More Thoughts on Athlete Identity and Next Week’s Goal

Date: March 15, 2015

Author: astottler

I love reading all your comments on athletic identity! I think that with all I do, I am still an athlete, but I just seem to have a mental block about realizing that. I think part of this recent feeling stems from the fact that I haven’t exactly been pushing hard in my workouts lately-while being sick for a while, I felt like I was just in maintenance and survival mode, but now I’m ready to get after it! This was especially apparent when I did Crossfit Open 15.3-I swear I used to be better at wall balls!

15.3 was 7 muscle ups, 50 wall balls, and 100 double unders, for 14 minutes. Since I am definitely not able to do a muscle up, I did the scaled which was 50 wall balls, and 200 singles for 14 minutes. I initially wanted to try double unders but after trying for a while, it was just taking too long. This one was tough-my arms were dead. Partially probably due to the fact that we did a TON of push ups the day before and so my shoulders were already sore!

Also-I’m feeling more like an athlete after today’s half training run. I’m back to double digits! I started the morning with my typical pre-run breakfast, jazzed up with some frozen blueberries. It’s basically a mess of egg whites, banana, and a few oats. I would normally put cocoa powder in it, but I’m not reacting too well to chocolate as far as I know, and didn’t want to take any chances.

After my foot felt really good all week, it flared up on me again yesterday. I used twice last night, and I still woke up with it sore. I even iced immediately upon waking up. I honestly didn’t have too high hopes for the run, given my foot and the fact that I felt pretty sluggish last week, but ended up surprising myself and having a great run.

My left calf had been a little tight this week, and strangely enough my calves get less tired if I’m running a little faster, so I picked up the pace a bit at the beginning and just got in a groove. I was well under a 10:00 mile for most of the run (minus a hilly mile) and kept up my splits right to the last mile. Ok? I’ll take it!

I think the fact that I was eating less junk this week totally helped! Also-in terms of race day plans, I’m not trying to PR. I just want to enjoy the race. In my last race, I ran all of my training runs at a pace to PR (in the heat and humidity no less), and went out way too fast, and ended up crashing hard at the end as a result, leading to one of my worse times. So no flying and dying for me this time!

Next week is finals week, so I went home after my run for Physics help and a home cooked meal. This is chicken and dumplings from Cooking Light-the dumplings are stops of whole wheat tortilla! The perfect mix of protein, carbs, and salt post-run!

We also had some blueberry pie, because pi day! I don’t have a picture of that, but here are the mini pies I had last night! My sorority sold them to raise money for our philanthropies (and yes, selling pie on pi day was totally my idea…). My friend and I split mixed berry and apricot.

In terms of finals, I have one Monday, one Tuesday, and one Friday. Luckily, I seem to be on track with my studying so far, which is why I actually have time to post this!

So-weekly goals. This past week’s goal was pretty successful-I think I nailed 5.5/7 breakfasts and lunches this week! So moving on to this week’s goal: no nighttime eating. During dead and finals week, there are treats and study snacks at every corner. While I know some people swear by their nighttime snacks, for some reason eating late at night always gives me stomachaches. While I would say I’m 99% fine after being sick, things that would normally give me a stomachache are magnified, and nightly snacks have not been kind to me as of late. So that’s this week’s goal-I’ll keep you all updated on how it goes!

Did you have pie for pi day?

One Thing at a Time

Date: March 9, 2015

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Thank you guys for your comments on yesterday’s post! I especially loved Elsie‘s-she suggested I try one small change at a time.

I’ve decided to do a small focus each week, and try to have the weeks build on each other.

This week’s focus? Healthy and properly portioned breakfasts and lunches. That may not sound like a “small challenge” but because I often pack my lunch, there is actually less to it than it seems! So far today went well!

Pre-Crossfit: 1 piece of banana bread.

Crossfit was good-I’m not a fan of Daylight Savings Time though. Waking up that early felt especially awful! The strength portion was:

5×65% back squats

5 pull ups

Alternate those two every minute on the minute for 14 minutes.

I actually really enjoyed the WOD today. I brought running shoes, which made the 400m run feel 1000x better!

3 rounds:

20 box jumps (20′)

20 push press (63#)

400m run

I think I finished in just over 16 minutes?

Breakfast was back at the dining hall-eggs+an apple with sunflower seed butter.

Per my healthy portions, I ended up not finishing this because I was too full.

Between classes, I ate my packed lunch of salad with hummus and hard boiled egg. You can’t see the hummus very well in this picture because I put the hummus at the bottom-it’s less messy when it doesn’t get all over the top!

Plus a fruit bar for something sweet.

Since I had lunch pretty early due to my class schedule, I snacked on some edamame crackers from Trader Joe’s later in the afternoon.

So-I think I achieved my goal for the day! Healthy breakfast+lunch.

I also thought it would be fun to take progress pictures in the ridiculous outfit I wore in the picture from yesterday’s post. So if you want to see those pictures, you better hope I make some progress because they look ridiculous. I’m too old for this…

And now I’m off to research cow lactation.

Do you ever set goals for yourself?

Preparations for Holiday Racing

Date: November 14, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Happy Friday! We made it! Yay! I actually was able to get my big assignment finished last night, which is a huge load off my shoulders!

This is what I made:

Luckily we didn’t have to do any graphics for this assignment, and I just had to work on game play. I have played enough Yahtzee now to last a lifetime.

Not going to lie, I like days better that include 3 straight meals. It seems simpler and more in order. Which is weird. Either way, yesterday was one of those days. My morning began with an hour of spin on my own, followed by breakfast.

I think the pancake was whole wheat cinnamon? Plus the typical yogurt bowl.

Then I settled in to a coffeeshop to work on the above assignment.

I had coffee Mon-Thurs this week and I think about half of those days it was unnecessary. This was way too strong and I was WIRED.

Lunch before lab was same old, same old. My last freezer meal :'(

After lab, I really wanted to go to Crossfit because it was squat day, and we’re following a specific program, but my feet were bothering me and I had a lot of work so I skipped it.

Dinner was a mix of a whole bunch of things-edamame, potstickers (chicken and veg), butternut squash, barley, and teriyaki chicken. For dessert, I had hot chocolate cake with fudge. With ice cream in a separate bowl so it wouldn’t melt.

I’ve gotten into the bad habit of having dessert at the dining hall more often than not, so something to work on. This was delicious though.

And those were my 3 meals!

Now onto running talk.

I feel like I’m not at all in speed shape, unfortunately. I’m doing a Turkey Trot 10k, and it definitely will not be a PR. On the plus side, I have been running 6 miles a lot lately, so the distance should be fine. In mid-December, I’m doing the Santa Run 5k that I’ve done the past 2 years. Last year I tried to PR this race (spoiler alert-didn’t happen), but this year I know I’m not going to be close because that’s in a month! That being said, some speed work is definitely in order. I’ve been doing Friday morning track workouts, although not super consistently. This morning was 10x400m, and I feel like in the last few repeats I was starting to get in the groove of running faster. I think next week’s track workout will be longer and not as fast, in preparation for the 10k. In addition, I think for now I’m going to make Monday afternoons (I only have 2 more of these of normal classes though) treadmill runs. These will vary somewhat, although for next week I’m thinking I’ll do 2 miles @ 8:00 pace, plus 10 2:00 intervals at 7:30. I did a shorter version of this last Monday, and I think after that I’m ready to kick it up a notch! To be honest, my main PR goal races will be in the winter-probably the same ones I did last year! So I have plenty of time. Right now, my running isn’t super focused, which I’m enjoying, but some speed workouts will be good for me!

What are your upcoming goals?

To Get Faster, You Need to Run Faster

Date: June 1, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

This title sort of sounds like a “No, duh” right? Well, it’s amazing how true that actually is!

But let me back up to food pictures!

Saturday night, I brought a couple of friends home to have dinner with my parents. We had one of my favorite meals ever, Grilled Peach, Chicken, and Goat Cheese salads. Yummm.

My mom also made a really delicious mushroom and artichoke dip to start off with, but I failed to document it!

For dessert, we had another favorite: blueberry crisp! It’s so close to summer!

We all had a great time chatting! I need to bring my friends back more often!

Sunday morning I was up bright and early…again…to run with my home Crossfit. I didn’t really have any preconceived ideas about how much I was planning on running-although I wasn’t planning on doing a ton! There were only 3 of us, and one guy wanted to do 8 miles. He claimed we would do a 10 minute pace, but we quickly picked it up! I actually totally forgot to bring my Garmin, so I wasn’t checking the pace the whole time. This was probably better because I didn’t get a chance to psych myself out! I knew I couldn’t maintain that pace for 8 miles, and ended up turning around at the 3 mile point-2/3 of us ended up turning back here. I’m not sure of our pace on the way back, but it was still a decent clip. My legs finally locked in and it felt almost effortless. Plus, chatting with new people is fun! We discussed Crossfit quite a bit, which seems to be a hot topic with that one Crossfit bashing article going around.

And, I finally broke out the new shoes! (I’ve worn them once.)

I’ve definitely gotten faster since I’ve started running with the group a few weeks ago. I’m excited to have a solid base for when I start my half training, but sad I won’t have running partners in DC this summer! I have some big goals with my halfs coming up, so I guess I might as well blurt them out here and finalize them. I want to PR on my race in September. I should be able to do this-I was just a minute off my PR in my last half when I wasn’t trying to PR, and that had hills on hills on hills. I’m standing true to my vow to avoid super hilly races for a while! I’m doing the Giant’s Race in September, which is not flat, but as flat as it gets in SF! I previously just wanted to PR, but now I’m going to go ahead and put a number on it. 2:05. That’s the goal. I think that’s pretty reasonable, granted I train hard this summer. However, half #2 is a much loftier goal. I want to break 2:00. A lot of people in this running group are doing RnR San Jose in October, which I am now planning to do as well. It’s flat, and I’ll have over a month of running with the group and working on speed to prepare. A lofty goal, but with more runs like today, it’s starting to seem reasonable. Plus, SJ is flat! Yay!

After the run, I came back and waited forever at Jamba Juice for an Apple n Greens smoothie and a spinach and cheese wrap.

Aaand blogger fail of the day: that was my only food picture!

I have one other exciting thing to recap: I went to Soul Cycle today! My dorm went, which meant I got into a class for only $10! I’ve been wanting to try it forever, but I never got around to it. Here was my experience: the bikes all have clips-they give everyone spin shoes, although I had my own and I appreciated that they were able to fit the clips. I got on my bike-the handle bars were a little different, and I wasn’t sure what to expect, so I had a friendly employee help me adjust everything. Here’s the thing-the handle bars are SUPER low, although maybe I’m just used to the really high ones at school. I think if you have back problems or are really inflexible, this would be a major problem. The bikes were really nice though-they had a great riding feel, and the clips were much tighter than other bikes which was really nice-on the junky bikes at school my shoes swivel around in the clips.

The class was a definite style. It was very fast paced. I would say it was more cardio than strength based, and involved a lot of very fast paces out of the saddle and a lot of bouncing. Soul Cycle is all about the rhythm so don’t sit in the front if you’re new! I think this si the type of thing you’d get more out of the more you go. I was sometimes able to catch the rhythm but not always! Overall, the class was fun and I might go back (although it’s really pricy). However, as a certified spin instructor (yes, I sometimes forget that I am too), I can’t really recommend this class. The things we do in class basically go against everything we’re taught to not do as Spin teachers, for safety reasons, so I wouldn’t feel comfortable recommending it. There was a lot of bouncing around, and a lot of really high leg speeds, especially out of the saddle, which can be dangerous. To be honest, the only reason they can get away with such high speeds is that the bikes are very high quality. Also, we were taught that push ups and such on the bikes can be dangerous-which is true; you sweat a lot so the handlebars get slippery! There was also a small weight lifting portion on the bike-also kind of a no-no. The thing was, I felt like we might as well just have done that part off the bikes-we weren’t gaining much by being on the bikes!

Overall, I enjoyed my experience and worked up quite a sweat. But to be perfectly honest, I feel like this is one of those fitness trends that people are really, really into but are not necessarily the most smart thing. I think the classes are perfectly fine for experienced spinners, but people new to spin I think are a bit at risk for injury. But that’s just my two cents! It was really fun to be at a spin class not just in the corner of the school gym though!

That’s all I have for today-I have to give a big presentation tomorrow and I’m still without a voice from my cold earlier in the week so I need to rest my voice!

Have you ever tried Soul Cycle, or any spin studio? What did you think?