Dish Hike

Date: May 19, 2014

Author: astottler

How’s your week going?

The tiredness is finally hitting me. I was up lat last night working on a presentation and studying for today’s midterm-today has been a bit of a whirlwind! After my midterm I rushed to my softball game, which was super fun!

However, I did some interesting things Friday that I want to catch up on!

For breakfast, I decided to stop being lazy and actually break out my blender for some overnight oats. I used this recipe for mango-banana oats.

The verdict? Ehhh I wanted to like them but they just weren’t for me. I think it’s partly because I really dislike the flavor of really ripe banana, and the banana was a bit strong, so maybe next time I’d omit the banana. Also-and this is totally my fault-it was pretty runny because I used rolled oats instead of quick cooking steel cut oats.

Friday afternoon, I hiked a nearby trail (it’s on campus, so super close) with some girls from my sorority to get to know the new members. As always, it was a beautiful day, and I have to share pictures!

It was the last of the pretty hot days, and I got a fabulous farmer’s tan. After sweating it out, we were all dreaming of a cool drink, so we went to Philz coffee for iced chais. So good!

That evening, my friends and I went out to eat (*gasp* we got off campus!) to a Korean place. I got a Bi Bim Bap bowl with chicken and it was delicious! The dish is served in a ceramic, super hot bowl, and the rice gets nice and crispy. The downside is I always spent the whole time burning my tongue!

Afterwards, my roommate had a wild night-we went to the grocery and I bought my first Ben and Jerry’s! (Which fueled my 1am blogging Friday night.) I have to say, out of the ones I tried, Chocolate Therapy was my favorite!

And seeing as I don’t currently have ice cream running through my veins, I’m about to fall over I’m so tired! Have a great day!

Bay to Breakers 2014

Date: May 19, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

I had every intention of getting this recap post up last night, but wifi was down throughout the whole campus. Let’s just say doing research for a presentation you are writing at 1am ON YOUR PHONE is not the most fun thing ever. But here were are!

Yesterday, I ran Bay to Breakers, a 12k in San Francisco that goes from the Bay, to the Pacific Ocean (breakers).

I awoke at a fantastically early hour (4:50) to get ready to make the trip up to the city for the 8am start. For those of you that don’t know, Bay to Breakers is a crazy, wacky race. Everyone dresses up-that is, if they dress at all.

Upon arriving in our corral, we were immediately greeted by flying tortillas. Yes, flying tortillas. There were tons of people just will bags of tortillas, flinging them everywhere.

This is the first tortilla that hit me.

As you can see, I didn’t go alone! I ran the race with 2 friends.

This was my first time running with people, and it was a lot of fun! I will admit though, it was a bit difficult turning off that competitive instinct and not worrying about time.

In terms of my outfit, I obnoxiously wore all blue-shirt, pants, eye “black”, and then a tutu. People dressed up as all kinds of things. One motivated runner carried an inflatable palm tree the entire way! I also didn’t see as many naked people as I was expecting, although I soon lost count.

My face paint was probably not the greatest idea-I was expecting it to dry, but it was oil based and never did so it was super easy to smear! Right before we started, I was smacked in the face with a flying tortilla, which majorly smeared it-plus got stuck in it! Ew!

The race started about 30 minutes late due to some issues clearing the course, but eventually we were off! I actually carried my phone with me for this race so I took lots of pictures!

That bacon suit cannot go undocumented!

A mile or two in, we reached Hayes Hill-there was a challenge to sprint up it-the fastest person won a large sum of money. Hint-it wasn’t me! I have to say though, there was a lot of hype about this hill, but it was NOTHING compared to the hills of San Francisco of some of the halfs I’ve run!

It was such a beautiful day for running! It was pretty warm last week, which equals not totally freezing in the city!

The route was different than any of the halfs I’ve done-it went through a completely different area. We spent about half the race running through Golden Gate Park!

Around this point, we started debating how long 12k actually was. I thought it was 7.8, and one of my friends thought it was 6.9 As we passed Mile 7, it was determined that it definitely wasn’t 6.9!

As we debated, a friendly fellow runner informed us that it was actually 7.5 miles! Almost there!

And done!

See? Breakers!

Overall, this race was a lot of fun, and less crazy than I was expecting. Although this is likely because I was in the 8:00-10:00 pace corral, and the really drunk people were much farther back-but there were definitely some! There were a lot of very drunk spectators as well-but that meant the crowd support was awesome! I didn’t realize a good portion of the crazy would be drunk college students-especially those in Greek life!

I also saw quite a few people I knew throughout the day, which was fun! I would definitely recommend this race as a fun run-it definitely gives you a sense of San Francisco! But if you’re planning to race it-well, just don’t. There are a lot of people walking, there are a lot of people staggering around, the spectators sometimes blend into the race course-if you’re trying to go anywhere in a hurry, you’ll probably be incredibly annoyed by everyone. The key is to embrace it and just have fun! I know I did!

And you better believe a celebratory brunch was in order! I was starving-I took this race much less seriously and just ate a granola bar before around 5am, so I was more than ready!

Such a fun day with amazing people, and an amazing city.

Have you ever run Bay to Breakers?

At a Crossroads

Date: May 17, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hey guys! It’s currently Friday night at 1am, but I can’t sleep because my room is 1000 degrees and I have ice cream running through my veins (not a decision I regret though). I’m sitting outside (much cooler) watching drunk people slowly trickle back from one of the wilder parties of the year. I wasn’t feeling it-I spent my night with my only friends I need:

Kidding. All jokes aside though, I’ve never actually had Ben and Jerry’s, so my roommate and I decided to fix that! But today’s recap is for another post. I have a slightly more serious (how serious am I ever? Let’s be real here) post for tonight. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and reflecting. I guess this past month or so I’ve been feeling a bit of blogging identity crisis. What’s the point of what I’m posting? Is it interesting? Deceptive? (I hope not). Who am I writing to? Who am I trying to please?

In this post, I’m going to attempt to piece my thoughts together in a way that makes sense, as much as possible.

Tonight, I spent some time reading through some really old posts from another blogger-one that inspired me to blog wayyy back when.

Additionally, my blogging was slacking for a bit there, thanks to my so-called food rut.

I guess here’s what it comes down to. When I’m eating junk and feeling bad, it’s hard for me to be passionate about the things I care about and love and find SO incredibly interesting-nutrition, metabolism, etc. It’s something I truly am passionate about, but when I’m not following my own advice, it’s hard to find that spark.

I feel like my blog has really more fallen into what I tend to call it, a food and fitness blog, versus a healthy living blog. This isn’t inherently a bad thing, but it ends up turning into lazy posts where I throw up pictures of my food and say “This is what I ate.” Don’t get me wrong, this is fantastic for me to look back on. But what value is in that content? A lot of what I’ve been eating hasn’t been particularly healthy, so who am I hoping to inspire?

On the other hand, I find myself not talking about my exercise and fitness-just brushing it off. Even though, as a food and FITNESS blog, this could be a big thing. And it’s a big part of who I am that gets neglected quite a bit! But here’s where I run into trouble-and as I’ll probably elaborate on in a minute, maybe the source of my blog rut-I’ve been worrying too much about what people will think. Will they say I’m exercising too much? But here’s the thing. Everyone is different. My exercise routine is balanced, and I look forward to most of my workouts. Crossfit is fun. I pick and choose the workouts I go to based on what I would find the most fun. If it wasn’t fun, I wouldn’t go. Also, I’ve been an athlete my whole life. I’m in good shape. But I tend to be self conscious about the fact that I usually run in the morning, and then do Crossfit in the evening. So I don’t discuss these things. But I really should! It shouldn’t bother me what people think because I know what works for me. I love running, and training for races, and I love Cross-training. So be it.

And onto the topic of caring what others think…I’ve ALWAYS wanted Fitness is Sweet to be a positive place. I don’t want to be negative in my posts. And there’s one topic I absolutely hate talking about, but I’m going to talk about today. This is a weird one though-I’m not worried so much as to what others will think, but rather what future me will think. I cringe at all those past-Aurora posts freaking out over this or that, and all those random “a-ha” moments (OMG I need to eat Paleo! OMG I need to avoid gluten! UGH.)

So this post is probably not one I’m going to look back and love, but it is what it is. Because the one topic I HATE talking about is weight. But hey, why not talk about it then?

I’m in college. It’s spring quarter. Nutrition seems to once again have gone by the wayside. So here I am, up a few pounds. And running SLOW (priorities, right?). And as much as I HATE discussing this, here we are. Because as much as I preach a healthy lifestyle, I never really did figure it out. I never returned to my pre-college weight, which drives me crazy, and I never returned to my pre-college eating. I’m active, which is fantastic, but my eating habits clearly leave a bit to be desired. Sure, I eat my vegetables, but a lot of sweets and snacks never make it to the blog. I guess I’m at a crossroads because I’m ready to really dig into this issue, but not too sure where to start because after all this time I’m still not there!

I feel like the extra pounds are really holding me back, in terms of my confidence and my athletic capabilities-I really want to PR my half this fall!

This past week, I’ve been trying to focus on staying calm and mindful, which helps but is still hard to stick with!

And at the same time I want to make myself healthier, I also want to have healthier content. I want to show delicious, nutritious meals, not just thrown together pictures of froyo and muffins.

However, I firmly believe that a negative attitude and negative relationship with food is never going to help with weight loss, so there is going to be none of that here. Which is why I have zero regrets about that Ben and Jerry’s-it was delicious! And it’s over, and I don’t regret it. I don’t plan on eating it every night forever, but it is what it is.

So I guess the summary of this long and super rambling post is that I’m going to take better care of my health and also work on improving my blog content-but I also think the two go hand in hand!

So if you made it this far, thank you! I know this post will probably make me cringe later, but I also think it is important. As bloggers, it’s easy to paint a healthy glow on everything, but we’re not always as healthy as we make ourselves seem to be! That’s very important to remember!

What makes you uncomfortable?

The Best, Ugliest Green Smoothie Ever

Date: May 15, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Today was another warm one here on the West Coast! For most of the day, the heat really didn’t bother me. But now…

Let’s start from the top. I’m being a good person and going to yoga again! I went again this morning after spin (spin is necessary prior to morning yoga or else I’m insanely stiff). I can already feel myself loosening up, thank goodness! My hips were super tight, so we focused on those today. I was the only one in the class-surprise, surprise, 8am fitness classes aren’t super popular with college students. It is really nice to have the personal attention! I want to go to that class as much as possible-I think it’s really going to help my tendonitis.

I was glad I snacked on a granola bar (KIND great grains) before my workout because I was pretty hungry by the end!

For breakfast, I finished up the last of my berries with plain greek yogurt and sunflower seed butter, plus a mango and another granola bar on the side.

I only had one class today, but I had a busy afternoon! Lunch was a quick one-scrambled eggs with manchego and a sour grapefruit!

After lunch, I ran out to embark on the first of many errands. Stop 1-a party store for a tutu for Bay to Breakers on Sunday! I also got some fun socks and face paint! I’m ready! (minus the whole distance running thing. Ehh race clothing is clearly more important.)

From there, I went straight to the allergist. At my last appointment, they tested for food allergies. This time, they tested environmental allergies. The verdict? Welp, I’m allergic to basically everything. Severe to pretty much all the trees and pollen they tested for, as well as pretty severe for dogs, somewhat for cats, and super strong for dust mites. Sooo there’s that. There’s not a lot I can do about it for now, but most of the time I don’t have terrible reactions to things and it’s ok. But let’s just say they had to give me allergy medication after doing the dest because my skin was reacting so severely!

After the appointment, I raced back to school for softball practice. There wasn’t a huge turnout, but I got to play catch and shake out my arm, which was nice. We ended in time for me to rush to the earlier Crossfit for a strength day (no WOD). One of the movements we did was weighted planks-doing a plank with a weight plate on your back. I absolutely love this. I used to do them with my trainer way back then, and I loved them so much I did them on my own a lot. Well, my core strength is about half of what it once was! Hah!

I ended up missing dining because there was a special dinner thing going on that ended earlier, so I went to Whole Foods. I’m trying to be more frugal, and I walked out of Whole Foods carrying all my groceries in one hand!

Somewhere between finishing Crossfit and eating dinner, I got pretty dehydrated. I didn’t go back to my room at all in the 8 hours or so I was gone, so I ran out of water at the end of my workout. I figured it wasn’t a huge deal, but by the time I was walking around Whole Foods, I was deliriously thirsty so I grabbed everything as fast as possible! I got a green smoothie-technically. They were out of mango, so I substituted blueberries, turning my smoothie a lovely shade of brown. I seriously could not have cared less how it looked. Or how it tasted for that matter-as long as it was cold and liquid, it was the best thing in the world. I CHUGGED that smoothie!

On the side, I has cornbread and tortilla soup.

Other eats from the evening: a date with unsweetened chocolate, and some of my beloved goat Brie.

I’m still feeling sort of tired/thirsty/out of it-it’s so hard to cool down! I’ve been chugging water all evening, so hopefully I’ll perk up!

What’s your favorite cheese?

Learning my Lesson

Date: May 14, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Today was another scorcher! I got my run out of the way first thing. It was my hilly 5 mile route, and I’ve been dreading this run all week. The hills have just not felt good lately-my legs feel dead! Well, as it turns out, it’s officially hot enough that I need to start carry water, even on these short-ish runs! Mid run, at the top of the hill, I was SO thirsty! I drank a ton of water when I returned, but with the heat and my morning run, I’ve been fighting dehydration all day.

Post run breakfast was the same old-plain greek yogurt with berries and sunflower seed butter. To be perfectly honest, I don’t want to switch it up, partly because it’s delicious and refreshing, but partly because I’m scared my berries will turn alcoholic before I can eat them, because the last batch did! So far so good though!

I didn’t pack a lunch today because I wasn’t sure if I’d have time to eat it between classes. In the end, I did get a chance to stop by a cafe on campus for a chicken and pesto sandwich on whole wheat.

My second morning class has air conditioning, but it’s always on SO high that even though I brought a sweater specifically for that class, I was still freezing my booty off! I have never been so happy to walk outside in nearly 100 degree heat-to thaw!

However, my afternoon class is most definitely not air conditioned. I spent 2 hours staring at a computer screen and melting my brain. Not fun. I then picked up LITERALLY the best, most amazing, refreshing, and cool thing in the world. An iced latte! (decaf)

Crossfit today was pretty empty. I guess everyone got fed up with the what yesterday and decided not to show today! For the strength, we worked on power snatches and I FINALLY PRed by 5 pounds! The WOD was a tabata of pull ups, push press, sit ups, and dumb bell cleans. The push presses were probably the most difficult for me!

After my workout, I headed to dinner at the dining hall. I’ve actually been digging the dining hall lately-today they had HUMMUS, which is rare and exciting. I filled up a bowl with salad, chicken, and plenty of hummus!

For dessert, I had a cool cup of plain Greek yogurt with cereal and strawberries, as well as a small slice of lemon cake. I’ve been really into lemon lately, ever since I came across this recipe that I’m dying to make! I had a lemon luna bar earlier as well-so perfect for summer!

And now, I’m sitting in my room sweating. Gotta love lack of air conditioning! Also-I only have 4 weeks until summer…what??

Do you have any exciting plans for the summer?