locked out | Fitness is Sweet

Hello, and happy first WIAW from St. Louis! Thanks as always to Jenn for starting WIAW!

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If you haven’t gathered, I’m in St. Louis! I moved here for 3 months, and I’m starting to get settled in. I had my first day of work yesterday, and Tuesdays I have off, so I took the time to explore the city a little bit more. So let’s dive in!

Breakfast:

I woke up hungry and had a few crackers and strawberries while I made my yogurt bowl, which was 2% plan greek, cinnamon KIND granola, sunbutter.

Plus a really, really good nectarine. I was pretty surprised, to be honest. The few I bought were looking pretty sad.

Coffee:

While I do have an extra day off during the week, I also have online class(es) to work on, so I decided on my day off I will “commute” to the best coffeeshops I can find and work on my schoolwork. I have a list of coffeeshops that I intend to hit up. Today’s choice was Blueprint Coffee in Delmar Loop, near Wash U. Watch their video<-to know they’re legit! Coffee is a cherished process at Blueprint, and it did not disappoint.

As per usual, I had a decaf cappuccino and it was amazing. I would HIGHLY recommend Blueprint. Another plus? I was able to park on the street right out front! I spent a couple of hours there making sure my vet apps are in order, signing up for said online class, and looking into some spin teaching opportunities for while I’m here.

Around 11, I decided I didn’t want to overstay my welcome, so I walked around the neighborhood a bit. So cute!

Lunch:

I didn’t have too much else to do in that neighborhood, so I decided to make one last stop for lunch: Kayak Cafe. This was another cute little coffeeshop. I had a sandwich on GF (toasted!) bread with turkey, swiss, spring greens, tomato, and herbed cream cheese. Yum!

It was interesting being basically on another college campus. I feel like I saw the college experience I didn’t have. I originally wanted to move out of CA, and I always pictured myself curled up in coffeeshops in the snow studying. I guess maybe this fall! Ignore the fact that my wardrobe is totally unequipped for snow…I spent the next hour and a half or so driving around exploring Clayton, Maplewood, and some other areas.

Snack+unfortunate situation:

When I got back, I had a few bites of Birthday Cake Halo Top, and then proceeded to lock myself out. I’ve been here 2 days…

I was taking my roommates dog to go out, which normally she would be let out the back but I couldn’t figure out how to open the door, so I took her out front. I didn’t think it was possible for the door to lock the way it did….so I was stuck outside with no phone or keys, just dog!

It took me about 30 minutes to find a way back in, but I did it! There’s always a way. I was SO happy to be back inside—my roommate wouldn’t be home for another 3 hours!

I decompressed from the situation with a peppermint Luna bar, 2 kitties, and Netflix.

I ran out to do some errands—joined a gym+grocery, before it was Crossfit time!

I went to my new box for the first time! It was sort of hard to find. It’s on a side street down an alley…It was a pretty small box in terms of people, probably the smallest I’ve been to. Definitely not a bad thing, just a little different! One big plus is that it seems to be in a good neighborhood, which honestly was the top priority for me.

I had a good workout! For strength we did close grip bench press. I’ve never benched with close grip before, so that was a bit of a challenge. My left side weakness was pretty apparent here! The WOD was a benchmark that we are going to retest in 4 weeks.

Baseline: 500m row, 40 air squats, 30 sit ups, 20 push ups, 10 pull ups

The push ups were definitely my weakest point, and slowed me the most (especially after bench!). I finished in 6:32.

When I returned, it was dinnertime!

Dinner:

I snacked on some watermelon while I started to get things ready, as per usual. I actually ended up eating most of this throughout the meal and cooking.

For dinner, I was planning on making some kind of scramble with spinach…and then I realized I forgot to buy spinach. Oops. This was my first time actually cooking here though! (Yesterday I microwaved soup…) Instead, I settled for an omelette and side salad. It came out pretty well! I used goat gouda and Italian spices. I also had avocado toast on the side.

I got the garlic powder from Whole Foods and it is POTENT. It has a super fine, almost powdered sugar-y texture, and tastes just like fresh garlic!

My companion:

Dessert:

I tried some of these chocolate rice cakes. They were underwhelming. Plus a spoon of Halo Top.

Have you ever been to St. Louis? Any recommendations on things to see/eat?

Hey all! Looks like I have 2 days to recap, huh? FIRST. Let me just say that after practicing soccer Friday night, I was expecting my calves/front of my shins to be SUPER sore. After I was done practicing, I immediately put on my compression socks and wore them all night. I woke up Saturday morning amazed. Zero pain. My dad wore them for his soccer game for the first time today, and he is a fan as well. I just can’t say enough about how wonderful they are.

Here’s Friday Night’s dinner:Chicken curry salad. It was alright. There was one spice that was really strong that I wasn’t a huge fan of. And it ended up being chock full of walnuts, which my face suffered from. Boo.

Saturday morning was yet another yogurt bowl with sunflower seed butter and cinnamon apple bread. By the way, the cinnamon apple bread is just Whole Foods Gluten Free Cranberry bread, but we didn’t have cranberries, so we used apples. After breakfast, my dad picked me up for one last tune-up before tomorrow’s practice (eeeee). It was actually really painful. Not kicking anything for a long time mixed with lots of kicking all at once is not good. The heel/achilles was starting to hurt, and I bruised my ankle from kicking so much. I went to brunch afterwards for a Mexican feast. No guac yesterday though. 🙁 That’s the only reason I like brunch on Saturdays!Yes that is a biscuit on top of my salad. I have a weakness for biscuits…The salsa was SUPER spicy. I really should remember this…I had to move it out of the way and my mouth was still on fire. Also not pictured was half a waffle with blueberries. It looked something like this:Sorry, this is a disgusting picture. For some reason all my waffle pics are pre-blueberries. Which is boring. I obviously didn’t have peanut butter though.

Saturday was my rest day. It was a pretty low key day. I started a new book, “Homer’s Odyssey.” It’s about a little black cat who is blind. I’m a sucker for black cats. And I decided an inspirational and heart-warming book is just about what I need right now. Still working on that whole “changing my life” thing. And not going to lie, I checked the ending to make sure it doesn’t end with the cat dying, like so many “heart-warming” stories do. It cannot be qualified as heart warming if I am bawling my eyes out!

Other fun from yesterday: I went out to dinner with my sister. I wanted to steal the car, which requires her bringing it to me, so we decided to get something to eat in the process. We went to my FAVORITE restaurant in downtown Palo Alto, Lyfe Kitchen. If you live in the Bay Area, TRY THIS PLACE (Gina). It’s super healthy and delicious. I’ve gotten something different every time, and loved it each time. There are a ton of things I want to try as well.(How cute is this? They have an indoor herb garden.)(Me being a good blogger and taking tons of pictures.)

I went with a quinoa wrap, which included veggies, edamame hummus, and avocado. It was served with hot sauce, which I surprisingly really liked. (I’m not a huge fan of spicy things.)My sister ordered a goat cheese flatbread pizza, which was delicious as well.It had notes of pomegranate, which added a touch of sweetness and extra flavor.

My sister’s boyfriend lives in an apartment with a full kitchen, so I kept hearing stories of all the amazing things they were cooking up on a regular basis. “Oh, today we made scones.” “We had the most delicious quiche yesterday.” “We made the most amazingly rich gelato.”

Needless to say, I invited myself over to crash one of these baking parties sometime. ANd last night was just the time. I didn’t technically invite myself over this time, but it was probably implied. So what was the culinary delicacy on the menu last night? Lemon basil cakes. My sister has a couple of lemon trees outside her dorm, so we picked a bunch beforehand. Somehow I got stuck squeezing all the lemons (although somehow I expected this). My sister was in charge of ordering us around. How perfect. Haha. Me and the sis. SUPER old picture. This is from when I visited her at her freshman dorm! (Ok, so 2 years ago…)

The recipe made cupcakes. We had muffin cups, but no muffin tins. #Collegeproblems. SO we improvised. Good idea?You tell me.

They were still delicious though! It was a lemon cake sprinkled with sugar and lemon zest (zested by yours truly), resting in a basil lemon syrup, topped with fresh whipped cream. Not too shabby!

This morning I was up bright and early to go to spin. I had a quick breakfast before leaving. Since I had to get there early to sign up, I did some ab workout beforehand. Spin was really tough today! i was panting the whole time.

Afterwards, I made a mango run. To Whole Foods.Mangos on mangos on mangos.

Another thing I picked up at Whole Foods? Vanilla Chobani. Can you guys believe I’ve never had Chobani before? For some reason I was under the impression it was higher in sugar than other yogurts, but that’s not true. Whoops. I can’t wait to try it tomorrow! I also picked up a post-workout snack. French toast and scrambled eggs with guac. Let’s be honest, I got teh eggs just so I’d have a vehicle for my guac. More veggies when I was back on campus.

So I had a fun afternoon. When I returned the car to my sister, I somehow managed to lock myself out. Yippee. I got people to let me in the building, but all the RAs were gone (they have a master key) and my roommate was gone for the weekend. Yay. Alllll my homework was in my room. And my phone had very little battery. So what do I do in a situation like this? Walk across campus for froyo. Yes, my bike key was on that keychain. Ugh. I don’t know if I’ve ever had chocolate yogurt at Fraiche, but it was amazingly good. Like it actually surprised me, it was so good.

By the time I got back to my dorm and did some work in the computer cluster, someone was there to let me in. YAY! I was locked out for about 2.5 hours. But it wasn’t the best time to get locked out, because there were very few people in or around my dorm. More veggies. 🙂 Brussels sprouts with garlic and herb laughing cow. Kefir with cereal and sunflower butter.A square of raw dark chocolate.

That all was supposed to be dinner, but it was kind of early and I wanted to see my friends, so I ended up going to dinner later, so now I’m basically stuffed. Social eating is probably not the best for the waistline!

As strange as it is, I have no workout planned for tomorrow morning. Soccer practice/tryouts in the PM. And given my current stamina, I’m gonna need all the strength I can get! See you all later!

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