Happy Friday! (Or almost Friday for me.) I’m a lot more coherent now. I got a decent night’s sleep, plus the week of midterms is over. Now this is just the Night of Lab Report. My morning started out with 8am Crossfit. We spent a lot of time rolling out our calves…with the bar. Which is metal and hard and painful, and my calves are really tight from all the running I’ve been doing lately! I can still feel it-ouch. 

The workout was “Hellen” which is 3 rounds of 400m run, 21 kettlebell swings, and 12 pull ups. I finished in 12:18, but with the pull ups with a band. It’s amazing-I used to just do the Crossfit workouts to finish-and my goal would be to not finish last. Now, there are a lot of times when I’m at the front of the pack, and ahead of all the women. When did that happen?? I think it’s partly that my box here at school has a slightly different population of people, but even in the past few weeks, I’ve noticed a huge difference. I usually get behind from the beginning because I try to pace myself, but I find myself passing people near the end, especially on the running portions. I see people struggling on the runs while I am still cruising, and every time it makes me thankful for all the half marathon training I’ve been doing! My endurance is SO much better!

The shirt I wore to Crossfit this morning was covered in cat fur. Charlie fur. That shirt has not been home in 3 months…how does he do it??

But look at that face!

The trees in the lot where I park my car at school have been changing all fall, and there are just amazing. Fall In California looks like this!

After a quick breakfast, I had to head to office hours for chem lab, so I didn’t have time to hit up my usual coffeeshop. I did have time for a cappuccino after office hours, so I went to one nearby. This is what I get for cheating on Coupa (my normal coffeeshop). Sub-par milk foam. Check out the difference! The one on the left is today’s.

HOWEVER. A low milk foam to coffee ration means a high coffee to milk foam ratio. So there was a lot of espresso in this drink. So I was very awake, which was a nice change of pace!

No pictures of lunch-I grabbed it while running out and was striking out all over the place in terms of veggies. My lunch included laughing cow-I was going yo eat it with carrots, but my pack of carrots most likely had a pear die on it (or something sticky and gross) so I didn’t have time to deal with that. Next, I tried a fresh bag of snap peas, but they were oddly wet and had a really funky smell. So I ended up dipping raw green beans in  laughing cow. Totally normal, right?

I ended up with an early-ish and photographed dinner, which was a repeat of yesterday.

Vegetarian chili! So, so good. I also tried something-microwave nachos! Yes, it can be done. Cheese, tortilla chips, 20 seconds in the microwave.

They weren’t soggy or anything, but the cheese cooled really quickly so they had to be eaten fast. Not bad though for microwave cooking! 

After dinner I had the biggest chocolate craving, and given I have no chocolate and am not supposed to be eating sugar, I turned to cocoa powder for comfort. I whipped up this baby, which was probably half cocoa powder. Plus chocolate whey protein powder, almond milk, and unsweetened coconut, warmed up in the microwave. Not bad, but not the best. And I would kill for some chocolate or a cookie right now.

My Physics midterm went surprisingly well. I think they took pity on us after the last one. I’m not complaining. After the exam, I watched the end of a HUGE football game for my school-that I couldn’t go to because I was taking a midterm. We won (wooo!) and it was a huge upset, but it was super stressful at the end! It was fun though seeing people I knew in pretty much every shot of the stands!

Do you watch college football? What team?

Happy Wednesday! Or something. This has and is continuing to be quite the week. I just finished an intense 2 hour long Bio midterm and my brain is pretty much done, so I apologize for any lack of coherency. Tonight I still need to do a post lab and study for tomorrow’s Physics exam but my brain simply needs a break. I’m not sure I’m I’m sleep deprived or just mentally exhausted from all the studying and problem set work I’ve been doing. Today I spent a lot of time studying for tonight’s midterm-I usually don’t like studying day of but sometimes that can’t be avoided. A nap between studying and the midterm made it completely bearable though. I’m rambling. Let’s talk about fun things. Check out this picture of me PRing my front squat from my Crossfit’s facebook page!

Pretty cool! If yesterday was Tuesday, which I think it was (it’s one of those weeks…) I went to Crossfit in the morning and did a lot of snatches, and my shoulders are currently sore. 

I went to the campus store that takes meal plan dollars yesterday and scored big time-they have really good dried mango in their bulk bins, plus I got broccoli! It’s amazing the things you miss. That turned into dinner last night-broccoli, laughing cow, and brown basmati rice.

YUM. And I probably should have bought more dried mango because it is ow long gone. I should have just emptied out the bulk bin. My consumption of dried fruit is out of control. When my brain is mush half the time, it’s something easy to grab that will perk me up. And since I don’t have a ton of food pictures, we can talk about my eating habits of late. My roommate and I are pretty much avoiding sugar together, which means a lot of unhealthy things my dazed self might grab are automatically off limits. And I’m not at the point where I can even THINK about craving or missing certain foods. So I’ve been eating some random things. For example, yesterday, my sleep deprived mind thought it was a good idea to see if a human being could survive on nothing but dates. Which is sad because now I’m out of dates. And dried mango-see the problem here? Those are my favorites and go tos. My mom did bring me more dried fruit though-my currents are apricots and apples. 

Last night I had a Physics review until 10pm, and had to do homework after that. My running plan is pushed away in favor of school this week. I set 2 alarms for this morning-one for my morning track workout, and one to sleep in. I decided at around 5 am that I would turn off the early alarm and just sleep. Well guess who happened to wake up early anyways? This girl. Stupid daylight savings. Stupid sun. So I went out and did my track workout-10x400m repeats. It went pretty well-I didn’t run to the track like I usually do because I was short on time, so it took me a while to totally warm up and get in my groove. I’m pretty sure I’m going to be sore from this tomorrow though. I was really feeling it by the end. The only thing that was a little discouraging was that I don’t normally run these timed, but when I timed the last one, it was at the goal pace of my 5k. Which means what I was doing for 400m, I have to do for 3.1 miles. And ideally faster. This was kind of a wakeup call of how much work I have to do to get fast in the next month and a half. 

Cappuccino with a totally white top? Tons of milk foam->means it will be a good day. Hopefully that means I did well on my midterm? Some people read palms. I read milk foam. 

I’m clearly delirious. 

I’m also becoming BFFs with the barista. I swear I never even drank coffee before midterm season. 

Another highlight from the campus store-this hummus pack.

I bought this because it was a nice, reasonably sized hummus, and I ended up totally loving the hummus! I brought some carrots to go with it too, but they were kind of a wash because a few had rotted and the whole bag was slimy. Ick. But the hummus totally blew me away-have I not had that kind before? I hadn’t actually planned on eating the pretzels, but at that point in the day I think I needed carbs so they hit the spot perfectly. 

One more food highlight-THIS.

My mom is literally the best ever. She made and brought me vegetarian chili (which is the perfect fall food!), complete with cheese, tortilla chips, and even fresh cilantro. I’m pretty sure that’s as close to gourmet as I get in this dorm! So, so good. I still had some avocados in the fridge, which paired perfectly. Because what isn’t good about avocados?

I’m sorry this post was complete mush. The midterm I just took-I don’t think I’ve ever been that stressed-no-emotionally distressed-over a test before. And given I actually really loved the material, that is saying a lot. I also don’t think I’ve ever studied this hard or this much for a test. I thought I would feel more relief once it ended, but I’m still super anxious to get my grade back! But enough about midterms. I promise next time I’m back, the worst of the week is over and we can all live on a rainbow with puppies and butterflies. Ok, I need to stop. Sleep deprivation makes my posts 1. sarcastic and 2. bizarre. Good night!

Hey guys! I’m going to keep it short today. I basically have an endless amount of work, so there’s that.  

So…my school is having a pretty big outbreak of Norovirus, related to certain dorms and/or dining halls. So I’m trying to stay away from dining halls as much as possible because getting sick right now (or at all!) would be really awful. Hence last night’s dinner.

Yogurt, applesauce, warm cinnamon apples, and sunflower seed butter. 

In related news, anybody have any creative ideas of what I can do with apples, carrots, and eggs? Because that is pretty much the extent of my grocery supply at this moment. 

I’d also like to share what a big nerd I am with you. In Bio, we’re doing my favorite thing in Biology-carbohydrate metabolism. And given I’m a Bio major, that means it’s basically my favorite thing ever. So I made a pretty little poster, and this piece of artwork is going on my wall. 

This morning, I made the trek to my school’s shiny new gym. It opened on Friday, and this was my first time going. 

It looks pretty much exactly like the old one (but there’s a pool), and has pretty much exactly the same name. 

I made the journey across campus at 6:30am in the frosty air (ok, this is California…so maybe not) for one reason. 

SHINY NEW SPIN STUDIO.

Our old gym didn’t even have a spin studio. They just threw a bunch of crappy bikes into the corner of the weight room with some big speakers. The bikes didn’t even show speed! These bikes were a lot nicer, although they didn’t have as good a feel as the normal Spinning spin bikes. I put a class together for myself last night and went at it. There are no classes in this gym yet, which was nice because I can actually do my own workouts. The weight room seemed nice-everything is red (my school’s color), and our little logo is on all the weights. It was actually really empty! I’m not sure if it’s because this side of campus has fewer people or what, but it might be worth the extra long trip for an empty weight room! 

I wasn’t sure how the class I made was, but it must have been pretty good because I had the biggest post-spin high. Plus the return bike ride is all down hill. I thought about cheating on my usual coffeeshop, as Starbucks was on the way back, but it clearly wasn’t meant to be as Starbucks had a huge line. 

When I walked up to the register at my regular coffeeshop, the barista had already entered my order into the register. It was clearly meant to be.

A totally white top=the best kind of cappuccino. 

Fast forward to lunch-it was a pizza lunch with my Biochem professor and about 10 other students. I was super excited for it because I’m kind of obsessed with Biochem, but it ended up being a bit of a disapointment. I could be totally off base, but I got the impression that a lot of the students were there to suck up to our professor. 

In the afternoon, I went to do some work in a local cafe and picked up an oat bar. 

Between this and pizza, I ended up totally crashing my blood sugar and had to go take a nap. I did this yesterday too! I don’t normally eat a ton of grains anymore, so this is a problem I haven’t thought about in a while, so I didn’t even think of the consequences. Soo now I’m more well rested but behind on homework and studying. 

I don’t have a ton of food pictures today-sorry! So let’s stick to fitness. At Crossfit today, we were doing 2 rep max front squats. I’ve never actually done a maximum front squat. I was struggling at one weight, and then the owner of the box brought me weight lifting shoes to try. The next lift was 10 pounds heavier, and BAM-it felt light! I was shocked they made such a difference, especially given it’s not like I lift in running shoes. I ended up going up another 10 pounds, for a major PR (I know I said I’ve never done a maximum, but I’ve definitely never lifted anything close to this heavy.) I might have to get myself a pair of these now! In other Crossfit news, I did my first WOD with double unders today. Something kind of clicked a few weeks ago, and I’ve been able to string together quite a few of every other jump a double under. The workout didn’t call for hundreds of them, so it was the perfect time to test the waters. It went really well!

Aaaand I have one last thing to share with you guys. I am officially in 5k training mode. I found a cross country training plan to roughly follow, so here is what this week looks like. Days will vary based on my schedule and what else I’m doing that day.

Mon-Recover from 16 miler

Tues-Easy 30 min

Weds-10×400 repeats (Note-in the plan it calls for 400m jog in between, but I’ll probably just rest because I don’t want to do that much distance or spend that much time, at least this crazy week.)

Thurs- easy 30

Fri-30 mins fartlek

Sat or Sun- 60 minutes “long run” (Ohh how things have changed.)

The run I’m skipping this week is a tempo run. I wanted to extra time off to fully recover from the weekend’s super long run before I dive in. I’ve said this before, but I REALLY REALLY need to do a timed mile, but I really don’t want to. I do need to know if my 5k goals are realistic-as in, can I even run 1 mile at the pace I want to do my 5k at? I also want to sneak in some erging as cross training, because I felt that really helped me in my last 5k. But the first priority is making it through this week. Yeesh.

If you’re a runner, what is your favorite distance? Do you have specialty shoes for your workouts? 

My closet is kind of embarrassing. I didn’t even bring the shoes I used to lift in. There are Crossfit shoes, spin shoes, general workout shoes, running shoes, old running shoes, running shoes that I never wear because they make my feet hurt….