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Animal Kingdom

Hi friends! I’ve been meaning to post all week, but somehow time got away from me! I want to catch you all up on workouts+food+fun (and animals because that is my life.) Yoyo is currently flopped out next to me, helping with the blogging process clearly.

First, I wanted to talk about Monday’s Crossfit. We did the Crossfit Total, which is finding the 1 rep max of back squat, press, and deadlift. Since I’ve had 1001 injuries lately, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I knew my squat wasn’t going to be a PR. I surprised myself by hitting 190# on the squat! I don’t think I’ve lifted heavier than like 165 since hurting my foot, so I was super happy with that. I hit 80#, which tied my max on press (definitely not my strongest lift), and fell quite short of my max on deadlifts at 225, which was to be expected because I haven’t done heavy deads in a while. My total was 495#. I looked back at the last time I did this, New Year’s Eve 2013, and I actually got the same total! Given my deadlifts were pretty low this time (I PRed deads that day), I was happy with my squat progress! I’ll take it!

Other workouts—running! 3 miles is feeling good on my foot right now, so I’m starting to slowly build a little speed (as in, I pay a tiny bit of attention to it.. I ran my first Garmin run this week! The first 3 mile run felt awful, but the second felt better, and my time even improved a tiny bit. I honestly don’t care about how much speed I’ve lost, because I knew that was going to happen. I’m ready to slowly build back up that endurance!

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It was a good week at the zoo. The weather is finally cooling down to be quite pleasant, and I’m just hoping that sticks around!

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The Tasmanian Devils are my favorites. They’re nocturnal and are usually sleeping when I see them, so it was a treat to see them up and moving around!

I’ve also been enjoy a lot of downtime snuggling with the kitties, Scooby and Yoyo.

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Food:

Sunbutter and jam with my Aunt’s homemade blackberry jam! I needed some things from home and the shipping fee was a flat rate, so my parents there in something heavy!

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I’m on a huge spaghetti squash kick right now. This is spaghetti squash with marinara, avocado toast, and broccoli.

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I finally found watermelon yogurt! It’s good! Topped with granola and sunbutter.

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My typical work lunch for now if it isn’t a sandwich is a peach, goat cheese, and chicken salad. Plus a savory granola bar. I like these. I thought the concept was a little weird, but they’re basically like crackers.

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The zoo has Dole pineapple whips (soft serve) and I’ve been eying them since I got here! Friday during lunch was finally the time! So good.

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Weekend happenings:

Friday afternoon my roommates invited me to go watch a big local bike race that evening, so I stopped by the grocery store on the way back from work to pick up some beer to bring. I happened into a pretty big free fall beer tasting, which was pretty cool! I ended up buying one of the beers, and it was really delicious!

Then, we headed over to the park to watch the races. They’re so fast!

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We hung around for a few hours before heading out to dinner at a place by the house.

Saturday morning began bright and early, though brighter and earlier than necessary thanks to the aggressively needy Yoyo who figured out how to open my door, and subsequently found his toy at 5:30am. Then, it was off to teach spin! It was a good class, but small thanks to the gorgeous weather and the holiday weekend.

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The main event Saturday was meeting up with my really good friend’s sister, who happened to randomly be in St. Louis! We met up at Rise for coffee, and it was great to catch up with her and meet her friend! They’re both dental students, so it was interesting to compare their experiences with all the vet stuff.

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Sunday definitely did not go as planned. I was planning on going to Open Gym at Crossfit to make up the Saturday WOD that I missed, but when I got outside, I was greeted with a flat tire on my rental car. I ended up Ubering to Crossfit because I didn’t think the rental car place was open yet, and did the following workout:

heavy set of 3 sumo deadlifts (It was supposed to be 1rm but I probably haven’t done sumos in a good 2 years)

30-25-20-15-10-5

box jumps

wall balls

I wanted to do this one because it was pretty friendly to my hand, which is still pretty painful.

Then it was time to deal with the car. I was especially sad because I really liked driving that car–it was the same kind I drove in TN! The whole process was honestly pretty painful.

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But now I have wheels again, so I can’t complain. I don’t have much going on the rest of the day. I have to work Monday morning so I’ll likely keep it low key! I might head to a park with a book, because my allergies tend to get a little bad after being around the animals all day!

What did you do for the long weekend?

Food, Food, and More Food

Happy Tuesday! I hope everyone had a fantastic long weekend. I know I did! I have lots of food pictures to share, as well as a couple of

workouts to discuss.

Workouts:

Saturday: Crossfit-the WOD was killer: 20 minute AMRAP starting with a 1 mile run and then as many rounds of possible of the remaining

time of 1 rope climb, 5 push presses, and 10 over the bar burpees. I hate burpees. The run part felt great though. I came in around 8:20

and it wasn’t a push effort so that’s good.

Sunday: My last “long” run. I did 6 miles by the bay. I got really frustrated by the gusting winds, but got it done.

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Monday: Crossfit Labor Day workout. It was “bring your friends and family” day so I brought my sister and her boyfriend.

She had shoulder surgery at the beginning of the summer and hasn’t exercised much since then, and I feel bad because she couldn’t

walk the rest of the day…The workout was a partner workout of the following:

100 squats

10 pull ups

75 squats

20 pull ups

50 squats

30 pull ups

25 squats

40 pull ups

My sister and her boyfriend were a team, and since she has a bad shoulder, he had to do all the pull ups. I ended up helping out with a few

because that was brutal!

Now, onto the food! I love having access to a full kitchen and CA produce. My gosh.

Another wrap with humus and veggies:

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A quesadilla/wrap with cheddar and mozzarella, half an avocado, tomato, and baby kale sautéed in garlic. Plus a side of broccoli.

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A delicious heirloom tomato, basil, fresh mozzarella, and avocado salad, topped with olive oil and sea salt.

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A simple breakfast of eggs with seasoning and a farmer’s market peach. DC peaches are laughable in comparison to CA peaches.

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A salad with chicken, goat cheese, peaches, basil, and balsamic.

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And then, Greek food. Every year a Greek church in my hometown hosts a Greek festival over Labor Day Weekend.

We always go for the delicious food.

For my main meal, I had a greek salad, delicious rice pilaf made with chicken broth, lemon, and butter, and chicken that was insanely hard to cut

with plasticware. On the side, I had Spanikopita, a Greek pastry made with phyllo dough, spinach, and cheese.

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And of course there was dessert. They have these delicious doughnut-like balls. Loukamades? I think I totally butchered that spelling. They’re

basically doughnut holes covered in honey (But much lighter and fluffier than doughnut holes) and served hot. Normally they are covered with nuts,

but I was able to get them without! So delicious.

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That’s all I have today-I hope everyone else ate well this past weekend!

Who’s Excited??

Hey guys! Sorry for the lack of regular posts the last couple of days. I felt kind of off-sort of like I was stuck in a rut. That kind of bothers me since I haven’t really felt like that all summer, but I did feel that way some during school. I just didn’t feel like DOING anything. I skipped Crossfit last night, but I did get my butt in gear for a nice walk, which kind of threw me out of the funk. I’m pretty sure the funk may have been partly because I ate too many carbs…they mess with my brain!

Anyways, now that I’m done complaining, I’ll highlight some pictures from the last couple of days and get onto TODAY!

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A pretty view of San Francisco from my walk the other today. Sad news-I finished my audiobook mid walk. This sure as heck beats mid-12 mile run, but meh. I feel a little nostalgic about that audiobook-it took me through my long runs of my first half marathon training!

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This dinner was not really supposed to be this. The plan was to make a quesadilla with this recipe. However, my mom had to brief the guy taking care of our cats while we’re on vacation, and before I knew it it was 9pm and still no food. Instead of going through the effort of making the tortilla, I just microwaved the leftover meat we were planning on using with a can of diced tomatoes and pepper, plus taco seasoning. I also whipped up some guac. Add a bed of lettuce, and we were good to go! I may have gotten a little seasoning-happy. This was SPICY. (Well, keep in mind all the seasoning was mild…#wimp).

Thursday morning was the kitten nursery. I really do love working with them.

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Followed by breakfast-it turned out to be much bigger than this but this is what I got on camera. Yesterday, I discovered I had 2 days to eat 6 mangoes. Challenge accepted. There’s one left. Image

I also took a “cat nap.” Haha…I’m going to miss that when I go back to school!

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Aaaand here’s some more food. Nothing too crazy. I want to get to today’s workouts!

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Ok, onto today! 5:45am spin was cancelled due to Labor Day weekend. Booo. But it did give me an opportunity to sleep in a little and make my own spin workout. I really want to be a spin teacher someday, and it’s been a while since I’ve made my own class. Plus, I want to do a post on my local fitness blog about HIIT training, but…I’ve never done it before. So that would be a little hypocritical. I’ve been reading about the benefits in the book I’m reading, and so many bloggers do HIIT training. I designed an hour long class, which included 18 minutes of HIIT training. I did 1:00 of intense, all out work, followed by 1:15 of moderate intensity. I did this sequence 8 times through.

OMG I was DYING. I have NEVER worked that hard on a Spin bike before. To get the true benefits of HIIT, you really need to go 100% max effort during the minute on. Whew. Ouch. And why did I put this at the beginning of my class? For the intervals on, I did a mix of high resistance fast speed, and pretty high resistance super fast speed. My legs hurt….

Anyways, in case you’re wondering, I thought I’d post the “class” so you can all go out and feel my pain. Sound good?

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Here’s the playlist I made.

And here’s the sequence:

(Song #)

1-Warm Up

2- Hill: increase resistance every minute and hold 80 RPMs

3-hill: heavy, hold 1:30 and then repeaters

4-first 2:00 downhill then start Hiit

5-9 HIIT then downhill

10-flat road endurance-hold 100 RPMs at working pace

11- hill- 30 sec intervals in/out of saddle

12- hill: heavy repeaters

13- hill: jumps (8 sec on saddle, 8 out/4 in/out, 2 in/out)

14- downhill, high speed (over 100 RPM)

15- flat road intervals

16- flat road intervals

17-cool down

*Repeaters- 20 seconds in saddle, 20 seconds standing straight, 20 seconds standing over bike

I followed this with 10 minutes of abs.

And then cursed myself for being dumb and not running BEFORE my spin workout. It’s one thing to not run before a 5:45am class, but when I could spin ANY TIME, and it’s not even early, I should run first.

4 miles were on the schedule for today. I actually did a decent portion of it on trails-which I hate but need to practice. It was pretty hot. And I did not choose my clothing very well. A big, thick, cotton t-shirt, already drenched in sweat. I was literally drowning in my own shirt. Eh. Oh well.

I decided to mix it up a little today shoe-wise and wear my Brooks. They actually felt better than I remember! Maybe it was my new inserts?

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The rest of my day will be spent getting ready for tomorrow- I’M GOING TO HAWAII! I leave super early (well, as a regular at 5:45am spin it won’t be too bad…), so I have to get everything ready to go tonight! I need to go to the library for fun books and to look for new audiobooks. I also have Crossfit tonight…legs rest up quickly! I refuled from my sweaty run with my post-workout recovery drink (aka homemade chocolate milk) which I made in my Vitamix so I wouldn’t have to heat the milk, and could add in an extra ice cube or two.

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In Hawaii, I actually have quite a few workouts planned. Which is probably good-it’ll keep me sane. I have 4-5 days of running, including 2 long runs. I’ve contacted some of the Crossfits in Maui, and will drop in for a class or two while I’m away as well. How cool is that??

I might pop in once or twice with a post while I’m away since I’m brining my laptop, but don’t worry-I’ve got you covered with some AWESOME guest posters while I’m gone! Like, really great. While I read the posts I kept wanting to comment!

I hope you all have a GREAT holiday weekend! I’ll make sure to take lots of pictures while I’m gone!

What are you doing this weekend?