Guys! We’re a week away from Thanksgiving! And the best part? I have all of next week off! I just need to get through 2 more days…

My morning began with an early, foggy track workout.

It’s always so bizarre to me when I get up in the morning and see people who haven’t gone to bed yet…

I was all prepared for a soggy track workout, but once again, the rain held out for me! I completed the same workout as last week, and improved my overall pace my a second. I’ll take it!

Then, I headed indoors to lift. I’m following Crossfit’s Wednesday strength portion on my own. Today called for backs squats at 85% of my max…3 reps every minute for 10 minutes. 30 squats at 85% of max is HARD. I’m already feeling it. I then did some core/arm strength, and finished with a 500m row. It was supposed to be 1000m but my legs were DONE and were not going to move any faster. 

I made sure to refuel properly this time, adding a protein bar to my morning meal so I have some hope of walking tomorrow.

I packed a crazy amount of asparagus for lunch again, topping it with salt, pepper, and nutritional yeast.

At this point, it was raining like crazy outside, so I was stuck indoors with nothing but my homework and my asparagus.

I had a rather large snack a bit later-apple chips with cinnamon cream cheese (x2).

Plus a little creation of my own-chocolate. I don’t actually keep any chocolate in my room, so I decided to make some with cocoa powder, coconut cream, and sweetener. I then drizzled it on banana and topped with sea salt. Gourmet 🙂

 

However, as we all know quite well, I tend to be a bit heavy handed with the cocoa powder, and ended up eating a TON of it, which made me super hot and jittery. Blech. Plus I’ve had the worst stomachache since then!

Then, I biked through a river to get to Bio Office Hours. Seriously-it was a weird experience. There was the DEEPEST puddle in the middle of the road-probably like a foot deep. I had to coast through it and lift my feet WAY up off the pedals, or I would have been pedaling underwater!

Something really awesome and amazing happened after office hours. I was in the library searching for a bathroom, when I just happened to notice this shelf:

Umm scientific nutrition books? Biochem? Metabolism? I was in heaven! I had to stop myself from checking them all out! I’m definitely going to go get one or two for Thanksgiving break! I’m such a nerd, clearly.

It’s funny-this year my school has embraced the rallying cry of “nerd nation,” in response to our football team doing well. I think it’s funny, because I don’t think most people here are nerdy. I mean, some definitely are but that’s not the general impression you get! Or maybe the super nerdy people are living in the basement? That is a thing-Computer Science majors legitimately live in the basement of the CS building. It’s a scary place. I would never be a CS major.

Also, check out this fun idea I stole from Miranda!

Isn’t this just too cute? I wish I had more than a couple days to appreciate it!

I was going to go to the gym to get my row on, but I wanted to digest a little and decided to make tomorrow’s spin workout. Well, i got really caught up in making everything perfect, and two hours later, I finally glanced at the clock. Time really does fly when you’re having fun!

 

I have to be somewhere a little later tonight, so I knew the workout wouldn’t happen in time, so I went straight to dinner (maybe later tonight I’ll row-we’ll see!). I snacked on this while I raided the fridge.

I had such a great dinner plan, which was foiled when I found out my green beans were moldy. Darn! I officially have no vegetables left. Which is depressing given I just realized how much I love tons of veggies at lunch (maybe this is WHY they’re all gone…). I ended up finding some lettuce that was REALLY on its last legs, and pairing it with fig balsamic, cottage cheese, and a chicken sausage.

Plus some frozen zucchini bread. 

That’s all for today-my lab report calls me!

PS-I really want to do a certain race because they give you a shirt that says “I earned my guacamole.” That’s reason enough for me! Plus, I would love to get quite a few 5ks in before half training starts…I want to get fast!

Favorite veggie?

Happy Wednesday! It’s WIAW-which means you guys get to see a ton of food! Thanks Jenn!

 

I just got back from an a cappella concert-it’s Big Game week, which means we are playing our rival school. Tonight was “Big Sing,” so there were groups from both my school and our rival singing and basically bashing each other the whole time. It was all in good fun, but a mention of a certain loss to USC…too soon. That one hurt. I also couldn’t help but laugh when they sang about grade inflation at my school-in science majors, grade inflation most definitely doesn’t exist. 

But back to food! Here are a few things from yesterday.

A snack plate-I finally tried cinnamon laughing cow, and I’m in love! It’s not super sweet, which was a nice surprise! Super delicious on apple chips, just saying.

A leftover cheese souffle (amazing) and a salad with goat cheese and fig balsamic dressing, also amazing. 

This morning, my soggy run turned into sunshine when I awake to 0% chance of rain (it had been 80% for the morning). I did my long run for the week-8 miles. Of course, “long run” is kind of an interesting description, given I did 16 a few weeks ago…

I don’t normally eat much before workouts, but this time since it was a longer run, I chowed down on this bar.

 

The run went pretty well-I didn’t bring my Garmin. And of course, a cappuccino was necessary afterwards.

 

This was ah-mazing. It probably helped that I’ve had sub-par cappuccinos as of late-Starbucks is just no where near the same.

The obsession continues.

So…I was concerned I wasn’t eating enough vegetables. Which is true. So I packed an insane amount of asparagus for lunch. I threw every seasoning I had on there-garlic (from a jar), nutritional yeast, veggie seasoning, salt and pepper-it was wonderful. The only thing was I could smell the garlic in my backpack through like three bags…

And since it’s WIAW, I even packed a plate. And eating asparagus out of a bag? That’s weird even for me. 

Some dates from my 2 lb container. <3

My conclusion from today was that I clearly have not been eating enough veggies. I felt AMAZING all afternoon-I just had so much energy! I’m glad I still have some asparagus leftover for tomorrow! I think veggies at lunch are a lot more appealing for me when they’re cooked. 

As I was eating lunch, the skies finally started falling. So grateful I packed a raincoat!

And in case you’re wondering, yes it is really hard to see with this on. 

The best part about eating tons of veggies was I didn’t crave everything under the sun when I returned after class. I grabbed a quick snack before heading to the gym.

I did 3×8 minutes on the rowing machine (trying to gain back that extra fitness!) before heading to a spin class. During class, I was thinking-when you get in better shape, it’s not that your muscles burn less when you workout. Partly you can just breathe better, but partly I think it’s an increased pain tolerance. That was my experience with rowing at least, and I’m starting to feel that way again now with spin. If I can get into super awesome shape, it would really benefit me as a spin teacher because I would have some hope of talking to my class without gasping for air. On that note-I am officially certified! I passed the online test, so now I just have to get hired! (Although I want to get CPR certified as well.)

I decided to go to the dining hall after spin.

Grilled chicken, salad, a stuffed tomato, and beets. I pretended the beets were french fried and dipped them in ketchup. It didn’t exactly work-I’m not a beet person. 

They had a cooking demonstration going on with little samplers as well.

The cup has ginger carrot soup. It was AMAZING. Super creamy and smooth, with maybe a hint of coconut? SO good. I also tried pop rock chocolate.

It was interesting. The pops were super strong!

I also had this little concoction:

Dark chocolate cocoa powder. Banana. Heat. Mash. Amazing. I topped it with coconut cream. To be honest, I’m not a fan of coconut cream. It’s a little too rich for me!

And also, I have to share with you guys this toy we played with in my Physics lab today. I want one so. badly.

(Source)

And now I’m off to do homework and decide if I should do a short but soggy track workout tomorrow before lifting…I love the rain…when I’m inside. 

Have a great day!

Favorite Thanksgiving food?

The place we normally go has incredible butternut squash soup, served with creme fraiche. I’m sad we’re not going there this year just for that reason!

Hi friends! I never blog in the morning, which is what I’m doing now, but I was soo tired last night and had a ton of homework to catch up on, and ended up with a few extra minutes this morning. 

Before I get into yesterday, I have a few photos to share from Saturday.

Lunch with my parents on Saturday.

MY NEW SHOES. SO excited!

Sunday morning, I was up bright and early for spin certification training! It was about a 40 minute drive away. I decided to stop for coffee-when I realized I didn’t pack a fork for my salad. I tried to grab one from the coffee shop, but all they had were spoons and knives…It’s actually easier than you would think to eat salad with a spoon!

One thing about the gym though? It was FREEZING. It was basically just a concrete box, with no heaters or anything, and of course all I had was a sweatshirt. Brrr.

When we finally got on the bikes around 11:30, people kept commenting on how blue my lips were!

There was a wide range of students in the class-some have been spinning for longer than I’ve been alive, while others have been to a class or two but have been asked to get certified for one reason or another. 

The format of the class was a lecture, and then a ride right before lunch. The first ride was just to show us different techniques and drills. Then, after lunch was more lecture and a second ride at the very end, which was the instructor taking us through a class. Overall, I was probably on the bike for about 2.5 hours, and the class was 9 hours. 

Lunch!

I’m really, really glad I chose the Spinning brand as my certification. So much of what they do is based on hard science-from how the bikes are designed to the drills they take the students through. I’m lucky in that my first spin teachers taught Spinning style classes. Spinning classes mimic what it’s like to ride on the road, with no extras (like weights or bands). 

The instructor was great as well. She’s been involved with Spinning for 20 years, and teaching classes like this for a long time as well. She actually wrote some of the manual we were given, and was able to give us a lot of information not covered in the manual as well.

I think was of the most helpful parts was the profile building and music selection. After taking this course, I feel like I was totally unprepared before to teach class and make profiles. One other interesting thing is they emphasize making music choices besides just pop. I think that a lot of times, pop is an easy way out to get the class pumped up and enjoying the ride. A really awesome instructor can pull off a much different style of ride-the ride she took us through only really had one song with lyrics, and normally that would have made me bored, but she was such a great instructor that the class flew by. That requires a lot of cuing, and a lot of practice though, so I definitely may use a lot of pop as my crutch!

Building classes really is such an art. 

After the class ended, I stopped by my house for dinner and cat time, seeing as it was on my way back. We had cheese souffles, an herb salad, and sauteed thyme mushrooms.

My mom also made a really amazing blueberry crisp.

Served with vanilla frozen yogurt-divine.

And of course time with this guy:

Let’s just say that my black sweatshirt didn’t make it back to school with me-it was an inch thick with fur!

Have a great day!

 

Hi friends! 

I’m glad many of you are as excited for 12 Days of Christmas as I am! I’ve created a page at the top of the screen specifically for it-I’ll post each day up there!

I’m currently sitting in Starbucks. It’s nice to not have any more midterms that I’m procrastinating for by blogging. (More on that in a minute…) I had my first red cup of the season!

Apparently they’re a big deal or something?? Haha, I must say, I never knew the red cups were such a big deal until I entered the blog world. I guess I’ve had one before-maybe peppermint hot chocolate? This time last year I didn’t drink coffee. 

My cappuccino today was basically half milk foam-not that I’m complaining! This is about half of what was left once the coffee was all gone!

Not going to lie, it was sub-par milk foam. I’m totally spoiled by the milk foam quality at my coffeeshop-but I find a lot of the larger chains just don’t put in the time necessary to get it right. Once again, so spoiled. (But for the record, my coffeeshop is cheaper than starbucks. Barely, but still.)

Let’s back up a bit, shall we? Yesterday morning I somehow managed to oversleep my alarm. Which has never ever happened, except once where I think I did the same thing…I have no memory of my alarm going off, or me turning it off, but I do have a memory of checking a text from my friend exactly at the time my alarm was supposed to go off…go figure. I guess that’s what 5.5 hours of sleep will do to ya! 

With some rushing, I still manage to fit in most of my workout. It was 5x1000m repeats, which I did on the track. I gotta say, 1000m is a little too long for my liking! I still maintained my goal pace pretty well at least. I ran out of time for the last one, so I did a 400m repeat instead. 

I’m really trying to conserve laundry-my goal is to make it another week to Thanksgiving without having to do it (I did it last week), so I’m breaking out some of the lesser worn clothes. I thought I should show you the fact that I have bright blue workout pants, which I broke out for Friday.

I actually don’t know why I don’t wear them more often-they are a different material than my other Nike workout pants, but it actually is a lot better because my other ones always fall down, at least until I start sweating, which is a major pain. Plus, they feel so winter-y!

So…that midterm. Let’s just say I don’t think I’ve ever gotten nauseous from a midterm before. To put it in perspective, the last midterm which I thought was “not that bad,” the class average was 58. And THIS ONE was bad. Ouch. 

To add insult to injury, my Friday Chem lab lasted the full 4 hours, and I had to rush to Crossfit afterwards-I was starving and chocolate milk has never tasted so good in my life!

The workout was deadlifts for strength, and lots of pull ups and overhead lunges for the WOD. I probably could have used a smaller band for the pull ups- there were about 75 of them total, but I finished the workout pretty fast. 

It was so nice to spend a Friday night relaxing without having to be studying! I went to Whole Foods after Crossfit since they’re fairly close, and it was nice to just wander around. I needed food to pack for tomorrow’s 9 hour Spin Certification class (!!!), and this Whole Foods has the most awesome granola bar selection. I was all set to buy some awesome looking kombucha-when I realized it had a warning saying you had to be 21. Yeah, I wasn’t old enough to buy kombucha. 

This Whole Foods also has the biggest selection of egg nog I’ve ever seen. I was SO tempted to buy, well, all of it. My roommate and I are definitely getting this after Thanksgiving:

But our fridge is tiny so that should be interesting. They also had some local looking egg nog that seemed super gourmet. We are also planning an egg nog tasting party. We’re going all out for the holidays this year! It’s so hard to restrain myself from buying ALL THE DECORATIONS. I’m trying to wait until after Thanksgiving-but I really wanted one of these trees!

They are insanely cute-but I don’t want to kill it over Thanksgiving so I resisted. Here’s a blurry pic of the tree I had last year (it’s a real tree).

I picked up dinner from the hot bar-the Indian food smelled incredible, so I layered spinach, rice, and chicken, and had a side of cabbage slaw.

I ate outside-they even had heat lamps!

I also sampled a new granola bar. I’ve tried the same brand of bar before, and I liked the other one better. This was good, but it had a slightly cardboard-y flavor. 

I had a fairly low key night-I stopped by my friend’s birthday party, and then later met some new people, which is always fun. I ended up buying my small group late night, because let’s be honest-how much kombucha can a girl drink in 3 weeks? I still have 50 meal plan dollars left, AFTER buying everyone food!

I have a pretty large but varied to-do list today-I don’t plan on having much time tomorrow for school work. I got the world’s fastest haircut this morning-all the sudden I had the hugest urge to cut my hair, and I was in and out in 15 minutes. I got 4 inches off-my hair has gotten way too long in the last few months-I haven’t gotten it cut often enough, or gotten enough taken off. Here’s a before and after pic, although it looks exactly the same. I swear in real life it’s actually a lot shorter!

SO much better. I hate having long hair!

One more thing for today-I discovered that pretty much the only green juice I actually like is anything with pineapple and kale. I picked this up at Whole Foods, and it’s really good! Pineapple, kale, mango, and apple coconut water. 

Have a great day!

What is your Starbucks order?

The only thing I get anywhere is a small cappuccino. Everyone’s orders here have been so intense!