Olympic Fever

Date: August 7, 2016

Author: astottler

Has anyone else caught the Olympic Fever?

Here’s a throwback: does anyone remember when I trained at the Olympic Rowing training center?

They had a countdown clock down to the seconds. Crazy how that seemed insanely far away then, yet here we are!

All the plates in the cafeteria had the Olympic rings on them!

I’ve spent most of the weekend on the couch, between the Olympics and baseball. It’s been fantastic. I’m watching swimming as I type this up! Food and workouts have been good as well.

Friday morning Crossfit was heavy deadlifts, then conditioning: 1000m row, 30 thrusters, 30 dips, 1000m row.

Friday eats:

Corn chowder with white cheddar, and avocado toast. A classic.

Greek salad with chicken.

I’m sort of obsessed with halo top+leftover GF chocolate cake from the freezer.

These bars are really delicious. I like the blueberry one better, but they legitimately taste like pie.

Friday night, I got to hang out with my high school friends. It was so great to see everyone; it’s absolutely insane, but some of these people I hadn’t seen in 3 years! Time flies, doesn’t it?

Saturday morning, I went to Crossfit. The workout didn’t feel bad at the time but I’m actually pretty sore!

It was heavyish bench press, and then a team workout. For a team of 3, we split up 75 hand stand push ups, 75 pull ups, 75 GHD sit ups, and 75 pistols. We did 25 each, in sets of 5 or 10. For the push ups, I did them off a box. My shoulder still isn’t 100% from last year’s injury, and it turns out hand stand push ups are one of the few things that doesn’t feel great. For the pull ups, I went unbanded kipping and they weren’t too pretty by the final sets, because there wasn’t a lot of rest time. I did the pistols with assistance because flexibility and balance is not my forte.

I’ve been craving pancakes lately, so I finally made some for brunch afterwards.

I made them with a sweet potato base, and added oats, cinnamon, egg beaters, vanilla, and baking powder. I tried to blend them for a smoother texture but that wasn’t happening as it turns out because the blender didn’t have enough in it.

I got some greens in while they cooked up. I had a salad with ginger dressing.

Finished product! They didn’t have as much flavor as I was hoping; they could have probably used a pinch of salt, and more cinnamon. I remedied this by topping them with cinnamon sugar and Grade B maple syrup. Someday I would love to try Grade C, but you have to go to Canada to do that, as I understand it!

For snack, I made quite the throwback recipe. I don’t think I’ve made my banana chocolate chip custard in 3 years! I don’t know why—it took 2 minutes to whip up, and tasted delicious!

I had a pretty simple dinner—pizza on tortilla, some kale roasted with nutritional yeast, and a salad with fresh mozzarella.

For dessert, I finished off my chocolate Halo Top, with a dab of sunbutter. Kind of the chocolate pb ice cream.

That night, I drove down to see some of my college friends. It was so, so nice to see everyone again. I’m really trying to make the most of the 3 weeks I’m home! These people are awesome.

Also, I had the opportunity to cut a watermelon, which makes me unreasonably excited. I consider myself a professionally trained watermelon cutter, after learning at a fruit and veggie cutting workshop as part of my summer internship a few summers ago. I meant to do a tutorial post years ago. I’m not sure if I never actually wrote it (I took pictures!) or if I just can’t find it. Maybe I should try to get that up!

In the past week, I feel like all my worlds have been colliding and it’s incredibly confusing. Knoxville was totally different from college, which is totally different from high school. I don’t know what to think! And of course, St. Louis is going to be even more different!

This morning, I went to an 8:15 spin class, which felt incredibly early after a late night. I wanted to try this hour long class. It wasn’t my favorite; it was pretty traditional (no crazy choreography) which isn’t a bad thing, but I felt it could have used a little spice. We did 3 15 minute hill progressions.

Speaking of which, did anyone catching the men’s cycling race? It was absolutely crazy! I’m subbing spin this week, and I might have to do an Olympics themed class, based on the profile of the Olympic course.

After spin, I went straight to the farmer’s market with the intention of buying figs. I was a little early for most of the stands to have all their samples out, unfortunately, so I didn’t end up buying as much fruit as I might have otherwise.

I got a mild chicken tamale to refuel from spin, which was delicious!

I’ve gotten into tamales lately!

A little bit later, lunch was served in front of the Giant’s game.

My mom made bruscetta out of the beautiful heirloom tomato I bought.

On the side, I had some strawberries, plus a little experiment. I was curious what would happen if you tried to make nachos out of crackers. The result?

They just tasted like crackers with melted cheese. Definitely not a bad thing, but not nachos.

For dessert, I had another Halo Top bowl. This time, Birthday Cake ice cream over GF chocolate cake. Plus sprinkles.

Yum!

Now, the women’s bike race is on. It simultaneously makes me want to do a race, and convinces me I will never do one. I love the idea of it, but I’m far too worried about crashing. In the men’s race yesterday, there were some nasty crashes going downhill.

What is your favorite Olympic sport to watch?

Gymnastics and diving are always amazing. I also want to catch weight lifting and rowing (because I know a few rowers from my rowing days!)

My Puppy is 51 Lbs

Date: November 4, 2015

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

How crazy is that? She’s gotten so big! Over 6x the weight she was when we got her!

Let’s compare:

What the heck?? How did that happen??

This morning I went for my first run longer than 2.5 miles since my half. It was uneventful. I’ve been embracing the shorter runs lately, especially with midterms and other life craziness! Plus I’m in love with my 2.5 mile route. It feels like fall! I broke out my santa run shirt-after Halloween means that’s officially acceptable. My spin classes are going to love me when I start busting out the holiday tunes! For the sake of my own dignity I will wait until after Thanksgiving for that. I’m a firm believer that the time between Halloween and Thanksgiving is the magical period when it is acceptable to start celebrating Christmas but also to still eat all the pumpkin.

The weather here has been gorgeous as well, minus a rainstorm earlier this week. It’s quite brisk in the mornings, but warm enough during the day that long sleeves/cardigans and scarves are tolerable.

I spent my Sunday doing reading from our hammock!

For some reason, I haven’t been feeling sunflower seed butter at breakfasts and have been doing greek yogurt with jam.

I know this looks like a spoonful but the bowls+spoons are huge!

The food situation has been better as well. I think our new chef is adapting to the tastes and needs of my house. More vegetables, less oil, the return of grilled chicken to the salad bar, and sufficient food for leftovers.

One day for lunch, it was all salads, which was awesome. Asian with shrimp, chicken caesar, and butternut squash with parmesan and brussels sprouts.

Dinner of chicken, kale+veggie+tomatoes, and parmesan polenta.

Make your own tacos in salad form-Mexican rice, black beans, chicken, tomato vinaigrette. There has also been homemade salad dressings lately which have been awesome!

A dinner of leftovers because I was gone late at Crossfit-chicken, more polenta, leftover salad, roasted sage sweet potatoes.

Salad+chicken with roasted cruciferous veggies (my fave) and rice pilaf.

I made my own little concoction today as well-cinnamon apples heated up in the microwave on top of oats, sun butter, and a touch of honey. I heated this up in the microwave as well and the oats actually got toasty! The things you learn.

In other life news-check out this photo of my little guy!

And finally-I’ve been loving time hop. Today’s memory from 3 years ago was great. The context is it was my first regatta for crew.

My father, everyone!

Food and Fitness Lately

Date: April 26, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Who’s happy it is the weekend? My weekend is super low key. I’m currently watching the Giant’s game on TV, and I don’t have a ton to do this weekend. My quarter has been weird-some nights I have a ton of work to do, but at the end of the week it’s basically nothing. Odd.

Since it’s been a few days since I’ve blogged, I thought I’d share some photos!

The last of my Easter eggs! It only took a few days to eat them all, with the help of my roommate of course!

Lunchtime coffee…which really was the main event but there was also a veggie sandwich in there. I did it for the avocado!

Ok, I promise this is better than it looks. I made a little pretzel dip out of mashed banana mixed with sunflower seed butter. Super tasty! You could definitely do this with peanut butter, or any nut butter.

One of my school’s cafe-type of places recently started carrying green smoothies. Clearly, I had to try it out. It was very mango-orangey! And definitely a bit chunky-my friends thought it was guacamole! I love avocados but I’d have to draw the line at drinking them through a straw!

This cappuccino has a twist…it’s decaf! Crazy, right? This was the morning after I took Benadryl, so I slept REALLY well. Haha!

Check out this new Trader Joe’s purchase-I just had to get it, didn’t I?? The verdict-good but surprisingly subtle. I put mine in eggs, which I will admit, looks a bit odd.

So…the other day, I finally broke out my blender. I’ve been wanting to make a chocolate mint smoothie forever, and since I had fresh mint, it was time. So-I’m pretty sure the last time I used my blender was when I tried to make a chocolate mint smoothie and put in way too much mint extract…which was 1.5 years ago.

In the mix was lots of fresh mint, cocoa powder, frozen banana, almond milk, and chocolate whey protein. It tasted just like a milkshake!

There was a bit of an…issue. My blender is a tiny, one person blender. It also has individual cups that you can screw into the blade to make the smoothie into a cup. I’ve never used it like that before, so I thought I’d try it because it would mean less clean up. (HAH.) Well…this requires turning the cup upside down. I blended up banana and almond milk, and was ready to add everything else…when I accidentally unscrewed the cup in the blender base…upside down. Which meant I opened the contents of the cup all over my desk. It was fabulous. Thanks to amazing reflexes, I managed to not drip it all over my chair and the carpet…but yeah. The smoothie pictured above is 2.0.

Yesterday, the craziest thing happened. It rained. AND I didn’t have a race! This is the only time all year that it has rained without me having a race that week. I’m 100% serious. It’s also Admit Weekend, where all the prospective freshman come and stay. Why am I telling you this? I wanted something warm for lunch, at a place that didn’t have a million prospective students. A little cafe tucked into a basement in the corner of the quad was perfect. A tomato and mozzarella panini!

And lastly:

I went on a mango run post-Crossfit. And also picked up a green smoothie and blueberry muffin. I may have to make this a Saturday morning tradition!

On the fitness front:

Thursday morning I did an abbreviated version of my treadmill workout. I haven’t done much speed work lately, and I wasn’t exactly loaded with time, so I did 7 intervals instead of 10 and shortened the warm up to .5 miles. In the afternoon, I had my last sound wave treatment on my Achilles. My Achilles wasn’t doing so well last week, but the good news is it seems to be feeling a bit better now. The treatment can actually take up to 3 months to work! So we shall see.

Friday morning I did a bit of Spin on my own. And made the poor decision to do a late night rowing workout after sitting around all day. I rowed about 6k (which would have been nothing to my former self) at like 10pm…So at Crossfit this morning my legs started out feeling heavy! This morning’s Crossfit was called “Lumberjack 20” which was the following:

20 deadlifts (I used 165 lbs)

400m run

20 kettlebell swings

400m run

20 overhead squats (I used 65 lbs)

400m run

20 burpees

400m run

20 pull ups

400m run

20 box jumps

400m run

20 dumbbell cleans

400m run

It was a long one! It took me just over half an hour!

That’s all I have today-I hope everyone has a great weekend!

How did you move this week?

Speedy Feet-Life After Half Marathon Training

Date: October 27, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Happy Sunday! I’m currently holed up in a coffeeshop. It is such a beautiful day, so I biked off campus, books in tow, with the intention of spending all day doing schoolwork in a coffeeshop. However, I realized I forgot to bring several items critical to me actually doing my work, but I still want to spend a little time here, since I made the effort to bike all the way here.

A cappuccino, as always. I actually slept pretty late this morning. I stayed up late last night doing pretty wild things- helping my roommate start a food blog, reading my old blog posts, watching a Biochem lecture for fun, and rearranging my furniture at 1am. I’m clearly the life of the party.

Also, I may finally be pumpkined out. For a snack, I had this:

Pumpkin bread, cottage cheese with pumpkin butter and sunflower seed butter, and a pumpkin spice chai latte.

But I may or may not have had pumpkin bread for breakfast….

A few things though-this is the video I was watching: Sugar: The Bitter Truth. If you do anything today, please please please watch this! It’s one of my favorite videos, and this stuff is basically what I want to spend my life studying-and it’s been way too long since I last watched it!

Also-guess what? Instead of taking another Chem lab next quarter, I’m taking Human Nutrition, a higher level class than the Intro to Nutrition class I took last fall. I’m really excited-except that after I take this class, I’ll have taken all the Nutrition classes at my school. Yes, all 2.

When I was helping my roommate figure out some blog things, I got sucked into reading some of my first blog posts. And possibly making fun of my past self a little bit. If you’re interested, here’s my first post. I think this was really great for me to re-read, because it reminds me of why I initially started blogging.

I also read a lot of the posts from when I was rowing. It really made me miss rowing! I miss my teammates, being part of a team, and just in general doing a sport. However, there is a lot that sounds pretty torturous. Like my post titled “Cold and Wet…Again.” Key phrases such as “day 2 of our 3 workouts a day,” “it was sooo cold,” and “it started pouring while we were in the boat.” Yeah, given I’m such a wimp in the cold, it’s no wonder I got mono!

I read through some of the posts from last winter-I feel like my eating was a little more interesting, but I’m definitely in a much better place mentally now than I was then.

Anyway, since I crave workout structure, I decided that I’m going to follow a Cross Country training plan in preparation for PRing a 5k in December. I’m actually super excited for this-there are lots of speed workouts, which are always fun, plus the runs are a lot shorter than my half training, so it will be a really nice change. I’m tentatively planning to always run in the morning, so I have some sort of structure in my schedule. Plus, that’s one of the times I know the track team isn’t practicing on the track.

Also, if you’re wondering, the time I’m trying to beat is 24:58. I think it’s definitely doable-I hadn’t run much before that race, but I was in awesome rowing shape, so it will be interesting to see how fast I can get in the next 8 weeks or so.

But I may or may not have ulterior motives than just PRing-last year I placed 5th in my division-and top 3 get medals. If I can break 24:00, I have a decent shot at placing. The only problem? I have absolutely no idea how fast I am right now-my last timed mile was 8:00, but that was when I was just coming off of Mono, and hadn’t run in many months.

But here’s the thing-the only chance I might really have to place in races is while I’m still in the same age division-and in at my next birthday, I’ll move up a division. In my division, I was actually able to come in first in my 10k a year ago. So I think I need to run a ton of 5 and 10ks before I get any older! It’s definitely nice to have something different to train for-I’m really excited! I still miss my team sports though. There’s a running club, but my friends who regularly go basically told me I’d have to be able to run 10 miles at a 6:00 pace. Yeah, not happening.

So, I mapped out a new running schedule for myself, and I’m going to spend the weeks leading up to my race getting fast, strong, and building endurance. One other thing I realized when I was reading my old posts was that I never really go into much detail about my workouts anymore-and my blog is called “FITNESS is Sweet.” So I’ll make sure to add more detail on those! I’m really excited for my new training-I start in a week, after one more long run.

Sidenote-on my long run, if for some reason something goes wrong and I can’t finish, the place where I’d be when that might likely happen just so happens to be at my favorite froyo place. So even if I can’t finish, it’s a win-win, right??
And my roommate and I are officially the most popular people in our dorm.

We put out candy yesterday and it was gone within an hour, so I had to restock! I lovelovelove that I still get to buy Halloween candy, even though I’m in a dorm!

Bloggers-do you ever read your old posts? Thoughts on them?

WIAW #dormlife

Date: September 24, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Happy Wednesday! As we all know, that means it’s time for the fabulous party hosted by Jenn.

This is my first WIAW from college. First, let me just state that I hate the furniture in my room this year. It’s dark and small and immovable. So basically it’s impossible to stay organized. So I’m blogging from my headboard-less bed next to a giant pile of books that travels from my desk chair to my bed regularly because my desk and shelves are full. Such is life.

But let’s get on to the day of eats. Today was an example of both how college life doesn’t have to be unhealthy, and how it can be unhealthy.

I started my morning with a few dates pre-run. I had a 4 mile run scheduled today, and decided to do speedwork. I ran a mile of warm up and cool down(half a mile to the track, half a mile on the track). I then did 400 repeats for 2 miles. I haven’t really done these before, but they seemed perfect given all my recent foot issues. Having rest time was crucial for my foot and it actually felt really good. I liked these, but I think I prefer the 200 distance way more.

Post run, it was breakfast time. I think this here is an example of how hard I tried to make dorm food look pretty/interesting. Plus, you all can admire my new dorm pet (aka my plant).

I am well stocked on fruit right now since I only just got here, and it’s a lifesaver. Unripe melon gets old fast.

I had one class this morning before eating some food I packed. The original plan was a salad with a hardboiled egg, but there wasn’t much left in the dining hall last night, and I was at a loss for dressing.

Plus the lettuce looked kind of old, so I tossed it in favor of some of the veggies from my fridge.

After my Physics lab, I headed to one of my favorite places to eat on campus for some mystery bread. This stuff is so good-oh how I missed it!

So why, you ask, is this one of my favorite places on campus? They have the most amazing selection of quick breads and baked goods. I pretty much always stick to the same thing since I love it, but I’m sure something pumpkin will have to happen soon.

(This is only a fraction of what they have.)

Today was a pretty snacky day. Besides what’s shown, I also had a Thinkthin bar, dried mango, multiple types of cake….more on that in a minute.

I went back to Crossfit tonight. I did like it better-that could be because the WOD had rowing, and any WOD with rowing has my heart. It was rowing+thrusters+pull ups. Hopefully in time this new box will feel like home, but it’s just not the same as my old one.

Dinner tonight was a little different-I passed on the gross looking salad this time and went for other random veggies instead.

Grilled chicken, a taste of mashed potatoes, some type of Greekish salad, and citrus beets. Not going to lie, my expectations were way too high for those beets. But hey, dining hall food isn’t really supposed to have flavor, right?

I was all set to type up this post when I got a call from my sister. She and her boyfriend are training for a marathon, and they had just finished their 18 mile run….miles away from their apartment. Being the nice person that I am, I picked them up in my tiny car. (I usually say my car seats 2, or 2+3 others with no legs.)

Despite the little detour in my night, I did score some groceries.

While tonight I haven’t accomplished as much as I might have liked, I finish class at 12 tomorrow and have allll day to spend in the library.

I feel like it is definitely possible to eat well in college, but it does take some discipline. Today I started to fall back into old habits a little bit. I guess one thing to consider is that it is okay to indulge occasionally, but you need to pick and choose, and other delicious things may come up later in the night (like pumpkin cake-not passing that one up). One big thing for me this year is I’ve avoided the dining hall for breakfasts, and I’ve packed lunches. As for breakfast-it’s just too hard for me to pass up pancakes and muffins everyday, and I know they make me feel awful. I’d rather keep food in my room and start the day off on the right food. As for lunches-last year I got in the habit of buying, but the serving size was almost always too large, and I felt bad throwing stuff away. Plus, it’s easier to pack something cleaner.

So that’s that-my first few days back! I promise to try and keep my pictures interesting, even if that means buying a lot more plants. Or a puppy.

Have a great Wednesday, and eat something good for me!

How did you/do you stay healthy in college? How do I keep my room organized when there is zero space?