Monthly Archives: July 2015

Day in the Life: Summer 2015

Hello! I don’t have work today since I’m working Sunday, so I went to a 5:45am spin class this morning. I’m running on about 4.5 hours of sleep and am definitely going to take a nap soon! I wanted to do another day in the life post for while I work my summer job.

6:05am alarm goes off (with a day in the life post reminder)

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Then I get ready for Crossfit and packed everything up for the day!

Then, I come downstairs to be greeted by a crazy puppy. Full disclosure-we’re having some behavioral issues right now.

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Pre-Crossfit snack/breakfast: a little baking experiment-carrot oatmeal raisin granola bars!

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6:45am: leave for Crossfit.

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7-8am Crossfit

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Workout:

Warmup/accessory:

3 rounds- 20 double unders, 8 bent over rows, 100m farmer’s carry with 2 25# plates

WOD:

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pulls ups

wall balls

kettle bell swings

The original workout called for burpees instead of wall balls but my hip isn’t that great so I subbed wall balls with a shallow squat

We then finished with some ab work.

8am: Clean up and change into scrubs. I’ve never actually gone straight from Crossfit to work before so this part was new for me.

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8:15am: Hang out in car, eat, browse blogs.

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9am: Start work. It’s a fairly slow day at the vet today.

1-2pm: Lunch break! I don’t normally work 9-6, but it’s one of my favorite schedules because it’s pretty normal. When I start later or earlier, I eat at either 11 or 2/3!

Leftovers: BBQ chicken, coleslaw, mashed sweet potatoes.

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I eat lunch in the break room with coworkers and also enjoy a few break room snacks. One of the vets brought in Jamba Juice for us!

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6pm: Done with work! I get out right on time today. It’s a pretty dark sky.

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I was planning on going to the track, but I get a text from a friend wanting to hang out, so I spend time eating a snack and debating my options.

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Plus 2 squares of dark chocolate

6:20 Decide to do a slightly shorter track workout. Regret eating dark chocolate because 2 squares of 72% is a lot of caffeine for me right now!

Track workout was originally 8x400m, but I end up with 5x400m. Given I’ve done 0 speed work lately, that’s good enough for me.

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7:10pm: Arrive home, and make myself a quick and easy dinner. I’m not super hungry since I just had a snack, so I make some frozen veggie/potato snacks. One flavor is sweet potato, the other is broccoli. With ketchup. Yes, they are Spongebob shaped.

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Plus s small slice of my granola bar with sun butter.

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Then, I shower off all the animals and get ready to go.

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8pm: Leave to make the 25 min drive to school where my friends are living for the summer. I arrive around 8:30.

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After debating what to do, since I have a car we go to get boba. They realize how small my car actually is. It’s actually kind of ridiculous.

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I ended up getting Rose-Aloe tea. I think it was rose tea with chunks of gelatinous aloe? I would have preferred pearls, but I actually had no clue what I was ordering-all I cared was that it was decaf, and my friend got this and knew it was decaf!

Around 10, we head back to campus and meet up with my other 2 friends. I stay there until around midnight, and am in bed by about 12:30! If I had work the next day, I definitely would not have been out so late!

What is your typical day like?

Throwback Thursday: Crazy Crazy

Throwback Thursday-also known as the perfect opportunity to make use of a post I wrote 3 months ago and only just realized I never published. Oops.

So how about a 3 month throwback? I was a week away from my Napa Half, and was in the middle of sorority recruitment, while still dealing with my (then) mystery illness.

Things have been crazy around here lately, and I just wanted to pop in and say hi! This weekend was recruitment for my sorority, which meant that was literally all I did all weekend-Saturday we were there from 4:30 to 2am!

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It’s fun meeting new people but this year was kind of rough for me. After feeling fine Friday morning, Friday evening I was feeling pretty awful again. Boo. So maybe the elimination diet isn’t working so well? I ended up too sick to participate in about 1/3 of rush. Luckily, everyone was so understanding. It’s so frustrating though!

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^Pref night!

Throughout rush I was pretty much living off of Luna bars because they were a fairly safe bet for me (well, as safe as anything could be at that point…). I still don’t know exactly what is wrong with me, but I’m trying some new medicine that will maybe help.

That being said, I’m feeling pretty unprepared for my race next weekend-I skipped my final longish run-but I don’t have any big goals other than finishing. I’m going to say right now that I will most likely not post my time on here, because I don’t want the extra pressure to push myself given all health issues lately.

On a more positive note (sort of), I got something new:

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It’s pretty cute. It’s a plantar fasciitis night brace. I had a sock, but I couldn’t get the sock as tight as I wanted without squishing my toes, so I wanted something with some room to breathe! This is pretty heavy duty, but my feet feel great when I wake up-even after standing on my feet for hours on end at rush!

Beides the bars, I’ve had a few delicious things that I managed to snag pictures of lately.

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Dining hall corn tacos with rice and beans, plus collard greens dipped in honey mustard because they’re pretty plain and options are limited!

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Egg salad on a rice cake, in the beautiful spring weather!

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And this delicious salad from Trader Joe’s. It had chicken, sunflower seeds, dried cranberries, kale, carrots, cucumbers, cabbage, and a spicy vinaigrette. YUM.

Have you ever felt totally unprepared for a race?

 

Nectarine and Date Salad with Feta

Hello! I hope everyone’s week is going well! Today, I’m sharing a recipe with you all which basically what I’ve been having for lunch every day at work, so stick around until the end of the post!

I started work at 7am today, so a quick breakfast was in order. Cherries+polenta+Luna bar. I probably eat too many bars, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. I currently have a healthy alternative baking in the oven which is a total experiment so we’ll see how that turns out!

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I didn’t get to have lunch until 1:30, so I was pretty ravenous and tired by then! Lunch was a salad with dates, nectarines, chicken, and feta (recipe at the bottom).

Plus Mary’s crackers.

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I’m trying not to get froyo at work more than once a week, but since I was so hungry, I had a small cup with blueberries.

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After working the rest of the afternoon, I had a quick snack before Crossfit. A random bar I found that didn’t haven anything I’m allergic to (i.e. nuts-which nearly every bar has), a banana, and a couple of pieces of these freeze dried apple/raspberry balls.

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Crossfit was good, but my hip has been bothering me lately when I squat for some reason, so I’m trying to be gentle to it. I worked on power snatches (not landing in a full squat), and did very shallow overhead squats in the WOD which was 12 minutes of overhead squats, push press, and push ups on the minute with an increasing rep scheme. Not a crazy intense one, but I got a good shoulder burn!

Dinner was a few Cooking Light recipes from the Cooking Light app. The app is so convenient-they even make meal pairings with main dishes and sides, and it’s easy to scroll through different recipes based on their principle component (like poultry). Today, we had BBQ chicken which I ate over a piece of gluten free bread, coleslaw, and mashed sweet potatoes with sage and browned butter.

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For a little something sweet after dinner, I had a little sunflower seed butter and raspberry jam on gluten free bread.

Now-recipe time!

Date Nectarine Salad

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Ingredients:

For the salad:

8-10 oz grilled chicken breast, chopped

1/2 c feta

2-3 nectarines, chopped

about 15 pitted dates, chopped

3 large handfuls of lettuce

For the dressing (adapted from Cooking Light)
3 T white wine vinegar
2 T olive oil
1 T minced shallots
1 T fresh chopped parsley
1 t Dijon mustard
1/8 t salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 garlic clove, crushed

Mix up the dressing, and then toss it all together!

Serves 3

 

 

Wiped

Hello! I’m finally blogging on a week night. I finished my day, and am now awaiting a visit from my friend’s 2 new kittens! I only met them last week briefly at the vet, so I cannot wait!

So, what are my days looking like? I started my morning with a really hilly 3 mile run. Workouts before work are pretty essential for me because I’m allergic to everything at home (i.e. Charlie, Lilly, and Chloe), and I’m allergic to everything at work (i.e. every animal there), so a little workout and fresh air helps keep things under control. Side note: my hip has really been bothering my lately when I squat for some reason. Not the motion of equating, but being down in a low squat position. I went to a yoga class yesterday, but I also played a softball game yesterday which stiffened it up. Anyways, I’m trying to avoid squats for a little while.

Sidenote: Guess what? I’m going to IDEA World Fitness Conference next week! Is anybody else going to be there? I’m pretty pumped! I’m going as part of the college program, so hopefully I’ll get to meet other students! Additionally, I’m signed up for all kinds of spin workshops!

Anyways, post-run I was running a bit late so I had a super quick breakfast of an Oatmeal Raisin Luna bar and mango. For some reason I have so much trouble finding the oatmeal raisin flavor…

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Today, I worked 8-4, which was a fairly ideal schedule in my mind. Evenings are usually pretty slow. At 12:30, I broke for lunch.

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Lunch was Trader Joe’s chicken strips, brown rice, and leftover green beans. I haven’t been a fan of TJ’s chicken lately. There have been a lot of tendons or something in it lately and the texture has been kind of gross.

During my lunch break, I stopped in to the nearby froyo place for a small container of chocolate sorbet with blueberries and a couple of raisins.

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Tonight was my spin teaching night, so I sprinted out the door at 4 to make the traffic-filled drive across the bay. Maybe it was the holiday weekend, but traffic wasn’t awful. I had a pre-workout granola bar in the car while driving.

I have to get to spin pretty early to avoid even worse traffic, so I’ve gotten in the habit of taking power naps in my car when I arrive. It makes a difference!

The class went pretty well. It was a smaller class than usual, but I think everyone got a solid workout in!

I came home and unleashed the beast puppy. She was a little crazy, but now she’s asleep.

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The first week of work, I came home totally wiped, and after dealing with animals all day, I had little patience for my little puppy. Now that I’m getting more into the routine though, it’s getting a lot better! That being said, I’m looking forward to my pillow tonight!

Dinner was a Trader Joe’s salad with leftover cheesy polenta.

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On Sunday night, my family made our annual 4th of July cake. Normally, we do a big sheet with a berry flag pattern, but we simplified since the holiday had already passed. This year, we used a gluten free chocolate cake mix.

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For dessert tonight, I had a small slice of this. Unfortunately, my stomach doesn’t like something in this cake and I honestly have no idea what it could be, but I had my reoccurring illness issues on Sunday after having this, and I’m feeling kind of off now. My stomach is 99% healed, but there are some random things that are still iffy!

So that was my day! Also-I updated my Races page FINALLY!

What is your favorite granola/protein bar?

My Life: Puppies, Vet, Food

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What has been going on lately leaving me such little time to post? This one is part of it! She’s quite the handful. Fortunately, I think we’re starting to get through the worst of the biting phase, but it’s still a work in progress. She started puppy school a couple of weeks ago, and already knows come, sit, down, and shake. She’s a bit headstrong though, and still somewhat easily distracted. She listens to every word we say, and cocks her head to the side when she doesn’t know what we’re saying or if she hears a new noise. She puts her tongue and mouth on everything, and anything is fair game to be chewed on. The weird thing is she really likes licking feet and ankles. She’s also started jumping up to put her front paws on all the furniture. It’s only a matter of time before she’s stealing food from counters!

Work at the vet has been going really well, and I really like my job. That said, it’s basically my entire life right now, to the point that I have dreams about it every night.

And finally, food. Because I’m home, food is a lot more interesting! Last Sunday, I went to another Giant’s game with my mom and got cauliflower flatbread.

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And a hot fudge sundae. YUM.

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Oh, and a sunburn. Look at what a beautiful day it was in SF though!

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Other notable and colorful meals?

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A teriyaki bowl with asparagus. Quick and easy.

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An egg white scramble with spinach, nutritional yeast, and lemon thyme salt, plus oatmeal and an amazing nectarine. My friend who lives on an orchard visited me again last weekend!

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My current go-to work lunch. Recipe coming soon!

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Eggs with brown rice/quinoa blend, plus a nectarine for breakfast.

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Cooking Light Asian Lettuce Cups with mint snow peas, plus brown rice/quinoa.

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A post-workout protein smoothie into which I accidentally dumped a third of the container of dark chocolate cocoa powder, hence the intense color. The smoothie was half cocoa powder, and the other half was a frozen banana, soy milk, a pinch of protein powder, and a handful of spinach.

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Froyo at lunch at work. Want to hear something terribly sad? I realized I’m allergic to one of my favorite froyo toppings! Apparently the last ingredient in Heath bars is almonds. On the one hand, this makes me really sad that I won’t be able to enjoy Heath in my froyo any longer, but on the other hand, I’m glad I have an explanation to why I was having a significant mystery allergic reaction. Boo.

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Brown rice+my copycat SweetGreen salad-watermelon and feta!

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A very pale but delicious dinner. Cooking Light’s lemon marinated grilled chicken, rice with feta and spices, and frozen then baked cauliflower with Greek seasoning blend.

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A simple breakfast of eggs, and blueberries/a tiny banana with sun butter.

And finally:

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The Primavera salad from Le Boulanger with no nuts and added chicken!

What’s the best thing you ate last week?