I Feel So American

Date: July 4, 2016

Author: astottler

Happy 4th of July everyone! Hope you all had a fabulous weekend. I’m checking in with the latter half of my first weekend in Tennessee.

Let’s start with Sunday.

I started by hitting up Knoxville’s only spin studio, Turbo Cycle.

It was one of the classes where your stats appear on the screen, and this always makes me work harder! It was a tough and fun class. One thing that I didn’t love was that I didn’t have my own spin shoes. I’ve never actually used any other cycling shoes, but they didn’t make the cut of what to put into my crammed suitcase. Apparently mine have pretty thick and sturdy soles, so the shoes I used for that class made me a little nervous for my foot since I could feel the pedal more beneath me, but I was careful and it was ok.

Afterwards, I went to another highly rated coffeeshop to cool off with a decaf iced latte and to finish my book.

Back in my room, I made lunch.

Sweet potato noodles, spinach, cheese, guacamole, and BBQ chicken.

After lunch I walked down to World’s Fair Park with a new book in hand and explored the area.

After a while I decided that the ~95 and humid weather was not as pleasant in the shade as I was hoping, and headed back for a low key afternoon with my book and some netflix.

My outing that evening was froyo. It’s 5 miles to the nearest froyo! Worth it.

My 4th of July felt extremely American. My most American yet (although this one may be a close second). I’m in the South, my friends.

I started my morning with Crossfit, which was a Hero WOD.

Adrian

Seven rounds for time of:
3 Forward rolls
5 Wall walks
7 Toes to bar
9 Box jumps

Forward rolls? Not a thing for me. I did the sub, which was flutter kicks. I was able to knock out toes to bar pretty well. I’m getting stronger there at least! Box jumps? I did them! I used a shorter box (I think 18″), and was super careful. They felt good. I forget to mention it, but on Saturday I “did” my first burpees since my foot. I say “did” because I stepped forward and back. But we’re getting there my friends!

The Crossfit gym is decidedly un-airconditioned, so I was sweating buckets almost immediately. Lunch was a much needed green smoothie, plus a fuji apple chicken salad from Panera.

I spent the next few hours reading and doing laundry, before making the drive into the countryside to visit my college advisor’s lake house.

As a happy land dweller, I usually avoid water, but I was persuaded to spend some time in the lake, thanks to warm temperatures.

(Apparently Nike makes bathing suit bottoms that are shorts. This is my ideal!)

My floatie of choice was a paddle board. I’ve always wanted to try SUP, but there was a pretty strong current and I had no confidence in my ability to steer away from it if I actually got up. I stood briefly while hanging on to the dock. Baby steps! I spent most of the time just sitting on it, enjoying the beautiful day and the water.

I felt so AMERICAN. Floating in a lake, drinking a beer, eating ALL the appropriate BBQ foods.

I had a great time, and left in time to make it through the small and windy country roads with some daylight left.

It started to get dark right as I got back onto a main highway, and I saw a few fireworks being shot out a ways away. There is something so amazing and beautiful about seeing fireworks when you aren’t expecting to.

I made it back by around 9:30, and contemplated walking down to where I knew there would be fireworks, where lots of people were headed.

I walked a little ways before deciding I wasn’t feeling it. Also, I thought my room my have a decent view of some fireworks (yay for the 11th floor!), so I grabbed a treat at an open market (A candy bar. American? Probably.)

I arrived to my room JUST in time to see this:

What a perfect view!

And now it is time to head to bed—lots of early mornings ahead!

What did you to do celebrate the 4th?

Exploring Knoxville

Date: July 3, 2016

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

After a pretty intense week, Friday night I was able to start exploring Knoxville!

Friday night I went to Central Burgers and Taps with some of the people I’ve met while here and their dogs. This is a very dog friendly city, and most places with outdoor seating allow dogs.

Saturday morning began with a Crossfit class!

I hadn’t done any intense exercise in a week, so it felt good to sweat! (And sweat I did—no AC!) We did about 1000 burpees, push ups, wall balls, and ab mat sit ups. Well, maybe not 1000, but over 100 of each! We did a deck of cards workout, where each movement was a deck of cards. The coach let the class choose, and apartment the class is full of masochists, haha! In all seriousness though, the people were SO nice. Some of the most genuinely nice people I’ve met in the Crossfit community. I wasn’t sure I was going to try to do a membership because the class time I can make is 5:30am (ouch), but I was won over!

Next up was a trip to the only gluten free bakery in Knoxville, for their Saturday morning biscuits! Benefit Your Life was a bit of a drive (apparently you can drive 13 miles on the highway and still be in Knoxville?), but totally worth it. I got an egg and cheese biscuit, and a strawberry, banana, orange smoothie.

Plus a chocolate chip cookie for later.

After cleaning up, I enjoyed my lack of schedule by reading a book for an hour or so before heading out to explore the city (i.e. plant my butt in a coffeeshop and work on vet school apps). I headed to K Brew, and had to try their special, a honey lavender latte.

I’m not normally a sweet coffee person, but this was AMAZING. I’m going to have to go back and try their cappuccinos too to really evaluate this coffeeshop!

I ate my cookie while working on apps. Necessary to make them a little bit sweeter. In all seriousness though, having such a low stress and happy environment makes them a lot less stressful.

I was there for about 2 hours before I headed down to Market Square to walk around. Apparently there’s a nice farmer’s market there Saturday mornings!

I then stopped at a salad and sandwich/burger restaurant for a turkey, avocado, and ranch salad.

Followed by frozen custard. Chocolate/vanilla swirl.

This was from Rita’s. Apparently there’s one near my house in CA that I have yet to try, but this was really good! (Shake Shack is better though.)

From there I drove around the area to try and get my bearings and ran some errands, before heading out again with the same people. We played corn holes, which I’m decent at but not as good as you might think, given my pitching background!

Today I have another full day to explore, and after my workout, I’m not sure what I want to do!

Have you ever been to Knoxville? Recommendations for me?

What I Ate SUPERSPEED

Date: June 30, 2016

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

It’s been another long day. I’m learning so much, but I finish the day totally wiped, with my feet aching. In exciting news, I went for my first post-stress fracture run last night. It was more like a shuffle, and max .5 miles, but the ability of the human body to heal if you let it is amazing. 4 weeks ago, I thought now I might still be in a boot.

Jet lag stinks too. I haven’t been able to fall asleep as early as I would like, so I’ve just been SO tired. So let’s hop to it!

Breakfast:

Plain Greek yogurt, GF vanilla crunch cereal, sunbutter. These are Carolina blueberries. They taste okay, but they’re squishy. They pale in comparison to what you can get in CA, but they are alright.

Snack: Banana

Lunch:

Quest BBQ chips, salad with peach, chicken, and goat cheese.

Snack:

Workout: A few push ups+40% of Blogilates 1000 squats video.

Making Dinner Snack (It’s impossible for me not to snack while I cook so I at least go for something healthier. The grapes are frozen!)

Dinner:

Sweet potato noodles in the microwave this time, veggie burger (x2 because I was still hungry), and salad with Bolthouse Farms Creamy Garlic dressing.

Dessert:

Dorm Room Food+Fitness

Date: June 28, 2016

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Greetings (again) from Tennessee! I’m currently blogging from my dorm (I just graduated and am back in dorms already—haha! This is seriously the nicest dorm ever though…apartment style). I’m in the kitchen while steaming some snap peas. The snap peas were pretty awful raw—super fibrous and hard. I’m hoping I can soften them up a bit!

I think it’s been hot here, but I’ve actually been FREEZING all day inside! And I didn’t pack single long sleeve shirt to wear for warmth.

I wanted to talk a bit about food+fitness while I’m here. I currently don’t have a gym membership or a Crossfit membership, and I’m trying to figure out how I want to do things. I’m not off soon enough to make any evening Crossfit classes, but I could potentially make a 5:30am one. That being said, what I’m doing is important and I really don’t want to be tired all day, or the days will be rough. I might get some drop in Crossfit classes and go 2x/week, or I might do a gym membership and go after I get off. Crossfit is about 4 miles closer than the nearest gym though, and a lot of gyms are really hard to join for a month (because they’re impossible to cancel). This all would be a lot easier if I could just go for a run for exercise! I’m hoping that by the end of my time here I’ll be able to a bit. So far, my foot is feeling good, despite long hours standing on it.

Workouts so far this week:

Monday night (after dinner): 15 minute Blogilates abs video: Extreme Abs 3. Who knows, maybe I’ll be crazy out of shape but have super strong abs by the end of the summer??

Tuesday night: I did the inside of Murph (sort of). There’s plenty of space in my dorm to exercise, so I did 100 sit ups (in place of pull ups), 200 push ups, 300 squats. I broke that up into 20 rounds of 5-10-15. It felt SO much easier than actually doing Murph! I did work up a little sweat though.

That did have me craving harder workouts again though! Still not sure what I want to do.

In terms of food, I’ve been sort of lazy. Breakfasts have been Luna bar+fruit (I had the BEST watermelon on Monday!). Lunches have been packed—nothing complicated because I was super tired by the time I got to the grocery and didn’t buy much, plus I wasn’t sure how much time I would have. They’ve just been sunbutter and raspberry jam on gluten free bread. The bread is frozen, so I actually make my sandwich on frozen bread, then stick the whole thing in the fridge the night before. It’s been pretty good by lunchtime! On the side, I’ve been having some of the awful snap peas. I also threw in some blueberries today that I brought with me all the way from California! They are far better than the blueberries I’ve been getting here. For a snack, I’ve been having chocolate cupcake Luna bars. I think they’re growing on me, but today was the last one I had, and they’re hard to find!

Dinners have involved this exciting find:

I mostly was excited to find thin sweet potato that I could quickly sauté up. Dinner on Monday was this served alongside some spinach patties (frozen).

Since this was clearly not enough food, I also had some snacks (banana+frozen grapes, sunbutter and jelly toast).

I actually planned my workout around tonight’s dinner. I wanted to roast some stir fry veggies that I bought, so I wanted something I could do in the dorm while those all were roasting.

I actually ended up eating the entire container because they shrunk SO much! I had that with a hemp+greens veggie burger. I actually loved this! I loved the subtle hemp flavor.

That’s all for now! Still not sure what tomorrow’s workout will look like. I also desperately need to hit up the grocery for more veggies!

What is your favorite at home workout?

What I Ate While Traveling

Date: June 26, 2016

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Greetings from Tennessee! It has been quite the long day. I woke up at 3am for a 5am flight, and I’m feeling about ready to drop!

I thought it would be fun to record a little What I Ate in a Day Traveling edition.

Breakfast: on the plane, after sleeping for about an hour.

Homemade butterscotch zucchini bread+cherries. Boy am I going to miss California fruit!

Lunch: I had a layover in Denver, so I grabbed food to eat on the plane. At the first cafe I stopped at, I was lucky enough to find a pre-made gluten free turkey sandwich, with garlic aioli. Perfect! I ate this with my last few cherries.

Snack 1: I had a few bites of this bar with breakfast, and had the rest about an hour after lunch.

Snack 2: Still on the plane, I had blueberries and crackers.

I ended up renting a car for this trip because of my foot, but it meant I was able to get some things from the store. I was caught out in a thunderstorm—now I think I know what it would be like to drive in a hurricane!

(Please note that I am parked in this picture.)

I ended up picking up dinner at the whole foods hot bar. Salad with parmesan and grapes, teriyaki chicken, roasted carrots, and African spiced sweet potatoes.

And then later that evening when I was packing myself a sunbutter and jam sandwich for lunch on Monday, I had a few crackers with sunbutter+jam. I wanted to choose a local jam!

And now I’m off to finish getting ready for tomorrow (Monday)!

What is your favorite travel snack?