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The Royal We

Hello! I hope everyone is having a fantastic Halloween week! I have finally gotten over the hump of midterms, and I think (knock on wood) they went well! That being said, I definitely spent some time relaxing with Netflix today (much needed) and am currently tackling the pile of laundry that has built up in the past week or so.

Let’s go through the past several days, shall we?

Monday morning began with a track workout. I did a warm up followed by 4x400m, including a timed trial of my 400m run. The good news is in the past few weeks with my training program, I’m 6 seconds faster! Running for a grade is definitely a good extra motivator.

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Monday was quite the grind. I had a midterm in Exercise Physiology on Tuesday, plus I was leading section for my English class so I had to prep for that. I think I spent 9 hours studying for my midterm alone. My only break was to meet up to work on my English, and to teach an over capacity (!) spin class. The energy from a full class was exactly what I needed to refresh my mind!

Foods:

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Stuffed pepper, chicken, veggies.

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Gluten free vegetable past and broccoli with sesame dressing (because there was no lettuce left). Plus a little rice pudding which apparently had almonds (but wasn’t labeled). And now I’m having a bit of an allergic reaction. Meh.

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My new favorite snack: pumpkin pie filling (from a can) plus egg whites, cooked in the microwave. I got the Whole Foods brand which was pretty low sugar.

I have not gotten anywhere near sufficient sleep lately. I don’t think I’ve gotten more than 6 hours in maybe a week? That plus 9 hours of studying (plus other HW and class) had my brain so fried that by the time I was going to bed on Monday, I started talking to myself, which alone would be weird enough, but by referring to myself as the royal we. Oh sleep deprivation.

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From my textbook-isn’t this adorable?

Tuesday morning I went for a short run to energize my mind and enjoy the fall colors.

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Post run, I ate breakfast and stared longingly at the pumpkins that I would get the chance to carve with my dorm post-midterm.

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I think the test went pretty well, and I got the chance to rest my eyes briefly before leading section, which definitely went well! At this point I was feeling my second wind.

Tuesday evening I went to Crossfit-we worked on bench press, and a long WOD:

10 minute AMRAP:

9 toes to bar (v ups for me because of my shoulder)

12 push press

15 squats

3 min rest

Helen, cutoff of 10 minutes:

3 rds of 400m run, 21 kb swings, 12 pull ups (I did TRX rows)

I was maybe a little too ambitious with my shoulder. It was feeling really strong prior to the workout, but the push presses were just too much volume. I started at 55# and had to drop the weight to just the bar in the middle. My shoulder was pretty sore afterwards, so I gave it a full rest today. At the same time, I think a lot of the soreness was just stretching and getting that flexibility back, because it’s feeling good now. I think it’s going to take some pushing while still being careful.

I stopped at Whole Foods for dinner and a couple of groceries. Dinner was veggie soup, roasted sage butternut squash, and brown rice.

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On Tuesday night, I attended a school event that is a bit of a tradition here, but that combined with good conversations with cool people resulted in far too late of a bedtime.

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That being said, tiredness-wise I’ve actually been doing really well, although a day off was necessary.

I was planning on running today, but I’m glad I waited because tonight I found my new shoes in the mail! They will be broken out tomorrow!

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Also-I’m planning a day in the life for tomorrow so stay tuned!

 

Brain Mush AKA Chem Midterm

Wow, my brain is so mushy right now I started to spell “mush” wrong in the title! It’s now 8:45pm and I just got out of a Chem midterm. I’ve been doing chem since 11am today, so my brain is pretty much gone!

My morning started with Crossfit. I had a piece of pumpkin bread beforehand-seriously, this has made the biggest difference in how I feel during my morning weight lifting!

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The WOD was a burner. It was sets of 250m row+one exercise for a minute, with the three exercises repeated twice through and rest between sets. The exercises were its ups, kettle bell swings, and burpees. I kept a pretty consistent pace on the rower throughout which was good though!

I was more than ready for some protein when I got back!

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I also had a cappuccino because Chem.

After class, I ran back to the dining hall for a veggie filled lunch. Roasted veggies, Greek salad, and bulgar with cranberries.

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I also had a small serving of hot chocolate cake. I’ve finally learned how to serve myself a reasonable size!
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After an afternoon spent studying, it was dinnertime. Yes, all I did today was Chemistry and eat.

On the menu was chicken, mac n cheese, salad, and roasted broccoli.

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In terms of “progress,” one thing I’ve noticed since making more of an effort to eat well and moderately is that my eating from day to day is way more consistent. There aren’t any super calorie spiked days, which seems like a good thing! Consistency is key!

And now I’m off to sleep or start some more homework. Sorry for the lack of coherency today!

New Shoes!

Hey guys! I’m going to keep it short and sweet because I have a midterm tomorrow so…yay…

First off, I got new boots over the weekend and I’m sort of obsessed with them.

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And the good news is, my feet are too! I got boots with some really good support for my plantar fasciitis, and it’s making a world of difference!

Also new shoes-new running shoes! My old ones took me through a lot. Countless DC rainstorms, through the monuments, and across the finish line of a half marathon! But my feet were starting to feel every bump in the road, and to be honest, my feet don’t need any more reasons to complain!

Here are the new ones! I wasn’t sure about the feel when I first put them on but they felt great on the run! I like the look of the old ones more though.

Old:

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New:

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So, let’s run through food and fitness, shall we?

I went to 7am Crossfit, and had some healthy pumpkin bread to fuel me. It was perfect! No lightheadedness despite 50000 squats.

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In all seriousness though, our new squat program we are doing is why I will not be able to walk tomorrow. I think I did 56 HEAVY squats? And then 50 wall balls. And I already feel it. Yippee. The WOD was 50 wall balls, 800m run, and 30 pull ups.

Good news on the pull ups front though! After losing my pull ups strength over the summer because we never did them, I finally got it back! I was coerced into switching to a very small band during the workout, and then I whipped out a couple of real kipping pull ups afterwards! YES.

Post-workout, protein was very necessary. Yogurt+peaches+sunbutter.

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And coffee. I definitely took the time to get a real coffee-a cappuccino!

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Lunch was same old, same old from my freezer this week. I only have 2 more frozen meals! Then I need to go grocery shopping. But first I need to make it through this week…

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After class, and before a meeting, a rushed to the gym for a quick run to shake out my legs. I did a modified version of my treadmill workout, and was shocked at how well it went. I had no problem knocking out the 8:00 mile, and keeping up with the intervals.(5 rounds of 2 mins @7:30 pace, 2 mins walking.) I ended up covering 3 miles. Seriously though, coffee+not super early+not sore (yet) is a running game changer. Plus, I definitely had some excess energy to burn! I think I may switch my Monday runs to afternoon treadmill speed workouts because I loved it so much. That and my next 5k is in a month and I’m not in that sort of speed-shape yet! Plus, my feet seemed to appreciate the extra cushion the treadmill provided.

Dinner was pretty good in the dining hall today. Rosemary chicken, salad, a little rice, yams with cranberries, plus a baby spinach and cheese pie, which was delicious.

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I also tried some of a dessert that apparently is pretty popular but that I still don’t know what it is…

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I think it was pudding? Chocolate pudding, whipped cream, banana, strawberries, and what appeared to be some type of ores pudding? It was pretty good.

And that my friends, was my day! Now I’m off to study!

How do you feel about the treadmill?

 

Regular Posting

Here I am, posting regularly again! Yay! My morning today began with half a piece of blueberry apple cinnamon bread, and some milk. I debated a lot with myself for when I should do my morning workout…I considered trying to make a spin class, which would require that I am done with my erg by 7. The problem with this is it means I am depending on the gym where I erg to be open early, like it was when I did this before (which was lucky!) because my ergs definitely take longer than an hour. In the end, I decided not to torture myself by getting up so early, and to just do the prescribed workout. 

After my erg pieces, I got in a good 30 minute run. I explored a part of campus I didn’t even know existed, which is always fun! The only thing: I began my first erg piece at 6:45, and finished my run at 8:45, so I was hungry!Image

I’m trying to up my veggie intake, so I went to the dining hall that I know has spinach out at breakfast. Here, we have a piece of whole wheat toast, half with cream cheese, half with turkey, plus spinach, a slice of tomato, and scrambled egg whites. I was planning on just making this with hardboiled eggs, but the concept of peeling eggs seemed so…difficult. And there were the egg whites just asking to be taken. So it worked out. Plus melon. And half a blueberry muffin.Image

It was decent. My favorite muffins the dining hall has are the chocolate chunk and the orange cranberry. Way too dangerous. This muffin had me thinking about my absolute favorite way to eat blueberry muffins. So here it is: yes, made from a mix, with fresh blueberries, topped with course sugar, hot from the oven, and preferably in bread form (less bottom crust!). Are you drooling yet? I am. Now THAT my friends, is dangerous. Speaking of quickbreads, I am in serious need of some baking. I have all of 2.5 pieces of bread left in my freezer. I’ve been eating it more for snacks lately, and it kind of disappeared. The only problem is, it is impossible to make anything at school that I plan to freeze, unless I make a ton of it because everyone can smell it and wants some. Plus I don’t have a TON of ingredients…One thing that worked for me to make here is pumpkin bread, which makes 2 loaves, so I have a loaf to distract everyone while I run my loaf up to my room. I really want to make this, but I only have 1 can of pumpkin, and the recipe calls for a little bit more than that. Hmmm but I do have a couple of sweet potatoes…maybe that could work? In theory I have ingredients for banana bread, if I didn’t eat all my bananas so darn fast! I’ll have to grab a bunch if I plan to do that. I guess I could wake up early (hah, earlier) one day and bake before anyone is awake! Not sure if it is worth it though. 

Back to my day. I enjoyed a fabulous and much needed 2 hour nap. And like clockwork, I woke up wanting food, so I ate a granola bar, and quickly made the executive decision to hold off on cutting back nuts until tomorrow. Why? I was planning on a granola bar for an afternoon snack as well, plus I needed to pack some food for after practice and before my midterm, and I could not think of a single nonperishable thing I could pack that did not involve nuts or nut butter. So starting tomorrow, life is going to get difficult. 

So these granola bars? A delivery from my mom! I didn’t take any pictures before, so right as I started this post, I ran to snap a picture. These guys are frozen, I finished the ones I kept out.Image

If you are interested, here is a bad picture of the recipe.Image

I like that brown rice syrup is the main sweetener in these. I guess these could be a decent replacement for my quickbread as preworkout fuel, but I don’t like eating fat (nuts) before a morning workout. 

Ok, on to lunch!Image

Sweet potato bisque, Greek salad, tofu, and fruit. I later got some salmon which I ate in place of the tofu, because the tofu wasn’t my favorite, and I didn’t see the salmon earlier! I also had a slice of cinnamon toast and a small piece of chocolate cake. 

For snack before practice, I finished the last of my Sweet Potato bread.Image

Plus another granola bar and half a banana with peanut butter (left over from making my dinner). Yeahhh lots of nuts.

At practice today, I wasn’t in a boat and had to cross train on land, which today meant spinning. I really don’t mind this. I love Spin, and the water was pretty rough today anyway.  I did a few ab exercises after spinning, and I was juuust a little bit sweaty….I think this is cool (ok and maybe gross), but check out my mat that I was lying down on the to abs:Image

I was wearing an old softball t-shirt with a number on the back, and it made a sweat pattern! Can you guess what number I was? Well, at least I thought it was awesome.

I ate a peanut butter and banana sandwich with celery on the drive back, but we ended up getting back pretty early today, so I stopped by my local dining hall really quickly because there was a Lunar New Year celebration with special food. Unfortunately, all of the really good and unique food had RIDICULOUS lines, and I was pretty short on time, so I just had some noodles and salad.Image

On the way out the lines were shorter so I grabbed a chicken bun. In the corner there is some green tea ice cream. It is kind of a big deal when the dining hall has real ice cream because no one here ever gets it. Except, one dining hall is required to always have 3 flavors of ice cream. It has something to do with a condition the donors put when they donated money for it. It’s sooo far away though, so I’ve only been to that dining hall like twice ever. I also had some small candies. Then it was off to my math final! I think it went pretty well. I’m really hoping to do well in this class because I took a similar class in high school. It was so cold biking back though! I don’t think I’ve ever biked that fast back before! 

Ok, I am off to do work!

Do you guys have any suggestions for fun posts? Or requests? Let me know!