First Mountain bike ride in England

I finally got to ride my new bike. I have to say there is nothing better than going out for a ride on a sunny day. Yes I said sunny. This past Saturday Arthur and I ventured out for our first mountain bike ride, and we would not have asked for better weather… it was sunny with a crisp feeling in the air. I wore biking shorts and a long sleeve top… I was actually hot on the ride. The ride was incredible, and though it was just shy of a 15 k it was the perfect distance for my first mountain bike ride in over a year. It started off in a cute village called Austwick in the Yorkshire Dales . We started on a country road for our first accent, but quickly moved on to a muddy path… at this point my bike was properly broken in after the first 15 min… mud and all… We road down a path, which wasn’t to technical but defiantly harder than a dirt road, I made it down with just a few stops. At the bottom of the first hill, and just before starting on a Bridle way Arthur stopped to show me some nettles, so I would avoid them. We walked our bike through one spot to avoid getting stung by the nettle. Just as we started ridding we went through a huge section where it was unavoidable but to run into a few. I on the other hand fell into the nettles… which made my legs sting and tingle for the rest of the day. Lets just say it was not my finest moment. We then road up a very steep grassy hill to the top of the next hill… on the way down it was amazing… it was like a grassy roller coaster. I loved it. Then we had just a few small rolling hills on the rest of the way back. Arthur was in front of me the whole way… but was very good at waiting for me before he got to far ahead. After our ride we stopped in Settle for a bite to eat. I was really craving a sandwich… we both order the sandwich of the day it was on a whole grain roll with mozzarella, pepperoni and spicy tomato relish. Yummy. We also then stopped by a cute coffee shop for cappuccino. If I haven’t mentioned it before I love the coffee and tea shops in England. This one had the old time candy jar from which you could order different types of candy. I would have loved to post some pictures from the ride and the coffee shop, but I forgot my camera. I’m going biking again on Sunday,… so I will post pictures and blog about the next ride.

Danielle xx

Running and Biking

Arthur has signed me up for the Abbey Dash. So it is official I will be running a 10K on November 23. I started my ‘train’ this week, which mean no more skipping my runs. It is a 12 week training plan… On my entry form Arthur estimated I will run a time of 50 min (around an 8 min mile). I would be delighted if I ran 50 min. I think it is a bit optimist considering how I have been running. Since, I don’t want to get frustrated if I don’t reach that goal… I am going to time myself figure out how fast I have been running. To be honest, I have no idea how fast I have been running/ jogging. I want to make sure I set a realistic goal. The current plan is for me to run 4 times a week for now. Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday I will run for 30-40 min and on Sunday I will run for an hour. This is the plan for the next three weeks. For my first week… I ran 30 min on Tuesday, 30 min on Thursday… I skipped Saturday cause I was wasn’t feeling very well (my coach skipped his run too). To make up for it I was a crazy woman on Sunday, even though I still wasn’t feeling very good. I ran off and on for 2 hours while watching and cheering for a few friends running the Leeds half marathon. I have figured I ran somewhere between 7-8 miles. Even though I have run further in the past I felt like it was a great accomplishment. I have two more weeks of phase one. Then I will move on to phase two… not sure what that entails, but I will keep you posted. I will defiantly be running next weekend as I am headed to the Mountain Hut this year with Doss (click here for more details/pictures on the hut). It is a week of running, hiking, and no showers. I am only staying for the weekend so there will really only be one day I don’t shower. I will defiantly write a blog about that next week!

In other news… I bought a mountain bike on last Sunday… there just happened to be a great bike on sale for a great price. It was begging me to buy it and take it home. I am SOOO excited. I get to pick up the bike on Friday.















I got the Myka Pro version… which means I better also start biking! Who knows soon I might start training for triathlons.
Love you all, Danielle xx