Drenched

Date: July 10, 2014

Author: astottler

Happy Friday! Anyone have big plans for the weekend? I’m not really sure what I want to do. I might try to check out one of the Smithsonians!

As you may or may not have noticed, I’ve been trying to keep my posts more as daily recaps of food+exercise. It doesn’t get too long and I’m forcing myself to include some things that might have been better left out. Since I’m cooking for myself finally, I can have way more control over what I eat, which is fantastic! I think it will be interesting to see how this evolves over the summer. Plus-ideas, right?

My morning did not start off with a workout. Yayy sleeping!

I got ready and went to Starbucks for breakfast because I was lacking in the quick and easy breakfast food department. Plus I was still a bit woozy from the Benadryl (although everything I took it for seems to be getting better!), so I wanted a little caffeine. I went with a latte because they seem to be really week, plus a spinach and feta wrap.

Lunch was a repeat of yesterday-leftovers! No picture because I was in a meeting. Then a little dessert…

From the vending machine-which I became more familiar with because it gives me quarters for laundry! Not the worst things for you, but definitely not the healthiest.

Later in the afternoon, I also had a piece of banana bread.

After work, I headed to the gym for run club, with the full knowledge that a storm might come in. Hah.

Let’s just say I don’t think I’ve ever been that wet before in my life. If I jumped in a pool, I wouldn’t be that wet. It started to rain about 5-10 minutes in, and it came down hard. We decided to push through it because we got pretty wet, pretty quickly. This is the first time I’ve been caught out in a DC storm. I felt like someone was pouring buckets of water on my head. We don’t get rain like that in CA!

Then the lightning started. It was closer than I would have liked (but not dangerously close by any means!), but at that point, we didn’t really have anywhere to take cover from it so we forged on.

The theme of the run was a hill run. We were going to do hill sprints but it was so wet out we just ran up it. Definitely nothing like the SF hills I’m used to though! Not that I didn’t slog up it, but everyone talked beforehand about how big it was…that’s a SF foothill…

I’m pretty sure I was dying during the run because the pace was so fast, but I didn’t really notice because I was pretty busy trying not to drown. It’s a legitimate concern. How to you keep the water out of your mouth?

When we got back, it was comical how wet we were. And somehow I forgot my umbrella..I was going to go straight to the grocery, but I decided to ride the storm out in SweetGreens over dinner of a guacamole salad.

When the rain let up, I ran into Whole Foods (on the way back) for some quick groceries and a muffin.

Muffins/quickbreads are officially my favorite desserts. I’m calling it-muffins will be the next gourmet dessert trend! At least I hope they are…Whole Foods has such good muffins too.

Meanwhile, I’ve been dreaming up new variations of my banana bread. Chocolate raspberry may be next!

Do you like running in the rain? How do you not drown?

That’s a legitimate question!

I’m Getting Sleepyyy

Date: July 9, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hope everyone had a great day! Today’s post will be short and will just cover the basics…I am going to get very sleepy in a hurry. I just took Benadryl…my skin had been horrible this past week, and normally I don’t break out like that unless it’s an allergic reaction to nuts. I know I haven’t had any, and I had no idea why it would be, but my mom reminded me my allergy tests showed a minor coconut allergy-I never noticed a reaction before, but maybe since I’ve been eating all those quesadillas? I’ll probably make arepas one more time to get a recipe, but after that I’m going to lay off the coconut for a week and see if anything changes! I will try to make a normal flour version of the arepas as well! 🙂

My morning began at 5am…way too early. This is the first week that getting up was nearly impossible! I ran down to the 5:30am November Project. Given how much I was dragging out the door, I was amazed by how good I felt during the workout! I am proud to say that here in week 3, running the stairs definitely is getting easier!

I am out of non-speckled bananas, so breakfast was different today. I hate bananas that have any brown…I’m more of a green banana girl! Breakfast was a big slice of lemon-blueberry banana bread, and a mug of milk (because I don’t own glasses).

I left early enough to grab an extra big coffee-a grande cappuccino.

This was my lifeline today. Although I was on the edge of over-caffeinated early in the morning, I was still kicking into the afternoon. Tonight will be an early bedtime though!

Lunch was leftovers from last night‘s dinner.

And snack in the afternoon was more banana bread.

After work was Crossfit, where we worked on cleans and handstands, both in the strength portion and in the WOD. My handstands (against a wall) felt really good today!

Dinner came together quickly. I snacked on some banana bread and pretzels while I cooked the chicken and chopped up veggies for a Greek salad!

Favorite salad topping?

I’m a HUGE fan of goat cheese!

I can cook!

Date: July 6, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

So today I came to the conclusion that I can actually cook. Now that I’ve entered into the meat-cooking world, I think it’s fair to say that! Exhibit A is tonight’s dinner-Greek salad!

From the few times I’ve cooked chicken, I’ve learned that the key is to season the #$%# out of it. I have a few spices, and I basically go after it with all I’ve got. Seems to work!

Also on the food front, I have something to share with you guys. I’ve made the coconut flour quesadilla from Blogilates a few times now. Recently, I started making just a plain quesadilla, with the coconut flour tortilla base, and then cheese in the middle. It whips up in minutes, and all the ingredients are staples. In the past couple of days, (especially as my fridge grew sparse) whenever I was hungry I’d whip up one of these guys.

I turned it into a pancake version this afternoon by adding mashed banana and some white chocolate chips.

Those came out as kind of a fail (I burned them a bit) but it is versatile.

Now, onto the run. I had planned to do 6 but ended up deciding on 5. I’m really hoping it’s the heat and humidity getting to me, and I’m not just super out of shape, but every time I run it’s so HARD. Which is concerning given I was running fast(ish) 6 milers at the end of school.

At least the scenery was nice. I headed out along the waterfront. I had originally planned to go North to the Georgetown area, but it was easier to go south.

I ended up turning around at the Arlington Cemetery-not that I was trying to go there in the first place! My parents lived in DC and would talk about how they would always accidentally wind up there, so I guess it runs in the family!

With a mile left, I decided to run to Georgetown Cupcakes, a super popular place I had yet to try, instead of heading back. Sadly, when I got there the line was insane (to be expected).

Georgetown^

Instead, I stopped at the Pinkberry across the street. SO good.

Another thing I learned today? I’m not in California anymore. I sunburned the heck out of my shoulders today.

This picture doesn’t come close to doing it justice, but you can see my nice burn lines from Friday as well.

Other than that, it was a very low key day. Nothing crazy!

What did you do this weekend? Can you cook?

Patriotic City, Patriotic Day, Patriotic Banana Bread

Date: July 6, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

How was everyone’s fourth of July?

I had a great one-I’m pretty much in the perfect place for it!

I kicked off the festivities Thursday night. I had planned to do a run club workout that evening but with heavy rain coming, I wimped out and stayed in my bed watching Netflix until the evening when I Metro-ed over to a friends apartment for movie watching and banana bread making. I’ve been hinting at red, white, and blue banana bread, so here it is!

I don’t have a specific amount of the ingredients, but I made my banana bread recipe without any sweetener and added about a handful each of blueberries, raspberries, and white chocolate chips. The only white chocolate chips I could find were mini, and they kind of dissolved in the baking process, but it was still SO delicious!

Friday morning I had intentions of going for a run, but I slept in because my sleep schedule is really off right now-it was much needed!

I met up with my friends to watch the DC 4th of July parade!

I don’t think I’ve ever been to a parade before! It was fun, and I took a ton of pictures, but I condensed them into a little collage so I don’t bombard you guys!

After the parade, we wandered around looking for a lunch place that was actually open. We ended up at a cafeteria where I had a chicken gyro sandwich.

Then, we walked a ways to get gelato. It was perfectly refreshing on a hot day! I had vanilla chocolate chip and dark chocolate.

After some downtime and some weirdly shaped sunburns (I always miss a spot! Or two…), we met back up at the National Mall for the concerts and the fireworks show.

Except we never found the concert. We weren’t particularly close, and a random weird band was playing on a stage between us and the big main concert. It was ok though-I was mostly there for fireworks!

I swear it was like a movie watching the fireworks with the Washington Monument in the foreground. You know-the end of one of those rom-coms? Just me? Ok…They were really good, and I definitely haven’t watched fireworks with that many people before! The amount of screens you could see from people taking pictures was crazy!

I don’t understand how people for such good pictures…mine sort of just looked like the Washington Monument was exploding…

After the fireworks, I experienced the madness that is the Metro on the 4th of July. The first station I tried to go to was so full they were sending people away. The next one was also insane but after waiting in hoards of people to get through the gates, I was lucky enough to be one of the few people to get on the first train that I needed. It was PACKED. And people just kept trying to get on, even as we got further from the National Mall! Even the station I got off at was being held up due to crowds. Crazy!

After a couple of rest days, I hit the gym hard yesterday. Since I missed a training run, I started with a treadmill interval workout. 1 mile at a fast pace, then 5x of two minutes at a past pace and two minutes walking. I haven’t done this in FOREVER, and traditionally I do it 10x, but I didn’t have time for that, or the endurance! It did go better than I was expecting though!

Then, I did a short circuit (like 8 minutes) of push ups, squat jumps, mountain climbers, and sit ups, before heading to a spin class.

The class was AWESOME. The instructor was good and the music was great. I really pushed myself at the end, and the only thing that kept me pushing was seeing the big guy at the froth desk totally rocking out to our music. So great.

Since this post is getting crazy long, I’ll finish up quickly. I got a Whole Foods green smoothie, which was kind of watery but that was fantastic because it was so refreshing!

That afternoon, I met a friend and went to the zoo. It was fun, and the pandas were so adorable! I was EXHAUSTED by the end though, and my feet were far from happy.

I went back, grabbed a guacamole salad at SweetGreens (with blueberry basil lemonade-not a fan though) and planted myself on the couch with a movie.

Such a fun couple of days, but I’m ready for a low key day today! The only thing I have to do is a 6 miler!

How was your 4th?

WIAW-Summer Food and the Official Start of Half Training 4.0

Date: July 1, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Happy Wednesday! I feel like this week has already been flying by! Only 2 days left until the weekend-how is that possible? Let’s celebrate with What I Ate Wednesday!

Before I get into the good stuff (aka the food) I want to talk about a few things I’ve done the past few days! Sunday, I went to the Dupont Circle Farmer’s Market, and got some fresh peaches and greens for my favorite summer salad. Afterwards, I went to Target to pick up a few things. Prior to the weekend, I had only rode one Metro line. Sunday, I rode them all. I’m pretty sure I officially live here now! One thing I want to do sometime is play Metro roulette. Get on a random line and then get off at a random stop to explore. We’ll see.

On the fitness front, Monday kicked off the official start to my training cycle for my 4th half marathon! How crazy is that? 4? I knocked out an early morning 3 miles. For some reason, my Garmin kept losing me, so I’m not sure if I’ve actually gotten slower or if it was losing its little mind…Either way, I have no problems waking up for these views.

Can you guess which picture I stopped to take, versus just shooting on the run?

Now, onto the food. I’m insanely, insanely proud of Sunday’s meal. It was probably my most beautiful creation. I made my Grilled Peach and Chicken salad, but baked the chicken instead of grilled it and sautéed the peaches on the stove.

Plus a hunk of farmer’s market fresh whole wheat bread. What more could possibly say “summer”?

I feel like I should just stop there with that picture. This also marks my first time cooking chicken. That’s right-I’ve never cooked chicken. I’ve done ground turkey and even fish, but never chicken! (At home my dad would usually grill). It was insanely easy and came out way better than I was expecting!

Also, feel free to ignore the fact that it’s in a loaf pan. Kitchen tools are a bit sparse around these parts…(But a loaf pan was clearly a priority.)

For breakfasts, I just haven’t been feeling the yogurt+berries+sunbutter, although I need to eat that tomorrow before my berries go bad. Instead, I’ve been feeling the lighter fruit salad with sun butter. Currently in the mix is a banana and blackberries. Monday this was prepared and eaten in 3 minutes flat. Not ideal, but better than nothing!

In terms of lunches, I packed lunch on Monday. Baked chicken, plus roasted broccoli and cauliflower, and mashed sweet potatoes with sage.

Lunch on Tuesday was bought from the cafe at work. I needed to buy something. I had the pleasure of only doing half my laundry on Monday, and being one quarter shy of actually being able to dry it (and how the heck do you hang dry socks??). I’m spoiled at school because our laundry is free, but I managed to not have any bills the quarter machine would accept. Hence why I needed to buy lunch-just to get quarters and smaller bills. I got a hummus veggie pita on a whole wheat pita.

These things are massive. The pita is stuffed with tons of veggies, hummus, feta, and provolone. I was glad to be eating this alone because it’s kind of a mess!

Plus an impulse buy of marble bread. This seriously is my weakness.

After Crossfit today, I went grocery shopping. Twice. Apparently coconut flour is much more rare here? I was at Trader Joes and couldn’t find it, and with the knowledge that dinner would therefore be a ways off, I grabbed a protein bar. I’m not a proponent of artificial sweeteners in general, but it is what it is. This is one of the few protein bars out there with no nuts, and I munched on it as I walked to grocery #2.

Even at Whole Foods, I barely found it. In CA, there would be like 5 different types…

Once I FINALLY made it back, I whipped up a quick dinner. Coconut flour quesadillas, from Blogilates. With plenty of avocado and a side of grapes.

It didn’t come out as well as I would have liked-I didn’t add enough water to the batter so it was sort of dry. Take 2 is tomorrow night though so I have a chance to fix it! This may be my go-to easy meal for a while because the recipe calls for 4 oz of meat, so I was left with 12 oz leftover, which I cooked up and froze. Now that I have coconut flour, the other ingredients are staples. So maybe I can get food on the table before 8:30!

That’s all I have today-I have an early workout (followed by lots of coffee) on the Lincoln Memorial steps!

What is your favorite summer food?