After my half marathon on Sunday, I’ve been trying to refuel well for as fast as possible of a recovery. This means lots of carbs and lots of protein. The good news? I’m no longer hobbling around like an old lady! Score! Here are some of my eats from this past week. 

Taco salad from the Abs Diet cookbook. Plus some fresh guac-it’s been too long!

What I love about this salad is the dressing-it’s simply salt, pepper, olive oil, and lime juice with chopped tomatoes. This salad recipe has inspired my family to make our own dressings for salads-even a simple dressing like this makes the salad taste so much fresher! Most dressings can be whipped up in just a few minutes. If you haven’t made your own dressing before, I highly recommend trying it. 

This morning, I awoke with a stiff/sore calf. At this point, it seems that the best remedy is Spin class-how convenient. I left Spin feeling much better. Once again, I am so grateful my calf held up for my race. The race igniting a running fire under me, but I’m forcing myself to take AT LEAST a week, probably two, off of running before I start training for the Nike Women’s half. My calf needs to be 100% better before I start again!

After spin, I had been planning on trying a new protein smoothie recipe. Instead, I decided to put my pineapple Chobani to work.

Instant pineapple frozen yogurt! I didn’t actually need to coconut water-I only added a splash and I had no trouble blending. I simply blended a pineapple CHO with frozen pineapple chunks!

This probably could have used a bit more time in the blender-it was super chunky and not as thick as a result. 

Cinnamon raisin toast has been happening a lot lately. I blame the race

Cinnamon raisin toast topped with a little butter and cinnamon sugar is a great treat that’s on the lighter side. It’s healthier than a cinnamon roll while still hitting all those key flavor notes, but it won’t leave you in a sugar coma!

Midmorning, I was craving banana bread. I made a microwave version!

I mixed up a banana, egg beaters, coconut flour, a pinch of baking soda, and a splash of almond milk. Plus bittersweet chocolate chips, which obviously MADE the dish!

In the future, I think I would omit the coconut flour. It masks the banana flavor a little too much!

More carbs were the name of the game later in the afternoon. I made a spin-off of PB&J. Did you know that in middle school/beginning of high school I ate a PB&J sandwich every day at lunch? I was quite the connoisseur. I had the brand of PB all figured out. I also used to put two different types of jam on the sandwich. 

My aunt makes the best jam in the world and sends us tons of it. My favorite is the raspberry-she grows her own raspberries for the jam! I’ve always loved PB&J, but somehow my face seems to object to peanut butter now. Sunflower seed butter and jam isn’t quite the same, but it’s a close second!

I also had some leftover turkey taco mix from the previous night’s dinner. 

I made the mistake of eating a fairly large snack, and then another granola bar, right before Crossfit. Ugh, not the best idea! 

At Crossfit, we worked on snatches. I kept being too far out in front on mine, probably because my hips are so tight from my race!

The WOD was harder than I was expected. The Rx for the deadlifts was 155, but I stuck to 135 since there were so many reps. Here’s the workout:

25 deadlifts

25 toes to bar

25 box jumps

25 toes to bar

25 deadlifts

I really liked this workout! I really need to strengthen my abs though-my core was really quaking on the deadlifts! Also-I start cleaning my box tomorrow! I mean, a membership in exchange for cleaning is awesome, but to be honest, I just want to spend more time around the box. And hey, if I’m in there anyway, it’s an excuse to work on my pull-ups!

I was not hungry AT ALL after Crossfit, but I decided I needed to refuel. I made a chocolate coconut protein smoothie.

The coconut flavor came from shredded coconut and coconut extract. I’ll post the recipe once I perfect it-it could have used more coconut extract! This time I think I added a little much xantham gum and not enough ice. I’m kind of at a loss with the amount of xantham gum to use-I either add to much or too little! Help?

Today while pumping gas, I thought about two things. 1. This freaking car is such a gas guzzler-I just got gas last week! 2. My irrational fear related to pumping gas. I’m scared that somehow I’ll manage to blow up the gas station by spilling gas. It kind of freaks me out when the nozzle drips because I’m imagining that scenario. 

Aaaand once last thought for the day. I FINALLY got my first post up for my town’s fitness blog! It’s just an introductory post, but here it is! Don’t worry-this new blog won’t change anything about Fitness is Sweet. I’ll link to the other blog from here, but I’ll mostly discuss different things. I’ll definitely discuss anything relevant (such as workouts, interesting studies) on here as well!

Have a great week!

Do you have any irrational fears? Do your cats like to “help” you blog? Mine does…He’s here right now!

How do you recovery from a race or competition?

Since this post was supposed to go up yesterday, this becomes accidental throwback Thursday!

And what, my friends, are we throwing it back to?

Last year’s Giant’s Race!My sister and I ran the 10k last year. What’s this? Yeah, um. I won my division last year! What? How did THAT happen?

Well, I’m super proud of that! To be fair, my age group isn’t huge. But I’ll take it! Next year I’m considering doing the 10k again…and training to win. We shall see!

Back to the important stuff…food and exercise.

Yesterday morning was an early spin class. Yes, I get up at 5:10am in the summer for my own pleasure. Yes, I’m a college student. Yes, those are oxymorons. 

My calf continues to feel better, especially after spin. I refueled with a chocolate protein smoothie, with 1/2 cup less almond milk than usual. Plus a small slice of toast with sunflower seed butter.Yesterday morning I took my dog out to the park to participate in his favorite activity ever-soccer. He goes absolutely crazy for soccer balls. I wish I had gotten a picture of him, but I left my phone in the car so it wouldn’t get slobbery. It’s funny, he got mistaken for a puppy again. This happens regularly! Umm no, he’s almost 12? 

Before class I whipped up a quick lunch of leftover spinach quiche. After class, I hustled over to Crossfit. It was a little close-I hate rush hour traffic! The WOD was 7 rounds of 100m run, 5 toes to bar, 10 deadlifts (115), and 10 overhead squats with a 25 pound weight. I Rxed the weight, but did knees to elbows. It took me about 17:00-on the slower side. I wasn’t going to really push my calf on the run! (And *knock on wood* it’s feeling good as new!) 

I made myself a little snack plate, plus the leftovers from that morning’s smoothie. 

Trader Joe’s spinach and kale bites-not bad but they shouldn’t be microwaved (not that they have microwave directions…) They heated super unevenly! But tasty other than that!

Plus crunchamame, peas, and half a mango. It was perfect!

Sadly, I did not get enough sleep last night. I had to get up early this morning for the kitten nursery, and I had to stay up to sign up for fall classes….and the system failed. Grrr. I can’t believe I’m already signing up for classes though! Where has the time gone? 

-Granted, I still have almost 2 months of summer….

Also, please tell me how much I’m going to hate myself this quarter-here’s the current schedule plan: Chem, Chem lab, Physics, Physics lab, Bio, a unit of labwork. 

Ughh not even one fun class in there….

And since I love you all, here are some pictures from the kitten nursery this morning; we got 5 new litters of really little kittens! I had to syringe-feed a litter and I came home covered in cat food….sacrifices people!I love this. 

After changing out of my cat food caked clothes, I made myself a fruit bowl topped with sunflower seed butter. 

And one last thing-how cool is this? At the lab I work at, I had to take pictures of printer cartridges to be returned because they were defective….3D printer cartridges! The “ink” that was leaking everywhere was wax and plastic. Crazy.

What was/is your favorite subject in school?