Guadalupe River Run Round 3

Date: February 7, 2016

Author: astottler

It’s crazy to me that this is the third year I’ve done the Guadalupe River Run 5k. It’s crazy to me that I’ve been around long enough to do a lot of the races I’ve done so many times!

This year’s race was a blast. Apparently in 3 years I finally learned something about pacing! I’ve been doing my average runs faster lately, and with last Sunday’s 3 miler, I had a better idea of where I might be on the pace.

I guess Luna bars are my current pre-run breakfast! I also had a few crackers because I didn’t think this would hold me over quite sufficiently.

I was a little worried about going South on Super Bowl Sunday, but traffic ended up being fine, and I arrived with plenty of time to pick up my bib and wait around.

Also great was the fact that the weather was absolutely perfect. It had been really cold earlier in the week, but today we were treated to 70 degree temperatures. When I ran this race 2 years ago, it was cold and soggy.

Then and now:

Also sidenote: my mom came to the race with me today and was my photographer. For the past 3 years or so, I’ve done a lot of similar races. My mom uses iPhoto streaming to get me the pictures. At this point, we have a number of labeled streams going. However, she doesn’t use the streams for what they are! These photos went in the Turkey stream, despite the fact that we have a Guadalupe River Stream. Present in the Guadalupe River stream is Easter from last year, despite the fact that we have an Easter stream. The Easter stream includes half marathon pictures. Photos from Napa over Thanksgiving? Logically they could be found in EITHER the Napa or the Turkey stream. But nope—they’re in the Wedding Dresses stream.

*Sigh*

The race actually started a bit later than I had thought, but it felt so nice to just be outside enjoying the beautiful weather!

Finally, it was go time.

My original goal pace had been 8:20, but after hitting 8:22 last weekend without dying, I was shooting to maintain 8:15-8:20. I was very comfortable for the first half of the race, but I didn’t let myself speed up because I knew I would regret it.

Overall, because I wasn’t totally dying for the most part, I was having a grand old time!

The race course was…interesting. It goes through a park, and weaves back around a lot. We cover some of the pieces of the trails multiple times, from different directions. I think there was a little mishap with the finish. Everyone finishing around me I think was directed unintentionally to cut a corner, so the race ended up being quite short for us!

This is just a fun run, so I really couldn’t care less! Given I had my pace on my watch, I was able to calculate the time I would have gotten had the race been full length, and I’m happy with where I am! My pace was 27 sec/mile faster than last year, and I believe faster than I was 2 years ago, which was the closest I had gotten to PRing.

I won’t even show you my watch or time because it’s sort of comical, but my pace was 8:11. That was good enough for me to snag second place in my age group!

Winning beer glass! Given everyone who finished around me had a short course (near the end they started figuring it out and sending people the longer distance), I think it’s still fair because we all ran a short course!

The best part of the race? Their slogan is “Earn your guacamole at the Guadalupe,” and this year, they actually passed out guac to runners post-race!

So cute, and I love that idea! They also had Noosa, which they were quite generous with. My breakfasts are looking pretty exciting this week!

After the race, we stopped at Panera for brunch/lunch like we have the past 2 years. I got a half Fuji Apple Chicken salad, my favorite!

On the way home, we stopped at the Farmer’s Market because I wanted a Gluten Free baked good, but they were out of the only one I wasn’t allergic to—darn! Instead, we stopped in a Natural Foods store where I found some other good options 🙂

After cleaning myself up, napping a bit, and doing some homework, I settled in to watch the Super Bowl with plenty of 5 layer dip and tortilla chips, and possibly some of the other gluten free goodies I picked out. I was rooting for the Panthers, but that wasn’t happening today!

Also—my favorite commercial was definitely the Honda commercial with sheep singing Queen AND an Aussie. <3 ruminants

What was your favorite commercial?

College House Eating

Date: September 26, 2015

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hello! I’m happy to report that I’m feeling much better than last time I checked in-fingers crossed I don’t have more flares. I just finished my first week of senior year, and am figuring out my new schedule for the quarter.

I’ve been continuing half marathon training, teaching lots of spin (back to back classes on Wednesday night-oof), and soaking up time spent with good friends!

This year, I’m living in a house with about 40 girls-it’s not a sorority house but I suppose it’s a similar idea? We have a chef who cooks lunch and dinner for us 5 days a week, and an open kitchen to fend for ourselves for breakfast and weekends. I wanted to share some of the things I’ve been eating this week!

My first Sunday night scavenging dinner-the fridge is cleaned out Sunday morning so Sunday night can be difficult!

Lunch-salad with chicken, fruit salad, and AMAZING avocado salad. Do you see how much avocado there is there??

Tupperware lunch-I packed up a few salads before leaving home last weekend, so I had a few of my typical peach/date/goat cheese/chicken salads throughout the week!

Because I taught back to back spin classes (unexpectedly) I missed dinner so had to scrounge around again. Deli turkey may become a big part of my life, for better or for worse…

Salad with a homemade veggie slider, homemade potato chips, and amazing fruit salad with banana, mango, peach, papaya, and more.

Mexican dinner-super good. I made a salad with Mexican spiced chicken, black beans, and guacamole, plus rice and a rice crispy treat!

Breakfast post 3 mile run of Siggi’s vanilla, banana, and sun butter.

This past week has been a little interesting on the eating front. Because I was so sick earlier, I haven’t been getting sufficient calories, especially to fuel my activities. I’ve been trying to add extra calories here and there (dried mango anyone?) and after hitting 2000 calories on Thursday I seriously felt like a new woman. Today, I’m trying to eat as much as my stomach allows to fuel up for tomorrow’s 12 mile run-we’ll see how that goes!

What is your favorite way to eat avocado?

Cherry Vanilla Bread

Date: August 31, 2015

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Update from last night: I finally got my 6 mile run in at 7pm. That’s later than I ever really run, but I got it done and get 1000x better afterwards, and that’s what matters. I’m one of those people who cannot function without exercise. I get drowsy and dopey, and I think I am sort of tightly wound, and exercise normally takes that edge off me.

Despite the late start, we had quite the delicious dinner, trying 2 new recipes of Cooking Light.

The first were cheesy cauliflower biscuits, which were filled with garlic and cheddar flavor. They almost reminded me of soufflés, because they were light and fluffy. The second recipe was the Roasted Carrot, Quinoa, and Grape bowl. I really liked this one-we cooked quinoa in chicken broth, and that was mixed with chicken, sliced grapes, and roasted carrots, all topped with a greek yogurt based dressing and served over a field of greens.

The dressing had an interesting and delicious cumin flavor. The only thing is that I think we used more quinoa than the recipe called for, so there wasn’t much dressing for the greens.

This morning, I had a dentist appointment so I made sure to not have something that would stick in my teeth for breakfast! I had a Siggi’s pomegranate passionfruit yogurt, topped with sunflower seed butter, and a side of nectarine from the Farmer’s Market. I love that Siggi’s flavored yogurts are not very sweet!

After the dentist, I went straight out to do my medium length run of the week-5 miles. My legs were dragged a tiny bit from running the night before, and my foot was a little stiff, but I knew I’d feel better if I just knocked it out early in the week because it works better with scheduling.

After my run, I headed home to get to work on some baking projects. I’m trying to avoid eating too many bars because they tend to be higher in sugar, and because I’m trying to eat fewer foods that may contain traces of nuts because my skin has been awful lately due to allergic reactions.

In the process, I threw together a quick lunch of leftovers, this time skipping the bed of lettuce.

Project 1 was just basic pumpkin banana bread.

Project 2 was sort of spur of the moment. I wanted to try something different. I’ve made cherry bread before on accident (when I realized halfway through assembling ingredients that we were out of pumpkin-whoops), so I thought making cherry vanilla bread might be fun to do for something different. It turned out great!

Interestingly, the bread doesn’t have a strong fruity flavor, but the cherry masks the banana flavor. If you want a warm, homey bread that is still wholesome, I would recommend giving this a try! It has a pretty basic flavor, and I think it could be the base for a lot of different things-I have big plans for this come winter! Feel free to jazz it up by added dried cherries or chocolate chips.

Cherry Vanilla Bread

Ingredients:

2 well ripened bananas

1.5 cups of frozen cherries, thawed and ground in a blender or food processor

1 large egg or 2 egg whites

2 tablespoons oil (I used avocado)

1/3 c milk

1/8 c honey (or more to taste, recipe actually calls for 1/3 to 1/2 c sugar)

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon cinnamon (can omit-this gives it a warm flavor)

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1.5 c whole wheat pastry flour

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350

Mash bananas.

Add all ingredients except flour and mix well

Blend in flour, stir until moistened

Pour into 4×8 loaf pan, I recommend lining it in tinfoil

Bake for 50 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center is clean.

Enjoy!

And because I have to share this picture:

Coming Home

Date: August 16, 2015

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

I am currently sitting in an apartment in New York City! It’s my first time here, and I’m visiting my college BFF.

I just got in tonight and my friend has doe work to do, so I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to catch up! I came to New York from a daily trip in DC. We had a family reunion trip for my grandma’s 80th birthday, and of course I suggested DC. I got to play the guide for the weekend and shepherd the group through the metro. Also-I had $20 on my metro card from last summer and I actually remembered to bring it! Score!

Last summer, I fell in love with DC. When my plane landed at DCA, I felt like I was coming home. I can’t explain the feeling, but I feel like I left my heart here and this is where I belong. I’ve never felt such a strong pull to a place. Last summer was the best summer of my life, and I knew I’d be back.

The first thing I did on Friday morning was take a short jog. We stayed in Pentagon City, so I only saw the Washington Monument from a distance.

The first stop of the trip was the zoo-my grandmother and grandfather went on their first date there, so our family sort of originated from that!

How’s this for a little transformation Tuesday? Last summer there were baby pandas, and I believe this is the same panda, now 1 year old.

After the zoo, we stopped at a restaurant on the way to the metro where I got a delicious beet salad with goat cheese, avocado, and chicken. I’m trying very hard to make myself enjoy beets, and I think this salad helped bridge the gap!

Next up was the American history museum, which was one I didn’t spend much time at last summer.

And finally, we went on a moonlight tour of the monuments.

(Free champagne in the lobby with my cousin!)

The monuments at night are beautiful, and I loved getting the history and background of various spots.

The rest of the night was spent catching up with family, including my long lost sister who I don’t see enough!

Saturday morning was another early day-we started with the botanical gardens before it got too hot.

Followed by the Air and Space museum. That might be my favorite Smithsonian. I didn’t really explore Space last summer because I got too burned out on Air (I had my long training run that morning+the Natural history museum on that day), so it was cool to see that stuff! I really like all the space stuff. In middle school I actually thought I might want to do aerospace stuff as my career (that didn’t last though-I am no engineer).

In the afternoon, we went to high tea at the Ritz.

Apparently high tea is a big thing in DC!

They treated us very well, and brought all kinds of extra food. I’m avoiding wheat right now (which is insanely complicated and probably deserves its own rant) so I ate the innards of the sandwiches, plus a few bites of the current scone (which was fantastic). The sandwiches were egg salad, lobster, and cucumber with herbed cream cheese. A lot of the desserts had nuts, so they brought out a special plate for me that was nut free, including lemon creme brûlée!

We had a nice dinner planned late that evening, but the rest of the afternoon was dedicated to an important task. There were 2 things I wanted to do on this trip. Run the monuments, and get cupcakes. I consider myself a DC cupcake expert. For our poison of choice, I chose Baked and Wired. I’m not about that line at Georgetown Cupcakes, and Baked and Wired is spunky and unique. We took the Metro to Foggy Bottom (my favorite area of DC) and then walked to Georgetown so I got to show my family my old stomping grounds!

One of the necessary qualifications of a cupcake shop in my book is having dietary restriction friendly fare, and Baked and Wired has several gluten free options (as well as vegan options). I went with a gluten free chocolate strawberry, which was chocolate cake with strawberries in the batter, topped with vanilla buttercream.

For dinner, we got all fancied up and went to a French American place near L’Enfant, Central.

If you go there, ORDER THE CHEESEPUFFS. Amazing. I only had a few bites, but amazing. I shared a delicious goat cheese caesar salad with my dad for dinner and had the rotisserie chicken, which was perfectly cooked. I also pretended to be classy and had a glass of Rosé.

Sunday morning began with my other goal for the trip, a monument run. I had originally planned to run from Arlington metro stop across the bridge to the monuments, but the blue line metro was about a 20 minute wait, so we instead got off at L’Enfant and made our way to the National Mall, past the Washington Monument and Lincoln, and over the bridge to Arlington Cemetery and back. It was a fun run-I managed to drag 4 other family members with me, which is a definite first! It was getting bit warm though at 10am!

Our last stop of the trip was the Native American History Museum. The cafeteria there was Native American food, and it was delicious!

Blue corn creed, cedar plant salmon with beet puree, and root salad with heirloom carrots.

Quinoa plantain cake with a dulce de leche center.

Then, it was off to NY!

This DC trip was awesome, and it made me even more sure that I want to spend my gap year here. This weekend, my fears of graduating and only having one year left of college melted away because I know there’s something amazing to look forward to after college. (That being said, should I do a life plans update post at some point??)

What city do you call home?

On Order and Blogging

Date: August 9, 2015

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hello again! I’m currently enjoying my only day off in 8 days-to be fair, it’s because I’m traveling later this week, but it’s nice to get a chance to relax for a little bit!

I was just thinking about one of the things I like the most about blogging-the order. I’m naturally a person who likes neatness and order-not to say that I always succeed in the neatness and order, but I thrive off the routine and feel better when things are organized.

I definitely have a habit of grazing on food throughout the day, but I would love having all my food organized and captured in one place-I think this is what I liked so much about blogging, especially day to day.

Another thing-I feel like I actually enjoy things that happen in my life more when blogging because it gives me a chance to reflect on them and put the memories down and make them into something tangible.

So-today I’ll go through a couple of days of nearly complete meals, and talk about some life stuff.

1. I went on a run this morning with Crossfit. It was so fun-I actually felt pretty good, and it’s my favorite trail!

2. I finally went to the farmer’s market today and it was glorious. I stocked up on figs. YUM.

3. I’m in 2 slow pitch softball leagues. One league finished last week, and we won the championship! It was quite the stressful game, but a big rally at the end secured us the victory. In my other softball league, I got to play in the all star game (like I did 2 years ago) and it was awesome as well! I got the chance to make some plays and had a big hit. Playoffs for that league just started and unfortunately we lost our first game-but it’s double elimination!

4. I like reading old blog posts. I miss writing like that and I feel like my posts have kind of gone downhill-partly because I’m always catching up, I kind of breeze by the interesting details.

5. Not to brag, but I think my puppy is the prettiest Aussie on the Internet.

So here we go!

Pre-workout: part of a BoBo’s Oat bar. I freaking love these.

Breakfast-Siggi’s 4% vanilla+figs. I’m currently obsessed with summer fruit. I really liked the 4% too! It was smooth and not super sweet. I also like the smaller size because I can never finish a big yogurt.

Lunch-my typical salad (minus the bar-my picture from this day wasn’t as pretty). My salad is chicken, goat cheese, date, nectarine, and champagne vinaigrette. Plus some Mary’s crackers. I have this most days of the week.

Dinner: Quesadilla on a gluten free spinach tortilla-stuffed with mozzarella, broccoli, corn, and a sprinkle of garlic powder. Plus carrots and guac.

Dessert: Cinnamon pie. My mom made this once a few years ago after watching a Psych episode featuring cinnamon pie. It’s a custard based pie.

I love this picture because you can see Charlie sneaking around the background!

And here is a second day of food (Saturday):

I started work at 7am, so no workout, and no cooking!

Stonyfield blueberry fruit on the bottom yogurt, a banana with sunflower seed butter, and some more oat bar.

Lunch:

Same old, same old. Salad+crackers.

Snack:

Dinner: Chipotle! I’ve only been a handful of times for some reason, and I met up with a friend there so I was looking forward to it all week! I got a salad with chicken, and of course guacamole!

For dessert back home, I think I had some chocolate, and maybe either a granola bar or ice cream?

Since Chipotle was next to Petsmart, we made a trip in. My friend recently got 2 adorable kittens, and with all the babies (kittens+puppy), we pretty much always need supplies! Here are her kittens:

(Picture shamelessly stolen from my friend’s Snapchat.)

My puppy Chloe is…difficult. She’s really high energy, really smart, and very nippy. We constantly are on the lookout for new, interesting toys-anything to keep her amused! I got the green light from my mom to get anything that might keep her occupied. Needless to say, I ended up with an armful of squeaky and adorable dog toys.

I felt like quite the crazy puppy lady walking around the store with all that!

So far, the new toys have been a hit though!

What kinds of toys keep your dogs amused?