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WIAW-How We Do Vacations

WOW. I seem to have gotten a bit behind on posting, haven’t I? Thanks to Jenn, we can catch up somewhat in the form of WIAW!

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Friday afternoon, I finally made it home. I was really excited to do 14.4 at my home Crossfit! Since they only have 2 rowing machines, those of us not officially signed up for the open did an 800m run instead of rowing. I wasn’t sure how this workout would go-I’ve never been able to do toes to bar before! I ended up doing it for the first time ever, and getting 5 reps in before I kept failing and decided to just finish with knees to elbows so I could continue in the workout. I ended up getting up to 15 cleans before the 14 minute time ran out.

For my first dinner at home, we ordered food from a local favorite and I had chicken and rice soup. 85% of the reason I order this is because of the avocado!

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Plus a side salad.

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One of the perks of being home-raiding the pantry and or freezer. We always have amazing fudge sauce on hand, so I made a sundae with frozen yogurt and zucchini bread (on the bottom). The zucchini bread was from the freezer!

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For breakfast before Crossfit Saturday morning, I stuffed a whole wheat tortilla with sunflower seed butter, raspberries, and banana, and microwaved it until it was warm and gooey.

At Crossfit, most of the other people were doing 14.4 so I got to choose my own workout from the WODs that everyone had done for the week. I chose one that looked fun-it included pull ups, hand stand push ups (which I did with a box), and front squats. It was a very poor decision to chose anything that involved hanging from a bar, after so many toes to bar/knees to elbows the day before! My hands were SO done!

After Crossfit, my family and I drove down to Monterey for a little weekend vacation. On the way, we stopped at a little bagel shop that we used to always go to when we had softball tournaments.

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A turkey and avocado sandwich on a whole wheat bagel.

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Taro bubble tea, which actually turned out to be blended-which meant it was a smoothie like texture with tapioca balls at the bottom. I actually enjoyed this flavor-I’ve never tried it before!

For dinner the first night, my family ordered room service and split salads, potato skins (I haven’t had these in YEARS), and roasted artichoke.

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Sunday morning was my long run day. I’m officially in taper! 9 miles it was for me! I made sure to carb load up before running.

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I’m slightly concerned that I haven’t had my typical pre-run breakfast a single time before a long run during this training cycle. I’ve done a few of the runs in the afternoon, which I’ve never done before, and I guess I just didn’t bother with it before then. 

I found a trail that took me from our hotel, along the water through downtown Monterey. 

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I was probably not nearly as well rested as I would have liked to be but the run went fine! The thing was, we ended up not getting to eat lunch until super late! We finished lunch around 4!

My family decided to walk around Monterey in search of lunch, and I was instantly drawn to a little restaurant that was all about artichokes.

To start, we shared a fire roasted artichoke and artichoke dip.

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For my main dish, I ordered a turkey and avocado sandwich on a croissant. It came with roasted artichoke soup.

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This definitely hit the spot after 9 miles. More importantly than lunch, however, was dessert. Which is basically how my family does vacations. DESSERT.

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A brownie hot fudge sundae from Ghiradelli. Yummmm. 

For some crazy reason, we weren’t hungry for dinner yet! On my run, I found that there is a little Fisherman’s Wharf in Monterey, which we had never heard of! We rented a 4 wheeled bike-car thing, which was a lot of fun!

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The biggest attraction of Fisherman’s Wharf was the caramel apples, and we picked up a couple for later.

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I also saw Divergent-I’ve been listening to the audiobooks of the series on my long runs so I was excited to see it! I thought it was pretty good. My gripe is probably only because I read the book, but I felt like they left out a lot of details that while if they included everything the movie would be insanely long, I felt that without them the movie was a bit confusing.

Dinner was cheese and crackers and a caramel apple. 

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Monday was our last morning, and we drove to Carmel to explore the little shops. A highlight? Cheese tasting!

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Followed by tasting lots of little tapenades and sauces at a fancy little foodie store. We walked away with some quality white balsamic, which I cannot wait to use!

For lunch, we stopped at a Mediterranean place with amazing hot bread. I had some delicious and perfectly cooked salmon with saffron sauce.

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They also brought out a little complimentary dessert!

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After lunch, we walked down to the beach to soak up some beautiful views.

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Before dessert round 2! 

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In my family, if you don’t roll home from a vacation, you’re not doing it right! There was lots of great food over the weekend, but I’m definitely happy to return to a routine today!

How do you eat on vacations?

 

Workout Log #1 and Still Eating All the Fall Things

I hope everyone had a fabulous Halloween! I’m currently taking a study break. I’ve been studying HARD for Bio. I actually feel much more confident about the material and life now than I did after a mini meltdown I may or may not have had earlier today.   I actually opted out of flag football for…you guessed it-studying! I’m kind of bummed I missed it because we only have 4 regular season games, but I did get a lot done, so there’s that. Before getting to some eats as of late, I thought I’d post a little workout log for the week. This week is a little bit different than normal because I’m not following any sort of running schedule, but I will starting next week, so if we make it there when we get there I’ll go over that with you guys! My schedule varies a lot week to week-it depends on what workouts are what days for Crossfit-I love that they post the week’s workouts so you can pick and choose. This week was a little lighter on the workout front though because I had more going on. I’ve also been trying to squeeze in one on my own spin workout in preparation for certification, but as you’ll see this week, that doesn’t always happen. 

Workouts for Week of 10/28

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Monday: AM- easy pace 5 mile hill run

-nothing too crazy, but I wanted to keep my running going a little bit in preparation for Saturday’s long run

PM- Crossfit: Strength was clean and jerks with a front squat

WOD: 300 jump ropes

30-20-10 kettlebell swings/ sit ups

300 jump ropes

I felt the jump ropes in my calves 2 days later!

Tuesday: AM- 45 minute spin class plus 1 mile treadmill run

-I wanted to get a mile in at a decent pace. It was harder than I expected. I have a lot of work to do before attempting to PR my 5k!

PM- Crossfit Strength was 3 rep max push press-I got to 100 pounds, and 2 reps at 105. 

WOD: 10 minute ladder (3-6-9-12…)

Push press/pull up

OW. Can I just say, OW. My shoulders are STILL super sore from doing a million and three push presses. I had every intention of working on clean and jerks Wednesday morning, but nothing overhead is going to happen for a looong time. My abs are even sore.

Wednesday: AM- Lifting on my own. I worked on dead lifts and cleans. I set a few goals for November, and some of those include PRing on my cleans and deadlifts, so those will be one of my bigger focuses. I also did some rowing and weighted planks. 

PM- I had every intention of practicing a spin class, but I was so sleep deprived I couldn’t see straight, much less make up a class on the go. I ended up calling it quits after about 25 minutes and going to my dorm to take a nap. The good news is I still worked up a pretty good sweat, which I take as a good sign for my ability to make up a spin workout. 

PM- Pumpkin carving! That counts as a workout, right…?

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Thursday: AM- Crossfit. Strength was practicing Turkish Get Ups. I’ve done something similar in the past, which turned out to be more like half of a Turkish Get Up, but the movements still felt pretty intuitive. I was even able to try it with a (light) barbell, which is hard because you have to balance it with one hand.

WOD: 12 Minutes as many rounds as possible:

6 squats

12 weighed sit ups (overhead)

200 m run

I actually ended up getting the second most rounds! Go figure. 

PM Flag Football

Friday: Likely rest, maybe some abs or yoga

Saturday: Long run-we’ll see how long it actually turns out. I have a specific number in mind but we’ll see. 

Sunday: Probably rest, maybe take a tour of the NEW GYM OPENING ON CAMPUS TOMORROW. I’m so excited-it’s supposed to be super nice, and it will have an actual spin studio (not just some bikes thrown in the corner of the weight room…) and nice spin bikes that actually show speed. The current gym is literally right next to my dorm, and the new one is way across campus, so I probably won’t go there a ton besides for spin, but I’m hoping the current gym will be half as crowded! Also, I know the new gym will be having spin classes on top of the ones that are still going on at the old gym, so maybe this is an awesome opportunity since I’m getting certified soon?

Ok enough exercise talk. Let’s move on to the good stuff, some food from the past few days.

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I think I put a little too much weight in the prophetic abilities of the amount of milk foam in my cappuccino. Yesterday’s? AMAZING. TONS of milk foam-going to be a great day. Today’s? Not so much. 

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Someone shook my kombucha! Speaking of which, I need to get more…

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Cottage cheese, spinach, and pesto- #strangebutgood or just #strange? I’m going to go with the latter-this was way too salty. Not a fan.

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Love.

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Mystery bread as a study snack.

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Pumpkin soup take 2! This was really good! The pumpkin soup was kind of boring plain, so one of the twins suggested I add rice to it. I loved the idea! I went to the dining hall in search of brown rice, but all they had was a mushroom barley mix, which was absolutely perfect! I also added some grilled chicken and spinach-YUM.

The other day my mom brought me some pants from home and dropped them off in my car-but she really is the best-she also thought to bring me some other clothes-which I discovered lat last night as I was trying to muster up the energy to do laundry. The best care packages are the ones that let you put off laundry another day. But anyways, she clearly know me way too well because she included tons of dried fruit.Image

This coconut was really delicious! I’ve never had YOUNG dried coconut!

But she also left me THIS.

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A caramel apple! WAY better than Halloween candy!

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I wanted some protein on the side-clearly it was not overkill to eat a caramel apple with apple butter, right?

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Cottage cheese. Apple butter. Sunflower seed butter. Perfection. I’ve actually hopped off the pumpkin train-I’m ready to move on to other fall items-apples, cranberry bread, and (soon) gingerbread. My roommate and I are currently drowning in apples from our CSA box. She brought a slow cooker, so we’re planning on chopping a bunch up and throwing them in there with some apple pie spice. Which would be awesome on yogurt. I’ve been wanting plain yogurt so much lately, and I don’t have any! Sad. 

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My study buddy! Filled with chai tea. I was trying to decide if I should use almond milk or water to brew my tea in. Then I realized I’d have to get up and walk all the way down the hall to the bathroom for water. Guess which I decided to use? 

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Spinach buddies! I was actually planning on going to the dining hall for dinner…and then I was browsing twitter and saw on the local news that my University has had some horribly outbreak of a “mystery illness,” some type of food poisoning and probably norovirus from the food at one of our dining halls. 51 students were sick, and some hospitalized. Umm, no thank you-I’ll stick to my room! I’m just mad I had to hear about this on the news-no one told us students about it!

So on that cheerful note, I shall leave you. Have a great day!

What did you do for Halloween? I’d love to live vicariously through all you guys!