Happy weekend! Only 2 weeks of class until Thanksgiving. Hallelujah. 

Friday morning I did a 30 minute fartlek run. It was reasonably hard but not impossible-I could probably push harder in the future. 

Friday was really awesome for two reasons-Bio ended 45 minutes early, and my 4 hour Chem lab ended 2.5 hours early.

Bio lab ending early gave me an opportunity to do one thing. This.

There’s a cafe I like to sit at and do homework, and i have seen this pumpkin bread there since the beginning of October! However, at the main lunch hours when I’m there, the lines are INSANE so I never get anything. Well, 45 minutes early did the trick. And this. Was. Awesome. I think this pretty much does it for my fall foods bucket list. I’m actually pretty tired of pumpkin!

My chem lab consisted of smelling lots of chemicals. Kind of weird. But short-I’ll take it. If you want to know how to make artificial grape scent, I can hook you up!

Friday evening was Crossfit. We did a lot of heavy deadlifts. What is sad was that my abs may have been my limiting factor. My core is more sore than my hamstrings today! I’ve clearly been neglecting that core work! The WOD was a giant tabata of 4 exercises- thrusters, sit ups, push ups, and double unders. A few notes-on the push ups, my arms turned to jello FAST. I couldn’t figure out why, and then realized it was because I did 80 in 4 minutes. Yeah, that’ll do it! Note 2: double unders are SO much harder with jello arms! I couldn’t get the rope around fast enough! I ended up whipping my hands really hard a few times, and bruised a knuckle. Yes, jumping rope. 

That evening I had to go to Jewish Special Dinner (I’m not actually Jewish). My sorority is historically Jewish, so we put in on with the Jewish frat. It’s basically just dinner. I actually got semi-dressed up.

The food was vaguely Greek. It was pitch dark when we were eating-I partly wanted to picture to have some idea later of what the heck everything was!

Apparently the guys cooking it didn’t want the people to actually be able to see the food? My friend who was involved in some of the cooking told me afterwards that some of it was definitely suspect. The couscous was not supposed to look like mashed potatoes, and some of the falafel was really awful. My table got served first, so I guess I got the good batch because everything seemed fine to me!

I ended up leaving with a few friends to go downtown and get Cream. Cream is an amazing ice cream sandwich shop where you can have pretty much any combination of ice cream and cookie, plus the cookies are served hot.

I went with cookie dough ice cream, a chocolate chip cookie, and a double chocolate chip cookie. It was good, but I think I would have preferred just getting a warm cookie. I think I’ve developed a dislike of ice cream. Craziness. 

I was also on photostalking photographer duty for my friend and her new boyfriend. She wanted me to subtly take cute pictures of the two of them. For the record, these two were the ones I was talking about when I played wingman a while ago. Wingman-ing=success. 

Last night I had the genius idea to bike to the dinner and then leave it there, since it was close to the new gym, so I’d have to run to the gym the next morning and get a workout in before I would be able to go anywhere. Well, that backfired. Somewhere on the run to the gym, my keychain ejected my bike key, so my bike and I were stuck on the opposite side of campus…and I couldn’t get it! Before hunting for the key, I got a good workout in. Wednesday’s Crossfit workout seemed like such a good one, but I couldn’t make it in that day so I made it up today. By the way, I’m loving the new gym. It opens an hour earlier on weekends, and it’s SO much less crowded. All the bars were empty! That’s unheard of! 

The workout was 10 minutes of 3 squats every minute at 80% of my one rep max. These were rough. A lot rougher than I was expecting. Hellooo jello legs. Then, 5 sets of 3 push presses at 75% one rep max, and good mornings. The WOD was 100 hollow rocks (a core strength focused exercise). I followed that with 8 minutes on the erg. I’m trying to log more time on the erg in preparation for my 5k since I felt like it really helped me last year with my race. I’m not sure how I kept my pace for those 8 minutes though-on the looong walk back my legs were complete jello. And I must have looked ridiculous weaving around and staring at the ground the entire way back, looking for my lost key. I immediately got a new key chain-the old one was kind of broken, hence the key ejection-and symbolically tossed my old key chain. I’m just so grateful it was my bike key, not my room key or lab key-my roommate is gone all weekend since she has bronchitis. 

I then went on some errands-I need new running shoes so I hit up the running store. I brought my favorite old shoes that I’ve had many pairs of, as well as my most recent pair. It turns out they were the same model! No wonder I liked them!

I just went with the tried and true, although they had to be ordered. I’m excited about the new color though! Not that I disliked my old ones, but they weren’t exactly me.

I then went to Peet’s with the intentions of spending the day doing work. I ordered a cappuccino and a blueberry banana muffin.

However, after spending quite a few minutes looking up running workouts on my phone and enjoying my refreshments, I realized that the environment probably wasn’t the most conducive to me doing work. At least that kind of work. 

I had dinner with my family tonight to celebrate my dad’s birthday!

The big 5-0. Happy birthday to my dad!

And here was dinner:

I started with a basic half salad.

And chose teriyaki tofu stir fry as my entree. Yum!

We then headed back to my sister’s apartment for delicious German chocolate cake. I tried to avoid the nuts as much as possible, but between the cake and the few nuts in my salad, I’m pretty sure my skin is not going to be happy.

And since this post has been pretty devoid of pictures, let’s look at some other eats from the past couple of days.

Chicken sausage and figs. That’s a totally normal snack, right?

Zucchini bread.

Microwave nachos and cold chili for dipping purposes.

A new granola bar with sunflower seeds/butter. It was pretty good. It’s actually engineered to have a perfect carb to protein ration for post-workout, and all the ingredients are good. 

What may be my last pumpkin of the season. I’m actually pretty sick of it at this point! I made a mini mug cake with pumpkin, egg, almond milk, spices, coconut sugar, and some pumpkin butter. Delicious! I topped it with coconut cream. I’ve never had coconut cream before, and to be honest, it was a little much for me. It would probably be more my taste if it was thinned out a little bit. But not a bad combo. 

Tomorrow, my training schedule calls for a “long run.” It’s funny, the run it prescribes is 2 hours less than last weekend’s run (16 miles). It calls for 60 minutes, but I’ll probably end up doing 8 miles instead because the distance and route just work out better that way. And, I’ll stay in longer distance shape for my 10 turkey trot. 

In terms of workouts and eating, I feel kind of ready for a change. I need a new challenge. I need results. I desperately want to get faster, and I feel like my body is starting to get complacent with my workouts-Crossfit is no longer quite as torturous, and I’m looking to ramp things up. I’m not really sure how to do that though! I think I’ll try to make an awesome meal plan, and work some plyometrics and sprints into my workout routine. I desperately need to do a timed mile, but that’s easier said than done because I want to do it in the afternoon when I’m looser, and the track is closed for track practice all afternoon. Plus, I need to actually be fresh for it! Such a dilemma. 

Also-I did finally get my bike back. Luckily, I had a spare key at home which my parents brought me at dinner! Phew!

What’s the hardest workout you’ve ever done? Please share!