The Easy 5 Miler that Turned into a Tempo Run

Date: July 13, 2014

Author: astottler

So I did end up running this morning. And run, I did. I wore compression socks all day Saturday and Saturday night, so my calves were much better in the morning. I decided to still run in the socks though, just in case!

After a leisurely breakfast and morning, I headed out around 10:30am for an easy, slow paced 5 miles. Or so I thought.

About a mile in, I happened to run into some people from the Run Club I’ve been going to. I ended up joining them. They are MUCH faster than I am-and I’m especially slow for me right now since speed work was long in the past!

The scenery was much better than my planned route though.

And I finally saw the Jefferson Memorial!

Talk about a death of a run though. I ran with them for a bit over 2 miles. We were going at about an 8:40 pace. I have never been so grateful for stop lights! And I’m sure heat wasn’t helping matters!

I took this picture when I broke off from them as proof I was actually running kind of fast (for me).

Granted, my 5k time is much faster than that, but that is a totally different setting and training level! My legs were dead heading back.

But the views weren’t bad.

It’s weird to see the monuments when it is actually light out and crowded! Not so many people there at 6am!

I also found ducklings in the reflecting pool. So cute.

That was definitely not the boring, easy 5 miler I had been picturing, but that should make me faster in the long run (no pun intended). (Well, sort of intended.)

I refueled with a Dunkin Donut breakfast sandwich (my stomach was all weird but I needed food, so something bland) and a DECAF iced coffee. I’m not a fan of Dunkin coffee…it tastes too sour, or fruity or something.

As far as the rest of the day goes, it was low key. Did you guys watch the World Cup game? I was rooting for Germany. For no particularly good reason. People from my University organized a meet up to watch the game, so I watched it there. It was super loud and crowded though. And not going to lie-not the most exciting game, at least until overtime!

For dinner, I made a repeat of last week, but I totally messed it up. I screwed up cooking the quinoa-it ended up drying out a bit, so I added water to the whole thing, and it came out ok, but the texture wasn’t quite as good as last week. Still tasted good though!

Plus leftover brussels sprouts on the side.

Overall, I’d say it was a pretty successful day, although I didn’t do that much! I’m glad I got to finally visit the Jefferson Memorial though!

What did you do this weekend? Who were you rooting for?

WIAW-“If She’s Laughing it Can’t Be Good”

Date: February 4, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hey guys! Happy Wednesday! I’m actually especially happy this Wednesday because by some miracle, I don’t have the 2 problem sets I normally have this week, OR a lab report. Which means my week basically ended after today’s midterm. In terms of the midterm-it didn’t make me physically ill, so I’ll take that as at least a decent sign! And as always, I’m linking up for What I Ate Wednesday!

Thanks to Jenn for hosting this weekly party!

Guys. I just want to say, I’m doing something crazy right now. Laundry. Go me! I had to push it until midterms were over, so now I have no excuses. And no underwear. Needless to say, it’s time! I’m just doing a single load though because that’s all I can force myself to fold in one night. Who needs darks, am I right??

But let’s talk about some food. And fitness.

Yesterday morning I did a track workout-10x400m repeats. Nothing crazy. I may have eaten a bit too much the day before and felt kind of sick during them, so I didn’t push them like crazy.

Breakfast was amazing, and a new favorite. Full fat, super high quality Greek yogurt, sunflower seed butter, and berry compote (frozen berries reduced down on the stove). Amazing. Just like PB&J!

I’m going to run through the food from the last couple of days in no particular order-I had some snack days, and not everything was captured or necessarily a full meal!

Brussels sprouts with butter and parmesan, and an apple. Yeah, doing tupperware dishes is on my post-midterm to-do list as well…

Cheese and crackers, and a blood orange. We got fancy cheese at our marathon Whole Foods expedition, and they certainly have not disappointed. These two are manchego and goat gouda. And crackers never tasted so good-for the last 2 weeks, the only snacks I had very sweet things, like fruit, yogurt, and nut butter!

More brussels, more parmesan. Eaten cold. In retrospect, they probably would have been better hot…

But the microwave was in use-I’ve been dying to try making oat pancakes for the longest time! And all I have is a microwave…

It’s kind of hard to evaluate how they turned out. They might have been really awesome on a griddle. Or with the oats actually ground up. The flavor was fine-lots of vanilla and slightly sweet! Oooo I bet they would have been awesome in a waffle maker…

In the microwave, they just didn’t quite solidify. The recipe was half a cup of extra thick rolled oats, half a cup of unsweetened apple sauce, an egg, vanilla, and a pinch of baking powder. I’ll have to try these again at home sometime! (Or sneak my batter into the dining hall…hmm).

I roasted some blueberries in the microwave for topping, plus some whipped butter.

Because sometimes you just want pancakes for dinner! I also bet these would have been even better with maple syrup-the butter kind of got to me for some reason! Mmmm or nut butter…moral of the story-microwave pancakes are hard to do!

Last night, I ended up going to the gym pretty late-as in, 10:30pm. I did an hour long spin workout-instead of a set playlist, I plugged in an hour long race playlist and just rode whatever felt right. As a spinner, I think these types of rides are especially important-figuring out what works with what, and just enjoying riding on my own an kicking my own butt. The only late night workouts I’ve done have been spin, and I actually really like it-I feel like I get extra adrenaline!

This morning, I was up bright and early to train quidditch. I always forget how much I enjoy it! And torturing them. We did a new conditioning today-and when I was explaining it, someone remarked “If she’s this happy, this can’t be good!” It was great-we really took it to the next level today with a tabata of thrusters and push ups. It’s amazing how fast these exercises get difficult when doing tabatas! My sister’s boyfriend was evening failing on the push ups by the end-and he regularly does push ups with her sitting on his back! Major success in my book 🙂 I think I’m going to do their leg workout myself this weekend. I haven’t actually done the full sequence, and I’m craving more intense workouts right now.

This pretty much sums up my morning-coffee and chemistry.

Lots of yogurt. Lots of sunflower seed butter. Lots of berries. Perfection.

Semi-homemade guacamole with carrots and the following crackers. For the guac, I just mashed an avocado with some fresh salsa.

Dinner after Crossfit tonight was a different one. We finally put some of our Whole Foods goods to use.

Roasted carrots.

And the crowning achievement-sushi bowls! My roommate suggested we try making sushi, and I suggested we just be lazy and throw it all into a bowl.

We threw some short grain brown rice in the rice cooker, and then mixed it with some rice vinegar for that sushi rice flavor. Plus some Nori (seaweed), toasted sesame seeds, steamed kale, avocado, cabbage, coconut amines, and tuna. The tuna was really good-we got some in a jar marinated with herbs and olive oil. I’m no usually a tuna person (I’ve lived with cats way too long to not associate it with cat food) but this was flavorful in all the right ways! Major win in my books! Plus-leftovers!

Also-I’m starting to really fall in love with running. Which is fabulous. My race was great. Aside from the result, it actually was fairly enjoyable. I didn’t feel like I was going to throw up until the last .5 miles, which was a huge improvement from my previous 5k where I felt really sick pretty much as soon as I took off…

But the biggest reason? I’m starting to feel fast again. I’m starting to feel like myself again. I’m freaking excited for tomorrow morning’s tempo run. I’m doing hill sprints later in the afternoon-can’t wait for those. I want to do sprints. I want to be fast.

These last few months of running (aka my whole “official” running career) have been sort of tough-I’ve improved so much, and definitely done distance I never imagined before, but the few extra pounds from my freshman year put a HUGE dent on my speed. Plus, my feet kind of hated me. To be honest, I credit my project for helping me find my love of running again-due to some miracle, my feet are cooperating and I cannot wait for my next long run. And to be honest, losing some weight is definitely helping. Heck, maybe that’s even why my feet are improving. But I have the desire to run-as an athlete, as a racer. I also think that with these continued diet changes, I could make leaps and bounds with my speed, which is exciting. Post-project, I’m not really sure what is going to happen. But for now, I’m going to roll with it.

(I really like this picture but I couldn’t come up with an excuse to include it…so here?)

What is your favorite pancake topping?

Salsa-ing Around All Day

Date: January 13, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hey guys! WHEW. I swear this is the first free minute I’ve had all day-I’ve been running around like crazy since 7am!

The morning began by teaching weight lifting to quidditch. The only bad thing was that right now we have 2 days they can come, and only 3 people showed up today, which means tomorrow may be kinda crazy. The focus today was upper body and core-the main lift was push presses. I doubt they’ll be as sore as last week! I also taught them forrest rowing form for the conditioning portion of the workout.

After that, I rushed out to squeeze in a run. Fun fact-I’ve never actually done a tempo run before! It’s been on the schedule but it just never happened. I was planning on a 4 mile loop, with 2 miles at 8:00 in the middle. However, things don’t always go as planned. My legs felt heavy at the start, and when I tried to speed it up after the first mile, it just wasn’t happening. I ended up up waiting about .8 miles more when it was completely flat/slightly downhill (instead of slightly uphill) and just do a mile of tempo, since it is my first tempo run, after all. I was able to hold pace and felt pretty good! Things don’t always go as planned, but we have to adjust! My pace was so much better on the part after the tempo run though-interesting. While my heels felt pretty good, the ball of my foot went numb and hurt and it kind of felt like I had bricks attached to my feet….

By the time I got back, I had zero time. Breakfast was prepared the night before-yay for overnight oats!

I made them with raspberry goat milk yogurt-it’s interesting, I could really taste the goat-y-ness. (In a good way-it had that creamy tang of goat cheese.)

And then rushed to class. With zero time-nothing like being late to class to motivate you to bike insanely fast!

Straight after class, I ate my packed lunch and got some studying in.

Yay for leftovers! Leftover egg salad, leftover cucumbers and whipped cream cheese. Our mayonnaise that we made the egg salad with is actually super fancy-it’s “spooning” mayonnaise. I’m pretty sure someone would have to pay me a whole lot of money to convince me to eat mayonnaise with a spoon-but we had to get it because my roommate is allergic to canola oil, and the non-canola oil options were limited.

I also thawed out some more mashed sweet potatoes, and added them at lunchtime.

Then it was off to class-and immediately after class I had to rush to my home gym to do one last spin workout on their bikes-the bikes at school are a little weird and I wanted to practice my playlist at least once on them before I cancel my gym membership. If you’re keeping count, that’s 4 times I’ve practiced this same playlist in the last week. 4 hours of spin, plus biking a ton (an especially large amount thanks to a broken car), after not biking around for a few weeks means my rear end is pretty much shot.

And I have to say, while I didn’t hate it the last time, I definitely liked the playlist more the first time!

After Spin, my car’s engine sounded weird and the check engine light came back on-so it looks like I’m going to be without a car for the second time in as many weeks!

Back in my room, I threw together a super fast dinner from the fridge-more leftover egg salad, plus tomato soup with tons of cheddar.

Plus a Cocoa Coconut bar for dessert(/protein?).

Everything was consumed super fast-then I had to tune my violin. It was remarkably not terrible after sitting in a closet for 3 years! But I wanted the embarrassment of how out of tune it was to be in the safety of my dorm room, not in front of a whole bunch of musicians.

Mariachi was super fun! I’m definitely rusty on the violin, but it wasn’t terrible. It was kind of frustrating because the difficulty of the songs I used to play was much higher than this music, yet my fingers/brain connection is just not there yet! The whole class is conducted in Spanish-another thing it’s been a couple of years since I’ve done! While I didn’t understand everything, I understood enough, and I’m really excited to be speaking it again.

And that brings us to now-the few minutes I have before going to my sorority meeting. While it was a packed day, it was also a good one. And while I could definitely use more sleep, I’m managing.

One thing there was a question about, which I totally forgot to mention-my project will begin next Monday. I want to to plan/prepare/shop. And I need to look into buying blood glucose tests, and if that’s reasonable, or how much I can actually tell from that.

Have a great week everybody!

Crazy days-love them or hate them?