Friday was a work day. I took the morning off of any workouts in preparation for my 5k on Saturday morning. Fresh fruit (watermelon and blackberries) for breakfast, with a flapjacked.

I had my typical salad lunch. This salad featured blackberries, leftover lemon grilled chicken, and burrata cheese. Crackers and a banana on the side.

Afternoon snack:

Post-work, pre-dinner snack while waiting for my mom:

For dinner, we tried out a local salad place that we just discovered. I got a salad with artichoke hearts, sundried tomato, feta, kalmata olives, chicken, pickled onions, roasted chickpeas, and roasted cauliflower (I added that). This was good, but in the future I would get the dressing on the side, since the champagne vinaigrette flavor was pretty strong!

After dinner, we hustled down to San Jose to pick up my race packet for Saturday before it closed. My dad actually ended up signing up for the race at the last minute. He’s never run a race before, and since he ended up not having a soccer game that morning, he decided, why not?

The packet pick up was at a massive sports store, and I bought a ton of new and interesting bars. (See below.) Afterwards, I suggested we stop at Menchies on the way home.

I got vanilla with fudge, and a little chocolate and mint with Nestle Crunch.

At home, I couldn’t resist trying a new find, the Blueberry Quest Hero bar. I’m not a fan of Quest bars, and now I can’t eat any other ones because they all have nuts, but this was astonishingly good. I thought it tasted like a cake doughnut, and my mom thought it tasted like a Danish. Either way, I (surprisingly) recommend!

Saturday morning I was up super early: 3:45am thanks to a certain orange kitty scratching at my door. I gave up on sleep around 4:30 and got ready for the race!

We arrived in San Jose at 6:45 for the San Jose Giants race! The SF Giants race is my favorite race ever. Sadly, I’ll already be in vet school when it happens this year, and since I’m not in the middle of finals like I have been the last few years, I jumped at the chance! (I might have to do the Sacramento race in the series next year! The Sacramento Rivercats are the Giant’s AAA team.) The San Jose Giants are our Class A team.

We might be related.

^Sponsor

^Mascot El Gigante.

My dad and I didn’t really have plans to run together. He wanted to go around 7:55/mile, and for me that’s a solid NOPE.

And we were off!

I wasn’t sure how this race was going to feel, but I knew I’d been getting faster this season. I didn’t go out crazy hard. My dad took off in front of me, and when we passed at a turnaround about a mile in, I saw he was breathing a lot harder than me, so I should probably pick it up!

We ran by the stadium (photos my my mom.) Some of the former SJ Giants, and current Giants’ greats!

About halfway through the race, I realized that a PR was possible if I pushed it a little more. Slowly but sure, I locked in to a faster pace.

We also ran through Happy Hollow zoo! The zoo smell was very familiar to me, haha!

With a mile to go, I thought I had a good chance if I could get a sub-8:00 mile.

Before I knew it, I was entering the stadium. I saw the clock as I entered the field at 24:xx and SPRINTED to the finish.

(I think this picture is hilarious because it shows off my massive blue bruise. I got pretty beat up at the vet this week and my legs were covered in bruises. The worst thing is that big one is from when Chloe came to the vet for her vaccine and was crazy excited to see me.)

I made it!

Guys. I FINALLY PRed! I fastest 5k was my first 5k….4.5 years ago. I’ve been trying (on and off) to beat it since then! Since that first 5k, I’ve gone through numerous injuries, 4 years of college, vet school applications and acceptances, tons of major life events…and I FINALLY beat it! By 10 seconds, but I will sure as heck take it! Official time 24:49. The icing on the cake was I placed first in my age group! My dad placed second! Now I think he has the racing bug at least a little, and we’re trying to find a small race to do later this summer where we might both be able to place again

We explored the stadium a bit afterwards. It was super cool to see where a lot of Giants greats played!

I wasn’t planning on getting 8am beer, but….

They had Kona Longboard Lager, a great summer beer, so I got convinced to split it 3 ways.

On the way home, we made a necessary stop:

Zest, the local gluten free bakery. They only make doughnuts 2x/week, and after seeing literally half of my instagram feed on Friday as doughnuts (national donut day), I had to jump on the Saturday morning doughnuts (plus, the chocolate ones sell out super early so I wanted to try them!)

^That is perfection. Maple, chocolate, and cinnamon sugar. And a warm and gooey cinnamon roll.

Back home, since Charlie woke me up so early, I forced him to help me nap. Cats are pretty good at that, as it turns out.

For lunch, I was craving a Subway salad, but I made it work quickly with what we had on hand! Deli turkey, tomato, lettuce, grated fancy cheese, and balsamic vinaigrette.

Then, it was time for Pints for Paws! This was literally my ideal event. The Berkeley Humane society hosted a craft beer tasting festival where 100% of the proceeds went towards animals. Even better, the event was dog friendly! Of course Chloe came.

The event boasted 20 different craft breweries, with a couple of cider and wine places as well.

We got classes upon entering. My favorite beer was actually the first one I tried: Apricot wheat from Pyramid.

Chloe met plenty of friends.

Dogs. Beer. What could be better?

^Berry beer.

After the initial samplings, we quickly realized we would have to pace ourselves, especially because our first couple pours were extremely generous! Chloe took some breaks in the shade.

After some initial craziness when we first arrived, Chloe was actually amazingly good. She was (pretty) calm, and was good with pretty much all the dogs and people she met. I think meeting tons of people and dogs at once was a really great experience for her socialization, and with so many new people, no one person was too exciting!

^I tried Guiness lager, and it was really good and crisp! I actually don’t really like regular Guiness; it needs more fizz!

Chloe is a pretty unique looking dog, and I think nearly everyone at the festival (we were all dog people!) wanted to say hi to her! This picture basically sums it up:

I really enjoyed tasting so many different styles and types of beer. At some point, my dad and I were splitting the sample, or pouring out the extra of the ones that weren’t our favorites.

We also talked to a few people for a while and had interesting conversations; one was a parent of a recent UC Davis Vet School and another was a couple who had Aussies. Apparently Aussie and Cocker-spaniels get along well. These two just sat like that for quite a while!

I enjoyed trying different ciders as well; everything from traditional apple to sour cherry, pear, and pineapple.

On the way out, of course I had to stop in the kitten adoption trailer and say hi. Look at these beauties!

And on the drive back:

I was actually pretty hungry when we got back despite all the beer, and I requested dinner from our local Mexican place. I got my favorite chicken teriyaki tacos, and ate the insides.

Dessert was a bowl of Halo Top with a couple of Trader Joe’s snicker doodles crumbled in.

Thanks to an early morning and a big day, I found myself struggling to stay away before 8pm, so I was in bed around 8:15 and it was fabulous. I woke up Sunday morning feeling quite refreshed!

Also, I can’t explain it but somehow the beer seemed to helped my tendonitis! My Achilles was surprisingly good during the race, but started to tighten up afterwards. It was pretty sore walking to Pints for Paws, but the beer helped the pain go away. The funny thing though is even the next day, my Achilles was FAR better than it should have been; hey, I’ll take it! Beer for injury recovery? Why not!

Sunday was low key and productive. I started with a gym spin class; it’s different from the other classes I go to in that it works based on percentages of your threshold, which you find during the first 3 minutes of the ride. It’s cool because it’s all computerized; it determines a number for you, and then the screen displays percentages, and you go off those percentages.

After class, I headed over to Peet’s for a decaf iced latte and some forced time finishing up a write up for my advisor on what the vet school interview process was like for me.

I spent the rest of the day partially relaxing, and partially tackling the confusing and extensive medical requirements for vet school. I tried to stay off my feet because oddly, my stress fracture foot was a little bit sore today. I’m not worried at all, but it’s been a while since it’s done this so I was a little surprised!

Finally, for dinner, we made my Sweetgreen copycat watermelon and feta salad.

With a side of roasted rosemary purple potatoes.

Saturday was literally the best day: 5k PR in the morning, beer and pup festival in the afternoon. BRING ON SUMMER!

What’s your ideal day?

Sunday evening I went to the county fair. I went by myself, and it was 95% just to see the animals! I seriously contemplated buying a cow.

Plus there was a petting zoo! Totally worth the $3 to feed the ruminants. Speaking of which-guess what just came on Amazon? I’m pretty pumped to read this. Yes, this is a textbook on the digestive system of ruminants (cows and goats and sheep, etc)

Workout wise this week, I’ve done some morning Crossfit, some spin, and some workouts with my old trainer from when I was in high school! I first lifted weights with him. I was concerned coming back given the last time I trained with him I was in the best shape of my life, but it’s been good! I actually PRed my snatch by 8 pounds today. Except it was from the high hang-not even the mid hang. For those that don’t know much about weightlifting, usually you start from the ground because you get more power. Also-it was a power snatch not a full snatch. What all this means is I’m a lot stronger than my PR and next time I do full snatches I should be able to get even heavier! Technique is everything! Now all my lifts are in the triple digits!

On Monday he went easy on me and we didn’t do much conditioning, but today I had conditioning involving intervals of slam balls and max effort 250m rows. Killer.

Foodwise, what’s been going on around here?

Breakfast

Eggs, oatmeal, and fruit are the current formula. A couple of days ago I made oatmeal with cocoa powder stirred in (and a banana). I make a big batch and then can have it throughout the week. It was super convenient to grab a few bites before morning Crossfit!

Lunch

A sweet potato stuffed with chicken, spinach, salsa, cheese, and guacamole. This is great for a quick lunch!

Super ugly but got the job done-spinach, quinoa veggie blend, and chicken maple apple sausage. Plus guacamole and carrots. I love these individual packs of guacamole!

Lunch with my sister! A turkey sandwich with smoked gouda. I ate the insides out since I’m not doing gluten right now. On a side note-my stomach seems to be healed!

Dinner

Brussels, laughing cow, and maple apple chicken sausage. This is an old Carrots N Cake recipe!

Chicken vegetable soup with a side caesar salad (which was massive).

A frittata with potatoes and cheddar, broccoli, and Trader Joe’s Polenta.

Homemade banana ice cream. Banana, cocoa powder, and a touch of milk to get it moving.

Puppy

I swear she’s gotten so much bigger already! She went from 8.5 to 11 pounds in the first week we had her! Her snout and body are both longer, and yesterday she seemed to find her bark. She can be a handful-sometimes she goes psycho-puppy on us and is a biting machine that cannot be contained. She’s an angel when sleeping.

My friends came over to visit her yesterday evening. Totally already killing her selfie game!

Food

Monday morning, since I didn’t have class, I went out to brunch with friends.

I got a brie omelet with green onions and mushrooms. YUM. This may be a new favorite brunch plate, because I also want to try the goat cheese omelet!

I debated for a while whether to get hash browns or fruit. Next time I would do fruit-I guess I’m not a huge hash brown person, although these were good ones.

At breakfast, I’ve been making instant coffee a lot lately. It’s actually pretty good if you make it with just milk and no water. If I want less of a caffeine kick, I’ll do half a pack of it.

A giant cup of milk has been surprisingly filling, so I’ve kept the rest of breakfast a bit lighter. Whole wheat english muffin with cream cheese and eggs.

Yet another freezer meal-grilled chicken, balsamic brussels, and mashed yams.

I completely forgot to thaw a lunch for today, so I went to the dining halls t breakfast and grabbed the essentials for an egg sandwich-whole wheat english muffin, cream cheese, and hard boiled egg. Served with some grapes.

And then dinner last night was basic but solid. They had my favorite cabbage-miso salad, plus lemon caper salmon. There were also stuffed peppers but I wasn’t a fan, mostly because I don’t really like peppers.

Workouts

Monday: 1 rep max front squats at Crossfit. I PRed at 165#! ONLY 5# PR but I’ll take it! The conditioning portion was a little running, kettle bell swings, and fairly heavy dumbbell push presses.

Tuesday: Crossfit-over head squats and toes to bar (knees to elbow) for strength, and a pretty tough conditioning workout.

AMRAP 15

10 Wall Ball (14#)
20 Double Under
10 DB Snatch (25#)

I did actual double unders- and those gassed me! I’ve randomly made a double under breakthrough recently, and they’ve been pretty good. The downside? I whipped myself. A lot. Pretty badly. I think it’s a cute look.

I was supposed to do a tempo run that evening but I had a lot of school work. I have a race in 1.5 weeks and I’m feeling pretty unprepared!

Wednesday: 6 mile run. Since I skipped my tempo run, I picked it up a bit at the turnaround point, and did a mile at a fairly fast clip (definitely not race pace though). So….a week and a half to get fast…?

How do you work on speed?

Yesterday I woke up at 5am (that’s 2am CA time for those keeping track) to run over to the Lincoln Memorial for November Project.

I was shocked by how light-and hot and humid-it was at 5:30am. Since where I’m from it’s always freezing at night, I couldn’t quite believe it!

We all gathered on the steps. Today was “PR day,” which meant running the stairs for time.

Well, for some reason I thought we were doing that once, so I sprinted up the stairs. And then no one was stopping. Turns out we had to do it 17 (or 13) times…I scaled and did 13, partly because I had to leave a bit early. Guys. The Lincoln Memorial has SO MANY STAIRS. Like, you have no idea. THE BURN! Somehow magically I’m not insanely sore today-maybe because I spent the rest of the morning hydrating like a mad woman, but it was definitely a good one, and so peaceful to be running the city so early!

I went to Crossfit that evening because apparently I’m crazy, and everyone seems to think it’s PR week. Well, I did get a PR! I PRed my deadlifts by 10lbs for a total of 245! And my form was way better than my previous PR so that’s good!

And since we’re on the topic of workouts, I went to a run club today that’s through my gym (which I get a membership to as part of Crossfit). I should also mention that it was 90 and humid today. And that I never have to run in heat because I’m from San Francisco and such a thing does not exist…

There were only 3 of us plus an instructor, and the other women looked pretty fast. On the schedule was about a 35 minute tempo run-10 easy, 10 min tempo, 5 min easy, rest of the run tempo. In theory tempo was a faster pace, or 10k pace. In reality, it was me trying not to die. I was doing ok keeping up with the easy pace-it didn’t feel too bad but it was about a 9:00 which is on the fast side for a longish run for me (My latest 10k pace was 8:45). But I was doing fine. I fell behind pretty quickly when the tempo part started but I did what I could. Coming back though, my legs were absolute bricks. During the “tempo” part, I was just trying to keep them moving. So fast runs in hot and humid weather build character, right? I’ll probably go back even though I probably slowed the others down, because it’s good for me and I’m sort of learning the area through a guided run. That was a little extra incentive-better keep up if I don’t want to get hopelessly lost! And hey-official half training starts next week! Although I’m going to keep up my weekend 6 milers until I get to that point.

Foodwise?

I wasn’t sure if I’d have time for breakfast post-November project, but it was a non-issue and I had woken up HUNGRY. So this protein was much needed after 10245412342 stairs.

And I finally worked out my coffee situation. After waking up at 5am, this was a lifesaver.

As a side note, this is a 12oz coffee, which is the smallest size they serve. I had one again this morning and it was WAY too much caffeine, even though I was drowsy all morning. WHEW. Guess who usually drinks baby espresso drinks? THIS GIRL.

Lunch today was kind of awful. I made some cauliflower in the microwave and topped it with hummus leftover from the previous night’s dinner (picture will follow) and it was just a mushy mess. Ick. I also had scrambled eggs with manchego and spinach, which were ok but it was kind of a mess.

Here’s the aforementioned dinner. The craziest thing happened. I heated soup up on the stove. Not the microwave, the STOVE. Am I officially a real person? I took tomato soup and mixed in some fresh spinach, then topped it with cheddar. On the side was some hummus and pretzels, plus my new favorite thing-FROZEN GRAPES! I had some on the softer side which I hate, so I just stuck them in the freezer. SO good!

The tomato soup was Trader Joe’s, and I was really disappointed. I forgot to check added sugar, and this had a fair amount-it tasted sweet. Ugh.

Speaking of which, on my way out of work today, I was hungry and wanted some quickly digesting carbs to fuel my run, so I picked this guy up from the restaurant.

It was pretty tasty, but SO sweet and oily. But my run went well (as well as it could have) so who am I to complain. I just don’t want to make it a habit!

After the afternoon’s run, I stopped at Whole Foods to be lazy as well as to make use of my gift card. I picked up some fruit, carrots, super dark chocolate, and sun butter, plus dinner and lunch for tomorrow. Not having to pack lunch tonight is sort of fantastic.

My dinner was Mexican tilapia over beans, roasted potatoes, and garlicy cabbage and green beans. Plus lots of grapes with sun butter when I got back, and a bit of dark chocolate.

And now I’m at that point where I could go to bed nice and early, or watch another Scandal…decisions….

I started my morning bright and early. Or something. At least for this jet-lagged CA girl! I have to get up at 3:30am CA time, and I haven’t had a chance to get coffee! Bad combo! Luckily, I’ve determined two nearby coffee places that should work!

Breakfast was plain Greek yogurt, mango+strawberry, and sun butter. I’m not a huge fan of the mango+strawberry for some reason. Trader Joe’s also doesn’t have the best frozen mango though-it’s never quite ripe-so it’s a bit solid.

Today was my first day going straight to Crossfit from work, so I had to commute in my Crossfit shoes because I couldn’t carry 2 pairs of shoes! Classy.

No pictures from lunch because it was a work lunch, but it was a whole wheat pita stuffed with veggies, chicken, hummus, and cheese.

Instead, here’s tomorrow’s lunch which I just packed!

After work, I finally worked out a good commute, I think. I made the Metro by 1 minute after arriving at the station by bus. Walking to Crossfit from the Metro was horrible. DC traffic and cars are the worst. So much honking, so much grid locking, so many drivers who will just run you over…and I had to walk through this horrible traffic circle with like 6 different intersections…Terrifying. I miss California drivers…

Anyway, I arrived much earlier than expected and was able to jump into an earlier class. The main strength was snatches, trying to PR. I wasn’t expecting anything crazy, but I got some good tips from the coaches and easily PRed by 5 pounds from just the hang position (which doesn’t have as much power). This was named the number 1 box in DC last year, and I can see why! And that’s saying a lot given how many there are! So far, each of the classes I’ve been to have had 2 coaches.

The conditioning portion was an 8 minute AMRAP of overhead walking lunges, burpees, and plate rows. I’m not sure what it was, but I felt like I was really able to push myself today!

I realized walking home that I pass Whole Foods everyday on the way back. And I have 2 Whole Foods gift cards. Does that mean I never have to cook? Maybe I’ll pack home cooked lunches for a while and pick up dinner. We’ll see.

I didn’t stop in today, but I had plenty of leftovers so dinner came together quickly. Chicken, leftover cumin cauliflower, roasted sweet potatoes, and some unpictured snap peas.

I picked up some dates and 85% chocolate today, so that served as dessert.

So, I’m tentatively planning on going to November Project DC tomorrow. At (gulp) 5:30am. My logic is that maybe I can shock my system into this time zone? Or drink lots of coffee? It’s a .75 mile run from my apartment, so I definitely need to try it at some point, and tomorrow may just be that point. I calculated that if I leave a bit early, I can get back in plenty of time to shower and catch the metro. But it’s early. We’ll see.

When was the last time you PRed?

I began my morning with a giant hill 5 miler. It kicked my butt. My legs tired super quickly-Crossfit the night before probably didn’t help, but hills have been sort of killing me lately. And yes, I was definitely cursing gravity a bit as I was climbing today!

Breakfast was same old, same old. But in a different bowl! I thought I was out of disposable bowls, and I have a very limited selection of actual bowls, so I used an old jar from one of my fancy yogurts for a yogurt, strawberry/peach, and sun butter creation.

I said I wouldn’t share all my selfies for my selfie a day challenge, but I think today’s is especially pertinent because it involved coffee which was definitely the turning point of my day. I didn’t sleep very well last night, and this morning’s run really knocked me out! I was sort of dehydrated and constantly chugging water, and my whole body and mind were tired. And then coffee. And then I felt 1000x better.

I’m sort of embarrassed by my lunch picture but such is life when you are reaching the end of the year. I had a meatball, laughing cow, and a boatload of carrots.

Today was my last day of classes for the year! Woo! Now just 2 finals and a paper between me and the summer! It’s bad-I’ve been in the summer mindset for a while now. I can’t stop thinking about my summer. I’m super excited. I keep thinking about what each and every day will be like, the fun places I’ll run, the awesome things I’ll cook. For anyone keeping track, I’m going to Washington DC for the summer! I’ve never been there before, so I’m insanely excited! I’ve already been looking into Crossfit boxes and…they seem much higher scale! The one I’m probably going to chose had a whole section on “amenities.” Hah!

Anyways, for snack I had some beautiful blueberries and leftover mashed sweet potatoes.

I considered going to Crossfit this afternoon, but given that the run this morning kind of killed me and the workout was basically the worst thing ever…let’s just say a ladder up to 21 of burpees and push press was worth missing.

I’ve been meaning to eat more dinners in my dorm to eat up all the random food I have, but that hasn’t exactly happened. For some reason the vegetable soup I thawed a few days ago still looks like a block….so there’s that. Instead, I went with a salmon burrito bowl at the dining hall. These bowls are good-I just wish the guar wasn’t so saturated with lemon!

Also-Day 3 of no sugar, yay! Sometimes the whole “no sugar” thing clicks for me and sometimes it doesn’t so hopefully I can hold out!

And back to the title of this post-guess what else I did to celebrate National Running Day? I took advantage of the discount for today and signed up for another half marathon! I am now officially doing Rock n Roll San Jose in October! It’s a month after the previous half, so working out the training for that might be a little funny, but I’m excited! So-what’s getting real?? Guess what I put my projected finish time at? 2:00! I’m now officially committed to trying for that. Suddenly, it seems so doable. I have so much time to get faster, and every half I’ve done has been insanely hilly. I was playing around with a pace calculator, and I’m getting excited! In terms of my training, I start training for my September half on June 30. I really want to PR that race which I think is doable since it’s a flatter race, but my training probably won’t be too crazy this summer because I’m working full days with an hour commute each day. Plus East Coast summer weather…After that race, I’ll take a bit of time off before training hard for a couple of weeks for the October race.

After that, I’ll probably go back into 5k training and speed work! And that’s my year! Whew!

How did you celebrate National Running Day?

Post run breakfast was the same old-plain greek yogurt with berries and sunflower seed butter. To be perfectly honest, I don’t want to switch it up, partly because it’s delicious and refreshing, but partly because I’m scared my berries will turn alcoholic before I can eat them, because the last batch did! So far so good though!

I didn’t pack a lunch today because I wasn’t sure if I’d have time to eat it between classes. In the end, I did get a chance to stop by a cafe on campus for a chicken and pesto sandwich on whole wheat.

My second morning class has air conditioning, but it’s always on SO high that even though I brought a sweater specifically for that class, I was still freezing my booty off! I have never been so happy to walk outside in nearly 100 degree heat-to thaw!

However, my afternoon class is most definitely not air conditioned. I spent 2 hours staring at a computer screen and melting my brain. Not fun. I then picked up LITERALLY the best, most amazing, refreshing, and cool thing in the world. An iced latte! (decaf)

Crossfit today was pretty empty. I guess everyone got fed up with the what yesterday and decided not to show today! For the strength, we worked on power snatches and I FINALLY PRed by 5 pounds! The WOD was a tabata of pull ups, push press, sit ups, and dumb bell cleans. The push presses were probably the most difficult for me!

After my workout, I headed to dinner at the dining hall. I’ve actually been digging the dining hall lately-today they had HUMMUS, which is rare and exciting. I filled up a bowl with salad, chicken, and plenty of hummus!

For dessert, I had a cool cup of plain Greek yogurt with cereal and strawberries, as well as a small slice of lemon cake. I’ve been really into lemon lately, ever since I came across this recipe that I’m dying to make! I had a lemon luna bar earlier as well-so perfect for summer!

And now, I’m sitting in my room sweating. Gotta love lack of air conditioning! Also-I only have 4 weeks until summer…what??

Do you have any exciting plans for the summer?

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!

Let me back up. I’m sure all you guys care about is my morning- or rather, kitten pictures! I am sooo excited to be volunteering to care for kittens this summer. Most of them are under 4 weeks old! I will be going once a week, on the 7am shift. But enough of that, here are some pictures! They are all sleeping, so the pictures kind of look like lumps of fur. 

These pictures really don’t capture how tiny they are! Lilly was definitely a lot older when we got her. I think towards the end of the season, I’ll pick up more shifts. I go back to school a lot later than most, so towards the end of the season, they will probably be short of hands. SO EXCITED.

Less exciting is my last (good) brunch of the year!But then, when is avocado ever boring?

And then my pre-study necessity:

An iced latte was soo perfect. I was really drowsy from a nap, and hot because my room is not air conditioned!

Last night, I did my 4 mile training run. While running, I realized that I really need to make running my priority this summer. By that, I mean, it has to take priority over my other workouts. Last summer when I trained for my 10k, I just tacked the running on to the rest of my other workouts. Most of my training runs were not with fresh legs. However, I can’t really do that this time around, because the mileage is much higher. Running has to be what I do first thing in the morning. If I want a Spin class or yoga recovery, then that’s great. But running needs to come first. The reasons for these thoughts? My legs were pretty much shot on my run. I also decided after the Nike Women’s marathon in October, I want to start training for a 5k PR. To be fair, I’ve only run one actual 5k, and I have run faster than I did that day, but I think it would be a good change of pace. 

5k last year- Santa Run! My time was 25 something….

Also, I have a question for you runners- I love strength training, and am going to continue that through my half training. Do you prefer running the day after lifting while sore, or the day of while tired? 

I bring this up because I am quite sore. I really love free weights-almost everything I do, I use the bar for. It is more of a total body workout. For example, I hadn’t done deadlifts much lately, and during those yesterday, my core was definitely getting a workout! And despite doing doing but squats and deadlifts yesterday, my shoulders are SUPER sore. That really is a mystery to me. Maybe from holding up the bar on front squats? Hmm. 

Ok, back to studying for me!

Do you cross train? What do you do? What is your schedule like?

Long time no post though, right? I have tons of food to catch you guys up on, so I’ll just go over some highlights here in a minute. But first. Why haven’t I been posting? SO much work this week! Why does it feel like every week is such a hard week? Oh, that’s right, ROWING. Also, I haven’t exactly felt like posting because, well, I haven’t really been eating too well. And then this wouldn’t be a “healthy living blog,” it would just be a food blog, or, a junk food blog. To be perfectly honest, I’ve had a lot of difficulty eating well since the holidays. It’s been really hard for me to get back on track! And lack of sleep definitely isn’t helping matters…Does anyone have any tips for getting back on track? I’ve currently ditched all sweet items in my dorm room, as well as (most) nuts. 

So how are my allergies? My skin was clearing way up…but here’s the weird thing. I replaced the nuts in my diet for a ton of coconut (yeah, I know, not the best strategy…) and my skin went downhill again. So what am I allergic to? This is really odd. I broke down yesterday and had a granola bar as well, so that probably doesn’t help matters….

Being the awesome person that I am, I wanted to do a little test for my allergies that I was pretty sure wouldn’t work (it didn’t). I put a little coconut butter on one side of my face, and a little peanut butter on the other side. I wanted to see if it would cause a breakout. It didn’t. But it was only on for like an hour (yes, I walked around with pb on my face for an hour…I’m pretty cool) and I didn’t really expect to see many results. 

Ok, I will go through all the food in a bit (I don’t have my connector cable with me now, I’m between classes), but first let’s talk about this morning. I had a 6k test! For those of you who do not know, this is the most painful thing in rowing. It is basically 6000 meters on the rowing machine at an all out effort. This was only my 3rd 6k test, and I was really expecting to see a lot of improvement in my time and PR. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen, which I was pretty disappointed about, Given the fact that I’m fairly new to rowing, I really should be PRing more. My fastest 6k was my first one! At least this was faster than my last one, but still, it’s frustrating. This does make me wonder though; if I had better nutrition, would I have been able to PR? To be perfectly honest, I put on some weight since my first 6k test, and I’m thinking this could be seriously slowing me down. So now I have a new motivation to eat well! And I have a new plan. I have the tendency to reward myself with sweets: for doing something well, for a hard workout, for a good grade. So my new idea is to reward myself with peanut butter. That way, I will get to enjoy a reasonable amount of peanut butter and still feel like I’ve gotten that little reward. So instead of waffles, I can have a scoop of peanut butter on my oatmeal! This morning after my 6k? I made my favorite ever smoothie! Peanut butter and banana! Sidenote: I know that you’re supposed to remove the banana peel before freezing bananas. I just never thought about why. I was planning on this smoothie post workout so I popped a banana in the freezer last night so it would be really awesome. But I was in a hurry and just tossed the whole thing in. Yeahh that was not the best idea. In case anyone is curious, the reason it is bad is because it is impossible to peel (you probably figured this out). However, I was very determined. I wanted my smoothie, dang it! So I persevered. Here’s the recipe, it’s super simple!

Peanut Butter Banana Smoothie

1 frozen banana 

1/2 c skim milk (or more if your blender is not powerful enough to blend)

1-2 T peanut butter to taste

1. Add to a blender (break up the banana as much as possible for easier blending).
2. Blend. Enjoy

So simple! The longer you blend it, the fluffier it gets! I don’t think I’d ever had one of these smoothies with a freshly frozen banana before, so it was extra frosty!

Well, this is a great transition into the food portion! Before my erg test, I had a slice of Banana Bread and a little milk. 

After, to go along with my smoothie, I had half a whole wheat english muffin with cream cheese and egg scramble/egg whites. Plus like 1/3 of a pancake with syrup. I didn’t take a picture of this because my plate didn’t look very good. After my banana massacre…

But I did get some pictures of lunch! I ate an early lunch (around 11) because I was getting a little hungry, and my legs were starting to burn from this morning. Plus, who can sit in a cafe and work with food that close? 

I decided on a chicken pesto sandwich, plus a bran muffin. I figured the bran muffin was a little treat, but definitely a step up nutritionally from last week’s giant apple fritter. Plus, it would not make me feel gross, especially on a 60 minute run!

No picture from dinner though! The beach run with my team was fun (well, as fun as running on sand can be…), but I ended up getting my feet and therefore running shoes soaked and sandy! So much for a Friday run! Our coaches brought us chocolate and apple cider for a toast post-workout at the beach before we headed out to dinner. 

Dinner was a fun experience but the restaurant was frustrating. It was a seafood place, and they were out of every fish except for maybe one kind, as well as steak, and garlic bread. Plus, they ended up messing up our order, such that my table got our food at least half an hour after the other table. Luckily, I had nothing to rush back to do! I enjoyed a chicken casaer salad. 

Back at my dorm, I went to Late-Night Dining with my friend to get a warm, gooey giant cookie. We have meal plan dollars that come with our weekly meal plan, which let you buy things from other places, like late night. I almost never go to late night, which is where most people use them up (yeahhh morning practice!). The quarter is already more than half over, and only a small portion of the meal plan dollars carry over. I realized I could buy 97 more giant cookies this quarter! That’s over 3 a night! Yesss. Haha, don’t worry, I won’t do that! But finally, let’s play catch-up on food!

Ok, I need to comment on this one. This was one of the best ideas I’ve ever had. Like ever. I brought back some fresh tomato salsa from Saturday’s Mexican brunch in a tubberware, and I had the genius idea to mix it with some salt, pepper, and avocado! This is seriously the best guacamole I’ve ever had. I ate it with celery sticks. I’ve made this multiple times and just cannot get over it. At home, whenever we would get fresh salsa, we would never finish it. Ohh how naive I was. This mixture is awesome, and super easy! This is my banana mix with regular cocoa powder, instead of dark cocoa powder. It is completely different! Maybe fruittier? Topped with unsweetened coconut.

These are the coconut truffles I made the other day. Yes, I was too lazy to actually make them balls. All they have in them is coconut (unsweetened), baker’s chocolate, coconut oil, and then they are rolled in cocoa powder. I actually started eating these in the morning before my workouts in hopes the caffeine in the chocolate would wake me up a little bit!The biggest reason for this photo dump is that I seriously was planning on blogging, so I took the pictures, and I don’t want them to go to waste!

Another attempt at a healthy mug cake. This one actually worked out, but for some reason it exploded from the bottom…getting mug cake ALLLL over the microwave. This had banana, liquid egg whites, vanilla protein powder, cocoa powder, whole wheat pastry flower, a bit of dextrose, and some of my crumbled up truffles as chocolate chips. Not bad! I actually made this one other time, and it was pretty good as well! It would be 1000x better with real chocolate chips. 

This is me realizing I could make awesome French Toast in the microwave. European style bread soaked in egg white, vanilla, and cinnamon.

My first post-peanut butter attempt at Banana Oatmeal. I topped it with blueberries and coconut. Not too shabby!I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get this veggie sandwich for its massive amounts of avocado. This thing might have had 2 avocados on it. It was crazy, I don;t even think I was able to eat all the avocado!Mug cake number 2! Way better/less messy attempt! Although it was close to popping…there was a giant air bubble on the bottom!

And now I leave you with one more picture. Happy Valentine’s Day!