Of course, my morning started with a Crossfit workout.

We did a simple but longer workout, with the option of having a partner and splitting it up:

50 squats

400m run

50 push ups

400m run

50 pull ups

400m run

50 wall balls

I chose to do it alone…and started regretting that decision during the pull-ups! Honestly though, my pull ups need so work, so builds character?

After a sweaty workout, I relaxed on the coach with sparkling water and a mid-morning baseball game. Perfect way to spend a holiday!

On the way home from my workout, I picked up some food for the day, including apparently bad goat cheese. I was going to have some for lunch, but it was rotten. What the heck?? It wasn’t past the expiration date!

For an early, light lunch, I had a single serve bag of rice cakes (current obsession) and a salad with peach and burrata.

After the game, i spent a few hours relaxing with a book and a kitty, which was fantastic.

Then, mid-afternoon, I went to a BBQ with some of my high school friends.

I got to play with my friend’s puppy, drink beer and eat delicious food, and lose a water balloon toss.

I came in time for the dinner I envisioned earlier in the day: red, white, and blue salad!

I’m already obsessed with Blueberry Burrata Salad, so I figured why not throw some raspberries in and make it patriotic? This salad would also have been delicious with goat cheese in place of burrata.

We also had grilled corn, because #summer.

Of course, I also had to make red, white, and blue banana bread. It’s just my basic banana bread recipe, but with white chocolate chips, raspberries, and blueberries stirred in. It’s also possibly the most delicious banana bread variation I make.

For fireworks, we weren’t feeling too ambitious, so we walked to the top of our street with Chloe to where we could see the whole Bay, and were able to see a couple of different fireworks displays from there.

Here’s the obligatory blurry fireworks picture:

It was a nice low-key holiday!

I have lots of good things to share, including a recipe! Yay!

Before I get to food, let’s talk about workouts. I was all set to go to Crossfit after work Monday, but I walked outside to a giant storm, and then the Metro stopped running, so I missed the class, and didn’t feel like going to the late class.

Anyways, this meant Monday was rest and today was a 3 miler! After pouring all afternoon, I decided to take a chance and go for it during a break in the rain. I did my usual 3 mile route.

Yeah. I live here.

And this is not a bad turn around point:

Yes, the Washington Monument is EXACTLY 1.5 miles away, so it should be pretty clear why this is my typical route now!

On the way back, storm clouds began to threaten. It started POURING right as I was running up my block. Talk about lucky!

The run also felt fantastic. I was running on rested and not “just woke up and it’s 6am” legs, plus I’m been working hard in my training, and it’s certainly paying off. This is week 3, and each week I’ve done this route. I’ve done it faster each week, and each week it feels better. Week 1 was super slow for me-10:18 pace. sat week was 9:48, and today was 9:29. And it wasn’t like it was an all out pace, so it’s a good start!

Now onto the part everyone actually cares about. Food.

Breakfasts have been the same old-sunflower seed butter with lots of fruit! Plus chai tea since I’m laying off the coffee.

Lunch Monday was leftovers of Cheesy Mushroom Quinoa plus some yogurt.

Lunch on Tuesday was extra special. I was on trip at work, and the food they prepared us was amazing and beautiful.

I’m not sure how much I should talk about work on here, but I will say this gives me so much hope for the future of America’s school food system!

I piled my plate high with all kinds of delicious salads. One of my favorites was a ginger root salad. This is the first context in which I’ve actually enjoyed beets!

I also got to take leftovers home with me, which made a great pre-run snack/dinner.

And finally-for the recipe!

Coconut Flour Arepas

*Edited to add: this is based on the fantastic Blogilates recipe for healthy quesadillas!

Ingredients

2 T coconut flour

1 ear of corn

2 T water

6 T egg whites

1/8 t baking powder

salt to taste

Directions

1. Mix together coconut flour, water, egg whites, and baking powder in a small bowl.

2. Remove the corn from the cob, and add to mixture.

3. If mixture is too thin, let it sit a moment. The coconut flour may take a bit of time to absorb the water, but this will still be fairly runny. Add salt if desired.

4. In a large pan, add a touch of olive oil and heat the pan.

5. Once pan is hot, pour mixture into pan.

6. When bubbles begin to form on the surface, flip and cook through.

7. If desired, sprinkle with salt, and fill with desired fillings. I used smoked gouda.

Delicious, and comes together in minutes!

What is your favorite type of cheese?

Not for everything, but I love goat brie. If you haven’t tried it, you absolutely need to!

I have had a busy day, and loved every minute of it!

But first, I have to back up to last night to talk about some food things-new to me places and baking!

For dinner, after passing a multiple Sweet Greens on my way home, I finally decided to stop in. For those unfamiliar with it, it’s a salad place. I was a little surprised by how expensive the salads were but they were made with all local ingredients so I guess you get what you pay for! I went with the guacamole salad (because avocado!) which really did taste like fresh guacamole! It was really lime-y, which I normally don’t love but it was really working here!

After dinner, I stopped by the store to pick up some ingredients for banana bread. I haven’t made it in forever, and while I may not have many cooking utensils, I did get a loaf pan! (And I know I still owe you guys the lemon poppyseed banana bread as well!) Banana bread is my thing. I modified a recipe and I’ve never made a variation that hasn’t worked. On tap for last night was blueberry banana bread! I used my banana bread recipe (adapted from Nancy Clark’s recipe) and omitted sweetener, and added about 3/4 c fresh blueberries. I have a friend in DC for the sumer as well, so she came over to bake with me! I quickly realized I didn’t buy a mixing bowl….so pot it was! My oven is also really weird and tiny, and for some reason the bread was only cooking on the top until I moved it to the bottom wrack, but it still came out well!

I have a 4th of July variation I really want to make-what do you think of red, white, and blue banana bread?

Saturday morning, I was in for a treat. I signed up to do a free OutRun! It’s basically a boot camp mixed with running, for a 90 minute workout, put on by Roam Fitness. The 90 minute weekend runs are free, but there are shorter ones during the week that are not.

Before the workout, I fueled up with banana bread and cherries.

Then, it was go time! I took the metro to get there, and it was a fairly easy trip.

When I arrived, everyone was super welcoming and friendly. I don’t have a lot of pictures from the workout but it was a good one! I think we covered about 4 miles, with bootcamps interspersed. We did all kinds of things, but to name a few: jumping jacks, planks, Indian Runs, stairs, stairs with a parachute, ladders, and abs. The list goes on. It was super fun, but definitely hard. I loved getting to explore the city on foot and go to new places! And guess who I ran into?

Anne, from Fannetastic Food! I actually found out about this workout from her blog, and since I’m now in this city, I figured why not check it out? She was really nice and fun to talk to, and even hung back with me while I was dying going up a hill with the backpack of water! Plus, she answered my constant questions about where we were, since I’m really trying to learn the lay of the land! For more pictures, check out her blog because I’m sure she got more than I did!

Running up said hill was definitely worth it for the view of DC though.

This was a fabulous workout. That being said, you definitely need a fitness base. There wasn’t a huge group today so I imagine the pace groups would split up more if there was, but I definitely found myself pushing the pace a bit, and it was hard! It was so much fun though, and I know these types of workouts and the work I put in now are what are going to help my PR in the fall. Like I’ve said before, I need to run fast to get fast!

Also, you know it was a great workout when you’re starving all day!

Before I go into the rest of the day, I want to spend a moment talking about the DC fitness community. It’s seriously fantastic. I’m soaking up every bit of it and loving it. Just this week I’ve:

-run through the monuments

-run up the Lincoln Memorial stepsx100000 at 5:30 in the morning

-PRed twice at a Crossfit named the best box in DC

-got my butt handed to me at a super hard run club run along the waterfront

-gone to OutRun

It’s a lot for a week, but there’s seriously so many awesome things I just can’t help myself! I’m sure things will slow down once half training really kicks into year, but until then, I’m just going to continue to love it. Plus, everyone is so nice and welcoming!

Ok-back to the regularly scheduled programing (aka food). For some reason I decided that a hot cappuccino was perfect after a hot and sweaty run.

I then snacked on some dried mango while I made some scrambled eggs with Manchego and spinach.

Also, maybe it’s the heat, but grapes have become the greatest thing ever in the past week.

Later that afternoon, I met up with some friends from school who are also here, and we went to the Folklife Festival, which is a cultural type of festival that the Smithsonian puts on in the National Mall. This year’s focus was China and Kenya. We wandered around and watched some shows, and cooking demos! Also, we saw professional storytellers from Kenya! What a cool profession!

Afterwards, we walked over to an Asian Fusion place for dinner. It was fairly far, but I wore my trusty new pink running shoes to save my feet, and man was it a good decision! I walked everywhere tonight! (Hence the above collage.)

For dinner, I had mixed veggie an chicken stir fry.

After dinner, one of my friends split off, and we ended up in an Uber right around the area I had run in that morning! I felt insanely knowledgable because I knew where we were, and how to get to the Metro. Gotta love fitness adventures to tell you where you are! We decided to get ice cream, so took the Metro to a place that ended up being closed. We wandered around until we found a burger and shake restaurant that had frozen custard. That was a good decision, after being out in the hot sun all day!

I chose vanilla custard with salted caramel sauce and chocolate truffle cookie dough. It was delicious!

We then hopped around the city again to see a movie. It was great, wasn’t awful, but I wouldn’t recommend it.

But what a day! I’ve been EVERYWHERE. On the schedule tomorrow is the Farmer’s Market! I have to make the most of this city, right??

Have you ever lived in a city? Any ideas what I should do while I’m in DC?

2 workouts

and 1 amazing family.

I don’t post a ton of recipes, but since we’re approaching my blogiversary, it was time to get to work in the kitchen! I love low sugar recipes, and these lack the sugar without the flavor. Enjoy!

Double Chocolate Banana Bread

Ingredients:

4 ripe bananas

1 egg (or 2 whites)

2 T oil (I used canola)

1/3 c milk

1 t salt

1 t baking soda

1/2 t baking powder

1/2 c cocoa powder (I used dark chocolate, hence the color)

1 c flour-I used whole wheat pastry

1 T honey

1/2 c bittersweet chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 350.

2. Mash bananas and mix all ingredients besides the chips.

3. Stir in chips

4. Bake for 45 minutes at 350 until done.

Cranberry Banana Bread

Ingredients

4 ripe bananas

1 egg (or 2 whites)

2 T oil

1/3 c milk

1 t salt

1 t baking soda

1/2 t baking powder

1.5 c flour (I used whole wheat pastry)

2 t cinnamon

1 t vanilla

1/4 c packed brown sugar

1/4 c dried cranberries

1/2 c chopped fresh cranberries

1. Preheat oven to 350.

2. Mash bananas and mix in all but cranberries.

3. Stir in both types of cranberries.

4. Bake for about 50 minutes or until cooked through.

Healthy Polka Dot Cookies (Mint chocolate)

Ingredients

2 ripe bananas

4 soaked dates (unsoaked should would but may not blend as well)

1 full square Baker’s chocolate (unsweetened)

1 T butter (or coconut oil)

1/2 t baking powder

1/2 t baking soda

1/4 t salt

3/4 c cocoa powder

2 eggs

1 t vanilla

3/4 c flour (whole wheat pastry or any type)

3/4 c mint chips

Makes 24

1. Preheat oven to 350.

2. Warm bananas in microwave, and then blend with dates until smooth.

3. Melt Baker’s chocolate into banana mix.

4. Using a mixer, blend in all but flour.

5. Mix in flour with mixer.

6. Stir in mint chips

7. Drop onto cookie sheet-about 2 teaspoons per cookie.

8. Bake for about 9 minutes, depending on oven and cookie sheets, or until cooked through.

Enjoy!

So last night after I posted, I was sitting on my bed attempting to do homework. I had a lot on my mind, and could not sit still. I decided, gym at 9 pm? Why not? Ok, now looking back on it, this doesn’t really seem too late, but I’m definitely an early morning workout kind of girl. But honestly, nothing sounded better than spinning my heart out. I hoped on a bike, shuffled my Now That’s What I Call Music 45 album, and just had such a great time. It was on shuffle, but all the songs came up perfectly for my profile. I was there for about 45 minutes. 

While this was something I really needed, I regretted my decision just a tad when my alarm went off at 7 to go lift weights….but I’m glad I got up! I did this tried and true workout:While I love it, I think it is time to start upping the weight on those squats. 

And being the good blogger that I am, I ate semi-more interesting things today, and photographed a majority of them!Plain Greek yogurt, frozen blackberries, and granola with added raisins. It was a different type of granola at the dining hall, and I’m not a fan. It was too sweet. Granted, the other type probably has too much sugar for me as well, but whatever. For lunch, I bought a super expensive salad in an effort to begin to use up my outrageous amount of meal plan dollars. I had half for lunch, with the plan of having the other half for dinner. (That didn’t happen, as you shall see.)

I had plans to run with my friend after class, but she was feeling sick and I wanted a nap. And a mango. In lieu of running today, we made new plans to run tomorrow evening. That’s my fruit knife, which I love. I seriously only use it for fruit though, not that I’m complaining!

My snack ended up being larger than planned, and included some bites of my now-soggy salad, banana bread, and another mango (the above mango is tiny, but you can’t tell from the picture). Oh, and some yogurt!Frozen banana bread. Since the school year is ending, I’m trying to eat up my freezer!

Enter microwave woes. For some reason, our microwave wasn’t working, so I went downstairs to use the dorm one-which, by the way, is super janky. And kind of gross. But it got the job done!

When my roommate got back, we looked a bit closer into the microwave problem. It appeared that the plug it was attached to was dead, because when we connected my lamp to it, it would not turn on. After further investigation, we finally discovered the root of the problem. The whole octopus the fridge and microwave were connected to was unplugged. Yayyy smart college students. I’m just glad we realized this when we did! The fridge is fullll.

I also received my housing assignment for next year! I’m actually super happy with where we are, although it is technically not considered very good housing. We got a pretty good draw number, but we had a huge draw group (8 people). (Oh, and the housing is a draw- you rank your top choices and they draw numbers.) But the dorm we are in is solid- centrally located, pretty close to 2 decent dining halls, and most importantly, very close to the gym. Because when I’m biking to the gym to go to a Spin class, and I don’t want the extra few hundred feet. You know. 

I decided to make dinner in my dorm, since we had a now fully functioning microwave. I ran into the dining hall for spinach, and left with a slice of cinnamon raisin toast as well. This stuff is seriously so good! And then I whipped up some guac from the avocados from my big, and a packet of guacamole mix. I the cooked egg whites in the microwave with a ton of spinach, and topped the eggs with guacamole. Have I ever told you guys I like avocados? No?

“Dessert” was more freezer cleaning- frozen blueberries and a Paleo Pumpkin sort-of-bread creation, x2 (because it’s half a slice!).Whooo check out the ice crystals on those blueberries!

Well, that’s about all I have for you guys. I’m currently realizing that my abs are sore….Being the weirdo that I am, I really love that feeling! So if you guys have any great sore abs workouts, send them my way!

Happy weekend! Hopefully everyone has been having a good weekend so far. I missed posting yesterday, I had another paper to write last night that was due at noon today, and I had practice all morning so I had to do it last night. Seriously, who assigns a paper to be due at noon on a Saturday? Well, let’s go over 2 days then! 

Friday morning began with weights. There are 2 options for times for weights, 6:30 and 8:30. I have class at 10, so I usually go to the 6:30 so I have enough time to completely finish my workout, eat, and shower. As you may know, I haven’t gotten much sleep lately, so Friday morning when I woke up I just was not feeling it. I got ready to go, and was running pretty late so I decided to just go back to bed and go to 8:30 weights. Since it was Friday, I could move around my schedule a bit and go to a 12:15 lecture instead of my normal 10 am lecture, so I didn’t start class until math at 11. 

Weights absolutely smoked my hamstrings. We do 2 workouts for 3 weeks. Last Friday’s workout left my hamstrings completely sore up until yesterday. Ohh RDLs how I love you. Yesterday, I did more and heavier RDLs, so this week should be interesting. In theory, I should be getting more used to it, so we’ll see. I’m pretty sore right now, but it’s nothing terrible. 

After weights, I made myself a Chocolate Post-workout Recovery Drink. 

I didn’t exactly mix in the cocoa powder completely…It’s amazing what 8 little ounces of fluid can do for muscle recovery. I instantly felt 1000x better. 

I also enjoyed some frozen cherries.

After my first class, I decided to get a little caffeine, because Chem definitely has a tendency to make me sleepy, and I have been behind on sleep for a while. 

I found a little cafe that I had never been to before, and ordered the only coffee drink I recognized (I’m obviously such an expert), and went with an iced latte. Even though it was freezing out. 

For those of you that don’t know, my campus is mainly a biking campus. When I got here, I hadn’t ridden a bike since I was maybe 8. Soo the first month was interesting. But now I’ve gotten proficient enough that I can carry a fancy coffee drink while biking! Score! That is definitely the sign of a true college student. 

I’m not a big fan of the taste of coffee, but I’m getting more used to it. I also don’t need a lot of caffeine to wake me up, and even though I didn’t finish this drink, I was a little jittery. But here’s the weird thing. I’ve noticed that at some point when I’m drinking a coffee drink, it starts to taste more bitter than normal. And I have the impression that this is the point of my caffeine tolerance. Like if I keep drinking it after it starts to taste more bitter, it will be too much caffeine for me. I’ve noticed this before. Has anyone else noticed this? Is it a real thing? Am I a freak of nature?

After class, I took a brief nap. (pshh what coffee?) When I woke up, I enjoyed a piece of banana bread and an apple heated in the microwave with cinnamon. 

Banana bread? Where did that come from? I thought my freezer was empty?

Delivery!

My mom brought me some bread to freeze! She had class here, so she brought me this, and my new toy:

A hand vacuum! My dorm has a vacuum, but a) it’s from the 1980s and b) I live in a college freshman dorm. I recently saw what someone used it to clean up. Never again. So now I have this little guy, which works great! I’m going to vacuum way more now!

Anyway, back to the banana bread. My mom used my favorite recipe, which can be found here.

Practice went well. It was interesting because we were short a coxswain (the little person that yells at us and steers the boat) so we had an injured rower cox us. She was actually really good, but I felt really bad for her because she’s really tall and the places where the coxswains sit is tiny! I was definitely cracking up some of the time because she kept forgetting she had a microphone on, and was being projected by speakers in the boat. Especially when she was complaining about some sailors docking their boats on our dock!

After practice, I came back and made one of my favorite meals ever, that conveniently can be made in my dorm room. 

Yes, you can make scrambled eggs on a paper plate in the microwave. Saving dishes baby! I cannot fully describe how awesome this meal is. Egg beaters (liquid egg whites), spinach, mozzarella, pesto, and avocado. So delicious. 

Followed by cocoa powder and banana! This time without peanut butter though. So sad. More on that later. I ran into the dining hall to grab some veggies for later, and a piece of whole wheat toast. I ended up heating up the veggies with some coconut oil and salt, which was tasty.  

Plus some more frozen cherries! After dinner, I cranked out my paper. My paper is on the causes of obesity in the United States, which is a topic that is super interesting to me. I actually found myself getting too excited as I was doing research. So when I write my final research paper on sugar, things are going to get interesting…After cranking out my paper, I went out to find some friends. 

This was an incredibly difficult week for me, both emotionally and academically. I began to realize how much time rowing takes up, and I became concerned that I would not be able to keep my grades up if I kept rowing. I finally decided I needed to quit. This was Wednesday night, when it was 12:30, I was doing a hard problem set, and I had an early 2x6k the next morning. Making that decision was really tough emotionally. BUT. I changed my mind. The 2x6k, combined with afternoon off gave me the motivation and energy I needed to keep going, so as of now I plan to continue. 

Being the intelligent person that I am, I ended up staying up way later than planned. 4 hours of sleep? Ick. This week was kind of a pyramid for me of sleep, minus Thursday. 8, 7, 6, 5, 4 hours of sleep. Yay. But a 2 hour nap after practice certainly did the trick!

For practice today, I rowed with the lightweights because they needed a few extra people to fill out their boats. Unfortunately, the other open weight girl who was supposed to come as well didn’t get the memo…so we still had a bad number of people. That meant that instead of rowing in a 4, I switched off in a pair. Which gave me 30 minutes on the spin bike to wake up before I had to be on the water, which was fabulous. <I rowed in a pair for the first time, which is 2 rowers, each with one oar. We had buoys to make it more stable, thank goodness. We also had a 30 minute erg piece. I never realized how weird it would feel to go from rowing on the water, straight to stationary rowing. I also realized that if our ergs were later in the day, they would be so much easier for me. That or I'm getting in much better shape, which is possible. Last week, I finally got my heart rate as low as it is supposed to be for our long ergs for the first time!

One nice thing about rowing with the lightweights, is that I was back 2 hours sooner. Our Saturday rows are super inefficient. We got back just as brunch was starting!

mexican salad with loads of avocado, and frozen fruit. Plus this:

x2 with thawed blueberries on top! So good!

After brunch, I took a very nice and much needed nap. This day has been really low key for me. I was planning on lifting today, but I just didn’t feel up to it. I spent most of the afternoon reading. Tonight will be low key as well, I plan on getting some work done. I want to re-watch Sugar: The Bitter Truth for my paper, so maybe I’ll do that tonight. Since I finished my paper already, I feel like I’m really ahead on the weekend!

This afternoon, I decided to check out The Market, which is a mini grocery store on campus that I had not gone to before. It was actually really nice, they had tons of stuff. I got 2 beautiful and huge Fugi apples. In addition, I got several other non-nut containing snack items. And naturally I had to break into them right away. 

I actually really liked these! They could definitely be eaten as a healthy alternative to potato chips. 

There may or may not be any left…

I wanted to find a low-sugar bar that didn’t have nuts. This one was pretty good, I will most likely use these in the future when I need something on the go. It has 0g of sugar, but it has sugar alcohols. I’m not exactly sure what their metabolism is like, but I think it’s a step up from other artificial sweeteners, and it tastes less weird. 

I was feeling adventurous for dinner today, and I wanted to do something different, especially since I really don’t like Saturday nights at my close dining hall. But then I realized I didn’t have a ton of time before my dance rehearsal, so I just ran in quickly and had a super carb heavy, and no terribly satisfying meal (which is especially unfortunate because right after I ate, my sister texted me about going out to dinner with my parents to what was probably a much better place, but I had dance rehearsal plus I already ate).

The pesto pasta today was whole wheat, and so was the garlic bread! I definitely went back for more garlic bread, plus watermelon and some con pops. Also, I actually had to get a new salad because I topped this one with tons of salsa, which turned out to be SUPER spicy, and I couldn’t even eat it!

So what is this dance rehearsal for? Did I suddenly decide to become a dancer? Hah. No. For crew, the freshman have to do a performance in front of basically every athlete as my school, and it’s a fundraiser. I have to do a line dance, and the Hoedown Throw Down from the Hannah Montana movie. I am no dancer. This is so difficult! I have absolutely no grace or coordination! And the performance is in just over a week! 

Ok, so today was Day 2 with no nuts. And I think a few days with slightly reduced nuts. It’s so hard! I need to find new things to top oatmeal, or my banana mixture. I’m getting some unsweetened coconut, so hopefully that will do the trick! I could go for some tropical banana oats! My other idea was apple cinnamon banana oats. Or stirring blueberries into banana oats. I really like the base of banana though. Another thing I have to worry about is actually getting some healthy fats in my diet without nuts. I am hopefully getting some chia seeds soon as well. I actually really like chia seeds and the crunch they give! Especially in granola bars! So how is the whole no nuts thing going? I’m pretty sure my skin is clearing up, which is both good and bad, because it means that I am most likely allergic, and should eat significantly fewer nuts, but at the same time, my skin should be better. So we shall see. I was going to talk about another topic today, but seeing as this post is already super long, I’ll save it for tomorrow. Here is a little teaser: Real Food!

What do top your oats with? What is your favorite source of healthy fat?

I’ve been waiting for an excuse to post the recipe for my favorite banana bread! Here is the recipe, it’s super healthy and low to no sugar, depending on your preferences. I got it from Nancy Clark’s Nutrition book (there’s also an app with all the recipes). So here’s the recipe, which I’ve modified slightly:

Ingredients:

4 well ripened bananas

1 large egg or 2 egg whites

2 tablespoons canola oil

1/3 c milk

1/8 c honey (or more to taste, recipe actually calls for 1/3 to 1/2 c sugar)

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1.5 c whole wheat pastry flour

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350

Mash bananas.

Add all ingredients except flour and mix well

Blend in flour, stir until moistened

Pour into 4×8 loaf pan, I recommend lining it in tinfoil

Bake for 45 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center is clean

Let cool for 5 minutes (in theory, i NEVER do)

135 cal, serves 12

For this particular batch that I ate from this morning, I added no sweetener, and added blueberries. Yum!

After enjoying my banana bread, I biked over to weights. In shorts and a sweatshirt. Bad idea. It was probably in the 30s, and I couldn’t feel my hands AT ALL by the time I got there. This is the first time I’ve done weights as part of rowing, and it was interesting. I’m really glad I’ve done a ton of weights already and know how to do all the exercises, because the trainer basically demonstrated what we were doing once, and expected us to do it. He didn’t teach the new people how to do snatches, or anything like that, and I cringed watching them. I just hope no one hurts themselves! The type of weights we did were endurance weights, which was different and kind of strange. Most of the exercises were with an empty bar, but we did a ton of reps of each exercise, without much of a break between sets. For example, we did sets of 40 squats with just the bar. I’m used to ding like 3-5 squats, with a heavy weight on. But it was a good workout. Immediately after weights, we had to do a timed run (it doesn’t have to be right after, but most people do it then because it was convenient). I finished the run in 34:08. The run is a loop of campus, and I think it’s probably around 4 miles, maybe less. It was a comfortable pace to me, and I think it compared decently to other people’s times. The funny thing was that I apparently do the run in the opposite direction as most people, so I passed post of the team at some point going the opposite way, and it was fun to give high fives. Great motivation!

After the run, I rushed to breakfast so I would have time to shower before class. Breakfast was a letdown. I was banking on a smoothie, and all the smoothie ingredients were out, but there were no blenders. And I wanted to grab bread for lunch because I didn’t think I’d have time to go to lunch, but all I could grab was a whole wheat english muffin.

Ok I totally forgot to take a picture of breakfast, but it wasn’t that exciting. I had a bowl of yogurt with frozen fruit (wanna-be smoothie), which was soooo cold, plus half a whole wheat english muffin with regular and strawberry cream cheese, plus some scrambled eggs.

After showering, I was getting my things together, and decided to make a peanut butter sandwich with the english muffin for lunch, when I realized I couldn’t find the english muffin. I searched everywhere! I mean, who the heck loses an english muffin?? My theory is that I left it at the dining hall, which would be preferable to finding it in 2 months.

I didn’t think I’d be able to return to my room before practice, so I tried to subtly dress for practice. Scarves hide all!

Like the new scarf?

I had 2 morning classes. I thought I was going to be booked through until practice, but I ended up not having a chem section so I was able to get a real lunch. I’m optimistic about my classes this quarter. I wasn’t a big fan of my classes last quarter. My math class (linear algebra) was the hardest class I’ve ever taken in my life, by far. It was also pretty painful. I’m actually looking forward to my math class this quarter. It is Multivariable Calculus, which I actually took in high school, and the topic just makes so much more sense to me.

Since I was planning on a peanut butter sandwich for lunch, I decided to do that at the dining hall.

Pb on whole wheat bread. I was planning on just having a garden salad with it, but I couldn’t pass up some type of brussels sprout salad either. Plus, I had to have one of the stuffed tomatoes, stuffed with breadcrumbs and cheesy goodness. And of course, I came prepared.

I brought my own peanut butter! I’ve probably consumed a ton of trans fat in the form of peanut butter at the dining halls here and at training camp, so I really want to prevent that.

Are you ever influenced by watching people eat? I have a bad habit of seeing someone eat something, and then deciding I have to have it, like it was somehow justified because someone else was eating it too. I never realized that would happen when I saw a stranger eating something. That led to this

:

It’s some type of raspberry crumble bar. It’s oaty with raspberry filling, and is pretty good, but nothing special, it’s at the dining halls all the time.

After lunch I stopped by my dorm to grab a jacket for practice; BEST DECISION EVER, practice was cold! I had one more class of the day before practice. I was a bit concerned about getting to the pick up location by 3:15 if class ended at 3:05, but there was another girl from my team in my class, and we made it no problem. Before practice, I snacked on this:

It’s by far my favorite NuGo bar. It has way more flavor than the other NuGo Slim bars, and the regular NuGo bars are too sweet for me.

Practice mostly consisted of re-reigging the boats. We had the world’s shortest row afterward. However, something did happen. We got stuck in the sand. I never realized that a) that was possible and b) I should be concerned about it. The tide was super low today, so I guess that was the problem. It was bizarre, we were rowing along, and then all the sudden it got heavy and we weren’t moving. Since I was in the back of the boat (but the front in terms of what hits the sand first), I was about ready to climb out and start pushing. We ended up getting out of it by backing, but in the process we came dangerously close to hitting a channel marker. It definitely didn’t help that it had already gotten dark. There’s something really cool about rowing in the dark, it’s so peaceful, but it can also be difficult when I can’t see the water. I’ve never rowed at night before, but I think I prefer rowing in the early morning.

We made it back in time for dinner (yay), although dinner wasn’t spectacular.

Spinach salad with raspberries, which was good, but eating spinach is difficult to do neatly. I had some steamed cabbage and brown rice, and some random roasted veggies with mushroom gravy, plus a few potatoes. I topped it with a piece of grilled chicken for protein. It was an ok meal, nothing to write home about. Dessert?

It’s definitely a dangerous thing to have unlimited access to frozen yogurt. I had half vanilla half chocolate, with cocoa puffs and peanut butter (yes, the trans fatty kind. ugh.). Some habits die hard, and apparently having chocolate peanut butter and cereal was a habit I developed at camp. I was feeling pretty decent about my day of eating, not too bad for a first day back.

However. Back in my dorm….I chatted with some of my friends, who happened to share my love of food, which naturally ended in snacks. They were reasonably healthy, dried fruit and nuts, plus naturally I had to finally crack open my favorite peanut butter! I also opened my new 99% cocoa dark chocolate. I love super dark chocolate. I will eat straight baker’s chocolate, but 99% is so much better because it was way smoother. But my roommate also brought back a Costco sized pack of Hazelnut chocolates….

I have the tendency to want to eat whenever anyone else eats. Sympathy eating, if you will. If I want to survive college, it’s probably not the best thing. Especially if I’m eating meals with my crew teammates who are a foot taller than me and outweigh me by like 50 lbs. At least if I want them to still outweigh me by 50 lbs! Tomorrow I’m having a Guacamole party with the avocados I brought from home, so I want to try to plan that into my day in terms of meals. What concerns me most is if my food gets in the way of my workout. And as my workout intensity increases, nutrition is key. As I said before, old habits die hard. So basically I just need to get back into better habits. As I think I’ve talked about before in another post, I’m a huge underdog in terms of rowing. I need to take every advantage I can get, and my knowledge of nutrition could be that edge I need. Interestingly enough, I find that when I’m better at resisting sweets, I’m also better at pushing myself through physical pain on while rowing. Go figure. Here’s to a healthy week! The good news? Tomorrow’s workout is on my own, and no class until 12:30 so I get to sleep in !

How was your day?