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Vet Disaster Response/Apple Picking (Out)/Weights

It’s been a hot minute, hasn’t it? I want to catch up! I just finished my first block of vet school (essentially a class), and now I’m cuddling under a blanket with a sleepy kitty. I’m going to have another post up feature food as of late, but for now I wanted to discuss some of my life happenings lately.

In terms of the wildfires, thankfully they seem to be mostly contained at this point. The vet school has launched a pretty big response, so I’ve been taking several shifts a week to help care for some of the animals coming in. I also signed up to become certified in disaster response. This stuff is so important. I want to help, but you never know what to expect until these things happen, hence why I want to get trained specifically to respond.

In terms of workouts lately, I’ve mostly been running and doing Crossfit, and squeezing in a day of weights on my own every week to maintain basic strength. I’ve also been working on higher box jumps, which is fun! The boxes at the gym at padded, which is why I feel comfortable enough doing that. I’m maintaining my squat program, and also doing the same sequence with deadlifts. The disadvantage of the gym at school is it’s a quite small gym for like 25,000 people, so there’s usually a line for the squat racks, so I have to be smart about when I go, and still allow a minimum of 10 minutes of waiting. Boo. Here are my weight workouts from the last 2 weeks. I’m off-setting the squats and deadlifts by a week in terms of number/percentages (so my heaviest days will be different for squats vs. deadlifts).

Week 1:

Not on the squat program yet, but working on building volume. Day 1 of deadlifts.

4×3 back squats with 3s pause at the bottom

8 minutes of 2 backsquats every 30 seconds (155#)

12-12-10 deadlifts at 145-155-165

4 rounds of single leg rdls and 20 heel raises (to help with plantar fasciitis)

3×6 box jumps

 

Week 2:

Going an extra rep on the squats, and finishing the last week heavier than last time through the program.

Back squats: 11-11-9 at 135-145-155

Deadlifts 10-10-8 at 155-165-175

4×6 boy jumps (I worked up to maybe 28ish inches? It felt high!)

Half of an ab video

I think I bruised my tail bone a little bit a while ago (not really sure how), so I haven’t done much ab work lately, and I didn’t want to push it with that.

And now onto the fun stuff! I went to Apple Hill yesterday. It’s east of here, and it’s a little town that goes crazy with apples this time of year. There are a bunch of farms that sell apples and every imaginable apple product. We were hoping to pick apples, but apparently there weren’t too many places that let you do that, and they were already picked out for the season. Darn!

That didn’t mean I couldn’t get ALL THE APPLE PRODUCTS though. Plus, it was festive and so pretty up there!

Even better, my friend brought her adorable puppy!

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The first thing we did was get some apple goodies. I got an amazing caramel apple!

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There were a bunch of vendors selling various crafts and food products. I went home with some blackberry honey from that place, and some apple cinnamon BBQ sauce, apple salsa, and unsweetened apple butter from the next stop.

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Christmas trees growing nearby!

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I brought home a big bag of beautiful pink ladies!

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Necessary apple cider donut!

Overall, it was a fun day but not quite what we were hoping for! It was super crowded, so in the future I would go earlier in the year!

I’m excited to do EVERYTHING with these apples this week!

Back into Back to Back Running

Happy midway-through-the-week! How are you all doing? I’m not doing so great. I feel like someone lunched me in the stomach after that last baseball game….Let’s hope we can rally for game 7! The worst part is I have a midterm right through the end of the game…I’m going to be a mess.

There’s a topic I’m thinking about writing, but that’s for another day. I thought I’d go over some workouts as of late! Let’s take it back about a week, shall we?

Wednesday: 5 mile run. Supposed to be 6 but I was running late! Whoops.

Thursday: 45 minute Soul Cycle class. It kills me that I have no way of going to spin regularly. Once the World Series is over, I should be able to fit more spinning in, at least on my own.

Friday: Track workout! It has been months and months and months since my last one. I started out with my favorite-10x400m. I didn’t kill myself on the pace or anything, but I have a lot of work to do! I followed that up with 200 sit ups because I never do abs. Whoops.

Saturday: Rest!

Sunday: 6 mile run. Longest run post-injury-induced running break! It was pretty uneventful, but my pace was a little bit better! I’m loving this fall weather too. I want to make 6 miles my standard distance for now. I found a perfect turnaround point, so I don’t have to always run with my watch, which is more relaxing.

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Monday: 4 mile run. Nothing crazy, just the basic campus loop. This was a big deal though because this is the first time I’ve done back to back runs. It only worked because I took really good care of my feet on Sunday-ice and Advil, plus my night braces! Those things help so much!

Also-Crossfit. We worked on push press and pull ups for the strength portion. The WOD was a 20 minute AMRAP of the follow:

400m run (I wore my running shoes instead of Crossfit shoes and my feet thanked me)

20 wall balls

10 burpees

I finished 4 rounds plus a run, and my hips are feeling it today! One thing I will say though-as much as I hate burpees, all the workouts we’ve done lately have been…50 burpees. Straight. So 10 feels like a breeze!

Tuesday: Morning Crossfit. I love the morning classes but with the cold weather rapidly approaching, my morning days are numbered. I’m not about lifting weights in 29 degrees. Ugh.

For strength, we did power cleans. We did sets of 2, every minute on the minute for 10 minutes, and added 5# every minute. I started at 80 with the goal of working up to 120….yeah there’s definitely something wrong with my math there! I ended up failing fantastically on the second rep at 125# and totally wiping out. Fun fact-if you fall over backwards on your butt on an Olympic lifting platform with enough force, you slide pretty far. I felt ridiculous, but I’m pretty sure no one saw me totally fall.

The WOD was much less eventful!

5 rds:

350 m row(yeah, weird number)

6 thrusters

8 hang power cleans

10 burpees

I ended up using 75#. I tried to use 65, but was promptly told to add weight. Whoops.

And that just about wraps it up! Have a great Wednesday!