16.4, Goats, and a 5k

Date: March 22, 2016

Author: astottler

Hello friends! It’s been a little while, and I have lots to catch up on!

Let’s start with 16.4. I did it Friday night at my home Crossfit, and while it was a lot of fun, OOF. That was Friday night. It’s Tuesday morning now. Will my lower back ever be the same? Still TBD.

16.4 was a 13 minute AMRAP of 55 deadlifts at 155#, 55 wall balls (14#), 55 calories on the row, and 55 hand stand push ups. Obviously, I can’t do handstand push ups. I figured if I made it that far, that would be fantastic enough, so I decided to do Rx. I wasn’t sure how far I would make it into the workout, but got after it!

155# on the deadliest normally would be considered a comfortable but very heavy weight. But I’ve hardly done deadlifts at all in a while, so I was a little nervous. I started with sets of 10 and then did sets of 5 around 20 reps, and smaller sets at the very end. More than anything, my core was giving out on me! Definitely something I need to put some more work into. After the deadlifts, I stumbled over to the wall for wall balls. The ball actually felt SO light when I picked it up after deadlifts. That being said, I DEFINITELY struggled with the wall balls. They’re hard enough without 55 deadlifts in the recent past! In addition, I don’t normally do wall balls to a 9 foot target, and was prepared to get no repped. Which definitely happened, but not too much. When i felt like my reps were declining, I broke up the set to avoid wasting energy on a no rep. That being said, this was such a struggle. I couldn’t even do sets of 10, and by the end a set of 5 wasn’t even happening. However, my home box has a Crossfit games Masters athlete, and she was right there with me coaching me on. When a games athlete tells you to pick the ball back up, you pick the ball back up. I think I got to the row around 9:30. Luckily, rowing is sort of one of my strengths. I used the first minute or so as a “recovery” since I was sucking air from the wall balls, and then picked it up, busting it out at the end. I ended up finishing the 55 calories at 12:59. I’ll take it!

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I was BEAT afterwards, but SUPER happy with how I did. I was actually the only non-masters female athlete to do this workout Rx at my box! But my core and hamstrings were done. Anytime I bent down, it took all the strength in the world to come back up! I went in the first heat (because I don’t like to see how painful it is) and stuck around for about 4 more heats, watching and cheering.

So, 16.4 done, 165 reps!

(And check out this adorable corgi cheering us on!)

The next morning was a REST day. I legit could not bend over.

That afternoon, I went to a farm with my friend to see baby animals. Unfortunately, we seemed to be a bit early in the season, but there were some young goats!

Afterwards we made a mandatory froyo stop. Cake batter and chocolate with chocolate chips for me!

Dinner was another tortilla pizza, this time with grilled peach, chicken, gorgonzola, and balsamic.

Sunday morning was race day! I ran the Hellyer 5k for the 3rd time. Unfortunately, I woke up feeling even more beat up from 16.4 than the day before. Ouch. Lower back was still not functioning.

We brought Chloe to the race, and she made another puppy friend.

It was a chilly, but luckily the forecasted rain had not yet begun.

^Me attempting to stretch my back. Back still feeling rough. OUCH.

So apparently when you put your bib on with two jackets on over it, it comes out kind of crooked. Oh well.

I was hoping to approach my PR in the race, but out of the gate I knew that wasn’t happening. Some days your just don’t feel right, so I decided to just not die and do my best on that day. The race was Alice in Wonderland themed, and there were quotes printed out throughout the course which I thought was a fun touch.

But overall, I’m happy with it!

I also had the pleasure of meeting blog reader Rina; we’ve been trying to meet up for a while now, so this was a pleasant surprise!

Rina is super speedy and placed second in her (our?) age group which is awesome! It was good to finally meet you Rina!

After the race, my family and I (and Chloe) stopped at a gluten free bakery near home for brunch. We got some baked goods to share (cinnamon roll and blueberry lemon muffin), and my mom and I split a chicken and avocado sandwich on foccacia!

It was a busy weekend!

Check back in tomorrow for some more food details though—so nice to have the freedom of a kitchen!

16.3 (LOL)

Date: March 13, 2016

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hey guys! I’m currently taking a little study break. We’re in the home stretch! I have 2 finals tomorrow and then I’m DONE. Tomorrow will be a long day though—2 back to back 3 hour finals followed by my 3 hour off campus Biochem class.

Shall we back it up a bit to Friday before getting into 16.3?

My morning began with a WET 5 mile run. And cold. Yuck. Sometimes I like running in the rain, most times I don’t, especially in the morning. But I got it done. A highlight was breakfast—I was super excited to try the Siggi’s fig and lemon yogurt, and realized it would go perfectly with the copious amounts of lemon poppyseed bread in the freezer. I used the one with the slightly weird texture. I actually like the flavor of that more. Still looking for the perfect recipe!

In my morning class, I got to work with rats! Then, it was lunchtime. It was a made to order brunch, so I got eggs florentine on a gluten free english muffin.

After lunch, I went to my final class of the quarter and just got DRENCHED on the bike ride back. When I arrived at my dorm, my sister was waiting outside for me and I didn’t have time to change clothes. We were off to visit the cat she was going to adopt! I fell in love with a few others while there.

But meet Lava! My first nephew 😉

He’s such a sweetie. He loves climbing on everyone’s lap and purring.

The rest of my wild Friday night consisted of falling asleep before 10pm. #deadweek

Saturday morning before Crossfit, I stopped by the Stanford softball game. They were playing Cal Poly, and growing up I played softball with quite a few girls who are now on Cal Poly, so it was fun to see them play!

Then, Saturday morning was 16.3! I was not really excited for it. The workout was a 7 minute AMRAP of 10 snatches at 55# and 3 muscle ups. So, muscle ups are definitely not a thing for me. I assumed I would do scaled, which was 35# snatches and jumping chest to bar pull ups, which I was not excited about. When I showed up however, out coach informed us that since any reps in Rx is ranked higher than scaled, it made sense to just do Rx and then finish the workout with pull ups, and take a score of 10. Since 55# snatches are really comfortable for me, I took this option, and scored all of a 10. Because of that limitation, there wasn’t much hoopla around the workout. The exciting thing though was that I actually did 5 pull ups between my snatch sets WITHOUT a band. WHATTT. I used the smallest band for the first set and then ditched it for the last couple. I’ve been putting in work on the pull ups lately, so I was pretty pumped to be able to break them out in a workout for the first time!

After my heat, I judged a heat and watched another. It was actually a lot of fun, and sort of amusing. Because of the way the standards for muscle ups were set, you can actually do some pretty ugly things to make it work.

After the workout, I went out to lunch with my gym-mates. We went to The Counter, which was delicious but insanely slow. We were there for over 2 hours! It was really fun getting to know everyone though. I keep saying this, but I love the Crossfit community.

My make your own burger creation went unphotographed because I was ravenous, but I did a chicken burger with gruyere, garlic aioli, avocado, mixed greens, and tomato on a GF bun. Demolished.

The rest of my day consisted of a review session, studying, and a cat bath.

Because of my vet assistant experience, I came over to bathe Lava and clean his ears. He was not amused. He’s such a sweetie and we weren’t worried about getting bitten, but he definitely did not love the water and was quite squirmy! After his bath and partial blow-dry, he would not stop cleaning himself—I don’t think he liked any part of the experience!

I think he forgave his mean old aunt though because he was curled up on my lap an spurring before I left.

Sunday morning was my 9 mile training run, which I was not looking forward to AT ALL. The weather report called for rain all day, and it did not disappoint. I was a little worried about blisters for 9 miles in the rain, but that ended up being a non issue. I was also thoroughly unprepared for this run. I don’t actually have any water bottles at school right now (right??), and forget to get some gu from home last time I went back. Luckily, I still had a few packets of chocolate, but I was worried about the caffeine in chocolate because last time I had issues with it. But sometimes you have to suck it up, get out, and get to work. Based on the route, I hit a water fountain at mile 5 so I could take my gu then. It gave me quite the energy boost! Overall, I felt pretty good, albeit wet. Myshoe came untied in the last mile, and when I bent down to tie it, and nice little puddle came out of my rain jacket. Needless to say I was DRENCHED.

I’m not really paying attention to paces right now, so I was pretty happy with this!

Lunch was super delicious. A bowl of polenta, eggs, spinach, and mozzarella.

And then I committed to not going outside the rest of the day. I’m so over being cold and wet!

I’m currently rocking my seasonably appropriate compression socks. It’s a good thing St. Patrick’s Day falls during long run season!

Aaand now it’s back to studying. ONE MORE DAY!

Running in the rain—love it or hate it?

16.2

Date: March 5, 2016

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Full disclosure: I’m writing this post to procrastinate this paper. That being said, I had some thoughts I wanted to get down.

This weekend is currently my craziest in terms of school work, but so far I’ve been checking things off the to-do list at a reasonable clip!

The main topic today: 16.2. I did Crossfit Open workout 16.2 this morning, and I am seriously in awe of what my body can do, and am so, so proud of myself. The workout was 4 minutes of 25 toes to bar, 50 double unders, 15 cleans (85#). If you completed that in 4 minutes, you had another 4 minutes to do the T2B, double unders, and 13 cleans at 115#. And so on. the cleans got progressively heavier with fewer reps.

I did this workout Rx. I literally got my toes to bar last week. I can only do one rep at a time, and previously I had only done sets of 4, so I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I knew the toes to bar would take me most of the 4 minutes, and my main goal was just to make it to the jumprope. My over the moon goal was to reach the bar for the cleans. (This workout was a bit frustrating because my cleans are really solid, and the weight was a nonissue, but I knew my other slow movements would be the limiting factor). After some calculations, I determined that if I nailed my toes to bar, whether or not my double unders were on point today would determine if I would reach the bar.

Guys. I BUSTED OUT the toes to bar. Far faster than expected, and at perfect pace. I was SO proud. Once I reached the jumprope, I realized how shot my arms were! My double unders tend to go when my arms are wiped out. I got into a rhythm for the first 20ish, and then I could not string them together, only get a couple at a time. Ultimately, I finished 46 double unders, just 4 reps from my reach goal. I was happy with that, and felt so accomplished with how far I’ve come. This time last year I couldn’t Rx this workout. Heck, this time last month I couldn’t. At this point, I can do pretty much every Crossfit skill. For good measure, every time I’ve been at the gym I’ve done a few pull ups at the end of class, and they’re getting stronger!

I went in the first heat (what can I say, I like getting it over with!) and hung around to watch everyone else go. THIS is what I love about Crossfit.

Other happenings:

I fully intended to do a WIAW post this weekend and recorded a full day of food, but then didn’t have time Tuesday to write it up.

This is another attempt at lemon poppyseed bread, using the flavors from the previous recipe I tried and the base from the recipe I’ve been using for cranberry orange bread. I really liked this version! Currently obsessed with lemon poppyseed. I’m not sure if it’s the ultimate version though. I may need to play around a bit!

Also from my full day of eating was this dinner, which was really unique. Eggplant polenta balls, served with a red pepper cream sauce.

I got a Graze box! It’s basically a monthly snack shipment. The first box, a sampler is free, so this was my free box! My options are limited thanks to no nuts/not gluten, but I think I’m going to get another box, simply because having interesting food shipped to my door is super exciting 🙂 I really liked the dried rhubarb (never had that before), and the caramel apple was a creative idea.

I haven’t tried them yet, but the seeds seem a little plain.

I think my biggest regret of my college career is not going to more baseball games. Before coming to college, I assumed I’d go to every single one. Things happened (read: mono) and I never got around to it. On an impulse, I headed over to the last-minute scheduled game (due to impending weather) after Crossfit to watch the game, totally disregarding my long to-do list. Totally worth it. I love baseball so much.

This is my typical yogurt bowl but I thought I’d share it because it looks sort of presentable.

This was hands down my favorite meal of the week. Bean chili (over greens), cheese, tortilla chips, and GLUTEN FREE CORNBREAD. OMG, so good. I LOVE cornbread, and this just hit the spot, especially after my 5 mile run that morning.

And finally, another good meal. Mustard salmon, garlic kale, and roasted veggies.

Actually, one last thing. I’ve sort of been sucked into youtube lately, watching what I ate in a day videos, and am considering doing a what I ate vlog. Would anyone be interested in this??

16.1

Date: February 28, 2016

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

I’m knee deep (more like chest deep) in Biochem studying and my eyes are threatening to snap shut, but I wanted to pop in for a quick weekend/16.1 recap.

Friday Highlights:

Coffee with my long lost sister+lunch with my sister and mom for parent’s weekend. Tomato basil soup with cheddar plus GF bread with some butter and some cranberry spread.

Cat sitting for the cat my sister is cat sitting (it’s quite complicated). He’s a sweetie! I did an ear cleaning while I was there.

SMITTEN! AKA ice cream made with liquid Nitrogen. There’s now one attached to the local Whole Foods. My friends and I squashed into my tiny car for the drive. Sadly my stomach was not 100% so I only got through half of this, but it was amazing! Also for some reason I’ve been crazy sensitive to the caffeine in dark chocolate lately….

Saturday:

16.1!

I joined a big group for the 10am workout. I ended up actually signing up for the open at the last minute. For this workout, I did the scaled version because chest to bar pull ups are not a thing.

The scaled was all about speed, since the weight was light, but since the workout was long, pacing was key. Here’s scaled 16.1:

20 minute AMRAP:

25ft walking lunge with 35# bar

8 bar facing burpees

25ft walking lunge with 35# bar

8 jumping pull ups

One thing I really pride myself on is my ability to pace, and my decent endurance (thanks to running). People were quickly passing me, but I held steady and passed them by the end. The worst part of this was the lunges coming off the burpees. This was a quad burner for sure! Burpees have actually gotten a little bit better for me lately, so it wasn’t terrible. Plus, jumping over a bar with no plates is 1000x easier.

The surprise: the jumping pull ups were a major quad burner as well! Jumping after all those lunges? Yeesh.

I held a steady pace until my very last 1.5 rounds when I floored it. I got through 9 and a half rounds—I almost finished the last set of lunges but got no-repped on the 5 feet. I’m really proud of my score though—251!

This was SUCH a fun morning. This right here is the Crossfit community. I stayed for the next heat as a judge, and my scoree did awesome—she did Rx and crushed her goal! Unfortunately, I had to leave after that to clean up and grab a quick lunch.

New favorite thing: microwave hash with sweet potato (I got a purple one!), spinach, eggs, and fancy cheese. This is my cheese of the month!

I had to rush off because at the last minute, I got called in on to work at the vet. I was only there for about 3 hours, but they had been pretty short staffed. I really enjoy working there, and hope to find a more regular time next quarter! Luckily I spent most of Friday night finishing my take-home test so I had the hours to spare, although as I said before, now I’m knee deep in Biochem!

I spent some of the evening reading my textbook with a lonely kitty.

Sunday:

Doing my long run is not ideal the day after the Open workouts, but it is what it is. I thought I would be sore from the lunges, but I basically wasn’t. What was sore though were my jumping muscles in my calves; probably a combo of the burpees and jumping pull ups. I spent the time to drive to my favorite place ever to run. It is SO pretty there.

I mentioned this last week, but I’ve gotten spontaneously faster, even with an easy (in terms of effort) pace. I had my watch set to only show distance, so I wasn’t focused on pace. I’ll take it! My legs were a bit tired at the end, but everything felt good!

The rest of the day has been spent studying, plus a short break to go to a sorority alumni event.

And back to Biochem.

Anyone out there do 16.1?

My Honest Opinion on Crossfit

Date: March 30, 2015

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

This is something I’ve been thinking about a bit lately. And what better way to talk about it than at the end of the Crossfit Open?

I did 15.5 on Friday. I wasn’t sure if I was going to be feeling well enough to do it. 10 minutes before my heat started, I didn’t think I would be able to do it. But then I did a few thrusters and felt better, and was fine by my start time. Since I wasn’t feeling 100% at all and wasn’t sure I’d even finish, I decided to do the scaled version, which was 45# thrusters instead of 65# thrusters. I wasn’t thrilled about that, but it is what it is and I did what I could on that day. 15.5 was:

27-21-15-9

calories on the rowing machine

thrusters

I personally liked this. Everyone says I’m crazy and that this was way worse than 14.5. I disagree. 14.5 was the worst thing ever. EVER. It was 21-18-15-12-9-6-3 thrusters and over the bar burpees. Maybe it’s because I HATE burpees and love rowing that this year’s was so much better. I also am pretty good at pacing myself with the rowing and getting the most out of every stroke, so I didn’t gas myself on the rower. In addition, 45# thrusters aren’t that heavy for me-although my shoulders were definitely feeling it by the end! I went through the first set with 15 unbroken, but by the end I was breaking it up a lot more.

I ended up finishing in 12:15.

The atmosphere was really fun. I was at my home Crossfit, and in addition to having a party to celebrate the end of the games, we were having a going away party for a coach and a member. There were tons of people out, lots of food, and loud music. It was an awesome way to end the games, and I’m so glad I was able to do the workout. I actually felt SO much better after the workout. I don’t understand my body.

So….Crossfit.

I will say that I personally love it, but my honest opinion will be honest despite that.

First, the things I don’t love. I don’t necessarily agree with the intro programs. Note that every box is different, and I’ve seen a few different intros. I think that they teach you to lift too fast, and throw you into things too quickly. My home Crossfit is by far the best-you have 3x/week intro classes for 4 weeks before you go into the open class. I even think that’s pretty soon to learn all the olympic lifts and start doing them in a rushed manner (in the WODs). On the other hand, I’ve seen one box that only did one 3 hour intro session before getting thrown into the regular class, and another that doesn’t even have an intro class-the new students learn the movements as they go as they come up in WODs, which I think is totally irresponsible.

Another con-depending on what box you go to and your individual needs, Crossfit is likely not the most efficient way to get you to be in the best shape you are capable of. If that’s your goal, a personal trainer would probably be better because they focus only on YOU. I recognize this, but I do Crossfit because it’s fun and I like the community aspect-not to mention it’s much cheaper than a personal trainer. I don’t need to be in the best shape ever ever ever-I exercise for my health and for my own enjoyment.

Another important thing to mention is that every box is different. I’ve been to quite a few at this point, and I’ve gone to 3 full time over the past 2 years. Each one has a different vibe, different community, different exercise philosophy, and different style of workouts.

But like I said, I love Crossfit. I love the community. I feel like I always have somewhere to come home to, even as I move away through the years, I know I can always come back. On the flip side, Crossfit is one reason I have no fear about moving to a completely new city. I know Crossfit will always be there, and will always be a way to meet people.

As I said before, Crossfit is just fun. I love weightlifting, and Crossfit is a program that mixes it up a lot, and is something you can do every day. The workouts are varied enough that you can go day after day because it works different muscles. (Not that I’m suggesting anyone go 7 days a week). When I first learned about Crossfit, I knew it was right up my alley. That being said, I recognize not everyone is going to be into it, which is fine. But I would definitely suggest trying a couple of different boxes before discounting it!

Have you/would you try Crossfit? Why or why not?