My Ability to Walk Has Been Compromised

Date: March 5, 2014

Author: astottler

How’s your week going? Mine is deceptively low key. But I know that’s just the calm before the storm! I’m at the point in the quarter where all I want to do is go home and see my cats…2 weeks until spring break! In similar news, I changed my phone screensaver to something more holiday appropriate.

This morning I woke up for my 5 mile hill run. I’m now at the point in half training where it’s really important to just get those miles in! My legs felt heavy. Very heavy. I didn’t push it hard though so it was ok. I was super thirsty by the end though-apparently today turned into a warm day!

Breakfast was some goat milk yogurt with strawberries microwaved and then refrigerated.

I really wanted to try and reduce the berries in the microwave. What I ended up with was a desk covered in strawberry mush. Oops!

I was still hungry (or was it thirsty?) so I also had a sun butter bar.

Lunch was a repeat of yesterday. The only downside was I used dining hall grilled chicken which sort of resembled a rock. I didn’t even know chicken could be hard and tough!

So…I have a snacking problem. That’s one thing I don’t like about college. I could snack at literally any moment of the day. And until this evening, I didn’t have any fruit. So while none of my snacks were totally unhealthy, I completely messed up my meal schedule!

Some samples of my snacks:

Banana with 85% chocolate.

The best combo ever-date, unsweetened chocolate, sunflower seed butter.

Tapioca pudding made in the microwave and sweetened with a single date. It’s actually pretty easy to make tapioca pudding in the microwave from tapioca pearls! But if you try this, definitely put a plate under the bowl because it will pretty much always overflow. It was kind of annoying because I had to stop it about every 30 seconds so it wouldn’t all overflow. But I guess you could use a bigger bowl!

Between this (plus cheese and crackers), I wasn’t hungry around dinnertime. After my late section, it was time for a workout. Sort of.

I had it all planned out too. But my legs are sore so I decided no legs. And no shoulders because those are sore too. But the final straw?

Funny story-at Crossfit last night we did sit ups as part of the WOD, and the night before we did toes to bar. I didn’t really think about it until someone else mentioned how bad the sit ups were after toes to bar the night before, and how sore he was. I thought-huh. I’m not sore. I guess the sit ups did feel much harder though.

HAH. Now it feels like my abs are being ripped out every time I flex. So-no legs, no shoulders, no abs? That leaves me what, wrist curls? So I decided to do yoga on my own instead. Hence the inability to walk.

I also had to pick up our CSA box, which was a workout in and of itself. I drive to get it, but I have to bike a little ways back from my car. Normally someone can pick it up from me, but today that couldn’t happen. So I had to bike back one handed, carrying a giant CSA box in the other hand. And while my one handed biking is wayyy better than it used to be, it was still kind of dicey, especially with a lot of delicate fruit. But we both made it back alive.

Anyways-yoga. Since today was unusually warm, I decided that outdoor night yoga would be nice. As I was biking back from section, I passed a little area that I thought would be perfect (plus it’s super public).

Right beneath the tower.

What’s cool is I can see this tower from home. Like home home, not college home. Despite being about 30 minutes away.

It felt so good to stretch out! I was sort of hungry when I went back so I snacked a little bit on crackers and sun butter and granola bars, before deciding I should actually eat some thing real. I made some scrambled eggs, and had a side of baby carrots.

I hate eating late at night, but such is my schedule.

I went to an event tonight with my sorority where we brought a Nutritionist in to talk. She talked a lot about the healthy options the dining hall offers. And it’s true-the dining hall has improved a lot, especially lately. The two best additions are a much improved salad bar and bowls large enough to put a salad in. Next quarter, I’m going to make it my goal to eat at the dining hall more. It saves me time and money to go. I think part of my problem now is I have big snacks, and then am not hungry at the right times, so that’s something to work on as well! I need to make the most of my meal plan!

Ok-I’m off to study for a quiz!

Favorite snack?

Why This Half Training Will Be Different

Date: January 30, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hey guys! I’m solidly in the middle of week 2 now! And some things are changing-I’ll discuss in a minute!

Let’s back it up a bit, shall we?

Wednesday morning I went to the gym for a Crossfit-like workout (basically the one they did on Tuesday that I couldn’t make), plus 2 miles on the treadmill. The workout was working on hang cleans, and the conditioning part was 3 rounds of 500m row, 21 pull ups (assisted), and 21 push ups. The sad thing about this workout is it definitely made me realize my knee isn’t 100%. I had some trouble with the rowing! Also, I have a mystery bruise on the top of my foot, right along one of the seams…so that feels fabulous.

I went to the dining hall for breakfast-I really wanted a change of pace! Sadly they didn’t have just egg whites (which can be less sketchy), but I went with plain scrambled eggs and egg onion, spinach, and cheese. Plus a side of fruit!

Wednesday was a little crazy-I had an evening midterm, which needed to be studied for. Plus, I had lots to do for Thursday! I actually got 9 hours of sleep Tuesday night, and it was absolutely glorious. And I’m currently contemplating bed…

Anyways, here’s my randomly packed lunch-totally normal to eat turkey burgers and corn on the cob out of a bag, right??

This filled me up SO MUCH. This is the change I was talking about-when I get full, I’m SO FULL CAN’T EAT ANOTHER BITE. And when I’m hungry, I’m KILL ME NOW I’M STARVING hungry. I’m not sure if this is my metabolism changing?

Fun fact-did you know that polyunsaturated fats get used as hormones that regulate metabolism? So maybe this is because I’m eating more fat?

Now I’m thinking it may be something else though-like my body adjusting to more fiber/different foods. Today, I couldn’t eat a ton without being TOTALLY stuffed.

But on that theme, I left studying to come back to my room and eat a snack-the last of the yogurt from the giant container, with berries and sunflower seed butter.

If you can’t tell, I’m running a little low on bowls. And utensils…I ate my soup off of a plate.

I have real, non-paper bowls but they’re really deep, and since the soup got thinner when it thawed, all the goodies on top sink to the bottom. So plate=problem solved…?

My test went fine. Which is good. And I was on top of things enough that I wasn’t up crazy late (5 hours of sleep-yay!).

The next morning I went to spin, and studied for my morning midterm while eating. Breakfast was 0% Greek yogurt+mashed banana+cocoa powder. I poured everything onto a (you guessed it) plate, and it’s amazing how much yogurt comes out of a tiny container!

I ended up finishing my Nutrition midterm 30 minutes early-this stuff is my jam 🙂 So I had plenty of time to do my pre-lab before my afternoon class.

For lunch, I went with something small and more moderate-butter sage mashed sweet potatoes-but I didn’t want to waste the skin, so I stuffed them! Yum!

Look how it compacted after rolling around in the container all day!

After lab, I had a snack of sunflower seed butter (the last of it 🙁 ) and an apple, plus corn on the cob (totally normal, right??). Then, Crossfit. We didn’t have strength today-just mobility. Which basically meant foam rolling for half the time. Since my race is coming up, I wanted an easier type of workout anyways! The WOD ended up being worse than expected-we did 10, 9, 8, 7,….1 thrusters, with 90 jump ropes between each set, followed by an 800m run at the end. My shoulders are still really sore from push presses on Tuesday, so that was kind of terrible.

I pushed the run a lot at the end, and ended up feeling kind of sick, thanks to whatever changes are going on. I’m kind of concerned about this given my 5k is this Sunday, and that naturally has a tendency towards nausea. I think I may to stick to lower fiber/easier to digest foods or something! I think I’m going to have kombucha tomorrow morning too.

I forced myself to eat something afterwards-what ended up working the best was the brown rice fried rice (not really fried rice, they just like giving their rice different names to seem fancier.)

Veggies weren’t that appealing (but maybe the veggies choices also weren’t great), and I ate a lot of the tofu. Plus this mini plate with more rice and chicken, and a little pineapple.

So hopefully whatever is going on resolves itself-this is really strange! But I guess your body will react when you completely change what you’re eating!

Oh, and I came back to my dorm to find this:

Yes, that is my door. (And by that I mean the door I always use to enter/exit my dorm). No clue how that happened. #collegelife

One story is someone was mad and kicked it in. Another is someone accidentally ran into it. Not sure how that is possible….

In fitness news-why is this half training different? Besides the fact that I’ll be doing more speed work than before, some of the longer runs may be a bit more…unconventional. Why? I’m doing a Tough Mudder! The weekend after my half…the timing isn’t ideal, but I’m doing it with my sister and her boyfriend. We’re trying to get up a bigger group as well! So some of my longer runs may incorporate more strength elements-like running 5 miles, doing Crossfit, running 5 miles. Or doing some type of strength move every mile. That would definitely break up the monotony of a treadmill run as well!

Can I confess something? I’m on week 2 of my project…and I don’t feel different. Maybe feeling good is my new normal (I think this is the case), but I want to keep seeing changes! I’m scared this project won’t work. That after 4 months nothing will be different. That my theories were wrong. And I understand that it’s really too soon to tell whether this will be life changing, but I’m impatient. I would just feel really silly if after 4 weeks, nothing happens. I mean, I’m definitely developing new habits and trying new things, which is great, but do you have any idea how many cookies I’ve passed up on? I never realized how abundant cookies are on a college campus. They even had cookies for us after the bio midterm! But I know I need to be patient. And I’m determined to stick with this. And get more sleep…I’m actually not sleep deprived right now thanks to Tuesday night, but I know it will happen again if I don’t make sleep more of a priority. One of my chem friends today was super sleep deprived, to the point it was amusing to witness. Remember last Thursday when I was running on 3 hours of sleep? I was flat out delirious. Inspired, yes. Very inspired. But totally delirious. I’m running out of energy here-and since no more work needs to be done today, bed sounds really nice right now. Maybe I am more sleep deprived than I thought?

Have you ever done any type of obstacle course race?

Tips for Trying Crossfit

Date: January 2, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Happy New Year! I don’t have anything terribly groundbreaking to elaborate on about these past couple of days-on New Year’s Eve my friend and I took a train to San Francisco, but I don’t have a lot of pictures from that.

I rung in the New Year with whole grain pancakes (there were a lot more than this), some topped with maple syrup and others with blueberries.

The day was spent watching football, which was really depressing because things did NOT go well for Stanford football, and it was frustrating to watch thanks to some questionable play calling. But back to today’s topic.

Tips for Trying Crossfit

I want to start out by saying that I know a lot of people are intimidated by Crossfit-the culture, the throwing heavy things around, the idea that you have to eat Paleo. As someone who fairly recently (6 months) started Crossfit, I assure you this is not the case. At my box, never once have I heard someone even mention Paleo. Heck, when you graduate intro classes, they make cookies-yes with real wheat and real sugar-and champagne! The culture is just really nice! Everyone is incredibly friendly and welcoming. That being said, the culture definitely does differ depending on the gym and its owner. At this point, I’ve worked out at 5 different Crossfits (3 in Maui), and I have had a little of a mixed experience. For example, the Crossfit I go to at school doesn’t have the traditional type of Crossfit community, probably because it’s student heavy-it’s just not as friendly. That’s not to say that it is intimidating-the people are still really nice-it just doesn’t have the same sense of community. So-tip #1:

1. Do your research. Every box is different, and they are everywhere. There are 2 just 2 miles from school for me. Look on Yelp, check out their website. If the box is super hardcore, their website is a decent indicator. Don’t discount the box just because of that though! Don’t be afraid to visit a few places and try it out-almost every Crossfit gym offers a free intro class to give you a taste of what Crossfit is all about.

2. Don’t be afraid. You DO NOT have to be super fit to try Crossfit. EVERYTHING is scalable to your level-most people in fact scale the workouts. And everyone has to start somewhere-other Crossfiters understand this.

3. Just get through the workout. If you’ve gotten through the initial intimidation phase and are there and working out, don’t be a hero. You’re new. You will not finish the workout first. If you come out balls to the wall, you’re going to a) burn out super quickly and it’s going to stink. A lot. b) injure yourself-if you’re new and aren’t used to these kinds of movements or this kind of exertion, you’re more likely to get hurt. Some people claim Crossfit to be super hardcore and that everyone pukes after the workouts. This is simply not the case. I’ve never seen this happen-you take the workouts at your own speed, and nobody should be pushing themselves to the point of vomiting.

4. Use the runs as recovery. Not all workouts involve running, but the ones that do, I don’t recommend sprinting the run. Running is a lot harder when supersetted with lifts-a lot of times I’m panting prior to the run. I often use the run as an opportunity to catch my breath and recover a little bit. I may get passed on the run at the beginning, but by the end of the workout I’m passing people because I didn’t burn out right away.

5. Ask for help. Not sure about a movement? Don’t know what weight you should scale to? ASK. The trainers are there to help you-don’t risk getting injured by lifting too heavy before you’re ready. Each workout is programmed in a particular way-no workouts should be at weights of your one repetition maximum, and some call for much lighter weights and a faster pace.

6. What do you need? Exercise shoes. That’s it. That being said, there are other things that may help you. I have special Crossfit shoes-the Nano 2.0s.

The purpose of these is that they have a flat bottom. Traditional running shoes tend to push you to move your weight to your toes, which makes weight lifting much more difficult. The nanos are better for running that straight weight lifting shoes.

I usually wear workout pants and a t-shirt. I’m not a fan of lifting in a tank top because I’m also worried the bar will scuff me up, but most people don’t have any issue. Some people have weight lifting gloves or belts. I never learned to lift with those, so it’s probably not something I would use, but some people love them.

Hopefully this was helpful-if you have any further questions, just let me know!

Would you ever try Crossfit? Why or why not?

Ringing in the New Year with a PR

Date: December 31, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Happy New Year’s Eve! I hope everyone has a fun and safe night to bring in the new year!

A lot of people are doing reflections on the new year posts, but to be honest, I just don’t see the need, since I basically did the same thing for my Blogiversary. I’m also not really doing New Year’s Resolutions this year. I have some general goals and ideas of things I want to do or change in the future, but it’s more of a concept and the fact that I have no idea where my future lies in terms of exercise.

(Not relevant but I had to share this picture.)

I could set running goals, but I really don’t know what my running future holds. I want to PR a 5k this winter. I’m signed up for a half in April and am planning on one in the summer. But here’s the thing. I’m REALLY loving 5k training and speedwork and running fast. It’s fun. And right now it’s a little hard to look past the constant pain in my feet. I have tendonitis in my achilles, which is straining my feel and part of my arch, which is really painful. And that doesn’t include my mystery pain and numbness that comes with longer distances. I have a doctor’s appointment in a couple of weeks to hopefully begin treatment, but once again, it’s hard to look past this issue which for some reason popped up in the last couple of months. My 10 mile run a couple of weeks ago was painful and pretty much demolished my feet. In addition, I’m starting to get serious about teaching spin, and I have no clue where I want my weight lifting to go.

But let’s back it up a little, shall we?

Yesterday morning I went to an abs class, which was really hard and I’m currently suffering from the aftermath. Then, I took some of my high school friends over to my college campus for a hike.

We tried to eat lunch at a couple of places on campus, but everything was closed. We ended up going off campus and making an amazing discovery-a little place that was pretty much an Indian food version of Chipotle! You could choose a bowl or a burrito type of thing, and choose rice, meat, sauces, and veggies.

My masterpiece was a bowl with brown rice, chicken, tikka sauce, yogurt sauce, date sauce, and veggies. So delicious!

Then, we finally tried a fancy gourmet ice cream place called the Tin Pot. I sampled sweet cream with balsamic swirl, but ended up deciding on the San Francisco chocolate Tcho ice cream. Such a good decision.

All the ingredients were local, and the texture was insanely smooth. And in the cone was a little surprise-they fill the bottom of the cone with chocolate to keep the ice cream from dripping, and the chocolate at the bottom of our cones was still warm and gooey.

That evening, I was off to Crossfit for Crossfit totals, with dreams of PRing. Crossfit totals is basically taking one rep maxes of the back squat, press, and deadlift.

I haven’t done a ton of max lifting in the last year and a half, and I’m definitely lacking mentally here. It’s silly, but I get nervous for the lifts. However, after failing to PR my backsquat, probably due to lack of focus and losing some of my form, the nervousness turned to fire. I PRed my press my 10 pounds, and my deadlift by 30 pounds! For anyone interested, my total was 495 lbs, which is all the maxes of the three lifts added together. I’m really happy about this-I also feel that I would get a lot stronger at my home Crossfit. I may try the weightlifting class at my school Crossfit though. I love power lifting and I don’t think I get to do it quite as much at my school Crossfit. Anyways, this was a great end to 2013. It was funny-I only did a few reps of each exercise in the hour, and felt simultaneously like I was totally normal yet I was about to fall over. Lifting heavy is a strange thing! Dinner afterwards was a good one-turkey burgers with brussels sprouts and parmesan, and sweet potato rounds.

This morning, I went back to Crossfit to tackle “Murph.” Murph is a hero workout, meaning it was named after a fallen soldier. Hero workouts are usually long and brutal. This one?

1 mile run

100 pull ups

200 push ups

300 squats

1 mile run

This might be one of my favorite Crossfit workouts ever. And I’m glad I was able to do it at home! There’s a lot of strategy involved with pacing. I did the first mile in 8:36, which I was super happy about because it felt good, and means my speed work is probably paying off! I broke the middle part into 20 rounds of 5 pull ups, 10 push ups, and 15 squats. The pull ups were with a fairly light band, and the push ups were form my knees since we have to touch our chests all the way to the ground! The squats made my legs very heavy by the end! I had to push hard to make the 45 minute cut off, and finished my last mile under 9:00, so that my overall time was 44:29. Another great workout conquered!

I spent the rest of the morning helping my mom take my kitties to the vet. Charlie is the biggest scaredy cat, and it was quite the task getting him into his crate. In the vet’s office, he hid in under the table the whole time. It’s so sad!

When we returned, lunch was leftover butternut squash soup with cheese and crackers.

I guess I don’t want to set any fitness goals because I don’t know what my future holds. After my halfs, I may be done with distance running, at least for a while. Or maybe not. Maybe I’ll run a marathon. I don’t want to torture myself through tons of long distances if my feet can’t take it!

In terms of life goals, I guess I don’t see it as much as a new year, but more as a new quarter in school. In general, I just want to be more put together. I want my room organized, my homework always done ahead of time, productive hours in the library, healthy and balanced meals. I guess I also want to spend less time on my phone or the Internet-it makes me a little more unaware of the world, and my attention span is currently non-existent. I think I’d prefer to set aside a particular amount of time for reading blogs or social media, instead of having it leak into my life.

As for tonight? My friend and I are going to San Francisco, which I am insanely excited about!

Have an amazing night and be safe!

WIAW and I’m a Weather Confused California Girl

Date: December 10, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Well, one final down, two to go! It’s definitely crunch time over here-which is why I’m OH so happy to take a break to celebrate What I Ate Wednesday. Thanks Jenn!

Before I get into it, thank you all so much for your kind comments on my blogiversary post! They melted my heart and brightened my day inside the dark library.

Also-if you haven’t there’s still plenty of time to enter my giveaway!

Since I have been doing 12 Days of Christmas, I haven’t gotten a chance to post a lot of my recent eats! Hint: there have been lots of persimmons. I think my record is 6 in one day? Although to be fair, two of them were babies.

Why I was motivated to take this picture, I have no idea.

It’s been cold here in California. Ok, everyone else, feel free to laugh. I’m a wimp and take my bundling up seriously. Why be cold when you can wear 6 layers?

This morning I went to morning Crossfit-the low was 26 I believe, and I thought for sure my car wouldn’t start, since it was in the 40s the night before and it didn’t sound good. Luckily though, it did, and I only had to worry about cleaning off copious amounts of ice from my windshield, and not trying to find someone to jump my car! I really need an ice scraper though-I was lucky to have a towel with me-otherwise it would have been my fingers (I’ve done that before..ouch).

Also, our Crossfit box is literally freezing. It was colder in than out, and it was below freezing out so…

And the worst part? The bars are like ICE. Yuck. Anyways, by the time I returned and got coffee, I found myself craving a dining hall breakfast (what? who am I?) and since this was the second day in a row I wanted that, I decided to go for it.

A whole wheat english muffin with one side butter and (some) jam, and the other cream cheese, egg, and spinach. With a side of unripe pineapple! I also had a whole wheat pancake with butter and jam.

Ok, the real reason I tend to avoid the dining hall is because they often have the most delicious blueberry muffins (one of my major weaknesses), and I know eating 5,000 muffins before a final probably isn’t the best idea…

My lunch was a turkey sandwich made open faced:

Plus an extremely delicious piece of mystery bread that it’s been way too long since I’ve had.

I got them at a little cafe and settled in to relax after a morning of studying before my final. I didn’t bring headphones, and didn’t want to strain my brain my reading anything, so I eavesdropped for about an hour. Totally normal, right?

After my exam, I decided to actually go to the dining hall! To be fair, I complain about how boring dining hall food is, but it’s also because I almost always go to the same dining hall-I don’t seem to get back from Crossfit/other workouts before all the other ones close. Example-yesterday I finished Crossfit and tried to catch the tail end of a different dining hall’s hours. They had no food left!

But I finally got what I wanted today, since my exam ended earlier:

A burrito bowl with salmon. I’ve been craving Mexican food so much since listening to a book on tape during my workout yesterday-they went to Mexico and were eating tacos (keep in mind, I was listening to this at 7am and wanted tacos…).

And you better believe that I’m going to get dessert if I just took a final!

Chocolate soft serve, chocolate chips, marshmallows, jam, and cereal. I was SO tempted to add peanut butter-I made a ton of chocolate/peanut buttery soft serve cups of deliciousness last year, but I refrained for the sake of my face and skin.

Ok, so what have you missed on the food front?

Persimmon and egg cup.

Snack plate-guacamole, cinnamon laughing cow, pear chips.

Broccoli and white cheddar laughing cow.

A Whole Foods Southwest salad that I added avocado to.

Teriyaki tofu, rice and quinoa mix, salad with goat cheese, hummus, and avocado.

Christmas on a plate. They opened up a Harry and David store at my local mall, so pears were a necessity. I had to pull myself away from eating really delicious persimmons to eat a really delicious pear. I know, poor me.

Mass amounts of broccoli for lunch because that’s clearly what all the cool people do.

Mushroom and barley soup, and a salad with goat cheese, hummus, and fig balsamic. I accidentally poured half the container of goat cheese on there.I wish I could say I was sorry…I love goat cheese!

And the grand finale…

Last night I wanted something sweet, so I went forward with a microwave pumpkin oatmeal cookie in mind. Except I kind of just turned it into straight oatmeal. I used pumpkin butter, and then since I didn’t have any normal almond milk open and I’m leaving in 3 days, I used almond nog. O.M.G. The flavor combination of eggnog and pumpkin was unreal. You all you to try your oatmeal like this. I also mixed in some egg white, pumpkin pie spice, vanilla, baking powder, and butter (it was kind of supposed to be a cookie at one point…but delicious addition!)

YUM.

And since I was talking about cold weather and bundling up…here’s a picture of me being a weather confused California girl.

2 jackets. Scarf. Gloves. Shorts?

Let’s say that I regretted this decision when I left the library in the dark….brrr! It’s so much colder once the sun goes down. My friend wanted me to come over the other day at like 9pm…I wore 3 jackets, 2 pairs of pants, uggs, gloves, and a scarf that covered my whole face. I couldn’t move my arms. But I wasn’t cold!

I hope you all are having fabulous weeks! 3. More. Days.

What is your favorite seasonal flavor?