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Running Without Numbers

Date: June 14, 2014
Author: astottler
Categories: Uncategorized

How’s everyone’s weekend going? I’ve had a pretty low key day so far, so I think it’s time to do a bit of blogging! I seriously had the best day of exercise on Friday. Let me just preface this post by saying this week will be very Crossfit heavy because it is the one week out of maybe 6 weeks all year that I get to go to my home Crossfit, and I absolutely love it there!

I began Friday morning with a run.

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I’ve been doing a fastish mid-long run on Sundays with my Crossfit run group the past few weeks, but this Sunday my sister is graduating and I can’t go, so I decided to do a 6 miler on Friday morning. I wanted to keep my pace up since I’m trying to PR. I wore my watch, but I set it so I could only see time. I think I have a tendency to see a pace that is faster than I think is comfortable, and it freaks me out. I start thinking I should be breathing harder, so I do, and it’s just all bad from there! I ran based on feel, while trying to go a bit faster than a comfortable pace. I ended up just about exactly where I wanted my pace to be, although I must admit the last mile was pretty tough! It’s hard right now to imagine 13.2 miles at a pace faster than this, but I have plenty of time to work on it before then!

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Since I’m a blogger, I take pictures of my watch. But it’s actually a really great tool. I have a log now of my runs so I can look back at half training from a year ago and compare, which is pretty cool!

Also cool? I just realized that I ate exactly the same thing one year ago as I ate today!

Last night for dinner, we made Whole Foods’s Black Bean Soup (although made with 1/2 broth instead of all water for more flavor).

Topped with cheese, and of course, avocado! I had leftovers for dinner as well!

This year’s bowls:

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And for comparison-a picture from exactly a year ago!
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Also from the fitness world: I got new Crossfit shoes! I love love love them! IMG_8060 IMG_8061

 

They are a million times better-I didn’t even realize how bad and worn out my old ones were. These were so much better to run in, and my Achilles felt totally fine after running 1.5 miles in them during Crossfit this morning. I’m wondering if my old Crossfit shoes played a bit of a role in my tendonitis. It’s definitely feeling better today!

On the life front, I’ve trying to get ready for my trip to DC. I’m buying business clothes, I’m seeing my high school friends, I’m figuring out last minute details. Also-an update on the nut allergy. I’ve FINALLY rid myself of all my reactions. I kept accidentally eating half a peanut, and my skin would break out, but since I’ve been super careful, I am happy to say that my skin is 100% fine now!

And lastly-my main activity for today was baking a Boston Cream Pie for my sister’s college graduation. Her boyfriend is also graduating, so his family is coming to our house for dessert.For those that don’t know, a Boston Cream Pie is sponge cake with a custard filling, topped with chocolate ganache. It’s a fairly involved cake, but I’ve made it a few times before so I wasn’t concerned. Funny story-the very first time I made it a few years ago, I fell down an entire flight of stairs while holding it. My foot was bruised for months, but the cake was fine so totally worth it!

Sponge cake:

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Sponge cake is mostly air-I spent so much time whipped egg whites and then egg yolks!

Then the custard:

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And finally the chocolate ganache!

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New Beginnings

Date: March 25, 2013
Author: astottler
Categories: Uncategorized

Yeahh so guess who is behind posting again? Me! I swear I planned on posting Friday. And Saturday…Here’s what ends up happening. I usually like to post at night to recap my day. Makes sense, right? But see the thing is, when I am at home, my family likes to watch TV episodes at night, so we end up getting really into it and watching until late (we have the shows on DVD). And then it is late. And since I’VE BEEN ABLE TO WORKOUT (yay!) I have to wake up at a reasonable hour. So I don’t want to stay up even later…yeah let’s just say I should not try to wait until late to blog because at that point it just doesn’t happen. So since I’m a bit behind…I was really sore from yoga on Thursday! I have now found my downward dog muscles…It’s amazing what a month off can do to you! Friday I ended up decided to skip my planned run, especially since I was planning on running on Saturday. I’ve been trying to have SOME type of activity to do each day, and I ended up decided Friday would be baking day. I wanted to make something complicated, and the winner was…Boston Cream Pie! For those of you that aren’t familiar with it, it is 2 layers of sponge cake with pastry cream between the layers and a thick chocolate glaze. I just used the recipe from our America’s Test Kitchen Cookbook. I’ve made the recipe once before, and it’s pretty complicated although not terribly difficult. It is just a lot of steps. And hey, it was the perfect opportunity to use the new mixer! (Note: I’ve misspelled “the” every single time in this post…) Here’s the process:ImageImageImageImageImageImageImageYes. It was delicious. I like how this isn’t SUPER sweet. I think I could have taken the cakes out a bit sooner though. Eek looking through my pictures, I realized I’m getting ahead of myself on meals! I had some good eats! Guess what? I had my first yogurt bowl! I know so many of you swear by them, so it was time to try it! (Sidenote: Kefir and cereal is seriously delicious as well, for all you yogurt bowl lovers.) Plus, I got some sunflower seed butter, which doesn’t seem to make my skin break out. I’m pumped. ImageThese guys, plus some pumpkin bread I found in the freezer, which I swear we didn’t have any left of, but hey, I found basically half a loaf, so I’m not complaining!ImageYogurt bowls? I’m a fan. I’ve been dying to recreate this since but I have had to eat really lightly because I’ve had morning workouts. Lunch was also good on Friday. Apparently we had some whole wheat tortillas hiding in the fridge. ImageI filled it up with rotisserie chicken, jack cheese, tomato, spinach, and pesto, and then popped it into the microwave. Yum! Plus half an artichoke.

Dinner was a scramble filled with veggies, plus some oranges. I wanted to keep it light to save room for my day’s work!Image

Saturday morning I head over to the track for a workout (!). I did some running, mixed in with some abs and sprints. I ended up running 2.5 miles, which were broken up into miles chunks (plus the half mile). Given this was my first time running since I got so sick, and the first time in over a month, I’d say it went pretty well. I have a ways to go to build up my stamina, but I felt pretty good, and my legs didn’t really feel tired at all until the final half mile. It also occurred to me while I was running how much better running is than erging! However, I’m REALLY sore today. I’ve never been this sore from running. Even my arches are sore. So once again, I have a ways to go! After my workout, I cleaned myself up and my parents and I drove over to Berkeley to have lunch with my grandparents, since we won’t be seeing them on Easter. Their new favorite place is a Korean restaurant called Bowl’d, so we all went there. I got a chicken bowl, and here’s what it looked like:ImageImageIt was really good! The bowl had various types of rice, noodles, and vegetables. Topped with a citrus soy sauce, which was vaguely sweet (almost like a teriyaki sauce). I liked it! But the bowl stayed VERY hot the whole time, and I was constantly in danger of burning myself! 

My whole family was ready for a nap by the time we got home, so I read in bed with this little guy:ImageImageImageImageImageI love my cats. We ended up ordering a quick dinner from a local diner-type restaurant, and I chose huevos rancheros.ImageHey, anything with avocado and I’m sold!

This morning I headed over to one of my favorite spin classes. I had to get there early to sign up, so I did some crunches while I waited. It was a great class, I was able to push myself more like I normally do. My stupid bike seat started sliding back towards the end of class though, even though I tightened it. I got off my bike once to fix it, but when it slipped a second time, I just gave in and finished the class. 4 hills! Whoop! Which, I must say, is way better than 1 30 minute hill…

I didn’t snap a picture at breakfast because I was in a hurry, but I had a sort of yogurt bowl: kefir with peanut butter puff cereal and sunflower butter, plus a mango (of course). We still have like 8 mangos, which are all starting to be ripe. This will not be a problem.

After spin, I went to the farmer’s market.ImageMy best find? Avocados! They were 6 for $5. They also had mini avocados, which I naturally had to get.ImageImageI think I am going to try to sprout the pits, and see if I get a mini avocado plant! I’m not sure they will sprout though; they are so tiny!

Have you guys ever gotten kettle corn at the farmer’s market before? It is by far the best kettle corn out there. So naturally we bought a reasonably sized bag (as opposed to giant. See? Showing restraint). We also bought an apple pie from a stand that came from a local pie restaurant that we used to always go to when I was little. My mom and I have both been dying for apple pie lately because it keeps coming up in the books we are reading. It cost just as much if we bought slices as to buy a whole pie, so a whole pie it was!

After the farmer’s market, I began this blog post and then went out to Indian food with Jessica, one of my best friends from High School.Image

It ended up being a buffet, which was just as well since neither of us would have known what to order anyways. She had never had Indian food before, and I never know what to order since I’m not exactly sure what anything is. The end result? We basically got some of everything to try.ImageIt was really tasty! It wasn’t too spicy, except for one thing, which I figured out fairly quickly and avoided. Jessica didn’t fare as well. Her plate got completely mixed together, so she couldn’t tell what anything was and couldn’t identify the really spicy item! We used the warm Naan served on the side to take away some of the kick.

After a fun lunch, we saw a froyo place that I had not tried yet right across the street, so NATURALLY, what choice did we have? And hey, it’s been over a week since my last one! It was a Tutti Fruiti. The yogurt was good quality and the toppings bar was a good variety, but the flavors weren’t especially interesting. But I guess at this point that’s hard to expect given how many places I’ve been to. It was a great afternoon; we probably stayed in the yogurt place chatting for an hour! I miss that girl!

Other than that, I haven’t done too much up until now. There’s one last thing I want to talk about though (hence the title of the post). As some of you may know, I walked onto my college’s crew team this fall after never having rowed before in my life. My school has a program for novice rowers, so the fall was spent teaching us all how to row. It was an awesome experience, one I wouldn’t trade for anything. I met some truly amazing people. Come winter, the novices moved in with the varsity rowers, recruits and Olympians alike, starting with winter camp (which you can see in my earliest blog posts). Through blogging about this, I found some other rower/former rower bloggers (shout out to Brittany and Theresa!), which is totally awesome. But then winter quarter got hectic. Rowing took up 5 hours every day, and I was only getting about 6 hours of sleep a night, and certainly not putting 100% into my classes. I can’t help but think this is part of why I got so sick. It probably didn’t help that the first day I was sick I spent a couple of hours freezing my drenched butt off in the bay…ANYWAY. These past few weeks have given me some perspective. I realize there’s no way I can keep that type of schedule up anymore. I spent a lot of time on softball in high school, but that was MY sport. I had to remind myself that while I loved rowing, I had only been doing it for a few months, and it really wasn’t MY sport. I had such an amazing experience, but I’m not up to full strength. Racing starts in less than a week. And most importantly, an aftereffect of this stupid illness (mono) is that I will need more sleep for a while. So I decided I cannot continue to row. One again, I wouldn’t trade anything for the opportunity to row at a high college level, but it is time to move on, hence the name of the post. Right now, I’m training to get back into shape for Intramural soccer, which I’m pumped for. I started playing soccer when I was 5, and haven’t played since my freshman year of high school, and I’ve really missed it. And I want to really get into running. I can’t wait to have more flexibility in my workouts and in my life. Seriously, I’ve never had this kind of freedom. For so long, anytime there was any event or activity, I automatically knew I couldn’t go. In high school, it was because I had softball, and this year it was because I had crew. I’m excited to try new things and meet new people. I feel like I have so many more opportunities now, and I think I will have a chance at not going through life as a sleep deprived zombie. (Speaking of which, has anyone done a zombie run? I think it sounds like fun!) It’s also important for me to have a good quarter academically, given I had to drop 2 of my classes because of the mono last quarter. Like I said a minute ago, a really want to get into running. I really want to try one of those “Mud Runs” where you have to go though/over all kinds of obstacles. That’s total body fitness right there! Anyway, I wanted to let you all know what is going on with me. I decided a little while ago, but i wanted to wait until everything was finalized. To end, here’s a picture of my favorite flowers, which my cats have been leaving alone so far (last year I found my birthday bouquet scattered around the house).ImageThe picture doesn’t do them justice!

What fun or interesting runs have you done?