowledge. The topics? Whole food, plant-based nutrition. Who would’ve thought it just 2 years ago? And why do I care? We’ll come back to this shortly. Let me paint the picture first.

Not ready to go vegan but want to adopt a more compassionate lifestyle? 8 little things you can do right now which will make a big difference.

“Being vegan is great! Run! Be vegan! Woo, go veganism!”

I’m aware that it isn’t that simple for a lot of people and I’m not all about the hard sell. Would I love it if everyone in the world went vegan? Of course. Could I spend hours telling you why adopting a plant based lifestyle is good for your health, the environment, climate change, animals and generally helping to improve a lot of the things we need to improve as human beings? Sure I could. But I’m not going to. (Well not here, anyway!)

The journey so far – what I’ve learnt from running and more importantly what I’m doing about it

The last 18 months has been a very steep learning curve for me. I have changed so much, and learnt so much, that I think it’s time to look back at the journey so far. And it really is a journey, passing milestones and learning new things all the time.

I’ve learnt lots of things about myself I didn’t know before; I love to run, I’m committed to getting faster and stronger, being vegan means everything to me, it’s OK to ask for help if you need it and that you have to run your own race, nobody else’s. A great metaphor for life.

With these revelations came some big changes, so read on to learn more.

“To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.” Same blog, new direction.

Or so Winston Churchill said. (Well, not the bit about the blog. Obvs.)

This blog is very different now from what it set out to be. When I first set it up, I had just found out we were moving to Canada and, as a result, I was going to be unemployed for a while until I found my feet. As can be seen by the first post, I set up the blog to try and make sure that I would get out and about and do things and not sleep all day. It seems I was scared that, without a job, I had no identity and therefore nothing would happen in my life. But I was wrong. Life happened.