Why This Half Training Will Be Different

Hey guys! I’m solidly in the middle of week 2 now! And some things are changing-I’ll discuss in a minute!

Let’s back it up a bit, shall we? 

Wednesday morning I went to the gym for a Crossfit-like workout (basically the one they did on Tuesday that I couldn’t make), plus 2 miles on the treadmill. The workout was working on hang cleans, and the conditioning part was 3 rounds of 500m row, 21 pull ups (assisted), and 21 push ups. The sad thing about this workout is it definitely made me realize my knee isn’t 100%. I had some trouble with the rowing! Also, I have a mystery bruise on the top of my foot, right along one of the seams…so that feels fabulous.

I went to the dining hall for breakfast-I really wanted a change of pace! Sadly they didn’t have just egg whites (which can be less sketchy), but I went with plain scrambled eggs and egg onion, spinach, and cheese. Plus a side of fruit!

Wednesday was a little crazy-I had an evening midterm, which needed to be studied for. Plus, I had lots to do for Thursday! I actually got 9 hours of sleep Tuesday night, and it was absolutely glorious. And I’m currently contemplating bed…

Anyways, here’s my randomly packed lunch-totally normal to eat turkey burgers and corn on the cob out of a bag, right??

This filled me up SO MUCH. This is the change I was talking about-when I get full, I’m SO FULL CAN’T EAT ANOTHER BITE. And when I’m hungry, I’m KILL ME NOW I’M STARVING hungry. I’m not sure if this is my metabolism changing? 

Fun fact-did you know that polyunsaturated fats get used as hormones that regulate metabolism? So maybe this is because I’m eating more fat?

Now I’m thinking it may be something else though-like my body adjusting to more fiber/different foods. Today, I couldn’t eat a ton without being TOTALLY stuffed.

But on that theme, I left studying to come back to my room and eat a snack-the last of the yogurt from the giant container, with berries and sunflower seed butter.

If you can’t tell, I’m running a little low on bowls. And utensils…I ate my soup off of a plate.

I have real, non-paper bowls but they’re really deep, and since the soup got thinner when it thawed, all the goodies on top sink to the bottom. So plate=problem solved…?

My test went fine. Which is good. And I was on top of things enough that I wasn’t up crazy late (5 hours of sleep-yay!). 

The next morning I went to spin, and studied for my morning midterm while eating. Breakfast was 0% Greek yogurt+mashed banana+cocoa powder. I poured everything onto a (you guessed it) plate, and it’s amazing how much yogurt comes out of a tiny container!

I ended up finishing my Nutrition midterm 30 minutes early-this stuff is my jam 🙂 So I had plenty of time to do my pre-lab before my afternoon class. 

For lunch, I went with something small and more moderate-butter sage mashed sweet potatoes-but I didn’t want to waste the skin, so I stuffed them! Yum!

Look how it compacted after rolling around in the container all day!

After lab, I had a snack of sunflower seed butter (the last of it 🙁 ) and an apple, plus corn on the cob (totally normal, right??). Then, Crossfit. We didn’t have strength today-just mobility. Which basically meant foam rolling for half the time. Since my race is coming up, I wanted an easier type of workout anyways! The WOD ended up being worse than expected-we did 10, 9, 8, 7,….1 thrusters, with 90 jump ropes between each set, followed by an 800m run at the end. My shoulders are still really sore from push presses on Tuesday, so that was kind of terrible. 

I pushed the run a lot at the end, and ended up feeling kind of sick, thanks to whatever changes are going on. I’m kind of concerned about this given my 5k is this Sunday, and that naturally has a tendency towards nausea. I think I may to stick to lower fiber/easier to digest foods or something! I think I’m going to have kombucha tomorrow morning too. 

I forced myself to eat something afterwards-what ended up working the best was the brown rice fried rice (not really fried rice, they just like giving their rice different names to seem fancier.)

Veggies weren’t that appealing (but maybe the veggies choices also weren’t great), and I ate a lot of the tofu. Plus this mini plate with more rice and chicken, and a little pineapple.

So hopefully whatever is going on resolves itself-this is really strange! But I guess your body will react when you completely change what you’re eating!

Oh, and I came back to my dorm to find this:

Yes, that is my door. (And by that I mean the door I always use to enter/exit my dorm). No clue how that happened. #collegelife

One story is someone was mad and kicked it in. Another is someone accidentally ran into it. Not sure how that is possible….

In fitness news-why is this half training different? Besides the fact that I’ll be doing more speed work than before, some of the longer runs may be a bit more…unconventional. Why? I’m doing a Tough Mudder! The weekend after my half…the timing isn’t ideal, but I’m doing it with my sister and her boyfriend. We’re trying to get up a bigger group as well! So some of my longer runs may incorporate more strength elements-like running 5 miles, doing Crossfit, running 5 miles. Or doing some type of strength move every mile. That would definitely break up the monotony of a treadmill run as well!

Can I confess something? I’m on week 2 of my project…and I don’t feel different. Maybe feeling good is my new normal (I think this is the case), but I want to keep seeing changes! I’m scared this project won’t work. That after 4 months nothing will be different. That my theories were wrong. And I understand that it’s really too soon to tell whether this will be life changing, but I’m impatient. I would just feel really silly if after 4 weeks, nothing happens. I mean, I’m definitely developing new habits and trying new things, which is great, but do you have any idea how many cookies I’ve passed up on? I never realized how abundant cookies are on a college campus. They even had cookies for us after the bio midterm! But I know I need to be patient. And I’m determined to stick with this. And get more sleep…I’m actually not sleep deprived right now thanks to Tuesday night, but I know it will happen again if I don’t make sleep more of a priority. One of my chem friends today was super sleep deprived, to the point it was amusing to witness. Remember last Thursday when I was running on 3 hours of sleep? I was flat out delirious. Inspired, yes. Very inspired. But totally delirious. I’m running out of energy here-and since no more work needs to be done today, bed sounds really nice right now. Maybe I am more sleep deprived than I thought?

Have you ever done any type of obstacle course race?