Monthly Archives: November 2014

This Weekend

Happy Monday! Who is ready for Thanksgiving? I know I am! I’m going to pick up my Turkey Trot race packet today! Woo!

How about a little weekend recap?

My Friday started off with a track workout and a free cappuccino.

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Not a bad start!

After a full day of classes, I packed up and headed home for the week. From there, I threw on my school colors and headed to our rival school for the night. I have a ton of friends that go to Cal, and this was Big Game week-our rival football game! As you can imagine, I was pretty popular rocking my red on the streets of Berkeley the night before Big Game.

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Our night began with a pizza dinner from Sliver, one of the many gourmet pizza places in the area. We then went and saw Mockingjay. I actually liked it a lot more than I was expecting. I don’t remember liking the book much but the movie was good! And I thought they split it off at a good point.

After the movie, we chatted and then watched Pitch Perfect, which I had never seen.

Luckily, we managed to sleep through all the rain expected and wake up the next morning to a partly sunny day. First stop was brunch, where I got a chicken and avocado omelet.

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From there, we went to a restaurant to watch the football game from. Let’s just say I was definitely the happiest person there. WE WON!

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At halftime, we stepped out to grab froyo from my friend’s favorite place. It was super thick and delicious. I got pumpkin and chocolate, with cookie dough!

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After the game, I headed home to hang out with these guys:

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Sunday morning began with a 6 miler along one of my favorite trails.

(Recycled pic)

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Followed by lunch at the Whole Foods hot bar.

My lunch of choice was macaroni and cheese with butternut squash, plus some assorted salads.

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For dinner, I shockingly met up with my sister. This is shocking because she is so busy and I never see her! We went to a Russian restaurant, and I got some delicious mushroom dumplings. They were served with onions and a sour cream type of sauce! So good!

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This weekend was such a fun way to kick off Thanksgiving break! There was one casualty though.

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My shoes had a small rip in them before I left for Berkeley, and I figured it wouldn’t be an issue. It quickly became worse  (than the picture) and let’s just say I was lucky my toes weren’t sticking out, given about half the shoe is disconnected to the soul. Oops…

What did you do this weekend?

SO CLOSE

Happy week before Thanksgiving! I officially have 1.5 days of classes before I get to return home! So what’s new?

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The view around campus. Who says California doesn’t have fall?

Yesterday morning began with the typical Wednesday 6 mile run. My feet felt surprisingly good-no clue why!

Post run was my typical dining hall breakfast of a yogurt bowl, but also some veggies. I love when they have them at breakfast!

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After classes, I stopped by a cafe and grabbed a salad.

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It ended up being pretty wimpy. No match for my runger! I went back for a blueberry bran muffin-perfect!

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And dinner was a dining hall salad with hummus and chicken, rice, and carrots.

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For dessert-the return of pumpkin froyo! I’ve been waiting all year for this! On top of some bread pudding. A great end to the day!

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And now I’m back to programming! I have one assignment between me and these guys:

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How excited are you for Thanksgiving?

Throwback-This Day Last Year

Guess what guys? My blogiversary is coming up!I’m not sure how many of you were around here a year ago, but I did a little “12 Days of Christmas” thing to kick it off. I’m going to do the same thing this year, with the same themes for each day! So if you’ve seen the “12 Days of Christmas” tab on my blog, this is why! That means a lot of prep for me over Thanksgiving…oh the struggle of having my blogiversary be during finals week…yeahh I was definitely not procrastinating or anything! In honor of this, I thought I’d do a little throwback post. This date, a year ago. Seriously though, the parallels are insane between this date last year and today. I went for a “longish” run this morning and it was supposed to be my first rainy run….but it held off. It’s supposed to rain today but so far it has held off-I’m even wearing the same jacket! Crazy. Plus, I’m doing a practice spin class tonight after classes. Go figure. 

Happy Wednesday! It’s WIAW-which means you guys get to see a ton of food! Thanks Jenn!

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I just got back from an a cappella concert-it’s Big Game week, which means we are playing our rival school. Tonight was “Big Sing,” so there were groups from both my school and our rival singing and basically bashing each other the whole time. It was all in good fun, but a mention of a certain loss to USC…too soon. That one hurt. I also couldn’t help but laugh when they sang about grade inflation at my school-in science majors, grade inflation most definitely doesn’t exist.

But back to food! Here are a few things from yesterday.

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A snack plate-I finally tried cinnamon laughing cow, and I’m in love! It’s not super sweet, which was a nice surprise! Super delicious on apple chips, just saying.

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A leftover cheese souffle (amazing) and a salad with goat cheese and fig balsamic dressing, also amazing.

This morning, my soggy run turned into sunshine when I awake to 0% chance of rain (it had been 80% for the morning). I did my long run for the week-8 miles. Of course, “long run” is kind of an interesting description, given I did 16 a few weeks ago…

I don’t normally eat much before workouts, but this time since it was a longer run, I chowed down on this bar.

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The run went pretty well-I didn’t bring my Garmin. And of course, a cappuccino was necessary afterwards.

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This was ah-mazing. It probably helped that I’ve had sub-par cappuccinos as of late-Starbucks is just no where near the same.

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The obsession continues.

So…I was concerned I wasn’t eating enough vegetables. Which is true. So I packed an insane amount of asparagus for lunch. I threw every seasoning I had on there-garlic (from a jar), nutritional yeast, veggie seasoning, salt and pepper-it was wonderful. The only thing was I could smell the garlic in my backpack through like three bags…

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And since it’s WIAW, I even packed a plate. And eating asparagus out of a bag? That’s weird even for me.

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Some dates from my 2 lb container. <3

My conclusion from today was that I clearly have not been eating enough veggies. I felt AMAZING all afternoon-I just had so much energy! I’m glad I still have some asparagus leftover for tomorrow! I think veggies at lunch are a lot more appealing for me when they’re cooked.

As I was eating lunch, the skies finally started falling. So grateful I packed a raincoat!

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And in case you’re wondering, yes it is really hard to see with this on.

The best part about eating tons of veggies was I didn’t crave everything under the sun when I returned after class. I grabbed a quick snack before heading to the gym.

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I did 3×8 minutes on the rowing machine (trying to gain back that extra fitness!) before heading to a spin class. During class, I was thinking-when you get in better shape, it’s not that your muscles burn less when you workout. Partly you can just breathe better, but partly I think it’s an increased pain tolerance. That was my experience with rowing at least, and I’m starting to feel that way again now with spin. If I can get into super awesome shape, it would really benefit me as a spin teacher because I would have some hope of talking to my class without gasping for air. On that note-I am officially certified! I passed the online test, so now I just have to get hired! (Although I want to get CPR certified as well.)

I decided to go to the dining hall after spin.

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Grilled chicken, salad, a stuffed tomato, and beets. I pretended the beets were french fried and dipped them in ketchup. It didn’t exactly work-I’m not a beet person.

They had a cooking demonstration going on with little samplers as well.

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The cup has ginger carrot soup. It was AMAZING. Super creamy and smooth, with maybe a hint of coconut? SO good. I also tried pop rock chocolate.

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It was interesting. The pops were super strong!

I also had this little concoction:

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Dark chocolate cocoa powder. Banana. Heat. Mash. Amazing. I topped it with coconut cream. To be honest, I’m not a fan of coconut cream. It’s a little too rich for me!

And also, I have to share with you guys this toy we played with in my Physics lab today. I want one so. badly.

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(Source)

And now I’m off to do homework and decide if I should do a short but soggy track workout tomorrow before lifting…I love the rain…when I’m inside.

Have a great day!

Favorite Thanksgiving food?

The place we normally go has incredible butternut squash soup, served with creme fraiche. I’m sad we’re not going there this year just for that reason!

Skipping Burpees

Do you ever have one of those days when you just feel like you killed your workouts?

That was yesterday for me. I’m loving these afternoon treadmill runs!

I did my heavy squats, and then I knocked out a treadmill speedy run. I started with 2 miles at an 8:00 pace. This is big for me, since I haven’t run fast much lately! I’m hoping to slowly increase this distance-honestly it’s harder mentally than physically!  So maybe if I do that I’ll have some hope of being prepared for the turkey trot? I followed those 2 miles with 5 intervals-2:00 @ 7:30, 2 min walking. I covered 4 miles total. It felt amazing. After all that running though, I made sure to come back and ice my foot right away! I’m pretty sure my feet like the extra cushion of the treadmill.

In terms of food, yesterday was pretty clean cut.

Breakfast part 1: cranberry orange bread (so good!!).

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Breakfast part 2:

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Lunch: Leftover Goat Cheese Souffle+ roasted carrots and a persimmon.

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Snack immediately post run: coconut covered date roll.

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After my workout, I was pretty ravenous for dinner. I had a salad with BBQ chicken, more veggies, and then I went back for a roll on the side.

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I also snacked on a protein bar plus some cheese and crackers later on!

So…last night I managed to be really dumb and somehow totally wiped out…in my room…Our beds are sort of raised, so I either have to jump up and down or use a chair. I tend to only use a chair when I’m lazy, which apparently I was. Somehow while I was stepping off the chair I lost my balance, and my other leg got caught on the back of the chair, so I had no where to go but down-I ended up falling pretty hard on my knee. Luckily I was wearing pants, but I still have pretty bad carpet burn plus a bruise. The only upside? It meant there was no way I was doing burpees during this morning’s Crossfit workout. I subbed 1 squat+1push up for each burpee….which was definitely much preferred!

When was the last time you wiped out?

Life With Plantar Fasciitis

Hey guys! As promised, I’m doing a “real” post today.

As most of you probably know, I’ve been dealing with plantar fasciitis for about a year now. This is a fairly common chronic injury, especially in runners, so I thought I’d go through what my experience with it is, and some ways I manage it. For those that don’t know, plantar fasciitis is inflammation of the plantar fascia, and normally appears as heel or arch pain.I’ll start by going through what I might do with it during a normal day.

Wake up. Remove my night brace. This thing is amazing and helps so much, but I can’t stand to have one on both of my feet at once. Luckily, right now one foot is much better than the other so this is fine. The brace keeps my foot flexed, which keeps everything stretched out so I don’t wake up so stiff.

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If it’s bad, I might take some Advil right away, especially if I’m running. I usually don’t have to do this though. If I’m running, I stretch and then head out. I often stop to stretch my calves a little during the run. Besides making it feel a little better, I also do this because the extra stretching keeps my calves looser overall, and calf tightness can make plantar fasciitis worse.

After the run, I really should ice. I generally don’t have a ton of time to before class, but I can usually at least put in a few minutes with the frozen water bottle, which I use to roll out my heels and arches. Just a little bit of icing can go a long way in terms of pain for the rest of the day.

Then, I generally take Advil (if I haven’t already) if I want hope of being able to walk that day. The day of a run is generally the worst. Sometimes the day after is pretty bad, but by 2 days after it is pretty good.

And then in the evening, if it is sore, I’ll ice. If I’m running the next day, I’ll probably take Advil. Honestly, the pain level is WAY better when I’m taking Advil constantly, but I really don’t like to have to do that.

You’re probably seeing a theme-antinflammatories are super important!

So let’s now talk about some things to expect.

1. I don’t run back to back days, in general. If I do, I have to be pretty careful the first day of running to take really good care of my feet post-run. Another thing I’m starting to do is if I run Sunday morning, I’ll push Monday morning’s run to Monday afternoon.

2. I can’t wear any shoes. I am banned from wearing flip flops. In general, if you have plantar fasciitis, you probably need to be prepared to spend some money. Good shoes with good support is crucial. And on top of good shoes, you may need orthopedic inserts. Pretty much all my shoes at this point have some type of insert. Even the boots I just got that  have pretty good general support have orthopedic inserts for extra arch support.

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3. Replace running shoes often. I just replaced mine, and it made a world of difference.

4.  For me, standing around a lot is a pretty surefire way to flare up the pain. While I know sitting generally isn’t good for you, I have to sit when I can.

5. For me, walking is the most painful activity. Period. Running is generally not too bad, but walking is so. awful. Especially if I’m walking somewhere after sitting in class for an hour.

6. Sometimes time off certain exercise is necessary. While this injury has still allowed me to run regularly, I did have to back out of a race and take some time completely off running.

7. It may flare up for no reason. My feet sometimes have a mind of their own, and I could do everything right and they’ll still hurt. Yayy.

8. I almost always do Crossfit in my running shoes now. I really like my Reebok Nanos, but if the workout has any significant amount of running (like more than a 400m warm up), I just can’t wear them. They have very little support, and my feet just aren’t happy with it.

9. Honestly, a chronic injury like this really stinks. It stinks to have to deal with pain on a regular basis. It stinks to be able to run one day, and barely hobble the next. But I’ve gotten pretty used to it, and I’ve learned to manage it so that running doesn’t usually hurt. It’s just unfortunate to have a chronic injury. I’m still optimistic that I can get rid of this, but it takes time and patience. I’ve started doing some exercises that I’m hoping will help, but I think it will be a while before I figure this out.

If you have any questions about plantar fasciitis-let me know and I’ll try to answer them!