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FDOE/ Easter 2018

I hope everyone had a fantastic Easter! I’m going to do a quick recap of mine, continuing with the full day of eating theme.

I started my morning with a blueberry flapjacked muffin and a mango.

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I spent the morning studying before heading outside to the park for a workout. I did a Nike Training Club workout, and then a sprint/agility workout that I had saved on my phone from years ago. The weather was perfect to head outside!

When I got back, I had a super light lunch of egg whites, spinach, and garlic and herb laughing cow with some peach Cheerios.

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I have 3 Neuro finals this week so coming home for Easter wasn’t plausible. My parents were nice enough to come up to me, and we went out to Easter “brunch” with some of my friends. They also brought me Easter eggs!

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Before brunch, I broke into the jelly beans.

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Here were my plates from the buffet! I think the highlight was the chocolate creme brûlée.

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It was so nice to be able to sneak away from school for a few hours!

Later that evening, I had some more Easter candy, some toast with jam, and some protein chips.

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And that’s a wrap! Except more full days of eating coming up, featuring hard boiled eggs!

Full Day of Eating on a Study Day

I want to do more full days of eating again, so I figured I’d pop in super fast for one (on commercials during the Giant’s game) from today, which was a weekend study day (similar to most of my weekends hah).

Breakfast:

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Mango+ double chocolate might muffin.

Workout: Crossfit. We did 21 minutes of 5 pull ups, 10 push ups, and 15 pull ups with 100m run every 3 minutes. My pull ups felt super strong so I guess the work I’ve been doing on them lately has been paying off!

Lunch:

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Panera half Fuji apple chicken salad. I spent a little time there studying (and charging my iPad). Funny story, yesterday I lost my iPad pencil (they are NOT cheap) and spent forever looking for it. It was a weird situation because I knew exactly where I had last seen it…putting it into my backpack. After searching every inch of my house, I ended up finding it in the parking lot at school, just lying on the ground where I parked. It must have fallen out and rolled under my car. It was mostly unscathed, thankfully. My iPad is my life so this was a relief!

Dessert:

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I was walking to a coffeeshop to study when I passed people eating ice cream outside at Baskin Robbins, and it seemed like a really good idea. It was. Gold medal ribbon is a childhood favorite. I spent some time studying outside there and it was really nice! This past week it’s been in the 80s, and beautiful!

Snack:

I came home to a very special package.

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Cheerios sent me their new seasonal peach Cheerios! To say I was excited was an understatement; I’ve actually been even more into Cheerios lately. Like I go through a box a week between pre-workout meals in the mornings and evening snacks. This made my day. They’re SO good. I have yet to see them in stores out here!

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Dinner:

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Super simple hash/scramble. Half of a baked sweet potato with 1 whole egg and some egg whites, spinach, and fancy cheese that was a gift from my parents. My favorite is the manchego, but this was a really good swiss-tasting one. YUM.

Dessert parts 1 and 2:

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Mint chocolate chip halo top with chipped cream, and later half a package of these Enjoy Life mini chocolate chip cookies.

And here’s a bonus Jackson picture:

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Spring Break 2018

Well, spring break is coming to a close. I figured I would share some fun and food from the past couple of days!

Thursday before spring break, my parents came to school to take Chloe to a behavior appointment (she has anxiety) so we went out for pizza afterwards. My mom and I shared a salad and a GF pizza with garlic and ricotta.

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Here’s a meal from Friday: salad with balsamic, turkey, goat cheese, and butternut squash seasoned with garlic, salt, and pepper.

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Saturday was St. Patrick’s Day.

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That morning, I did 18.4 and then drove home for break!

We celebrated St. Patrick’s Day with food. See’s has mint scotchmallows (mint marshmallow+ caramel) and they are amazing.

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We had an Irish meal. I skipped the corned beef and focused on sides!

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Cabbage, glazed carrots, potatoes with truffle salt, and a GF biscuit with dried cranberries (AKA a better version of Irish soda bread).

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…silly.

I have to share some animal pictures.

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Now food!

We tried a Chicken and Dill spring soup that was really good. Side of Brazilian cheese bites.IMG_8763

I also picked up a GF berry and peach pie from Whole Foods, since I missed pi day!

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Breakfast basically every day has been GF bread with sunbutter and a mango.

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On Monday, I decided this week should be like a “stay-cation,” so we had happy hour with Longboard Lager (my favorite Hawaiian beer). For dinner, we stayed with the theme and had a salad with grilled teriyaki chicken, papaya, parmesan, and poppyseed dressing. I also had a passion-guava juice drink mixed with sparking water.

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A Sweetgreen, my favorite DC place, just opened up super close to here so one night after spin (it’s right across the street from the spin studio I like), we went to dinner. I had the winter squash salad, but I added chicken and chose goat cheese instead of bleu cheese, so my salad has roasted winter squash, apples, raisins, chicken, goat cheese, and a balsamic vinaigrette. YUM.

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Wednesday, we had our big outing of the week. One of my best friends from back home works at a high quality chocolate company, so we went on a tour and visited her! The tour was great, and I learned a lot about both the chocolate making process, and tasting chocolate!

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SO MUCH good chocolate!

Afterwards, we went to Gilman brewing, which turned out to be a really awesome brewery.

They had like 15 beers on tap, and they were much more aligned with the style I like. I love saisons, and they had 4 types of saison, including a nectarine saison and a dark saison! Everything was fantastic!

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Thursday night, we celebrated my sister’s birthday…1 month late…with pineapple upside down cake. I made a little mini GF oat flour based one, and it was actually really delicious! Not quite good enough to share the recipe though. It was oat flour and applesauce based, and then I used vanilla pudding mix to flavor it.

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For lunch on Friday, I made a wrap with garlic and herb laughing cow, turkey, lettuce, and avocado sprinkled with salt, pepper, and garlic powder. On the side, I had a sale with aged blackberry balsamic and goat cheese.

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That evening was the final workout of the Crossfit Open, 18.5, for me! It was really fun to be able to do it at my home Crossfit.

18.5:

Complete as many reps as possible in 7 minutes of:
3 thrusters
3 chest-to-bar pull-ups
6 thrusters
6 chest-to-bar pull-ups
9 thrusters
9 chest-to-bar pull-ups
12 thrusters
12 chest-to-bar pull-ups
15 thrusters
15 chest-to-bar pull-ups
18 thrusters
18 chest-to-bar pull-ups

This is a timed workout. If you complete the round of 18, go on to 21. If you complete 21, go on to 24, etc.

Women use 65 lb.

So this in theory would be super cardio heavy, however, I had never been able to do a chest to bar pull up. I spent like 15 minutes before the workout trying everything to get a chest to bar, and nothing was working. I got advice from all the coaches but i couldn’t get it. Despite that, I got talked into Rxing the workout, and just planning on spending 6:45 attempting to do chest to bar. Well, I tried literally everything. Over 5 minutes in, I FINALLY GOT ONE! It wasn’t the prettiest. I knew I was getting high enough, but wasn’t able to touch my chest to the bar. My chest to bar ends dup being a reverse grip (like a chin up) and involved me pulling all the way up and pausing, confused, at the top, and then pulling into the bar. Once I had that technique figured out, I got another. And then another. And then I sprinted over and did 6 thrusters, and back for one more pull up. So I got a whopping 13, but I GOT CHEST TO BAR PULL UPS FINALLY! I think I could have redone this and gotten a lot more reps now that I figured that out!

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This is how you celebrate. Apparently that’s what I thought last year, check out what came up on my time hop:

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I hung around watching and judging the next heat, and then for a bit for the post-Open party. Then, I went home for Sweetgreen again, and got the same salad because it was so good.

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I also made flour less brownies again.

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I was up early on Saturday for a dog walk with friends, followed by a spin class. Check out this view!

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Also:

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I spent the rest of Saturday working on engineering a cat toy for a vet school contest. An engineer I am not, but it turned out really well!

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Sunday morning, I did a 5k that I’ve done the past 4ish years. I am still coming back from my ankle injury and have hardly run in the past 6 months, but the good news is that my ankle felt really good! It’s a little sore today, but it was fine during the race! Thanks to the small race, I managed to snag first in my age group.

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Sunday afternoon, I went to tea with my high school friends. It was so nice to see everyone! Also, their GF scones <3

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And now it’s back to reality!

18.3, 18.4, and Powerlifting Competition

Boy, do I have some things to catch up on! I’m currently on spring break, so I do want to get in a recap of recent athletic endeavors. Later I’ll do a post with a little more more food, and then one on what my powerlifting prep actually consisted of.

Let’s start off with a Crossfit Open recap: 18.3 and 18.4. These were the first workouts featuring movements I couldn’t do. Sidenote: 18.5 is announced tonight and apparently there will be voting; I’m really hoping it is movements I can do though! Chest to bar pull ups would be very questionable for me…

18.3:

Workout 18.3

2 rounds for time of:
100 double-unders
20 overhead squats
100 double-unders
12 ring muscle-ups
100 double-unders
20 dumbbell snatches
100 double-unders
12 bar muscle-ups

Women perform 80-lb. OHS, 35-lb. DB snatches

Time cap: 14 minutes

80# overhead squats are definitely not trivial. I was excited for the doubles because mine have been really strong lately. And ring muscle ups? Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen.

My first set of doubles was really strong. I think I managed to stringy together the first 50? The overhead squats were better than expected. I believe I did them in 2 sets, partly because sometimes it’s harder to put it down and have to get it up again! 80# snatches definitely felt harder after 100 doubles! I got through my second set of doubles in I think 6:21? So I had about 8 more minutes to play around on the rings. Suffice to say, I didn’t get my first muscle up. I did get closer than I was expecting though, so that’s something!

Workout 18.4

For time:
21 deadlifts, 155 lb.
21 handstand push-ups
15 deadlifts, 155 lb.
15 handstand push-ups
9 deadlifts, 155 lb.
9 handstand push-ups
21 deadlifts, 205 lb.
50-ft. handstand walk
15 deadlifts, 205 lb.
50-ft. handstand walk
9 deadlifts, 205 lb.
50-ft. handstand walk

Time cap: 9 min.

Now, I can’t do handstand push ups. I actually really don’t like handstands in general, so I haven’t ever had much desire to work on them. However, I was pretty confident I could bust out 21 deadlifts pretty fast, so I opted to Rx this workout and just do 21 deadlifts for time. I busted out my set of 21 in 45 seconds. I have to say, I have my powerlifting prep to thank for that. I never really do 155# deadlifts in workouts other than the Open because historically it is on the heavier side for a lot of reps for me. After deadlifting a lot, heavy, for my powerlifting prep, the 155# felt really easy. I ended up continuing on, with 155# and just doing the workout as the scaled, which was with hand release push ups. So I basically did 21-15-9 155# deadlifts and hand release push ups, plus 21 deadlifts, so I would actually get a workout in!

Now, for the powerlifting meet! Since I haven’t blogged a ton lately, I haven’t talked about it too much on here. My school hosted a friendly powerlifting competition, which I did about an 8 week prep for. Again, I’ll go into full details on the prep in another post. I do want to include food a bit here, because that was an interesting challenge. The competition was 6-9pm, and I am definitely a morning workout person so that was different.

I got super lucky with my schedule that day, in that I had the whole morning off and just had classes in the afternoon, so it was a restful day. I made myself my normal lunch: salad with grilled chicken, goat cheese, and pear, plus some GF crackers on the side.

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I had a granola bar mid-afternoon, per my usual routine. I had to be at an athlete’s meeting at 5, so in the 30 minutes between arriving home from class and leaving for the meeting, I whipped up a protein-and-carb-rich light dinner. I had egg whites with half a sweet potato (that I roasted earlier in the day—so fancy) and some reduced fat cheddar.

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Then, it was time to head over and hear about the rules!

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Powerlifting has certain commands you have to follow about when you can lift and rack the bar. I tried to practice these a little bit in training, but the command I was most nervous about is a command that tells you to lift, when you are at the bottom on a bench press. Basically, it means you have to pause at the bottom of a bench press until you get the command to lift. We were told we had to make our first attempts, so I actually dropped down my bench press initial attempt by a few pounds after that warning.

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I actually ended up eating another protein bar before the event started. I really didn’t want to go in hungry because I needed all of the strength!

Another challenge was warming up for the event. I was in the competitive division, which was the 2nd of 3 to go. The recreational/beginner division was the first to go, and it was the largest by far. When they started their squat attempts, I started warming up my squat. My initial attempt was 185, a slightly aggressive first attempt but also a number I was very confidant in. I actually warmed up to 195, which was my second attempt. I had a feeling I would be nervous, especially on squats, so it made me feel better knowing I hit those numbers. Then, before I knew it, it was go time!

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My first attempt went smoothly, although I do feel like I had waited a little long since warming up before I lifted. It was fine after the first attempt though. After each attempt, we had to tell the people in charge what our next attempt would be.

Then, I went for 195.

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It felt pretty easy, but I did get a warning about depth, meaning I had to make sure I went deep enough on the next rep (but my 195 was still accepted). I hit 200 in training on Friday, and my squat PR (from 2014….) was 205, so I went for 205 as my third attempt. I think I was a little overly concerned about going deep enough, and I got stuck at the bottom and failed the lift. As soon as you lose your core in squatting, the lift is just not going to happen. I think I had it in me though! I refueled with chocolate milk post-squats and then watched the heavy lifters go…someone squatted 500# which is so crazy to me.

Next up was bench. I warmed up to my initial attempt of 95#. Bench is by far my worst lift, and one I’ve hardly worked on in my many years of lifting. Actually, for that reason it was fun to train because I saw improvements and PRs. Again, I was nervous about the pause at the bottom.

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95 went up easily. My all time max was 115, from a few weeks ago, and it was UGLY. I went for an aggressive second attempt at 110 and didn’t know what to expect, but it also went up well. I went for 115# for my final attempt, and again, it went up super easily. Unfortunately, I missed the command to rack the bar after I successfully lifted it, so the lift didn’t count. Ah well. Annoying, but in the scheme of my total score it was only 5#, and for my own personal records, I know I hit it.

Last up was deadlift. It was around 8:30pm by this time and I was fading. Super tired. But I told myself, I literally only had to lift the bar 3 more times! Again, I warmed up to my first attempt of 225#. At this competition, we were not allowed to use powdered chalk, only liquid chalk. I’ve never used liquid chalk before. Honestly I don’t normally use chalk for deadlifting, but the bars at school are super slippery so that was always a problem. Luckily, I made friends with someone who had liquid chalk, and it seriously made all the difference! 225 was easy. My second attempt was 235, and that also went as planned. My PR (also from 2014…) was 245, so I decided to shoot for 250 for my final attempt….It went up fairly easily, and was my far the prettiest heavy deadlift I’ve done! Normally at near-max weights, the form breaks down (and the back rounds..), but that didn’t happen, I felt it completely in my hamstrings and not in my back. I was SUPER happy to finish with that lift and with a PR! Especially because when I started my powerlifting prep, I initially couldn’t get heavier than 225!

Overall, the meet was an amazing experience. It was so much fun, and everyone was so nice! I also LOVE lifting, especially powerlifting. I love getting stronger and watching things change. It was also fun to have a goal to work towards. 10/10 would do it again. I also had amazing friends who came out to support me!

I got home around 9:30 and ate the same egg/sweet potato meal I had prior to the competition, as well as a brownie with ice cream. I made these super amazing GF/vegan brownies and can’t say enough good things about them. They’re MOSTLY applesauce and chocolate, and the texture coming out of the oven was like the best fudgy brownie. They’r definitely best served hot, and I appreciate that the recipe makes a smaller batch.

Look out for more posts coming soon!

Crossfit Open 18.1 and 18.2

It’s been a little while, but I wanted to pop in today to talk about the Crossfit Open! We’re 2/5 workouts deep in the Open right now, so I thought I would recap them! Plus, I’m in the blissful 6 days between Neuro exams!

Also, obligatory Jackson photo:

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18.1:

20 minute AMRAP

8 toes to bar

10 dumbbell clean to overhead (35# dumbbells)

12 calories on the rowing machine

I signed up for the Open this year because it’s always a lot of fun. That being said, I haven’t been taking it too, too seriously.

At my Crossfit here, I think there are around 80 people signed up for the Open! Saturday mornings are pretty busy!

This workout was a long one, and pacing was definitely important. I haven’t done a whole lot of toes to bar lately, so I was pretty happy to maintain sets of 4 throughout the workout. My biggest issue was grip strength.  I had really great advice before hand to hook grip on the dumbbell, and that definitely helped a lot. Honestly, the cardio here didn’t kill me until the end, but my grip was going. That being said, it’s definitely possible I was a little too conservative on pace and should have pushed myself harder! I got 225.

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18.2:

12 Minute Timecap

1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10

dumbbell front squats (35# dumbbells)

burpees over the bar

18.2a: 1 rep max clean

This one was a little bit different. You had 12 minutes to both complete the squats and burpees, and find a maximum weight clean. This may be an unpopular opinion, but this was actually a fun one. I actually didn’t feel great going into it, and it was really the last thing I wanted to do that morning. Last week was just rough, and my body was just over it. I woke up a little sick on Saturday (though thankfully the very low fever only lasted that day?), so I was just not feeling it. For the record, I did not have a fever when I went to class. That being said, if it wasn’t for the Open I would not have worked out that day.

Anyways, going into this workout, I was a little concerned about even making it to the bar for the clean, and I was banking on only having 1 attempt. It’s sort of hard to guess an opening attempt because you have to take into account how your legs will feel after all the burpees and squats. But I also wanted to get a high number, obviously. I ended up opening with 120#, something that I was pretty confident I could get, but a number I would have been happy with.

I thought I did a decent job pacing the burpees especially, since burpees are just not a fast movement for me. I finished the work in 9:45, giving me plenty of time for the cleans. I easily got 120, then 125. 125 I power cleaned easily, so I decided to just jump all the way to 135 for my final attempt. My 1 rep max is 148, but the closest I’ve gotten in 2.5 years has been 135, which was recent, and I’ve failed at 130# since then. With 15 seconds left on the clock, I went for 135 and just slung it up. It came up SO easily, and I actually ended up power cleaning. Go figure.

I’ve always known for my Olympic lifts, I can get in my head a lot and mess up technique. I guess I just need adrenaline and not giving myself the option to fail it! Overall, again, I really liked this one. It had a lot of different components.

I’m excited to see what’s next, but I have a feeling around this week will be the point they start introducing movements that I can’t do (like muscle ups and hand stand push ups…). But we’ll see!

In other fitness news, I’m starting to slowly run on my ankle again. It gets sore when I run on it, but I think this is the next step in the recovery process. I just need to slowly build up distance, and not run more than once a week, and definitely not back to back.

The biggest thing though is that my powerlifting competition is next week! Weee! Thankfully, things finally started coming together last week, and I’m hitting the numbers I was expecting to be hitting. My squats were coming along really slowly early on, I think partly due to poor nutrition. I wasn’t getting enough carbs in before my workouts, so I didn’t have enough in me for the strength. Plus, I was neglecting protein in general. Another change I made was adding my accessory strength back in once a week for squats. In the past, whenever I did my squat program, I would do single leg squats and pistols on the same day, just to round out my leg workout. I didn’t do that for the first part of my prep, partly because hitting my 3 lifts was already taking a while. A couple of weeks ago I added it back in, and now my lifts feel WAY stronger. Go figure.

In terms of life, vet school is going as well as can be expected!

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We’re currently in the Neuro block, and from what I’ve heard, this is where it gets REAL. It is definitely a cool topic though! I also found out I got accepted into a program that will allow me to work in Nashville this summer, so to say I’m excited to get back to Tennessee would be an understatement!

I haven’t taken many food pictures, but I’m pretty sure I’ve been eating the same things for the past month. I’ll share a few of the ones I have.

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Butternut squash needles with cheese and an egg.

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Salad and really delicious GF white pizza with ricotta.

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I FINALLY made it back to the produce stand for the first time in months. Can’t beat $0.69 a pound zucchini.

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Salads this time of year are with bosc pears. This is basically what I eat every single day for lunch, but with goat cheese instead of aged cheddar as pictured.

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And finally, avocado toast with cumin (this is key), an egg, and feta. Super simple side salad with aged white balsamic vinegar.

That’s all for now!