16.5 and a Crossfit Open Recap

Date: March 28, 2016

Author: astottler

Ok, I know I have LOTS to catch up on—mainly my spring break trip to Seattle!—but I had a big Biochem exam for my off-campus class today so it will have to wait a little bit! Sidenote: cramming for a major test on the first day of classes for the quarter is awful.

Before I get into all those shenanigans, I wanted to talk about the Open one more time (this year) while it’s still fresh in my mind (and in my legs….).

So. 16.5. I was SO sure it was going to be some combo of box jumps and thrusters. But alas. I was in Seattle during the time both my gyms were doing the workout, and looked into doing it there, but the days/times didn’t work out so I had the pleasure of doing it on my own this morning.

16.5 was a repeat of 14.5 21-18-15-12-9-6-3 thrusters (65# for women) and bar facing (over the bar) burpees.

I remember 14.5. I remember it well. I remember it as the worst workout I’ve ever done. So I wasn’t terribly looking forward to 16.5 See recap of 14.5 here. Note, in that post I said that it was something I was never doing again. Oh, how things change.

Also funny, apparently I did this workout 2 years ago to the day, as timehop reminded me.

I had a feeling my burpees had gotten better, and wasn’t really sure what to make of the thrusters. My goal was to a) survive and b) beat my time from last year. Given you are all reading this post, yay! I accomplished goal a!

But I also did accomplish goal b. Like, wow. I beat my time by about 4:30, which is insane! I finished in 19:16. And the biggest thing? It was awful and hard and painful, but it no longer felt like the worst workout I’ve ever done.

So everyone, Crossfit actually works! Yay!

Seriously though. In 14.5, I remember it being a big decision to Rx because 65# was super heavy for a thruster, something I never did anywhere near that heavy in a workout. And the burpees knocked. me. out.

Honestly, the biggest difference was in how the burpees felt. Instead of death, they actually felt like a little bit of a recovery. Who knew?

The soreness is starting to set it. It’s funny, I didn’t feel sore or tired in the legs most of the day until after class when my right quad felt a little painful. Then biking back up the hill, I realized that the pain in my quads was rendering uphill movement impossible. My legs may be damaged. Will update on that.

Actually, another big improvement was from 15.5. This time last year, my stomach was flaring pretty badly. I had to do the workout scaled because I was sick, and I honestly didn’t think I was even going to be able to do it at all until 5 minutes before my heat started because I felt like I was so nauseous. While I’m definitely not 100% or normal, remembering how far I’ve come with this illness is important.

Here’s an overall recap of the open. See 16.1, 16.2, 16.3, and 16.4.

This was the first year I actually signed up and did all the workouts. I missed 1 or 2 in previous years. I got into it the past couple of years, but got REALLY into it this year. It was a blast. I counted down the hours until the live announcement Thursday nights, and looked forward to each and every workout (ok, maybe not 16.5). Additionally, in each and every workout, I showed myself I could do something I wasn’t capable of. That’s really what the Open is about.

And again, I was reminded by how fantastic the Crossfit community really is. I loved the camaraderie of going in and complaining/strategizing. I loved the giant burgers afterwards. I loved visiting my home Crossfit and being reintroduced to the community there. I know I’ve said it time and time again, but I’ve found my place, my people. And I know that wherever the next few years take me, that Crossfit will be there.

16.4, Goats, and a 5k

Date: March 22, 2016

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hello friends! It’s been a little while, and I have lots to catch up on!

Let’s start with 16.4. I did it Friday night at my home Crossfit, and while it was a lot of fun, OOF. That was Friday night. It’s Tuesday morning now. Will my lower back ever be the same? Still TBD.

16.4 was a 13 minute AMRAP of 55 deadlifts at 155#, 55 wall balls (14#), 55 calories on the row, and 55 hand stand push ups. Obviously, I can’t do handstand push ups. I figured if I made it that far, that would be fantastic enough, so I decided to do Rx. I wasn’t sure how far I would make it into the workout, but got after it!

155# on the deadliest normally would be considered a comfortable but very heavy weight. But I’ve hardly done deadlifts at all in a while, so I was a little nervous. I started with sets of 10 and then did sets of 5 around 20 reps, and smaller sets at the very end. More than anything, my core was giving out on me! Definitely something I need to put some more work into. After the deadlifts, I stumbled over to the wall for wall balls. The ball actually felt SO light when I picked it up after deadlifts. That being said, I DEFINITELY struggled with the wall balls. They’re hard enough without 55 deadlifts in the recent past! In addition, I don’t normally do wall balls to a 9 foot target, and was prepared to get no repped. Which definitely happened, but not too much. When i felt like my reps were declining, I broke up the set to avoid wasting energy on a no rep. That being said, this was such a struggle. I couldn’t even do sets of 10, and by the end a set of 5 wasn’t even happening. However, my home box has a Crossfit games Masters athlete, and she was right there with me coaching me on. When a games athlete tells you to pick the ball back up, you pick the ball back up. I think I got to the row around 9:30. Luckily, rowing is sort of one of my strengths. I used the first minute or so as a “recovery” since I was sucking air from the wall balls, and then picked it up, busting it out at the end. I ended up finishing the 55 calories at 12:59. I’ll take it!

12890933_847333898746845_1023593047539269477_o

I was BEAT afterwards, but SUPER happy with how I did. I was actually the only non-masters female athlete to do this workout Rx at my box! But my core and hamstrings were done. Anytime I bent down, it took all the strength in the world to come back up! I went in the first heat (because I don’t like to see how painful it is) and stuck around for about 4 more heats, watching and cheering.

So, 16.4 done, 165 reps!

(And check out this adorable corgi cheering us on!)

The next morning was a REST day. I legit could not bend over.

That afternoon, I went to a farm with my friend to see baby animals. Unfortunately, we seemed to be a bit early in the season, but there were some young goats!

Afterwards we made a mandatory froyo stop. Cake batter and chocolate with chocolate chips for me!

Dinner was another tortilla pizza, this time with grilled peach, chicken, gorgonzola, and balsamic.

Sunday morning was race day! I ran the Hellyer 5k for the 3rd time. Unfortunately, I woke up feeling even more beat up from 16.4 than the day before. Ouch. Lower back was still not functioning.

We brought Chloe to the race, and she made another puppy friend.

It was a chilly, but luckily the forecasted rain had not yet begun.

^Me attempting to stretch my back. Back still feeling rough. OUCH.

So apparently when you put your bib on with two jackets on over it, it comes out kind of crooked. Oh well.

I was hoping to approach my PR in the race, but out of the gate I knew that wasn’t happening. Some days your just don’t feel right, so I decided to just not die and do my best on that day. The race was Alice in Wonderland themed, and there were quotes printed out throughout the course which I thought was a fun touch.

But overall, I’m happy with it!

I also had the pleasure of meeting blog reader Rina; we’ve been trying to meet up for a while now, so this was a pleasant surprise!

Rina is super speedy and placed second in her (our?) age group which is awesome! It was good to finally meet you Rina!

After the race, my family and I (and Chloe) stopped at a gluten free bakery near home for brunch. We got some baked goods to share (cinnamon roll and blueberry lemon muffin), and my mom and I split a chicken and avocado sandwich on foccacia!

It was a busy weekend!

Check back in tomorrow for some more food details though—so nice to have the freedom of a kitchen!

16.3 (LOL)

Date: March 13, 2016

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hey guys! I’m currently taking a little study break. We’re in the home stretch! I have 2 finals tomorrow and then I’m DONE. Tomorrow will be a long day though—2 back to back 3 hour finals followed by my 3 hour off campus Biochem class.

Shall we back it up a bit to Friday before getting into 16.3?

My morning began with a WET 5 mile run. And cold. Yuck. Sometimes I like running in the rain, most times I don’t, especially in the morning. But I got it done. A highlight was breakfast—I was super excited to try the Siggi’s fig and lemon yogurt, and realized it would go perfectly with the copious amounts of lemon poppyseed bread in the freezer. I used the one with the slightly weird texture. I actually like the flavor of that more. Still looking for the perfect recipe!

In my morning class, I got to work with rats! Then, it was lunchtime. It was a made to order brunch, so I got eggs florentine on a gluten free english muffin.

After lunch, I went to my final class of the quarter and just got DRENCHED on the bike ride back. When I arrived at my dorm, my sister was waiting outside for me and I didn’t have time to change clothes. We were off to visit the cat she was going to adopt! I fell in love with a few others while there.

But meet Lava! My first nephew 😉

He’s such a sweetie. He loves climbing on everyone’s lap and purring.

The rest of my wild Friday night consisted of falling asleep before 10pm. #deadweek

Saturday morning before Crossfit, I stopped by the Stanford softball game. They were playing Cal Poly, and growing up I played softball with quite a few girls who are now on Cal Poly, so it was fun to see them play!

Then, Saturday morning was 16.3! I was not really excited for it. The workout was a 7 minute AMRAP of 10 snatches at 55# and 3 muscle ups. So, muscle ups are definitely not a thing for me. I assumed I would do scaled, which was 35# snatches and jumping chest to bar pull ups, which I was not excited about. When I showed up however, out coach informed us that since any reps in Rx is ranked higher than scaled, it made sense to just do Rx and then finish the workout with pull ups, and take a score of 10. Since 55# snatches are really comfortable for me, I took this option, and scored all of a 10. Because of that limitation, there wasn’t much hoopla around the workout. The exciting thing though was that I actually did 5 pull ups between my snatch sets WITHOUT a band. WHATTT. I used the smallest band for the first set and then ditched it for the last couple. I’ve been putting in work on the pull ups lately, so I was pretty pumped to be able to break them out in a workout for the first time!

After my heat, I judged a heat and watched another. It was actually a lot of fun, and sort of amusing. Because of the way the standards for muscle ups were set, you can actually do some pretty ugly things to make it work.

After the workout, I went out to lunch with my gym-mates. We went to The Counter, which was delicious but insanely slow. We were there for over 2 hours! It was really fun getting to know everyone though. I keep saying this, but I love the Crossfit community.

My make your own burger creation went unphotographed because I was ravenous, but I did a chicken burger with gruyere, garlic aioli, avocado, mixed greens, and tomato on a GF bun. Demolished.

The rest of my day consisted of a review session, studying, and a cat bath.

Because of my vet assistant experience, I came over to bathe Lava and clean his ears. He was not amused. He’s such a sweetie and we weren’t worried about getting bitten, but he definitely did not love the water and was quite squirmy! After his bath and partial blow-dry, he would not stop cleaning himself—I don’t think he liked any part of the experience!

I think he forgave his mean old aunt though because he was curled up on my lap an spurring before I left.

Sunday morning was my 9 mile training run, which I was not looking forward to AT ALL. The weather report called for rain all day, and it did not disappoint. I was a little worried about blisters for 9 miles in the rain, but that ended up being a non issue. I was also thoroughly unprepared for this run. I don’t actually have any water bottles at school right now (right??), and forget to get some gu from home last time I went back. Luckily, I still had a few packets of chocolate, but I was worried about the caffeine in chocolate because last time I had issues with it. But sometimes you have to suck it up, get out, and get to work. Based on the route, I hit a water fountain at mile 5 so I could take my gu then. It gave me quite the energy boost! Overall, I felt pretty good, albeit wet. Myshoe came untied in the last mile, and when I bent down to tie it, and nice little puddle came out of my rain jacket. Needless to say I was DRENCHED.

I’m not really paying attention to paces right now, so I was pretty happy with this!

Lunch was super delicious. A bowl of polenta, eggs, spinach, and mozzarella.

And then I committed to not going outside the rest of the day. I’m so over being cold and wet!

I’m currently rocking my seasonably appropriate compression socks. It’s a good thing St. Patrick’s Day falls during long run season!

Aaand now it’s back to studying. ONE MORE DAY!

Running in the rain—love it or hate it?

WIAW-A Series of Goodbyes

Date: March 8, 2016

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

It’s started. The graduation goodbyes have started. Today was my last Tuesday spin class of the quarter, and next quarter I’m only teaching Wednesdays. Because there are some people that only can come on Tuesday, today was my last class with some of them!

Goodbyes are the hardest. I love Stanford, but the people I’ve met here (both on and off campus) are the part I am going to miss most.

Over the past few years, I’ve realized that life is a series of goodbyes. My first taste of this was leaving DC after a summer. Every time I go somewhere new, there are people I leave behind. It’s so sad to leave people that have touched your life in so many different ways. It’s been such a joy teaching my spin students this year, and I know I’m going to be a mess during my last class in June! I also am really going to miss my Crossfit community here. I’ve spent 3 years there, and the gym itself has evolved and turned into such a community.

Enough mushiness, let’s cheer up with a little WIAW action, huh? Thanks to Jenn for starting this madness.

WIAWbutton

I always seem to do Tuesdays for WIAW, so I thought I’d do a Monday for some variety because what and how I eat varies day to day. ALSO: I have decided to do a what I ate in a day VLOG over spring break, so if I can figure out the technology, look out for that!

Preworkout:

Lemon-blueberry poppyseed bread, which I remembered about halfway through to photograph. Classy.

Workout: Crossfit

For strength, we worked on overhead squats. I think I got to 65 or 75#? This is kind of a big deal with my still recovering shoulder, and I was sore today! The WOD was 3 rounds of 4 exercises, for 1 minute each, with 2 minutes of rest between rounds. The exercises were box jumps, rowing, wall balls, and burpees.

Breakfast:

Full fat Greek yogurt, a nectarine/cherry blend, and crunchy sunbutter.

Lunch:

Minestrone soup (GF) with GF cheese toast and an artichoke olive salad. Perfect for a stormy day!

Dessert:

GF blueberry upside down cake. My mom made this for my for my sister’s birthday dinner, and it’s ridiculously good. She used the pineapple upside down recipe and subbed blueberries for pineapple!

Snack: Not sure this is even worth posting because I literally had 3 carrots, but I was hungry after class at 4:30, and even though dinner was at 5, I wanted something in my stomach so I wouldn’t get hangry in traffic on the drive home.

Dinner:

Dijon chicken and kale stew topped with cheese. SO delicious. Asparagus on the side, plus half a carrot cake flax muffin (another 1/4 was eaten not pictured).

Dinner #2 (eaten in Biochem):

Besides the fact that I need more food in my day, this snack helps break up 3 hours of Biochem!

What is the best thing you ate this week?

16.2

Date: March 5, 2016

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Full disclosure: I’m writing this post to procrastinate this paper. That being said, I had some thoughts I wanted to get down.

This weekend is currently my craziest in terms of school work, but so far I’ve been checking things off the to-do list at a reasonable clip!

The main topic today: 16.2. I did Crossfit Open workout 16.2 this morning, and I am seriously in awe of what my body can do, and am so, so proud of myself. The workout was 4 minutes of 25 toes to bar, 50 double unders, 15 cleans (85#). If you completed that in 4 minutes, you had another 4 minutes to do the T2B, double unders, and 13 cleans at 115#. And so on. the cleans got progressively heavier with fewer reps.

I did this workout Rx. I literally got my toes to bar last week. I can only do one rep at a time, and previously I had only done sets of 4, so I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I knew the toes to bar would take me most of the 4 minutes, and my main goal was just to make it to the jumprope. My over the moon goal was to reach the bar for the cleans. (This workout was a bit frustrating because my cleans are really solid, and the weight was a nonissue, but I knew my other slow movements would be the limiting factor). After some calculations, I determined that if I nailed my toes to bar, whether or not my double unders were on point today would determine if I would reach the bar.

Guys. I BUSTED OUT the toes to bar. Far faster than expected, and at perfect pace. I was SO proud. Once I reached the jumprope, I realized how shot my arms were! My double unders tend to go when my arms are wiped out. I got into a rhythm for the first 20ish, and then I could not string them together, only get a couple at a time. Ultimately, I finished 46 double unders, just 4 reps from my reach goal. I was happy with that, and felt so accomplished with how far I’ve come. This time last year I couldn’t Rx this workout. Heck, this time last month I couldn’t. At this point, I can do pretty much every Crossfit skill. For good measure, every time I’ve been at the gym I’ve done a few pull ups at the end of class, and they’re getting stronger!

I went in the first heat (what can I say, I like getting it over with!) and hung around to watch everyone else go. THIS is what I love about Crossfit.

Other happenings:

I fully intended to do a WIAW post this weekend and recorded a full day of food, but then didn’t have time Tuesday to write it up.

This is another attempt at lemon poppyseed bread, using the flavors from the previous recipe I tried and the base from the recipe I’ve been using for cranberry orange bread. I really liked this version! Currently obsessed with lemon poppyseed. I’m not sure if it’s the ultimate version though. I may need to play around a bit!

Also from my full day of eating was this dinner, which was really unique. Eggplant polenta balls, served with a red pepper cream sauce.

I got a Graze box! It’s basically a monthly snack shipment. The first box, a sampler is free, so this was my free box! My options are limited thanks to no nuts/not gluten, but I think I’m going to get another box, simply because having interesting food shipped to my door is super exciting 🙂 I really liked the dried rhubarb (never had that before), and the caramel apple was a creative idea.

I haven’t tried them yet, but the seeds seem a little plain.

I think my biggest regret of my college career is not going to more baseball games. Before coming to college, I assumed I’d go to every single one. Things happened (read: mono) and I never got around to it. On an impulse, I headed over to the last-minute scheduled game (due to impending weather) after Crossfit to watch the game, totally disregarding my long to-do list. Totally worth it. I love baseball so much.

This is my typical yogurt bowl but I thought I’d share it because it looks sort of presentable.

This was hands down my favorite meal of the week. Bean chili (over greens), cheese, tortilla chips, and GLUTEN FREE CORNBREAD. OMG, so good. I LOVE cornbread, and this just hit the spot, especially after my 5 mile run that morning.

And finally, another good meal. Mustard salmon, garlic kale, and roasted veggies.

Actually, one last thing. I’ve sort of been sucked into youtube lately, watching what I ate in a day videos, and am considering doing a what I ate vlog. Would anyone be interested in this??