To Row or Not to Row

Date: February 10, 2013

Author: astottler

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?

Back in Action

Date: January 8, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Today was my first day back! Overall, it was a good day, but I’m starting to realize how tired I am now. I was feeling tired early last night, and a power outage in my dorm gave me the perfect excuse to go to bed early. As a result, I woke up a little before my alarm, yay! Before morning workouts, I usually have some type of quick bread and a cup of milk, but I forgot to get milk from the dining hall last night. Whenever I’m home, I make some type of quick bread and freeze it. I actually got my own freezer for my room so I can have a ton of different options for breakfast, because I have a ton of early workouts. Last quarter I had practice at 5:45 am most mornings, on the water. What was my preworkout fuel today? Banana bread!

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?