Giant’s Race 2015

Date: August 27, 2015

Author: astottler

Hello! Guess who did a race this past weekend?

The Giant’s Race finishes in the Giant’s ballpark. It’s awesome. It was my first ever race! This year I did the 10k, not the half like I did the past 2 years. I had a hard time with my training for my April half because I was so sick, that I was just not up for it. That, and I had no time or energy to train with work. This summer I was on my feet 8 hrs a day, and half marathon training plus that would have torn up my feet!

So, I settled on the 10k.

It’s so crazy to me. 4 years ago, I ran this race for the first time.

I was about to start my freshman year of college. Where the heck did the time go?? When I ran it 4 years ago, I actually won my age group. I was in my best shape of my life at the time, and followed a strict training schedule to work up to that distance (at the time a PDR). This year, I ran the race about 7 minutes slower. Instead of moaning about how much slower I’ve gotten, I’m appreciating how my body has changed to allow me to run this distance without issue, essentially without training.

I didn’t have any expectations for the race. I didn’t want to die, but I wanted to run a decent pace. I was actually a second away from my last minute goal time. I mostly just wanted to enjoy this race. It’s an amazing course-along the Embarcadero, under the Bay Bridge, and out past Fisherman’s Wharf. Bonus-the 10k is flat. The half marathon course actually goes to Chrissy field, with a fantastic view of the Golden Gate.

The energy of the runners is amazing as well-lots of like-minded people (aka Giant’s fans). Plus, finishing on the field never gets old. I definitely enjoyed this race!

After the race, I met up with my mom and grabbed a complimentary post-race beer, just because I could. Yayy for 21. I only had a few sips though because we had other plans for beverages that morning!

There was also a little sandbag toss, for prizes. Of course, I had to take part. I nailed my first 2 bags right in the whole. I still have some softball player left in me, and walked away with some new sunglasses!

After my coffee exploration in New York, I figured I should use a trip to the city as an excuse to try some of the best San Francisco has to offer! I picked out a place, and it turned out they had gourmet and gluten free doughnuts! Dynamo Donuts. We arrived minutes before they opened.

I had a chocolate raspberry and a lemon buttermilk gluten free donut. Both were delicious, and you definitely could not tell they were gluten free.

Plus, OF COURSE a cappuccino. Excellent as well. Good coffee is just so much smoother, and without the bitterness.

Overall, it was a great morning!

Tell me-where’s the best coffee?

On The First Day of Christmas My True Love Gave to Me…

Date: November 28, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

One AMAZING family. I am so thankful. And how appropriate that the first day of Christmas fall on Thanksgiving? They are the best.

Even though my sister is in Michigan right now!

Today just proves how awesome my family is. My parents woke up at the crack of dawn (well, it was dark) to take to and support me in a Turkey Trot.

Also-so much respect for this guy: he ran the whole 10k with the ship!

I had plans to take a fast for me but still easy pace of 9:00. I went out pretty fast-my first mile was 8:10-so clearly I have no ability to not go hard. This race was pretty hard, but definitely a ton of fun. And it was nice to see my race pace in the 8s again!

After cleaning up, we headed to my Grandma’s house. She really outdid herself on the cooking front this year. I was SO blown away. Check out all these desserts-dark chocolate pecan pie, key lime pie, pumpkin cheesecake-all from scratch.

We had a 24 pound turkey (for 6 people), mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, 3 types of cranberry sauce, ambrosia with homegrown oranges, butternut squash soup, green beans, rolls, orange maple sweet potatoes.

Check out that concentration!

So thankful. I have no words.

What are you thankful for?

So Much Excitement

Date: August 5, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

I really should have waited to post again so I’d have more to show you guys, but I’m brimming with excitement. I’ve caught the running bug.

Why is it that we catch the running bug after a race-when we are physically incapable of running? I’m feeling way better now, but I am SORE. I was shuffling around like an old lady all morning. My hips-ouchhh. I guess this is what I get for racing way faster than my training runs…oops.

To further my old lady tendencies, I drank my breakfast through a straw….in the form of a chocolate green protein smoothie. And now the exciting news-what I spent my morning doing! GUESS WHAT? I’m now going to write a fitness blog for my hometown’s local online newspaper! I am so incredibly excited for this opportunity! I’ll share the links with you guys, and of course any fun workouts 🙂

However, I had so much trouble with the site today. I created the blog-it’s called Fitness 101. But man oh man did it make me miss WordPress. The site was not cooperating with me AT ALL. So I have my post sitting here on my computer, with no way to actually post it….

But still, I am extremely excited for this. I saw the ad for the position, and didn’t really think I’d actually get this opportunity. But hey, sometimes you just have to take a chance, right? I can’t wait to actually get some posts up! I’m thinking my next one will be First Half Training 101.

After some frustration, I broke for lunch. English muffin pizzas- pizza sauce (which for some crazy reason we had), spinach, and mozzarella on a whole wheat English muffin. As you can probably tell, all we had was string cheese.

Plus some celery and orange fleshed melon on the side. No, that is not cantaloupe; it’s better! I’m not exactly sure what kind of melon it was, but I think it was a cross between a cantaloupe and a honeydew. SO delicious-it was sweeter than plain old cantaloupe!

After lunch I started ~~plotting~~ planning. My next race is the Nike Women’s Marathon (the half) in October. My goal is to break 2:10. This race is known for being hilly, so I looked up as many reviews of the race as possible. Apparently it’s really poorly run, and the race etiquette is awful. A ton of people walk it, and don’t really move for runners. Even worse, a ton of people commented saying that walkers starting in the wrong race corals, like 9:00 pace. Given all that, it may be a frustrating race for me to try and PR, just because of all the traffic. I’m still going to train for it though!

I’m planning on doing training a little differently. After my race, I know I can run faster than I trained for. Now, to break 2:10, I think my goal is to be to maintain a 9:30 pace on my Garmin-for almost the entire run my Garmin read below 10:00 but I stopped a few seconds to stretch here or there, and walked through water and to take my goo. Plus, hills will definitely slow me down. If I stay below or at 9:30 (which now I really think I can do), I should break 2:10, taking into account the above factors.

Since I now have a half under my belt, I’m going to do training a little differently. I’m going to do speed runs, instead of just trying to get the mileage in. What does that mean? I’m going to mix in some intervals, some repeats, and some tempo runs. All my training will target a 9:30 pace.

But then I started thinking towards the future and getting even more race happy. I decided to make a Race page on the blog-check it out! It has all the races I’ve run, including PRs. Although I’ve only run each distance once, so everything is a PR….

So looking even farther into the future-after Nike, I think I’m going to take a break from halfs. I think maybe a late spring/early summer would be a good time for another one. The Giant Race was an awesome race, and might be a good one to try and PR on a half, but Im seriously considering doing the 10k….and racing to win. First place in my age group (for next year) was 47 minutes. If I ran an 8 minute pace, I’d place. And I think with training that’s definitely doable.

As for the slightly more near term: post-Nike I’m going to train to PR a 5k at the Santa Run. I’ve been dying to do a Turkey Trot, but I’m planning on doing the 10k for that (and probably not trying a PR). I actually looked up my Santa Run time from last year….and it’s a minute faster than I thought it was. I had an 8:01 pace, which means to PR I’d have to break 8 minutes. I do think that’s doable but it’ll take some work.

Here’s to some new PRs this fall!

How do you train for races? What’s your favorite distance? Do you like nerding out about running too? (I’m looking at you Beth.)

Lazy Monday

Date: January 22, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

I can’t believe the weekend is over already! These long weekends always fly by! My allergies have been terrible all day. I don’t know why my cats set them off so badly yesterday, but once my sinuses go crazy, it’s hard to stop them. I’ve been popping decongestants like it’s no body’s business (no more than the recommended dosage of course), but I’m not sure how much it has helped. The 2 things that do help: eating hot food and exercise. Let’s go through my day, shall we?

After an interesting night, I got up around 7:30, 8ish. My goal for this weekend was to get completely caught up on sleep, so this was a lazy morning. I wasn’t terribly hungry, but one of those delicious bars I got at whole foods the other day sounded just about right.

Sorry for the poor definition, I didn’t have the light on because my roommate was still sleeping. I topped this with some nuts for my healthy fat. After eating, I curled back up in bed to get going on my new book!

I really love it! It’s a great read; although it is definitely science-y, it isn’t meant for the scientist, it’s meant for the general public. I’m obviously not all the way through, but I’m hooked. Although I’ve hardly gotten to any parts where he describes the dangers of sugar. I ended up falling back asleep a little bit, which was great. Once again, fixing up that sleep debt! My eating today was a little strange just because of my schedule, so I ended up snacking through the day until dinner. I had weights at 1:30, so I ate snack/meal #2 around 11.

More peanut butter banana bread (plus extra pb), an apple microwaved with cinnamon, celery (gotta slow down those carbs!), and a small cup of unsweetened vanilla almond milk. I don’t think I’ve ever had almond milk by itself before, but I didn’t have any regular milk and I wanted some protein. Well, I actually wanted something cold to soothe my super dry throat…This meal was nice and steamy, and my allergies cleared up quite a bit.

I worked and relaxed for a couple of hours before weights at 1:30. Weights was nothing different. But lotsss of squats today. 4×50. I didn’t put any additional weight on the bar today. Why? I’m so sore from my workout yesterday! I forgot how sore my own weights can make me! My butt, and hamstrings….augh. Plus my abs are still a little sore from Friday’s extra ab work, and my right arm is a little sore from pitching briefly yesterday.

After weights on the way to a meeting with my professor, I chowed down another half of a delicious Chocolate Mint ThinkThin bar.

I ate the other half some other time throughout the day, maybe after lunch? These are soooo good. I highly recommend them. Although they are a little higher in sugar than what I’d prefer (10g, which is generally my limit when buying granola bars), they don’t have any artificial sweeteners. My meeting with my professor went really well. Apparently the first draft of my paper wasn’t quite as bad as I thought. Who knew?

After the meeting came another snack.

A nectarine and one of the Peanut Butter granola balls I made yesterday. Perfect! I really love the crunch that the chia seeds give these bars! I thought the brown rice crisps would get soggy in the fridge, but it was totally fine!

After more work, I headed to the gym for a spin class. This is the class I went to last quarter but now can never make because I normally have practice, so I decided to go for old time’s sake. Plus, I was hoping it would loosen me up a little bit! I did a few minutes of abs beforehand, which were surprisingly difficult. I think it is because we had some ab rollouts in weights today…I took Spin a little easy, and I feel a little bit better. The thing about this type of sore, is it doesn’t exactly help to roll out, or it is simply not worth it. Rolling out= so painful! Now that I’m sitting down, I don’t really feel sore, but any time I get up…whew.

After spin was dinner. I was lacking in veggies today, so I made sure to get some greens!

Caesar salad, a few potatoes and zucchinis, veggie souffle, and a small piece of tilapia. Plus a few chunks of pineapple (which was a little too acidic for my dry mouth…) I also grabbed some greens and tomatoes in anticipation of tomorrow’s dinner. Cheese souffle leftovers! When I returned to my dorm, I was in the mood for something more. I started off eating a banana with peanut butter, then shifted gears and threw the banana in the microwave with this:

And topped with peanut butter. I love this dark chocolate cocoa powder, it gives a ton of flavor! I didn’t take a picture of my banana mix because you’ve seen it before, and frankly it just looks black….

Overall, today was not a bad day. I wish my allergies would get better though! Since I’m starting to get more school work, I want to try to schedule a certain amount of time to work on my blog, and not just work on it here or there, because honestly I need to focus. But I’m well under my time limit today! Another piece of fun news: my friend wanted to try to do the Disney half marathon with me in May, but I’ll still be in school and probably in the middle of my season, so I can’t really do that. However, I may be able to convince her to do the Giant’s half with me in August!

I’ve never really talked about my race experiences. All 2 of them. Over the summer, I trained for the Giants 10k, which was in San Francisco and finished on the field.

My sister ran the 10k as well, and my parents walked the 5k. I ended up finishing first in my age group, but I didn’t know that until later so I didn’t get a medal. I think my time was around 52:00? Then over winter break, I ran the Silicon Valley Santa Run, which my friends were going to do with me but ended up not.

Check out all those Santas! I believe I finished around 25:00, but I could have been in better running shape (I had hardly run at all before, mostly erging and other workouts). But it was a fun experience! There was snow at the finish line, and cookies and milk! I definitely want to do this again next year. I also have always been dying to do a Turkey Trot! This year I ran on my own, maybe 4 miles? I take Thanksgiving very seriously, and I want to do anything to maximize my appetite for the big meal!

On other news, I am going on a ski trip with my dorm this coming weekend. I am slightly terrified, because I’ve only been skiing once. I talked to a few of my teammates who had their ski trips this past weekend, and during our weigh in at weights, they were moaning that all they ate all weekend was cookie dough and cheese. So I think I’m going to have to pack a ton of granola bars, because I don’t think I can handle that….

Any other suggestions for food I could bring?