Delicious food. Awesome company. And a (park)run.

My weekend started, as most of my weekends do, with an earlier-than-I'd-like alarm clock going off that allows me to get out to a parkrun, somewhere beautiful, first thing in the morning.

This weekend just gone, Brad (my partner in crime life and adventures, and my ever-present photographer 😂) and I went to Redland Bay parkrun. We've been taking my long-time friend but brand new parkrunner, Stacey, to a heap of new parkruns.

It's so much fun, partly because I get to hang out with this friend who hasn't lived this close to me in over a decade, and partly because this new focus at parkrun is reinvigorating my interest in parkrun. After doing 185 parkruns and counting, it can get a little boring just doing 5km laps of some park, somewhere every Saturday morning. Not so much for Brad as he thrives on routine, structure and consistency. But me? I can't stand such things. I find the rigidity stifling. Thus there is little in my life I have done for, literally, years like I have with parkrun.

Anyway, back to our morning: Stace and I had a great chat, as usual. We shared about our respective weeks with one another as Brad ran super fast ahead of us somewhere. Stace got a new parkrun and another parkrun location, Brad got another parkrun for his P-Index and I got a Fibonacci number for another of these unofficial parkrun challenges. More importantly we got out of the house, did some exercise, breathed in some fresh air and had some real conversations. It was lovely.

On Sunday B and I drove down to the Gold Coast so he could do a long run while I did yoga. It was the biggest class they've had yet and I must say, I didn't love the occasional comments behind me during class or the four latecomers, but what can you do?

The weather was lovely again. We can literally see and hear the ocean from where the class is held. I saw a couple of friendly, familiar faces. And, as always, I got to move my body and practise listening to what it needed and wanted, and only go as far as it wanted to go.

After class we organised to meet up with another friend of mine, Jess. She's vegan and has her fave cafes down on the Gold Coast and since we've come to love Cardomom Pod's menu options, we happily just keep going to the same place again and again.

It's on the Gold Coast, where there are plenty of skyscrapers (very tall buildings).

The inside of the cafe looks like this.

The outside of the cafe is well hidden and looks like this.

And facing the other direction, it looks over a park that looks like this. The suburb this cafe is in is known as Broadbeach and it has a rather large sign to highlight that!

I don't really care too much what the place looks like (as long as it's clean!) but I do care what the menu looks like!

I've recently discovered that I'm genetically designed to best absorb cold and raw food (rather than hot or cooked) so I ordered the Snickers Acai Breakfast Bowl with zero guilt and maximum pleasure 😁 I'm hoping that as my gut microbiome adjusts to this new way of eating (after eating, literally, the wrong way for me for almost my whole life) that I'll feel more alive and be thriving better than ever before!

And in my studying I discovered that Brad is designed to eat the opposite way to me: he's supposed to cooked foods and eat his meals while they're still hot! So when he said he wanted me to order him a burger (off their super healthy, vegan menu) I immediately complied 😉

And that's it! Well, that's the highlights anyway 😛 You don't want to hear about all the driving, all the chores and all the other things we squeezed in now, do you? 😝

All photos by Brad (@new.things). Thanks, babe!