More Thoughts on Athlete Identity and Next Week’s Goal

Date: March 15, 2015

Author: astottler

I love reading all your comments on athletic identity! I think that with all I do, I am still an athlete, but I just seem to have a mental block about realizing that. I think part of this recent feeling stems from the fact that I haven’t exactly been pushing hard in my workouts lately-while being sick for a while, I felt like I was just in maintenance and survival mode, but now I’m ready to get after it! This was especially apparent when I did Crossfit Open 15.3-I swear I used to be better at wall balls!

15.3 was 7 muscle ups, 50 wall balls, and 100 double unders, for 14 minutes. Since I am definitely not able to do a muscle up, I did the scaled which was 50 wall balls, and 200 singles for 14 minutes. I initially wanted to try double unders but after trying for a while, it was just taking too long. This one was tough-my arms were dead. Partially probably due to the fact that we did a TON of push ups the day before and so my shoulders were already sore!

Also-I’m feeling more like an athlete after today’s half training run. I’m back to double digits! I started the morning with my typical pre-run breakfast, jazzed up with some frozen blueberries. It’s basically a mess of egg whites, banana, and a few oats. I would normally put cocoa powder in it, but I’m not reacting too well to chocolate as far as I know, and didn’t want to take any chances.

After my foot felt really good all week, it flared up on me again yesterday. I used twice last night, and I still woke up with it sore. I even iced immediately upon waking up. I honestly didn’t have too high hopes for the run, given my foot and the fact that I felt pretty sluggish last week, but ended up surprising myself and having a great run.

My left calf had been a little tight this week, and strangely enough my calves get less tired if I’m running a little faster, so I picked up the pace a bit at the beginning and just got in a groove. I was well under a 10:00 mile for most of the run (minus a hilly mile) and kept up my splits right to the last mile. Ok? I’ll take it!

I think the fact that I was eating less junk this week totally helped! Also-in terms of race day plans, I’m not trying to PR. I just want to enjoy the race. In my last race, I ran all of my training runs at a pace to PR (in the heat and humidity no less), and went out way too fast, and ended up crashing hard at the end as a result, leading to one of my worse times. So no flying and dying for me this time!

Next week is finals week, so I went home after my run for Physics help and a home cooked meal. This is chicken and dumplings from Cooking Light-the dumplings are stops of whole wheat tortilla! The perfect mix of protein, carbs, and salt post-run!

We also had some blueberry pie, because pi day! I don’t have a picture of that, but here are the mini pies I had last night! My sorority sold them to raise money for our philanthropies (and yes, selling pie on pi day was totally my idea…). My friend and I split mixed berry and apricot.

In terms of finals, I have one Monday, one Tuesday, and one Friday. Luckily, I seem to be on track with my studying so far, which is why I actually have time to post this!

So-weekly goals. This past week’s goal was pretty successful-I think I nailed 5.5/7 breakfasts and lunches this week! So moving on to this week’s goal: no nighttime eating. During dead and finals week, there are treats and study snacks at every corner. While I know some people swear by their nighttime snacks, for some reason eating late at night always gives me stomachaches. While I would say I’m 99% fine after being sick, things that would normally give me a stomachache are magnified, and nightly snacks have not been kind to me as of late. So that’s this week’s goal-I’ll keep you all updated on how it goes!

Did you have pie for pi day?

Legs Don’t Fail Me!

Date: July 25, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hey guys! I’ve been meaning to post the last few days, but things keep coming up! I can’t believe I forgot about WIAW! Who am I??

Before we get to the deliciousness, let’s talk fitness and the status of my calf. I’ve been going to physical therapy all week, and I think it’s definitely helping. My physical therapist is great-my dad is friends with him since my dad has all kinds of things wrong with him. I’m getting the whole 9 yards-calf exercises, stretching, ultrasound, laser treatment, electrocution. Ok maybe they don’t actually call it electrocution, but what would you call getting electricity pumped into your leg?

Wednesday was another spin class. It’s one way for me to keep up my cardiovascular fitness. My spin teacher actually just tore her calf muscle, and she can’t exercise at all for like 6 weeks, so I shared miseries with her. After spin, I tested my calf by doing a lap around the parking lot with almost no pain.

This morning was the real test though. I wanted to run 2 miles, so I went to the track. That way, if I had to stop, the farthest away I’d be from the starting point was 200 meters! To be honest, I was expecting running to be painful. And it wasn’t. Thank goodness! At least not for the first mile. My calf started hurting a little bit after that, so I called it quits after a mile and a half. I didn’t want to push it-that’s what race day is for!

All I could think of today-legs don’t fail me now!Not after all this work!

Then tonight at Crossfit, I felt no pain and was able to do everything, which I am ecstatic about. I ran 1400 meters total during Crossfit, so my total mileage for the day was almost 3.

So the verdict? I’ll be fine by race day. It starts hurting when it gets tired so the next step is rebuilding strength. I’ll be good to go for race day, but the rate of healing will determine how ugly the race and aftermath is. I can’t help but think I jinxed myself by ordering this shirt:

So the plan? Crossfit tomorrow morning. If it still feels ok, I’m going to try for 1.5 miles. Then, I’ll try another 1.5 in the evening. I want to get the mileage in, but having recovery time will really help. Of course I’ll back off if I feel pain. My family and I are going to San Luis Obispo this weekend, so Saturday we have a hike planned. I found a great route for my run on Sunday. It’s a 5 mile loop, which I’ll attempt to run, but walk as necessary.

Ok, enough of that. On to the food!

I had a great salad from Cooking Light the other day- an Avocado Cobb salad! The dressing was made with creamy avocados, and the salad included chicken breast, hard boiled egg, avocado, goat cheese (it called for bleu but that freaks my mom out), and tomatoes. It called for bacon, but I don’t eat it and the only bacon we had was gray…so we subbed chicken sausage, which was actually quite delicious!

Wednesday night I went to the Giant’s game. They lost, booo. But that doesn’t take away from the delicious food offerings at the San Francisco ballpark!

For dinner, a Cha-cha bowl. It’s rice, black beans, and chicken breast topped with a veggie slaw (with pineapple!). They were able to make mine without rice and with extra veggies-yum!

We also enjoyed some unpictured garlic fries-I mean it is a ballgame, right?

And no AT&T park visit is complete without a Ghiradelli hot fudge sundae. If that doesn’t taste like San Francisco, I don’t know what does.

And of course a windy selfie. Only in SF would you bundle up to go to a mid-summer baseball game. I broke out the leg warmers and uggs, sweatshirt, fleece Northface, and a blanket. Brrrr.

Sadly, all the ballpark food (ok, probably mostly the fries and sundae) left me with a stomachache today. I decided that I need to make more of an effort to base my meals off of fruit and veggies, so I decided a bowl of assorted fruit and sunflower seed butter would do the trick for breakfast.

Here’s an obligatory kitten nursery photo. The kittens are doing much better! They were all pretty healthy and VERY energetic. One little guy thought it would be the most fun thing in the world to constantly, out of nowhere, leap from the table onto my shoulder, which is a bit of a problem since we’re technically still on quarantine.

This evening, I went to a local farmer’s market downtown. I didn’t take a ton of pictures, but I thought you nut butter fans out there would appreciate this vendor:Maybe I’ll have to try butterscotch sunflower seed butter! I wish my face didn’t hate nuts…Last year I got my dad chocolate bacon peanut butter.

I also got some beautifully delicious figs. I love figs but they’re always super pricey at the grocery store.

And another highlight?

Mini pies. Sweet potato and lemon strawberry. They were just perfect, and not too sweet.

I’ll leave you guys with that! Have a great Friday!

15 Minute Pie for Pi Day!

Date: March 15, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Happy Pi Day everyone! Do you guys celebrate this holiday? It’s well worth it! I really haven’t celebrated it enough. Back in high school/middle school we got pie in math class maybe once or twice. This year though, I wanted to rock it! I will get to the recipe in a bit, and it’s a keeper. Did I mention it is 3 ingredients?

Taking us back to yesterday. Breakfast was scrambled eggs with leftover mushroom artichoke dip again, but this time with an Asian pear from Costco. LOVE.

Lunch was also from Costco: Afghan food. Pumpkin Bolani plus sauces. I first tried these at my local farmer’s market. The vendors are so friendly and push tons of samples at you! I’ve also found them at Whole Foods, and a couple of other local grocery stores. They’re definitely worth a try! I like the Spinach Bolani as well.

Class yesterday actually ended early, since it was the last class of the quarter. We are going on a field trip to the farmer’s market this Sunday! I also found out that my sister has mono. What are the odds? Ok, you’d think they’d be pretty high since she is my sister, but I’ve seen her once this quarter, way before I could have caught it. It must be seriously going around! Anyways, since she’s in the sore throat stage, she wanted to go to Wildberry for frozen yogurt on our way out. Well if you twist my arm….I tried the tart mango that time, which was so good! All their flavors are awesome! And here’s some more exciting news! When I got home, I laced up my running shoes for my first “workout.” I put that in quotations because that is a gross exaggeration. I did lunges up my street. But to be fair, it’s not THAT short. And it’s straight uphill. And then I ran maybe a block to see how it felt. It was interesting; I was expecting to be much weaker, but I actually wasn’t too bad. But I got out of breath super quickly. But at least exertion doesn’t send me into a coughing fit anymore! And hey, I’m sore today so I’ll take it! But I see lots of Spinning in my future. I’m not allowed to lift weights for a while, since my organs might still be in danger of bursting. I’m itching to lift though! I keep drooling over peoples Crossfit workouts on blogs! I am getting blood tests tomorrow though to see if I’m my liver and spleen are more normal (i.e. find out if I can start running into things again).

Dinner yesterday was a Teriyaki Chicken burrito, from the same place. I’ve never gotten this in burrito form before. Let me just say, I am not a burrito person. I’ve had one maybe twice before. And kind of embarrassed myself while eating it (it’s not normal to stab it with a knife and eat the insides out?). I’m not sure what motivated me to try this. My tastes have still been a little strange since getting sick. My evaluation? Way better in taco form. In this, the filling wasn’t uniform, and there was too much tortilla and cheese.

Not too many good pictures of eats from earlier today. I had my last class of the quarter today, and afterwards my sister begged to get frozen yogurt again. I swear, NOT my choice!I’ve had frozen yogurt AT LEAST the last 5 days. This is kind of embarrassing. But I swear that was my last opportunity for a while! Now on to the more interesting eats! For dinner, I wanted to make use of the leftover turkey chili. I based the idea for this meal off of a recipe in the Abs Diet cookbook, which is a taco salad, but I topped it with chili instead of taco meat. Into the salad went corn and avocado. The dressing was a mixture of tomatoes, olive oil, lime juice, salt and pepper. Then, the salad was topped with chili and some fat free cheddar. It came out great!

And now for the best part of this post! Pi(e)! Last night when I realized today was Pi Day, I decided I wanted to celebrate. At the same time though, I was concerned with how high my sugar intake has been lately, so I wanted to have something lower sugar. Enter 15 minute pie.

I made individual pies. The crust is made of crescent role dough which we had hanging out in the fridge. It’s just the Pillsbury kind. I actually really enjoyed this as the crust, it was a lot more interesting than normal pie crust! The filling was simply frozen blueberries heated up in the microwave (although I did make 2 cherry pies). Blueberries are so sweet naturally that they really don’t need extra sugar in the filling! Simply line muffin tins with crescent role dough, fill with fruit filling, and cover (or not) with more dough. I sprinkled a little course raw sugar on top for a pretty finish. Then just follow the cooking instructions on the package (mine was for 15 minutes), and enjoy! These would be great with a little frozen yogurt (no kidding) or vanilla ice cream. And here is the beautiful process:Pre-oven

Post-ovenAnd here’s the inside of a cherry pie! The cherry pies were neater because I kept out the extra juice, but they were also drier. I enjoyed the blueberry pies more, but that’s just because I like blueberries more! In the future, I would make these with muffin liners just to make the taking out process a little neater. These would be great with other fruits too! Well, as long as the fruits are fairly sweet naturally. I can’t wait to try apple, and maybe a little later in the summer, peach! I hope you enjoy this super easy recipe!

Did you celebrate Pi Day? What is your favorite kind of pie?