WIAW- A Healthier Vacation

Date: September 10, 2013

Author: astottler

Hello, hello! I’m back from Maui, just in time to celebrate What I Ate Wednesday. Thanks to Jenn for hosting, although I’m sure she’s super busy with her adorable new baby!

This post will cover the last couple of days of vacation plus Tuesday. First, I wanted to talk a little bit about being healthy on this vacation. My family’s vacations are often centered around food. And in Hawaii, with so many delicious things around-how could it not be? To be honest, I was a little nervous leading up to the vacation about staying reasonably healthy. The last time I went to Hawaii was almost 4 years ago. I remember getting back from that trip and being 10 pounds heavier than I left. I was not aware that was possible. While I may be a tad flabbier than I left, it certainly is nothing significant, and I returned feeling healthy and strong. So what changed?

1. I didn’t go crazy on desserts. Last time, I remember eating so many chocolate covered macadamia nuts that I felt sooo sick. While sure, I ate more sweets than normal, I didn’t really gorge at any one time. With the exception of a very large piece of chocolate cake that left me feeling off for 2 days after…

2. I split meals. Restaurant portions are often huge (especially at touristy places). Before the trip, my mom and I agreed to split things and it worked out perfectly. We didn’t split a couple of times and both agreed afterwards that we should have.

3. I exercised. I continued to follow my half marathon training plan, so I ended up running 4 times on my 10 day trip. I also visited a few local Crossfit boxes- in Lahaina, Upcountry Maui, and Kihei. Some of my favorite days of the trip were the days I got a tough Crossfit workout in, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. On one of my no-workout days, I was feeling really sluggish. I busted out a quick 5 minute workout, and I felt like a different person.

4. Eat a healthy breakfast. On vacation, we generally buy food to eat in our room. I was really excited for all the tropical fruit. A healthy breakfast helps you feel good going into your day. Example A: my tropical yogurt bowl-plain yogurt, mango, banana, passion fruit, sunflower seed butter.

I came home feeling pretty strong. Before I get into a ton of delicious food, I wanted to talk a little about the last Crossfit I visited- Crossfit Kihei. I had heard from another Crossfitter that they weren’t very friendly. Well…that was kind of right. Myabe they don’t get as many visitors-I don’t know. I wasn’t exactly comfortable the whole time, in contrast to the other Crossfits where I felt like part of the team. The coach was really uninvolved, and there was no group warm up. Plus, for the WOD, I Rxed it when I really shouldn’t have. It was 50 snatched with squats mixed in. No one else Rxed it and I ended up finished wayyy after everyone else, which was a little embarrassing as I was just a visitor. It was a good workout though so I can’t complain. My shoulders really are feeling it today.

Ok-food time!

Vacation food:

Turkey sandwich which I got for the avocado-plus it has cranberry sauce-how fun!

Ice cream! I regretted this choice. I don’t like coffee…and this didn’t have quite enough fudge. Oh well-you live and you learn!

Salad with bleu cheese and asian pear.

DELICIOUS dinner-macadamia crusted Mahi Mahi with pineapple salsa, jasmine rice, and veggies. My dad and I split this, and they were kind enough to serve it on separate plates.

Lilikoi (passion fruit) cream pie.

Chocolate cream pie. Sooo funny story. When my family ordered these desserts to share, my dad asked the waiter for 2 forks…for himself. And yes, he did use both. My family takes our dessert seriously.

Airplane food. You know you’re a blogger when your first instinct is to snap a shot before eating, even on a plane. There were a few pieces of lettuce under there for garnish-you better believe I ate those-vegetables are vegetables!

Aaand that leads us back to today. This morning I ate my typical pre-run breakfast-a ThinkThin bar plus fruit, and ran 8 miles. I would be so much faster if my foot wouldn’t act up! Regardless, I didn’t worry too much about pace. PRing this race will be hard since it’s a very hilly course (Nike Women’s in SF). This weekends long run is 10 miles. And that will be my last flat long run. I have a very hellish run planned for the 11 miler. Anyone from around Palo Alto knows the Dish trail-yeah, that will be smack in the center of my 11 miles. Kill me now….

I went to Whole Foods for lunch and groceries.

I’m in love with Probiotics.

Chicken, avocado and kale salad, chinese chicken salad, and a few fried plantains. I’m starting a mini Whole30 a week from Friday (I’m doing 7 days), and I want to try to ease myself into it. I’ve been thinking about it, and the list of things I wouldn’t want to give up to eat more Paleo is shrinking. Hummus for salads. Goat cheese. Laughing cow. Gummy vitamins. Run fuel. That’s about it. In the future, I may be sort of Paleoish. The big thing for me is watching the grains and sugar I eat since my blood sugar seems to like to crash.

I also couldn’t resist trying these since I love dark chocolate. They’re good!

For dinner, we made Greek salads topped with spicy avocado hummus and a runny egg.

I also got another kind of hummus to try, which I ate with cucumbers. It’s really interesting and different!

And dessert was some of the pineapple we brought back from Maui. So good.

A couple of random other things- I got new shoes to replace my walking around/general workout shoes. My old ones were blue and neon green. The new models are blue and pink. I don’t know about the pink though…What do you think? I might get neon green laces. That way I can accidentally match still since all my clothes seem to be neon green and blue.

And lastly-my haul of Crossfit shirts from my trip! I swear, all I bought on the trip were 3 t-shirts but my suitcase was waaaay more full. Huh.

And I’ll leave you with that! Have a great day!

How do you approach vacation? Has anyone done a Whole30? Tips?

What is your favorite ice cream flavor? Coffee-yay or nay?

The Enforcer

Date: August 24, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hey guys! I haven’t shared a general life type of post with you all lately so let’s go through some highlights!

I of course have obligatory kitten nursery pictures. I only have a few more weeks-crazy! I’ll miss seeing those faces every week!

After the nursery, I drove one highway exit away for training run #2. I ran by the bay where I normally would do my long runs. It wasn’t my first location choice for a shorter run, but one highway exit was all I could manage in that traffic!

Being the smarty pants that I am, I failed to bring my Garmin. That wasn’t really an issue for me. I planned to run for time, but I kind of failed with that too. Luckily, when you do enough hard, long runs in a place, you have a very good sense of when you have 2 miles left. Since my run was 4 miles, I hit that out and back point from memory and it was fine. I felt kind of tired-the run felt long. At the same time though, I think I was going at a good pace. My original plan was 3x per week of running, but I think I’m going to bump that up to 4 for the next few weeks. Unfortunately, me feet weren’t great by the end-my new inserts aren’t the solution…

Overnight oats were exactly what I was craving for lunch, so I whipped them up from my vanilla yogurt that was on its last legs. 15 minutes of waiting, and they were good enough for me!

I listen to an audiobook on my long runs. I had the idea a week or so ago that in the afternoons, instead of reading a book, I should just take my audiobook and go for long walks. This summer, I’ve felt pretty sedentary when I’m not working out.

I really enjoyed it-my walk ended up being 2 hours long and very hilly. I’m thinking these walks will be decent training at least for the downhills of my half, sicne the movement is pretty similar.

Here are some of the views:

I didn’t sleep enough Thursday night. I had a 5:10 wake up for spin Friday morning. The thought of staying in bed could have crossed my mind if it wasn’t for this.

At 5:08 am, this guy busted my door open (not really sure how…) and started meowing his lungs out for me to get up. Not for attention, not to be petted, but so I would get my rear end out of bed. So, on 5 hours of sleep, I got up before my alarm. I don’t understand how he knows. When I wake up early for a workout (or the kitten nursery) he always wakes up and gets ready with me. I’m not sure how he can possibly know the day and time, since Thursdays I wake up an hour later. I swear, that cat!

After spin, I refueled with a plum, and eggs with kale and chive and onion cream cheese.

After a quick nap, I helped my mom take our car in for service. While the car was being worked on, we headed downtown in search of a coffee shop.

We happened upon a little place that attracted us with its produce and Blue Bottle coffee. Blue Bottle for some reason sounded familiar to me, so we decided to check it out.

I ordered an oat bar and a cappuccino.

How adorable is this??

We got talking about health, nutrition, weight, eating plans, and life. We ended up staying for 2 hours, leaving only when the parking meter was going to run out. This little discussion sparked my last post, as well as another one I wrote at the same time, which should appear on Monday. It was really, really nice.

That evening, I went to Crossfit and was able to Rx the workout (go at the prescribed weight/height of box). The workout was 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 of kettle bell swings and box jumps. The kettle bell swings were a non-issue. The box was higher than I was expected…And I thought for sure the workout would end with me picking pieces of Aurora out of the box. I have a bit of a fear of box jumps-and a pretty little scar on my shin to prove it. I’ll spare you the pictures of when it first happened. When I first began working with my trainer 3 years ago, I bashed my shin REALLY badly in one of the first sessions with him. He later told me he thought I’d never be back after that! I did it again a year ago, and now box jumps always make me nervous when I know they’re not a super easy height.

I was worried also that I’d be tired at the end and mess up. It took intense focus, and a lot of nerves, but I successfully Rxed the workout! I don’t care that I was the last to finish-I still did, I pushed my boundaries, and had a ton of focus.

That evening I visited my sister in her new apartment where she invited a whole bunch of friends over. It was a ton of fun-pizza, boba, games. The highlight was learning how to make paper airplanes-which of course degenerated into all out paper airplane warfare.

That’s all I have for you today! Also-expect a recipe coming your way soon!

What did you do this weekend? What is one exercise you’re terrified to do?

WIAW-Summertime Loving

Date: August 20, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Happy Wednesday! That means-you guessed it-another edition of What I Ate Wednesday, hosted by the lovely Jenn.

By the way, did you guys see her chocolate chip banana bread recipe? It looks AMAZING! I was going to make it but was short a ripe banana, and my dad may have killed me if I made it ~~and ate it all~~ while he was out of town.

But now onto what I actually DID eat!

Saturday lunch-leftovers. Sloppy joe meat (with turkey) in a lettuce leaf, plus leftover sweet potato wedges.

ANOTHER fruit bowl. I’m kind of obsessed with these. The best ones include bananas and peaches. WIth or without peaches though, there needs to be a tangier component than just banana-like berries or even apple in a pinch. Topped with crunchy sunflower seed butter for some healthy fats.

I also tried a new chobani flip-vanilla with corn flakes, honey oats, and praline pecans.

I paired it with a slice of veggie pizza and broccoli. My overall opinion? A little boring. And corn flakes+yogurt are not a great combination, just because they got super soggy.

Since over the weekend I was still on my no sugar challenge, when my parents broke out the peanut butter cups, I decided to make my own no sugar version. I heated up unsweetened chocolate and coconut butter (unsweetened chocolate is really hard), and then filled mini muffin cups first with the chocolate, then sunflower seed butter, and then topped with chocolate again. I also added a touch of sea salt to the top-to make them gourmet of course! I wouldn’t recommend using no sweetener if you aren’t use to the taste of unsweetened chocolate, but this would work just as well with dark chocolate.

One thing I love about summer is going to Farmer’s markets. I love tasting all the fruit-especially peaches. White peaches or nectarines are by far my favorite! However, fruit is not the only amazing foodie find at Farmer’s markets. Have any of you ever gotten kettle corn there? It’s the best kettle corn ever. When you get it, it’s so hot and crisp. What better to munch on while browsing the produce?

I do love my fresh produce though too. Some highlights-white raspberries and butternut squash hummus! I love topping salads with hummus, and I prefer less sharp hummus for this. Butternut squash worked just perfectly!

Also from the Farmer’s market-artichokes and corn. I also had a grilled portabello mushroom, but sadly we could not find any at the Farmer’s market.

Also-a side note: I’m not sure if anyone noticed, but I haven’t posted many pictures of my breakfasts lately. That just means they’ve been super boring and/or really quick and early in the morning. For example-this morning I grabbed a Thinkthin bar before Crossfit. And as much as I’m sure everyone wants to see the same picture every other morning….

So far this week my workouts have been good ones. Monday was my first run of half marathon training 2.0. It took me about 3 hours to get going…but hey, I still did it. I realized I haven’t A) done that run in my newer shoes and B) done that run since the beginning of my first half marathon training. I did a 3 mile run in my neighborhood. It’s pretty hilly, so it was great practice for the hills of SF. It’s a run I’ve done a million times throughout high school. I did it once, at the very beginning of my training, and was DYING. I was in pretty awful shape at the beginning of my training-after recovering from Mono a month or so prior, I never really got back into running shape. Well, the run was sooo much easier. It’s good to know the 10 weeks of training I put into for my first half helped me be in better shape.

Confession: the whole time I was climbing the big hill I was think “I’m scaling this hill, just like Spiderman.” #facepalm

I refueled afterwards with an iced chai tea latte. A weak iced chai tea latte-because who has time for something to ACTUALLY brew fully?

When I make my chai tea lattes, I brew the tea directly into the almond milk, which I heat up. Since I’m adding ice, I find it gets too watery if I brew it in water and then add milk.

Aaaaand one last piece of deliciousness to leave you with. Remember how I said I wanted to bake Jenn’s chocolate chip banana bread but was a banana short? Well, I wasn’t just going to let a good banana go to waste. Or a good craving for chocolate chip banana bread to go to waste. Instead, I whipped up a concoction that turned out to be a pretty awesome banana chocolate chip custard. So let’s go with that.

I don’t have the exact recipe. But there’s only one solution to that-I’ll have to make it again and measure it out! I kind of just poured and mashed, but I used 1 banana, liquid egg whites, a dash of salt and baking powder, and unsweetened vanilla almond milk.

Have a great day everybody! I’m sorry this post was a bit disjointed-I was a bit behind on food posts so I kind of just threw it all out there. I’ll leave you with some kitty love.

I really wanted to take a selfie with him-because I’m cool and take selfies with my cat…but I didn’t get quite that angelic facial expression…

Do you love microwave cooking as much as I do? What’s the best way to train for a hilly race? Favorite summer produce? Anyone else take selfies with their cats? Please?

Training Part Two

Date: August 18, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Guess what everyone?

Tomorrow is Monday. Which means….training starts! I am sooo excited. I can’t believe it’s only been 2 weeks since my first half marathon…and it’s 9 weeks from my second! Since I consider myself a seasoned half marathoner (hah) I’m going to go about my training a bit differently. Since I know I can put the mileage in which was my only goal for the last half, this time I’m doing speed work…and hills. Lots of hills. Hills on hills on hills. My run tomorrow is 3 miles around the neighborhood. Which means about 300 feet of elevation climb. It actually made me feel a lot better realizing the hills I’ve run around home for years are comparable to the hills of the race….

Anyways, I thought it would be fun to reflect on my training from my last half.

Lots of running….

Lots of shoes necessary to get through my training.

Compression socks to hold my legs together after long runs (I swear that’s what it feels like they’re doing!)

Fun places to run.

Post-run fuel. (I may have eaten this whole thing-more or less-after my 12 miler.)

Pre-run fuel.

Moral support.

Roller of death.

Tan lines to prove it.

Pre-race day jitters. (And let’s be honest-whole time of training jitters.)

Finish line ~~pain~~ bliss.

And enough craziness to do it all again!

Happy running friends! Here’s to another fun 9 weeks!

Burnt Out and Burnt

Date: July 6, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

First I want to take a moment to recognize the tragedy of the plane crash at the San Francisco airport Saturday afternoon.

I haven’t gone into much depth with my workouts lately, so let’s talk about that here!

Here’s a good one for you to try. It’s tabata style, meaning you work for 20 seconds, and then rest 10 seconds. You repeat this 8 times, for a total of 4 minutes. In the following workout, you do a full tabata of each exercise. Hand release push ups are where you lower yourself chest to the ground, and then bring your hands up off the ground, and then back down and complete a push up.

We did this at Crossfit Tuesday night, and combined with a warm up full of Romanian deadlifts, my legs are still sore! I actually Rxed the deadlifts, at 95 pounds.

So let’s go through some of the workouts this week.

Monday: Abs class and Spin with one of my favorite teachers. I actually saw her at the Farmer’s market today!

Tuesday: 4 mile run-2 miles were intervals. Yoga class. Crossfit that evening with the above WOD. I also practiced handstands! I’ve never done them before and actually got kind of close against the wall. Between those and a ton of downward dogs after not much yoga, my shoulders were done.

Wednesday: Morning spin, 4 mile run (split up. I hate the treadmill). A Jillian Michaels group exercise class. This class convinced me that I’m way too uncoordinated to teach any type of group exercise (hence why I want to teach spin. Not a whole lot of coordination is necessary).

Thursday: 10 mile easy bike ride

Friday: 4 mile run, Crossfit with this WOD:

10 Minute AMRAP

5 box jumps

7 burpees

10 dumbbell snatches

We worked on pull-ups then and my arms were sore. I also got a couple of double unders-progress!

Saturday: Crossfit. The WOD was:

400 m run

6 chin ups

10 push jerks

15 toes to bar (or knees…up in my case. I’m not that flexible)

It was a good one! I’m glad they are finally letting my lift the big weights! Heehee.

Ok, so I know this seems like kind of a lot of exercise. But my body seriously can handle it-crew was 2-a-days every day, and was a lot more intense. Plus, I’m doing a ton of different things so it’s not the same muscle groups every day.

Ok, so I know this seems like kind of a lot of exercise. But my body seriously can handle it-crew was 2-a-days every day, and was a lot more intense. Plus, I’m doing a ton of different things so it’s not the same muscle groups every day. Right now I’m feeling good so I’m just going to go for it. You know how I was talking about how I lost so much muscle in my arms? I’ve done a lot of upper body strength stuff this week and I swear my arms have already grown. Crazy!

Next week is my heaviest week of half marathon training, so a lot of non-running stuff won’t be in there then. So let’s talk running.

The title of this post pretty perfectly describes my last run. Burnt Out and Burnt. I made the mistake of doing 2 treadmill runs, both over my mental treadmill limit (which is 3 miles, if you’re interested. And that’s barely). The first one was okay, I did intervals which made it a little better. Then, I thought a 5 mile treadmill run on Wednesday morning would be a great idea. Hah. I gave up after a mile. I then did 3 more miles that evening on the treadmill (again. Yeah, I’m really smart). It was not fun. I can’t accurately describe my hate for the treadmill. I don’t get how people train for long races only on the treadmill!

Friday, I ran down at school after working at the lab. I was feeling pretty burnt out pre-run. This is the hard point of the training-the load gets heavier and you’ve been doing it for almost 2 months. Beth knows what I’m talking about! I had loosely been planning on trying to beat my last time for this particular run. ….And then I realized trying to do a pace run when I’m already burning out would be stupid, so I ran un-timed and un-Garmined (yes that’s a word). Plus, my Garmin was dead. I always wondered what it takes for it to run out of battery-I used it for about a month before bothering to charge it and it was fine. This time, I accidentally left it on, which I figured out when my purse beeped and it was dying. Sad.

Anyway, running without my Garmin was a good decision. But the run wasn’t very pleasant, and it was 100% my fault. I wore my new shoes and didn’t wear my anti-blister socks. I figured it would be fine since it was only 4 miles but things didn’t really work out that way. I think my new shoes might be a size too big. My other Nikes have always been half a size down, but the guy at the store at first thought I’d be a full size up. Anyways, my feet were rubbing like crazy and burning up! At some point I didn’t know whether I’d be able to finish. The 4 mile run isn’t that important. I’d rather not finish and not have blistered feet for the 11 miler. I ended up finishing, but it wasn’t the prettiest thing.

Where am I going with this? I need to be smarter about not burning myself out. Why run on the treadmill if I know I hate it? I just need to get the runs done, and not worry too much about speed, etc. And I feel better about tomorrow’s 11 mile run. The unfortunate thing is I need to start training for my Nike Women’s half like a week after I run this one. I think I’m going to train this a little differently though. I’m going to take an extra week off and jump into week 2 of the training plan, and I’m probably only going to run 3 days a week instead of 4. I think the plan is especially important the first time around, and it’s not worth burning out. So we’ll see how that goes! And since this post has had like no pictures, here are some scenes from my weekend.

How do you prevent burn out?