Speedwork Round 2

Date: February 5, 2015

Author: astottler

Hey guys! I haven’t done a “normal” post in a while, let’s let’s hop to it!

This morning, I started out with a track workout. I’m following a 3 week cycle for my track workouts: 10x400m, 5x1000m, 6x600m. Today was 10x400m, so the second time through the cycle. I have to say, it was night and day different from my first round! It may be that it was warmer because it’s going to rain here soon, but I just felt 1000x better and faster. Go figure!

After a long bike ride back (why do I live on the opposite side of campus?), I stopped at the dining hall for breakfast for my current usual-eggs with cream cheese, some type of fruit (today was mandarin oranges), and a pancake with butter.

While we’re at it, yesterday’s breakfast in the room was a good one too. Cottage cheese, berry compote, and sun butter.

Since I was done with class by lunchtime, I decided to head back to the dining hall and save one of my pre-made lunches for another time.

The flatbread was the star of the show.

Bleu cheese and pear, with a blueberry balsamic reduction. Um, what?? Seconds were necessary. Plus a coconut lemon macaroon bar.

I spent the afternoon running some errands and doing other work, before going to an evening spin class. I did a few minutes of rowing and abs beforehand since I was early. The spin class was pretty good. I miss my classes back home, but I really need to get back on the bike! I’m actually doing a Spinning workshop on Sunday. For Spinning certification, I need a certain number of continuing education units every 2 years, and this workshop counts towards those. I’m excited-I’ll be sure to recap what I learn!

No picture of dinner today because I’m lame, so here’s yesterday’s.

Chicken caesar salad, roasted carrots, quinoa, and a shepard’s pie. I’ve never had shepard’s pie before and wasn’t a big fan. Plus it said vegetarian, and I didn’t trust that and couldn’t tell what meat might have been in it. So that’s that! I hope everyone’s week is going well!

Any plans for the weekend?

I’m also going on a field trip, which should be cool!

I Drowned My iPod…Again…

Date: January 15, 2015

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

I hope you enjoyed yesterday’s little flashback! My mom texted me saying it really showed how tough things were for me then…my gosh yes. I get tired just reading that post! That was also about a month before my body eventually protested and I got super sick with mono.

I really do wish I did more descriptive type of posts though instead of random food dump! I think part of the reason I’m more reticent now is that I don’t psychoanalyze everything that I eat. My posts are therefore more sane.I swear, each year I get more sane. Or something. I was reading some posts from last spring-I was probably the most psycho then. And I ate so much! Mono really messed up my system and I had some crazy eating habits for a while…So anyways. My Thursday.

I have 9am class Tues/Thurs so I woke up nice and early to hit the track for a speed workout. It was really cold-I biked to the track and by the time I got there, my fingers were screaming. I’m such a California wimp. I was looking up weather in Minnesota-it said “feels like -32.” That is literally unfathomable to me. That’s basically absolute zero, right..? It’s so cold molecules have no energy…life is not sustainable…ok maybe not but that’s rough!

Anyways, I arrived at the track to find my iPod dripping wet and completely freaking out. Merp. I have a camelbak water bottle. I LOVE it, but when it gets a little old, it starts leaking pretty badly from the top. Yeah. I wasn’t 100% sure that was the problem initially because my iPod was acting like it was a tech issue, but by the afternoon I could the little water damage indicator was showing. I have a 6th generation nano-it’s perfect for exercise because it’s small and has a build in clip-but I don’t think I’m going to try and replace it with the same model. This is my 4th that I’ve killed-they told me this model was susceptible to water damage more than some others. I lost my first 2 to water damage due to sweat during exercise when I was doing my indoor rowing workouts for crew. And then this past summer I dropped it and the power button jammed. I think it may be time to move on!

The workout went pretty well-8x400m on the track. I wore a watch and tried to keep my pace at 8:00 which was harder than expected, although I’m going to partially blame the temperature. Either way, I have a lot of work to do before my race!

Post workout, I decided to stop in the dining hall for breakfast because I have very little food (as will be evidenced later).

I also had coffee. I have whole milk in my room, and instant coffee, which is a)surprisingly good (it’s Starbucks) and b)surprisingly effective. Better than dining hall coffee! I only needed a little boost, so I put half a packet into a cup of hot milk. Perfect!

I had initially planned on packing a lunch, but since I knew I’d miss dinner I decided to have something a little hardier at the dining hall.

Really delicious bleu cheese and pear flatbread. And then a Napa cabbage salad with miso dressing, curry roasted butternut squash, fried rice, and teriyaki salmon. It was a good one today, and I’m glad I made the decision to go to the dining hall!

I also had dessert-a small coconut lemon square and a couple of cubes of pound cake.

I thought about going back for another one, but after waiting a few minutes for things to settle, I decided not to get too crazy before teaching spin in the evening.

One thing about reading old posts? I remembered that naps are pretty cool. So I took one. I have this weird habit of waking up from naps in a complete daze. I think I dreamt my alarm went off…and then it did? Or maybe I fell back asleep while it was going off, only to wake up again immediately? I don’t know.

I also have a weird habit of waking up from naps and shoving food in my face. I can’t explain this one. I area a few pieces of dark chocolate-the last of the Christmas chocolate that I saved. With one notable exception:

I got these salted caramels from my spin teacher. Instead of going too crazy post-holidays and trying to cut out all sugar, I plan on having one of these every evening. It’s not the only dessert I’ll have, but knowing it will be there later keeps me from overindulging too much. I think when I run out I’m going to fill the box with something else and do the same thing!

Later in the afternoon, I left for spin. I leave pretty early to beat rush hour traffic, and then do Physiology reading while I wait. While spin is kind of a long drive away, I really cherish this time. My car is a pretty fun car to drive (when it decides to cooperate and not give me engine problems), I can listen to music, of course teach spin, but also spend some quiet forced time with my textbook. Physiology is my favorite. I want to know everything about how every system in the body works, down to the molecular level, so I really don’t mind the fact that my textbook is 1200 pages long. It’s just so cool!

Teaching the class went well! I did a different style class then I normally do, just in that I did some different type of moves, like doing a minute long sprint split between standing and seated. It was my biggest class yet though!

When I got back, I wasn’t super hungry but knew I needed to refuel with my paltry supply of dorm room food. I tried to hit all the food groups, focusing on muscle recovery!

Fats-whole milk plus some sunflower seed butter (I have butterscotch, and it’s delicious!)

Vegetables- carrots in the microwave, tossed with olive oil, salt, pepper, and Greek seasoning

Protein- milk

Carbs-hot chocolate mix

Let’s just go with it, ok? I wanted to try some Starbucks caramel hot chocolate mix I had. Since chocolate milk is perfect for post-workout, I figured this was basically the same thing! I was pleasantly surprised-this was really good! I was expecting it to be super sweet but that was not the case.

While it may not have been the grandest of dinners, it seemed to do the job!

Also-fun fact, I’m going to Disneyland tomorrow with my dorm! I haven’t been since 8th grade so it should be fun!

How have your eating habits changed in the last 2 years? How has your mindset changed?

Spin Kills My Pants

Date: December 21, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

I hope everyone is having a great weekend! Have you all finished your holiday shopping? I think I’m mostly done!

Today’s post will be quick-a little food, a little fitness, a little fun. Speaking of fun-today is the last day to enter my giveaway!

Workouts:

Spin. Friday morning EARLY I went to a spin class! My legs were still a bit burned out from the night before, so I didn’t go too crazy with the resistance!

Saturday-nothing.

Sunday morning-more spin with one of my favorite instructors back home! The bad news? My pants busted open in the middle of class right on the inside of my leg…I’ve had major issues with my favorite workout pants a lot-they keep busting open after being stitched up-but I can’t find them in stores anymore so I keep trying. HOWEVER these were not said workout pants-these were some of my newest ones, so this was totally unexpected! Spin kills my workout pants. This is not the first time this has happened in a spin class! Meh.

Food+Fun

After Friday morning’s workout, I refueled with an eggnog protein shake. I remembered making one last year, so I looked up the post and used the same ingredients! The perks of having a blog.

It’s green because I figured I wouldn’t get many greens later in the day! I used about a quarter cup of light eggnog, and then eyeballed vanilla protein powder, frozen banana, milk, spinach, cinnamon, nutmeg, and ice.

It was pretty good but got old by the end-I think I like my chocolate protein powder way more than the vanilla.

Friday post breakfast and work, I shadowed at what I was thinking I wanted to be my future profession and this affirmed for me what I do want to be, which is good!

Lunch was at a little French cafe. I got a quiche, and my family shared truffle oil fries-SO good!

Then, I met up with my high school friends at their college across the bay for a big reunion!

We went to Cheeseboard, a well known and gourmet pizza place in downtown Berkeley. They make one pizza a day, and today’s was margarita!

We also stopped for gelato-half chocolate, half dulce de leche. So good!

We had a fun night! The next morning called for coffee and pancakes. Somehow we actually got to the breakfast place before it opened?

That’s all the food I have pictures of. I went to my sister’s holiday party last night and she had some pretty gourmet food, but no pictures were taken. She went all out-latkes, bruscetta, baked brie, stuffed mushrooms, eggnog cupcakes, and chocolate mint cupcakes with real mint.

I need to go now-have a great day!

#tbt My First Spin Class

Date: December 18, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Fellow spinners-do you remember your first spin class? I was thinking about this today as I was trying to convince my mom to come to a spin class (it’s not going to happen). It was the summer after my sophomore year in high school and I had just gotten my first gym membership at the same gym my friend went to. I was always intimidated by spin classes-they looked so crazy and intense! But one morning my friend convinced me to go with her. I remember sort of struggling to figure out how to set up the bike, and not really knowing how to use the resistance knob. But mostly I remember how much sitting in that bike seat for an hour hurt! I remember sitting down talking to my friend outside after class and just being in so much pain from the seat! Thankfully that problem went away quickly with more classes! Now I know though that the sore butt thing gets worse if you don’t have enough resistance and are bouncing a lot in the saddle. Another learning curve is figuring out how to use resistance. It took me a while to realize I need to adjust the resistance at the beginning of the class-at first, if the person on the bike before me left a lot of resistance on, I would leave it on and just start super heavy!

Food+Fitness

Breakfast:

I’ve had nearly the same breakfast every day of break-sunbutter on toast plus fruit of some sort. We’re sort of overloaded with fruit right now! I still have persimmons from my roommate, plus we got shipments of both pears and oranges! For some reason, I always want sun butter on toast when I come home, but I NEVER have it at school!

A little while after breakfast, I went for a 6 mile run around my neighborhood. Here’s the thing. I live on a hill. There are no flat runs around here; it’s just a question of which hill I want to run up! This run was definitely hard. The last mile included a STEEP climb! And the last hill run I’ve done was….my SF race in September. Whoops. So something to work on!

I refueled with leftover chicken and roasted cauliflower, and then whipped up some more holiday cookies.

I made my healthy polka dot cookies again, but instead of using mint chips, I split the dough into 2 parts and added chocolate chips with a mint center to one part, and chocolate chips filled with caramel (these things are crazy good!) to the other half. It was a nice change!

It’s really nice to have some healthy holiday cookies around for when the sweet tooth strikes!

This evening, I taught another spin class! It was a great class-everyone had great energy and it was a lot of fun! I did run into an….interesting…problem in the middle of class. The gym I teach at is a sort of warehouse with a big open garage door type thing. Apparently there were some people in the park right next to the gym smoking an…inebriating substance…and the smell was pretty strong in the gym. I was going to close the big door, but before I could a lady got off her bike and took care of them! So that was a new experience to have while teaching a class!

I definitely felt the morning’s run while I was teaching though! I haven”t done double days in a while so I’m not quite in that kind of shape I guess! On the first hill, I was a little overly ambitious with my resistance and it was killer! I didn’t want to obviously drop my resistance while encouraging people to keep going, so I was pretty out of breath for that part of the hill! Lesson learned.

After class, I was more than ready to dive into dinner. We made my Guacamole salad with some chips and salsa, plus a few cookies for dessert!

Me legs are so shot now though! You know that feeling after a really hard workout where your quads just ache? Yeah…

Have you ever taken spin? How was your first class?

On the Ninth Day of Christmas My True Love Gave to Me…

Date: December 7, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

9 best moments from the past year.

(I apologize that this post is late to go up!)

1. The Giant’s winning the world series. No explanation necessary.

2. Going to a Giant’s game in DC. It was so fun to see a new ballpark, and I felt so much SF pride!

3. A random trip to the pumpkin patch. My friends and I made a spur of the moment decision to visit a nearby pumpkin patch and it was awesome because there were SO MANY.

4. Visiting my friends from high school over the summer right before I went back to school. It had been SO long and it was just like old times!

5. The Giant’s parade. This was amazing, despite sitting in the rain for 5+ hours being absolutely drenched. So worth braving the elements! There was so much Giant’s love and it was so cool to see all the players.

6. Our Halloween party. This was the best because I’m obsessed with Halloween, and it was an opportunity to see all of my favorite people at once. And yes, this was the same day as the Giant’s parade, so it was a pretty freaking great day!

7. Doing the Crossfit competition. I had never done a competition before, so that was a lot of fun. Plus, it was for such a great and meaningful cause.

8. Teaching my second real spin class. I say the second and not the first because I was pretty frazzled for the first one. By the second one, I finally found my groove and it was amazing! I left with such a high!

9. Visiting the monuments at night. This was just amazing-they were stunning.