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College Food (again)

Hey guys! Who’s excited for the weekend? I know I am! I feel like my weekend started a little early-I only have 1 class Friday, and my homework is already finished. Who am I? Ohh week 2…

Yesterday morning I started the day with a 5 mile SUPER hilly run. For some reason I was really dragging all day, despite sleeping in (relatively-I woke up at 7:40). But here are some of my delicious meals!

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Fancy shmancy yogurt. In a ceramic pot. You better believe I’m keeping that! One of the reasons I’m most excited to do the Project is because it’s an excuse to eat really high quality yogurt. No complaints here!

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A packed lunch-egg salad with the mayo and mustard from the tea party, plus dining hall eggs, as well as Brussels Sprouts with Garlic and Herb Laughing cow. Not going to lie, the Brussels could have been cooked a little bit more!

I had a doctor’s appointment for my feet/tendonitis. I got some exercises to try to help, so I guess we’ll see. I was doing them in chem lab today while I was waiting around. Eh. We’ll see. He also adjusted my custom inserts that I never wear because they cause extreme pain when I wear them, but I’m not terribly optimistic about that!

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Snack of an orange and chocolate chip banana bread. I’m kind of getting to the end of my freezer supply of this, which makes me very sad.

I went to weightlifting class again. Everyone there is super nice. Apparently they’ve been watching me in Crossfit and trying to get me to come for a while now! I only (ONLY, right??) had an hour because I had class, so I just worked on clean and jerks the whole time. For some reason, the weight lifting class goes by kilograms, instead of pounds. Which means without making calculations, I have no idea how much I’m lifting. I think this is good for me-I sometimes tend to overthink things and psych myself out. I ended up doing a ton of sets only 2.5 lbs away from my 1 rep max, and only missing the last couple at that weight-although I missed some jerks, I made all the cleans but the last 2.

The downside? I haven’t done a ton of Olympic lifting lately, like I had in the past, and my knee isn’t liking catching heavy weights in a super deep squat, so I’m kind of out of commission for a little bit. I skipped Crossfit because I can’t row (the workout for the day), because compressing my knee that much is a little iffy. I’ve been icing and taking care of it-I went to a spin class this morning (it was nice to not just be doing my own thing!), and did a 3.7 mile run this afternoon, both of which felt fine and loosened it up a bit. I think I need to just wait this one out and hope it’s just pain from getting back into it.

ANYWAYS, here was dinner: they actually had meat, which was nice.

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(Wow, I didn’t realize how blurry this is-that’s kind of embarrassing…)

My hall also had a late night guac party, which I of course participated in.

After spin this morning, I decided it was going to be a long day, and I didn’t go to bed as early as I would have liked, so I got coffee.

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I’m on a first name basis with the barista, and my order was finished almost before I was done ordering.

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Overnight oats made with Siggi’s and a minimal amount of milk. These were sticky and thick-note the spoon sticking straight up. I topped them with a little sunflower seed butter and wondered if they would hold me over until next week. Talk about stick to your ribs! My meals have definitely filled me up quite a bit lately-like lunch.

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This packed lunch was almost entirely dining hall food-a couple of hard boiled eggs made into egg salad, leftover yams from last night with a drizzle of honey, and store-bought brussels sprouts with white cheddar. So good. So filling!

I had Ochem lab all afternoon. I find labs stressful, but my result ended up being good, and the TA took a picture of my spectra.

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Ignore my reflection in the background-the printers weren’t working so we had to take pictures of the machines with out phones.

Organic chemistry friends out there-any guesses as to what this is? 🙂

After lab, I realized my Garmin was dead, and I wanted to do a tempo run, so I charged it super fast while eating a snack.

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One thing I recently realized is that when I run first thing in the morning, I don’t do well on an empty stomach-I almost always get stomach cramps. Kinda counterintuitive, isn’t it? I’ve found these Thinkthin Divine bars are perfect-I can eat one and go straight out. I haven’t really worked out yet what I could eat before morning runs in the next month-maybe oatmeal? I’m not sure.

My run went pretty well-at the 1.83 mile point, where the road changes, I picked up the pace, although I don’t think I held it the whole time, but it was still faster (it was getting dark and hard to read my Garmin). It definitely felt easier than the last time though-I felt like I could have kept going, and I wasn’t dying.

I ended up turning back a little sooner than the full loop-I didn’t need the extra .6 miles and my feet were starting to feel a tad brick like so I just picked up the pace a little and cut across campus. Plus, there were no cars so that was a plus!

I kind of planned on going to yoga tonight but I saw it was subbed as pilates, so I sat back with a couple of ice packs and Glee. I ended up making dinner while rolling around in my desk chair. There are advantages to living in a dorm-pretty much everything is within arms reach, plus  a little bit of rolling!

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Thai tomato coconut soup, topped with cheddar. Black cherry quick bread from the freezer topped with sunflower seed butter. Plus some carrots on the side, as well as a couple of cuties.

Not going to lie, I’m having the biggest chocolate cravings right now. But guess what I don’t have in my room? Chocolate! For some reason by the end of the week I crave more sweets and carbs.

Speaking of carbs-as it turned out, I should not have had that coffee this morning! We were discussing carbohydrate metabolism in my first class of the day, which is basically my favorite thing ever, and I was insanely excited anyway. Let’s just say I was wired. I’m pretty sure I don’t ever need coffee on the days when I have Nutrition first, despite the fact that it’s an earlier class time because I have my own excitement to carry me through!

Despite today’s excitement though, I was pretty disappointed at the depth at which we looked at carbohydrate metabolism. We just talked about digestion and absorption, no biochem. Boo. I <3 biochem.

Ok, I need to do laundry/pack for ski trip/watch lecture videos/do dishes/clean my room. Oops.

Also-I may or may not have internet or cell service in the mountains, so I will get back about anything once I get back!

What excites you?

I’m Flying Jack!

Ok, confession: I’ve never actually seen the Titanic. Moving on…

Yesterday morning (Friday) I donned by neon shirt and headed out for an early morning run. I checked the weather report-47 degrees was the low…and the low was at the time of my run. Awesome. The temperatures are really starting to cool down here. Want to know something bizarre? Next week we have lows of 47 and highs of 80. While it does tend to get cold at night here, that much temperature difference is insane!

3 miles were on the schedule for Friday morning. I ran half a mile there, and half a mile back, so my workout was 8x400m repeats. I really like these-and yesterday I felt like I was flying. I don’t wear my Garmin for these, but I’m sure I was well under my goal pace. Something I like even more? 200 repeats. I’ll get to do a lot of those while I train to PR my 5k. SO pumped. I just felt really great out there Friday-I felt like I was flying on my 9 mile run last weekend as well-I feel like I’ve suddenly gotten a lot faster-perfect timing though! T minus 8 days until RACE DAY.

I’m liking my new post early morning workout coffee ritual.

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It’s always cold in the morning, plus if I go straight from my workout, I beat all the on the way to work/class crowd. Perfect. 

Walking back to my dorm, I saw this:
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I wish I lived on the first floor. The cat is back! I called to it and it came running over to me.

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Such a sweetie! He almost made me late to class, but so, so worth it.

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And…um…he followed me in the door. Which was obviously a problem-it was a good thing my friend was there to kick him out because I definitely didn’t have the heart to do it!

I took zero food pictures from yesterday. But I did do things. And eat things. My dorm had a “homecoming” dance, so we all got dressed up and had fun. When I get the pictures back, I’ll show you guys! I also got ready and totally showered in 15 minutes flat. Because my friends wanted to leave and I was watching How I Met Your Mother….Priorities people! It was actually a lot of fun-everyone was expecting it to be super awkward, but it really wasn’t. It was great to connect with people from my dorm. 

This morning I decided to go to Crossfit. 2 weeks ago I PRed my clean and jerk, but today I just couldn’t get it up. You can’t PR everyday, and you don’t always have good lifting days. I wasn’t committing on the jerks, and I kept missing the cleans. I’m pretty sure in the last 2 weeks I’ve developed some bad habits-it felt awesome 2 weeks ago, but then the following week, I started banging up my legs doing cleans. 

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Which is not right. I was having the same problem today, but no bruising. I could tell I just wasn’t getting in the right position. But it happens. I was frustrated, but looking forward to the WOD: 3 400m sprints with 2 minutes of rest, and then 1 minute of rest in between. I brought my running shoes for this. I was expecting to finish last because everyone else was guys, but it didn’t turn out that way at all. I beat everyone in my heat (we split into 2 heats, starting 10 seconds apart to avoid running into each other), and even passed a person or two from the heat before me. It. Felt. Awesome. I’m starting to really look forward to training for the 5k-I haven’t done much fast running lately, and I forgot how much I liked it! And passing people? Best thing ever. 

On a sidenote, I REALLY need to do a timed mile, but I’ve been putting it off. My last one was 8:00, but that was pretty soon after mono and before any half training started. I would think I’d be somewhere around 7:30. I would LOVE to get down to under 7:00 like back in the day, buttt we’ll see about that. 

After my workout, I made the world’s worst smoothie. I brought my little packet of chocolate protein powder and cocoa powder to the dining hall, and even waited in the super long blender line. I added blueberries, mango, and milk. And…..WAIT FOR IT-arugula. I wanted spinach but they only had an arugula spinach mix, so I figured, why not? WRONG. WRONGWRONGWRONG. Arugula is a lot more flavorful than spinach. So I had 2 giant glasses of chocolate arugula. It was awful.

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I attempted to drink it alongside a biscuit and some chicken/guac. But then gave up and just got another biscuit. Shudder.

Hopefully you guys are having something at least a little more delicious! Tomorrow is my last “long” run before my race. I’m doing 6, even though my plan calls for 8. Last time I felt like my legs really benefitted from the extra rest. The body wants what the body wants! (Which, by the way, is NOT an arugula smoothie.)

Have a great Saturday!