Yesterday was a looong day thanks to a 4:30am wakeup and a 3 hour time change. Our flight left at 7am, so we were at the airport at 6. 

Starbucks for breakfast-I actually didn’t want any caffeine since I wanted to sleep on the 5 hour flight as much as possible. A chocolate smoothie did the trick-plus it is one of the less sweet options at Starbucks.

As expected the flight felt long. And the plane was FREEZING-and I was wearing pants and a sweatshirt. Sleeping didn’t happen much, but what are you gonna do? And get this-you had to PAY to even watch a movie. Whattttt. So I did not do that!

Upon landing, our first stop was a local swap meet (crafts plus farmer’s market). We had a couple of hours before my sister’s boyfriend’s flight landed so this was perfect. I loved looking at all the exotic fruits. And look at the size of those avocados!

I’ve never seen non-CA avocados! I can’t wait to try them! Another highlight was freshly pressed green juice. Soooo good.

The perfect start to a tropical vacation!

Once we picked up my sister’s boyfriend, we headed out for some traditional Hawaiian food for lunch-one of my dad’s all time favorite things. 

My mom and I split a giant papaya seed salad and teriyaki chicken.

We then visited our hotel and shopped around at a very touristy but awesome Hawaiian store-Hilo Hattie. Fact: my dad owns 10000 Hawaiian shirts. 

Want to know what’s sad? When my family has come to Hawaii in the past, it’s usually in the winter or spring. It’s HOT in the summer. And….my weather at home is nicer. Like a lot nicer. Not hot or humid-it’s been in the 90s here and humid, and THIS California girl is drowning in her own sweat. #spoiledCAgirlproblems

This evening, we attended a Luau. More pictures on that for another post! My Internet is slow so uploading takes a little while, and I only have about 3 minutes until I have to run. It was tons of fun-and I was SO ready for bed at 9pm. What’s weird is that my ankle swelled up kind of a lot yesterday-and I don’t usually swell much. It’s the one I sprained a couple of months ago that is still kind of stiff. I guess a lot of being on my feet plus flying contributed to that…weird. 

Hope you all are having a fabulous long weekend! 

Ok, so this morning I woke up at 5:45 for weights. Ugh. I definitely didn’t make my 10 pm bedtime last night, and after a hard day yesterday, I was dragging. My legs were still tired from yesterday. And throughout all this, one question was running through my mind. Uh oh, what is this tiredness is me getting sick? EVERYONE is getting sick! Gahh! 

As usual, my snack before weights was quick bread! More of the peanut butter banana. I actually found the recipe I used, which wasn’t the link I posted before (Though you guys should definitely try that one, it looked awesome!) The one I actually made was from fANNEtastic food, which you can find here. This bread is growing on me, I’ve started to crave it! I love Anne’s recipes because they’re mostly low sugar. I have been wanted to make another quickbread for a while, and I will hopefully do that this weekend! I need to restock my freezer! Also, her granola bar recipe looks great! I really liked having something around that was easy to snack on, and I like that the recipe has brown rice syrup.

Well, I powered through weights. I’m happy with how I did. I’m getting the hang of the workouts now, plus it’s less crowded as my teammates are starting to go to the later weights session more. After I finished my workout, I did 5×10 ab roll outs. As I stated in an earlier post, I think ab strength may be one of the keys to improving my rowing, so I got a little extra work in. And it certainly didn’t hurt that the baseball team was in the weight room after us. I definitely want to go to some of their games this spring, I LOVE watching baseball! (Go Giants! Anyone? Anyone?)

After weights, I was planning on finishing up a Greek yogurt I had in the fridge, but my coach was insistent that I drink a protein shake. I really didn’t want one of the ones from the weight room (ugh), so I had to promise her that I would make my own back at my dorm. Remember my idea from yesterday? I was considering making a protein smoothie with my vanilla whey protein powder, and adding cocoa powder. So that’s just what I did!

Plus a banana, milk, yogurt, a spoon of peanut butter, and 2 heaping spoonfuls of cocoa powder. And a more surprising ingredient? Frozen blueberries! Since my banana wasn’t frozen, I wanted something cold to thicken it up a little bit. The addition of blueberries turned out to be a great idea! The fruitiness of the blueberries really brought out the dark chocolate flavor!

I also had some fruit, and a little cream of wheat because I felt like I needed some carbs. I’m glad I decided to make a protein smoothie after all. After my workout, I realized I was pretty shaky, and the greek yogurt probably wouldn’t have done it for me. 

Here’s the smoothie recipe:

Dark Chocolate Blueberry Smoothie

1/4 c plain yogurt

1 banana (fresh or frozen)

1/2-1 scoop vanilla protein powder (I used 1/2 because I’m always scared to add too much) or chocolate protein powder (just add less cocoa)

1 tablespoon peanut butter

1/3 c blueberries

2 heaping spoons of cocoa powder (more or less to taste, I like more)

milk (enough  to get it moving)

Blend and enjoy! Top with peanut butter if you like!

I definitely need to post my favorite smoothie recipe at some point because I’m actually sure of the proportions. That smoothie is good, but not my absolute favorite. Any guesses as to what my favorite is? I’ll post it next time I make it!

After breakfast I had a little time because I didn’t have to do a run this morning. I felt pretty tired, but I knew I was planning on napping later, so I compromised and drank a cup of caffeinated tea.

This is my favorite black tea! 

During class, I was feeling exhausted and a little shaky. I felt kind of weird as well. Again, I asked myself the big question, am I getting sick? I was starting to get worried, because I felt pretty off. Finally, I was sitting in Math, when I figured it out. I was definitely suffering from caffeine overdose. Now, keep in mind, I don’t drink caffeine that often, and whenever I have coffee, I have half a cup tops. It was a huge mystery to me why a single cup of tea would cause me to feel so jittery. Now I never have to drink coffee, right? If tea can wake me up this much? I’ve never really felt the effects of caffeine from tea before, so this was all very strange. The only thing I can figure out is that a) maybe because I just exercised hard, I was more sensitive? Or b) I put a TON of cocoa powder in my smoothie this morning….So it was probably a combination of things. I was relieved that I wasn’t getting sick, but I was a little uncomfortable for class. This morning was full of weird sensations in my body. I realized that going up stairs was really not tiring. However, down stairs? My legs were shaking like crazyyy! My hamstrings and glutes were pretty much shot! And after math, I was hit with a huge wave of hunger, out of nowhere! Good thing it was lunch time!

I caught up with my sister at lunch. Can you believe I haven’t seen her since basically Christmas? Which is kind of strange, considering we go to the same college. Here’s what I ate:

This is basically the best salad ever. We have a salad restaurant here, and this is the only type I’ve ever gotten. It’s a Southwest salad, with beans, cheese, corn, tomatoes, salmon, and a cilantro dressing. It comes with tortilla chips, but I prefer it without. Normally they have avocado too (they didn’t today), which just puts it over the top. SO good. The thing is though, these salads are huge! It may not look like a big container, but they absolutely cram it in there! Especially if I get it with chicken (they put so much in), it’s super heavy! I usually end up picking the best parts out, and still walking away completely stuffed, but this time I came prepared and brought tupperware so I could portion away half of it (which will probably be dinner tonight). Then after picking up some school supplies, it was back to my room to relax. I wanted something sweet, so I grabbed a few handfuls of that spicy trail mix. I didn’t really want to eat a ton of cocoa powder before attempting to sleep, so I decided not to get creative. 

The rest of my day will be spent relaxing! We had a suggested run or erg this afternoon, but my body is so done. I feel way better and stronger now that it’s been a few hours since my workout, but I think I’m best off taking the rest of the day off and hitting it hard again tomorrow. I have some freedom in my workouts, and you can bet I’m going to take advantage of that! I probably won’t post again today. Dinner will most likely be a repeat of today’s lunch. I have an avocado in the fridge, but I don’t want to end up with an extra half of an avocado sitting around if I’m going to be gone. I might experiment on my “dessert”, so I’ll let you know if I come up with anything amazing! Have a great weekend!

Any plans for the long weekend?