Hello, hello! I hope everyone is having a fantastic Monday thus far. I wanted to share my weekend adventures: The Monterey Beer Festival! This was my birthday gift from my sister, so Saturday my whole family drove down to Monterey to drink some beer!

I started my morning with a Luna bar, nectarine, and 8am spin class.

After getting my workout in, I had a bag of rice cakes before hitting the road!

It took us a little over 2 hours to get to Monterey, with a fair bit of traffic.

Naturally, we dove right in for a sample as soon as we got there.

^Figueroa Mountain’s lager. One of the best of the day!

And then it was time for food! My mom and I split a corn on the cob and a chicken taco platter.

Then, it was time for beer! This festival was crazy crowded, and a lot of the lines were SUPER long.

(I realize Monterey is spelled wrong but I can’t edit snapchat, whoops!)

^Black lager!

After spending a whole lot of time waiting, we decided to just go for the shorter lines and skip the bigger ones (or any with only IPA). There were all sorts of things; everything from IPA to lager to stout to cider to apricot wheat to ginger beer.

^Raspberry ginger beer

^Fav of the day: Dustbowl Vanilla Blonde Ale!

^Good lager, but even better because they had a pup!

It was a fun day! They had a live band, which was fun! I will say though that it was super crowded, and a lot of places ran out of beer, some within the first hour. But the weather was beautiful, and the beer was (mostly) flowing, so who am I to complain?

We basically closed the place at 4:30 (an hour before the technical end) and then checked into our Air BnB to nap (at least I did) before heading downtown for dinner.

I was super hungry by dinnertime thanks to most of my calorie consumption for the day being beer. I split a salad with my mom, and then had roasted chicken with roasted potatoes and green beans.

My dad ordered some ice cream for dessert, which we naturally stole bites of: chocolate, passionfruit, and maple bacon.

Sunday morning, we slept in and then my sister, her fiancé, and I went for a short run pre-brunch.

I think we were all more than ready for food by our 11am brunch reservation. I shared a warm goat cheese, beet, and mango salad.

And for my main course, I got an absolutely delicious creamy polenta, poached egg, and queso fresco dish.

Naturally we had to stop at one of the many fruit and veggie stands on the way home. Avocados, 10 for $1? Sign me up! (They were small, but still!)

Road trip snacks:

Pre-dinner snacks:

I wasn’t crazy hungry for dinner, so I just had a massive artichoke and a sweet potato stuffed with cheese.

Dessert was birthday cake Halo Top with a flax brownie.

After dinner, I had to run into work for half an hour to do a treatment on a kitty (I volunteered), and then after, we made toaster oven s’mores with gf graham cracker.

It was a fun weekend! And I cannot believe it, but this is my last week of work at the vet!

Happy 4th of July! I hope everyone is out having a blast, or enjoying some quiet time beforehand. I’m blogging in front of baseball, and wanted to share a day of eating from yesterday,  July 3rd!

Breakfast: maple blueberry bread and strawberries I picked up in Davis, plus a beautiful nectarine!

Since I didn’t run on Sunday, I wanted to fit in some miles yesterday. Since I had some time on my hands, I went to my favorite running trail.

I went at a bit of a speedier pace than my normal casual run, and my achilles felt actually amazing.

Post-run, I made a quick stop at home for Chloe and then took her for a walk.

I learned on this walk that Chloe does not appreciate being honked at by a goose. It was sort of hilarious though.

When I got home from our walk, I made a quick but delicious lunch. I tried a new salad combo that came out amazing! I used guacamole as my salad dressing, then spread a leftover turkey patty with creamy goat cheese, and topped everything with ketchup. Yum! Plus a couple of leftover roasted sweet potatoes.

After lunch, my family and I went to a movie, which I thought was a mixed bag. During the movie, I snacked on a bar.

That evening, I went to Crossfit and then raced home to shower before having dinner with some friends. My friend was ambitious and made mushroom risotto! I brought beer and heavy cream (the missing ingredient).

On the side we had bread, corn, and a beautiful salad with egg, avocado, corn, tomato, and goat cheese.

I enjoyed time with my friends, and with kitties and the pup.

And now I’m off to enjoy my day. Have a good one my friends!

I hope everyone had a fabulous weekend! Tomorrow is 4th of July, and that’s crazy to me because I feel like the summer has flown by so far! Today we’re going to do a little weekend recap and then go over the week’s workouts!

Friday I didn’t have work, but I had a lot of errands to run. I made a big smoothie with banana, cocoa, chocolate protein, and milk for breakfast, and then took Chloe for a little walk.

I had an early lunch at home of a salad with maple/miso/garlic salad dressing, grilled chicken, and soft goat cheese. I recently got soft and creamy goat cheese from trader joes, and I love it!

The first stop was to buy scrubs, which was more complicated than I was hoping because my favorite scrub top was discontinued. I had to try on a million pairs of scrubs! Next, I visited IKEA to look at bedroom furniture. My last several stops took me to a shopping center.

^iced peach tea

After getting everything I needed, I actually stopped in for a SoulCycle class since I was down right next to one. Another SoulCycle opened up closer to me, but I refuse to go to that location out of principle, because it is literally right next to my favorite locally owned studio. RIGHT next to.

The class was fun, but SoulCycle still is not something I would recommend to everyone (unlike normal cycling classes, which I suggest everyone try!)

After class, I met my parents for dinner at True Food Kitchen. I had heard of this place, and was excited to see one had opened up! We started with torched avocado and cucumber noodle salad.

And beer for me.

For my meal, I got the seasonal salad with chicken, which had roasted cauliflower, chickpeas, roast broccolini, asparagus, raisins, and manchego.

Also delicious was my mom’s spaghetti squash!

For dessert, we shared a few things, but I ate most of this flourless chocolate cake with caramel sauce and ice cream.

Saturday, I had work as per usual.

For lunch, I packed a goat cheese, chicken, and nectarine salad with a side of microwaved sweet potato dipped in ketchup. It was fun to mix up my carb source from my usual crackers!

My parents met me with Chloe downtown after work and we tried a wine bar that served small plates style food. I skipped the wine because I had to go back into work later that evening for a treatment, but I enjoyed my food! My mom and I split a lemon poppyseed salad with goat cheese, and my main plate was a delicious ratatouille.

Since dinner was on the lighter side, of course I had to big a big cup of froyo. I had chocolate and blueberry, and a tiny bit of cake batter, with chocolate sauce and chocolate covered raisins.

We ate our yogurt outside, and there were a couple of dogs out there. Chloe was sitting right next to this pretty golden and she honestly couldn’t have cared less!

After I got home from work round 2, I popped open a bottle of this dark beer and watched the replay of the baseball game from earlier that day.

Sunday morning, I was up BRIGHT and early. I actually made the drive to Sacramento to volunteer at a spay and neuter clinic for feral kitties with my future classmates! Every month, vet students go to a local shelter and help spay and neuter anywhere from 60-90 feral cats, which are then released. This helps keep the feral cat population from exponentially increasing. As an incoming first year with limited knowledge, I was a little nervous, but everyone was super nice and helpful, and I learned and practiced some new clinical skills. It was such a cool experience, and I had a blast!

^My beautiful stethoscope.

On the way home, I stopped for gas at the gas station near where I’m going to be living (soon!) because there is an amazing produce stand attached. The prices cannot be beat, and the produce is so fresh and beautiful! I got 6 ears of corn for $2, and peaches were 79 cents a pound.

I got all that for $11! It’s a TON of food too!

My two hour drive back flew by thanks to both my road trip playlist (made for my road trip to Chicago for playoff baseball last fall!) and a phone call with a  good friend from college! We’ve been trying to Skype for a couple of weeks now, so I figured, hey, I’m stuck here for 2 hours, might as well chat for a bit!

When I arrived home, my family did a beer flight from our final box of beer of the month club.

This was a good one! More summery than past shipments (no dark beer or stout). We had an IPA, a lager, and 2 red ales that were very different from each other. My favorite was the Gypsy Lager. I love a good lager int he summer!

For dinner, we had grilled burgers (mine was turkey served bunless), roasted broccoli, and roasted sweet potatoes. Of course with lots of ketchup.

For dessert, I had a piece of cranberry orange bread with chocolate chips form the freezer. I am slowly but surely getting through my freezer stash!

And now onto the workouts!

Monday:

Crossfit! We did sets of 5 lighter squats for a “deload,” but then the WOD was rough! It was 21-18-15-12-9-6-3 of thrusters at 65# and lateral over the bar burpees. This is basically Open workout 14.5/16.5, but lateral vs. bar facing, which in my opinion doesn’t really make much of a difference. From 2014 to 2016, I improved my time by over 4 minutes, so I was curious how this year would compare to last year. I believe I beat my time by 45 seconds, finishing in 18:39. Is that the difference between lateral vs. bar facing? I don’t know, but I’ll take it!

Tuesday:

I worked the closing shift, so I had time for morning yoga! Pre-yoga, I did a little speed work on the treadmill. I did a half mile warm up at 8:00 pace, and then did 5 rounds of 2 minutes at 7:00 pace, 1 minute walk. It felt good! Then, I did an hour long yoga class that ended in perfect time for me to go straight to work!

Wednesday:

Crossfit again. We did lighter presses, and then the benchmark WOD Grace. I did this in March in Hawaii, and again was curious to see how I’ve improved. I used 85# and did it in 4:59. My previous time was 6:08, so I was SUPER happy with that improvement! After dislocating my shoulder 2 years ago, and then breaking my foot last year, I never really got my Olympic lifting strength back since I was out for a while between the two injuries. I feel like I’m finally starting to get some of it back, which is probably why I have seen such a huge improvement just from March to now.

Thursday:

I did my own gym workout before work. I’m not willing to do 6am Crossfit on days I don’t start until 10:30,  or I’d never make it to closing! Plus, it’s good to have a day to work on what needs work!

Here’s what I did:

Squat program: 6-6-4 this week at 155#, 165#, 175#. It felt surprisingly good! One more week of this squat program!

3 rounds of this circuit:

6 each of single leg squats with 30# dumbbells

10 rdls with 30# dumbbells

12 speed skater jumps

10 squat jumps

10 push ups

Then I did this little conditioning number:

10 minutes, every minute on the minute of 5 burpees+5 push ups.

I finished with a 3 minute Blogilates ab video.

Friday:

Crossfit again. We did lighter deadlifts, and then this arm crusher that I had to scale every part of: 21-15-9 of handstand push ups, ring dips, and push ups. I had to scale this to strict press, box dips, and push ups on my knees. I was going to try to not scale the push ups, but my shoulders were absolutely shot by the time I reached that movement!

Saturday:

Rest

Sunday:

Rest