Why is Running So Hard?

Date: September 17, 2014

Author: astottler

I’m so glad to be caught up on posts! Sort of.

So….I have a half marathon in 3 weeks. Yeah. Originally I was gunning for a big PR in this race, but I’ve decided I’m most definitely not going to do that. Thanks to foot issues, I’m probably not going to be in the best shape. Plus I’m tired of dying at races, so I’m going to go out very conservatively. My plan is to go out around a 10:00 pace, and my goal is to run a sub-10:00 last mile. 10:00 is on the slow side for me for races, but I want to keep a steady pace and have something left at the end, which is how I know I will have paced well. On that note, after about a week off of running, my foot is feeling much better and it’s time to get back at it. Since I was in Berkeley all weekend, and another recovery day couldn’t hurt, I did a long run on Monday. Technically 3 weeks out from my race I should have done a 12 mile run, but I opted for a 10 miler instead.

I had what seems to be my current pre-long run food (I can’t believe I’m eating yogurt pre-long run…)-plain yogurt, a banana mashed with cocoa powder, and sunflower seed butter.

I was super casual about this run and didn’t head out until around 12 (definitely couldn’t have done this in DC) so it was pretty warm, but a BEAUTIFUL day. The trail I ran on offers views of what I consider one of the most beautiful parts of Northern CA.

(Old pic-it was the perfect day so it was even more beautiful!)

I ran 2 more miles into this trail than I have before, and the scenery changed completely. I reached the edge of the reservoir and then was running through a wooded forest. At the 5 mile turnaround, I was shocked when the trail opened up to a beautiful lake/other reservoir! It was amazing! I also took my gu here-I finally tried the mint chocolate I’ve had FOREVER and it was SO delicious! It was a very warm day so it was nice and melty, like peppermint hot fudge! (Note: I still don’t recommend using goo as hot fudge on a sundae-it’s not THAT good.) The only problem was it made me cough like crazy-I guess I won’t be switching over anytime soon!

This run for me was more to get the miles in than anything else, so the pace was what it was. This was hard! Why is running so hard? It’s amazing how fast you get out of shape. Between tapering and a week off after my race, my legs did not have anywhere near the volume of mileage that I would normally have at this point in training.

But I finished and then gobbled down some leftovers-a turkey burger and sweet potato.

And then made pumpkin custard.

Dinner that night was Grilled Peach and Chicken salad. One of the peaches we used was absolutely amazing.

Plus some pita chips on the side.

For dessert, I tried Pumpkin Spice english muffins! They are SOOO good! I had mine toasted with butter and cinnamon sugar. I think they’d also be fantastic with cinnamon Laughing Cow or cream cheese. Yum!

Do you find you get out of running shape quickly?

2 Recipes!

Date: September 16, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hey guys! Since my Internet has been down lately, I’m getting ahead on catching up (?) and sitting at Starbucks right now. Not sure if I really need caffeine right now but it is what it is. This morning I went to 7am Crossfit and it DEMOLISHED me. I ate when I got home, but I was feeling sort of light headed so I got a pumpkin muffin to go with my (plain) latte.

The aforementioned killer workout? First we found 1 rep max of squats. I was stupid and didn’t bring my lifting shoes (which add about 20 lbs to my 1 rep max) so I was about 15 pounds of my max, but at least I lifted a tiny bit more without lifting shoes than I have before, so I’ll take it! The WOD though. Whew.

10 rounds:

15 wall balls (20/14)

3 cleans (135/95)

I did this Rx with 14 lb wall balls and 95 for the cleans. Sadly, the cleans were actually the resting portion of this workout. The wall balls killed me, and I was sucking air immediately. Wall balls really get your heart pumping! I don’t always eat before morning workouts-not usually before morning runs or spin, but I was glad I ate a little something before this class or I would have actually passed out. WHEW.

In terms of food lately, I have a couple of recipes to share! The first was one of the veggie salads from the culinary bootcamp I went to for work in DC.

This dish is the first time I’ve ever actually enjoyed eating beets. And I could eat it by the plateful. I even had some for breakfast this morning.

Gingered Root Veggie Salad

Ingredients:

.25 oz fresh ginger (1/2 tablespoon)

4.75 oz carrots

4.5 oz beets

4.5 oz parsnips

1.5 T honey

1.25 T lemon juice

1 T tarragon

1/8 T salt

Peel ginger, carrots, beets, and parsnips. Shred them in either a food process or a grater (I used a grater). Mix up the remaining ingredients in a small pour, and then toss everything together.

We had this with turkey burgers and roasted sweet potatoes. While I’m certainly not Paleo, I had a Paleo phase about a year ago, and discovered that I actually prefer turkey burgers in a lettuce leaf, rather than a bun!

Recipe #2 is another fall dish. I was craving pumpkin, and just happened to find a jar of Trader Joe’s Pumpkin Butter in the pantry from last year so I decided to experiment a bit. I’ve perfected banana custard (I still need to post that recipe), so why not pumpkin? This fall dish is light and fluffy, and the flavor is a bit subtle. This is healthy enough to eat for breakfast, and is packed with protein. If you want more pumpkin, feel free to add more pumpkin butter or add some cinnamon/pumpkin pie spice.

Pumpkin Spice Custard

Ingredients:

2 cups fat free milk

1 cup egg whites

1/4 cup cornstarch

1 T butter

1 t vanilla extract

4 T pumpkin butter

1. Heat milk until boiling. Meanwhile, in a medium size bowl mix together cornstarch and egg whites.

2. Once the milk is boiling, add it to the bowl (and not the pot it was in). Add milk slowly, stirring the mixture constantly. If possible, pour the milk on edge of the bowl to avoid cooking the egg on contact (i have yet to mess this up so don’t worry!).

3. After stirring the milk and egg mixture in the bowl, return to the pot and cook on medium high, stirring constantly,

4. Cook until the mixture thickens to a custard texture.

5. Once off the heat, stir in butter, pumpkin butter, and vanilla.

What pumpkin items have you enjoyed so far this fall?

Back to the Stone Age

Date: September 16, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

I apologize for the lack of posting lately. It seems I’ve been relegated back to the stone age these past few days. Which is another way of saying my Internet at home has been down. It goes in and out, but it seems to have been leaning towards out recently! So I’m currently blogging from Starbucks with a (non-PSL) latte in my hand.

So-let’s back up shall we?

Friday morning I did my first real post race run! My foot was feeling much better, so I went to spin and then ran straight afterwards so my foot would be maximally warmed up. I ran 4 miles, and it felt pretty good! It was really good after 2, so this is progress! I wish I had brought my camera-it really feels like fall now I had the same impression last year-one day it’s summer and the next it’s fall. I can’t even explain what feels like fall-it’s still been 80 degrees and warm! Maybe it’s the angle of the sun? Everyone who leaves the East Coast to come to CA complains about lack of seasons-but if you look closely enough, they are definitely there. Maybe it’s because I’ve lived here for 20 years and I’m familiar with the subtleties of the the chaining seasons, but it excites me!

Post workout I had a chocolate mint protein shake.

This was milk, a frozen banana, chocolate designer whey protein, cocoa powder, fresh mint, and a pinch of xyatham gum. It was just ok-there was a little too much xyatham gum and a little too little ice so it was a bit slimy and not quite cold enough.

For lunch, I had leftover macaroni and cheese, purple cumin roasted cauliflower, and some figs.

Later that afternoon, I headed up to Berkeley to spend the weekend with some of my best friends from high school. Almost all of my high school friends go to Cal! They’ve all been in school for 3 weeks now, which is crazy because I don’t start for another week!

I stayed with one friend the first night, and two others the second night.

Saturday, my friend took me on a hike that overlooked the bay. It was so beautiful!

We also passed this road sign:

(Reads: Godzilla rampant in SF)

Only in Berkeley.

After cleaning myself up, I met up with my other friend for a late lunch of a veggie sandwich from a cafe near her apartment.

After spending a couple of hours catching up with her and another friend, we went out for dinner and dessert. We went to Fenton’s Creamery, which actually appeared in the movie Up!

(Source)

For dinner, we all order the CA Avocado burger, although mine was in turkey form.

This was delicious and so, so messy.

The main event though was dessert. This place was famous for their sundaes, and I’m not about to pass that up! One of my friends comes here quite often, so she was able to point us in the correct direction. We got a monstrous brownie sundae with chocolate ice cream and health bar ice cream, all topped with hot fudge and whipped cream.

We split it 3 ways, and all left bursting at the seams!

We had a great time catching up. When I’m with them, it’s like nothing has changed and is so, so refreshing. Can you believe we’ve been friends for 9 years? That’s basically half my life!

(8th grade grad)

It was such a fun weekend. I loved seeing them, and I’m actually feeling about ready to go back to school!

Do you have any long-term friends?

Giant’s Game and Garden!

Date: September 14, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hey guys-I’m pretty behind on posting! I’ve been gone all weekend but that’s a recap for another day. So let’s step back a bit.

Thursday, I began the morning with a bowl of cottage cheese topped with sunflower seed butter and homemade pumpkin butter, which just consisted of pumpkin, spices, and brown rice syrup. Don’t knock the cottage cheese+pumpkin butter until you try it-it’s one of my favorite fall food combos!

I attempted to run a bit that morning for the first time since my race because my feet were feeling better. I only did about a mile because I discovered that the impact of running downhill was too much for my feet, and I live on a hill so I wasn’t going to make it very far!

That afternoon, I went to a Giant’s game with my mom!

It was such a beautiful day-it’s usually so cold and foggy in San Francisco! I NEVER wear a tank top to Giant’s games!

Since it was 9/11 there was a moment of silence and a salute from the fireboat. (I really wanted to do an entire 9/11 post this year but unfortunately I did not have Internet access that day, but it is important to remember those who lost their lives on that terrible day.)

One really cool thing about our ballpark is that they just put in a vegetable garden. It’s really awesome, and the landscaping/design is really cool. They even had a couple of avocado trees filled with avocados!

They now serve fresh salads and whole wheat flatbread pizzas in that area with vegetables from the garden. I got a blueberry mint smoothie later in the game and it was nice and refreshing.

For my main course, I got a cha-cha bowl, which is rice, beans, chicken, and mango-zucchini salsa.

It was a great game to go to-we won!

That evening, I went to a killer Crossfit workout. The WOD was 7 rounds of 2 minutes of:

200m run

7 deadlifts (I used 145#)

As many jump ropes or double unders as possible in the remaining time

Each round had a one minute rest in between. This was hard, and it was one of the first times I really ran on my foot, and it felt pretty good!

For dinner, we picked up some fresh whole wheat bread at the Farmer’s Market with the other necessary veggies.

And then for dinner, we made my California Chop Salad, which has kalmata olives, chicken, avocado, asparagus, and gouda tossed in a dijon vinaigrette.

And with that, I’ll leave this here and recap the weekend in the next post-hope you all had as good of a weekend as I did!

Non-DC Cupcakes

Date: September 10, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hello! I hope everyone’s week is going well. I started my morning with an early spin class, followed by a nice long post-breakfast nap.

For breakfast, I was planning on having this:

I’ve seen it around the blog and twitter world a bit-it’s a soft cheese that is eaten like yogurt but it doesn’t have the tangy taste. I had high hopes.

Well, it was terrible. I couldn’t eat more than a bite. It tasted like chemicals. It was sweetened with both sugar alcohols and stevia, so from the start I wasn’t a fan of the ingredient list. And sugar alcohols taste especially weird in dairy. On the plus side, there were real chunks of pineapple. As far as the whole soft cheese concept, I think I’ll reserve judgment until I try the plain flavor with no sugar alcohols or stevia.

Instead, I had a coconut Chobani with sunflower seed butter and a side of roasted carrots. I’ve been looking for coconut Chobani for no less than a year at every grocery store I’ve gone to and I finally found it!

For lunch, I had leftover BBQ chicken with cumin roasted purple cauliflower (that color is so much more exciting!) along with some unpictured grapes and crackers.

After lunch, I was looking something up on the internet and I found a reference to what was supposed to be an amazing cupcake place near my home that I had never heard of. Given all my DC cupcake expertise,I felt it was my duty to taste them. I feel like my entire summer was preparing me for that moment. So off I went with the company of my mom.

Here’s the thing about going with your mother. It’s much more socially acceptable to get more cupcakes. The cool thing about this place is they had three sizes-mini, normal, and large. So she suggested we get one of each mini cupcake to try. I have absolutely no problem with that, and this way we got to try all the flavors since my family split the minis. The place was called Libby’s-it’s in a sort of industrial area at the edge of downtown, and mostly does cupcake orders but they have a ton of “extras” you can just buy (which is what we did).

Appearance and flavor selection were on point. To name a few, we got red velvet, key lime, cookie dough, salted caramel, dulce de leche, buttercup, snickerdoodle, and carrot cake. I think my favorites were salted caramel and cookie dough. The frosting on the cookie dough tasted just like cookie dough, but it was light and fluffy. The verdict? Definitely going back.

For dinner, we had butternut squash macaroni and cheese from Cooking Light. This recipe is amazing and the only one we ever made-it uses butternut squash for some of the creaminess and you’d never know it!

In terms of entertainment, I have a couple of things to share. First is this book-The Price of Inheritance, by Karin Tanabe.

The author is one of my friends from run club in DC, so I was excited to find her new book at the bookstore. I’m really enjoying it so far, and highly suggest you go out and buy it! It’s really well written and I love her writing style.

Another fun thing-has anyone seen the Cropfit Subway commercial? I love it-it’s especially funny because some of those things are a lot like some of the stuff we do. Now where can I find a giant pumpkin?

Here’s the link.

What book are you reading now?