Archives

Throwback (Run) Thursday

Hey guys! Check out my guest post on Mangoes and Miles! I wrote about a topic near and near to me-avocados.

Yesterday was my first day of summer, and I must say, it was a really awesome day! I slept in until…5:10…but hey-it was well worth it to attend my favorite spin class! Plus, my kitty came into my room about 10 minutes before my alarm demanding to be petted. And waking up to a purring cat is way better than waking up to an alarm!

After spin, I had a 4 mile run to do. I decided to do a throwback run-last summer I clearly remember one of my first training runs. I went to early spin and then drove to a neighborhood fairly close by, which is flatter and prettier than where I live. I completely forgot to bring my Garmin, so I decided to run for time instead. I planned on 40 minutes, but I lengthened it to 45 because I kept stopping for pictures, plus a had a minor goose incident. More on that in a minute. I made a playlist on my phone of all the songs I listened to last summer to really throw it back. Confession: for some reason whenever people do throwback Thursday on facebook with their pictures, it drives me crazy. I have no idea why…ImageImageImageImage

I enjoyed the wildlife of suburbia- geese!ImageImage

Ignore the slant-this was my first attempt at a picture while running (without stopping). What’s funny is this lagoon is actually where we rowed some of the time. It’s also a 2k racecourse, so I would have raced here quite a bit if I had continued with crew. That’s so weird to me because I never knew people rowed here. I mean, I basically grew up in this area; half of my friends live here, and I went to violin lessons right around here, and then, I later rowed here. Image

There are geese everywhere around the lagoon. If you were to see the geese as they were in this photo, you wouldn’t think anything of it, right? You’d just run through and expect them to move. So I started to run towards them. But…they didn’t move! SO I decided to just run through them and run around them. As I got closer, they started hissing at me! They were hissing and screaming and running closer to me!

Image

So naturally I stopped to take a picture. What you can’t see is that there was a goose right next to me on my left hissing. At that point, I was kind of stuck. I was in the middle of the pack, and I didn’t know which direction to go in!

Luckily, I did get out in one piece, unscathed. But it was terrifying. I guess the bird around this lagoon are kind of aggressive. One of my teammates had a scary experience with an aggressive swan chasing her!Image

Being done with spin and a run by 7:45 am is such an awesome feeling. Breakfast was cottage cheese mixed with chia seeds and thawed blueberries.

An even more awesome feeling than that? Taking a midmorning nap with your cat. He’s such a sweetie! Sadly, I have no pictures, as I was unconscious.

Lunch was a leftover turkey burger and freeze dried sesame edamame. Image

I also had one of these guys-it was good, but similar to the coconut creations I’ve made in the microwave, so in the future I’d probably just do that.

Image

A little later in the afternoon, I met up with Kaitlin for coffee. She’s about to graduate, so I was lucky to catch her before she leaves! We went to Philz Coffee, which was a cute little place where they hand make everything. Image

We were both a little overwhelmed by all the different types of coffee! Since I know very little about coffee, and I didn’t want to have much caffeine that late in the day, I went with iced chai tea.Image

I got mine with milk and honey. They add mint leaves to it as well. I really, really enjoyed this. It was super refreshing on a hot day, and while the chai flavor was subtle, I really liked the flavor the mint added.

I also enjoyed an oat bar, which had various types of dried fruit. Image

I had a really great time talking with Kaitlin– I’ve never met up with a blogger before! She’s totally awesome and you all should check her blog out.

ImageThanks Kaitlin!

We met up more near school than home for me, but that worked out really well because I kind of forgot to turn my room key in, and school was on the way back. I had to say goodbye to people again! I also had to help my sister move out which was…a process. For the record, I was out in an our (besides the packing). I was there for 3 hours, my parents were there for longer, and she’s not even completely moving out! She’s living there (kind of-it’s complicated) this summer! But I did score a homemade cupcake from her fancy cupcake holder which she made for a class project. ImageImage

In addition, she and her boyfriend made cinnamon rolls from scratch that were ready right before we were done!ImageImage

They were sooo good, but I could only have a few bites before my heart started racing!

And FINALLY we were home for dinner. My family was having pesto pasta, but I felt like I could use protein more, so I microwaved egg whites and spinach and topped that with pesto instead.Image

And dessert:

Image

I had been out of sunflower seed butter in my dorm for quite a while, so this was AMAZING.

Have a great day everyone! Kitten nursery post to come, as well as my recount of Crossfit (my first class is tonight!).

Where is your favorite place to run? Have you ever met up with a blogger?

MangosMangosMangos

Wow, long time, seriously no post! Want to know a result of my lack of posting? My phone keeps dying. Since I need my phone near me for my alarm, it does’t get to charge at night. So as it turns out, my phone’s main charging time is while I blog, when it is connected to my computer.

So why haven’t I been posting? I’ve been busy…This weekend was Rush. And my meals have been scattered and boring or odd, because rush was during dinnertime. Lots of protein bars were consumed. And I didn’t have a ton going on that was worth posting.

I’m supposed to reflect on my week for Operation: Get Healthy. To be honest, I completely forgot about it until I saw Miranda’s post. Oops. So in summary, I failed miserably, and have gone in the wrong direction. On the plus side, my exercise has gone mostly according to plan, although I decided upon waking up that Friday needed to be a rest day. Which was fine by me, I didn’t exactly plan a rest day into my workout plan, so it made sense to take it when I needed it.

Saturday morning I lifted weights, focusing on snatches (they needed work). I ended up doing a Crossfit style workout of snatches and box jumps, and ended up doing 65 snatches for the day. I thought I was going to be horribly sore, but I wasn’t!

After my workout, I went out to lunch with my parents at Calafia. I ordered a bowl that included lentils, quinoa, spinach, and yams in a curry sauce.

ImageYum!

Afterwards, we went to Cold Stone. I haven’t been there in ages. Did you know they have frozen yogurt now? I was sold. Their ice cream is pretty rich and usually gives me a stomachache, but the froyo was fine. Image

With cookie dough. 🙂

After lunch, we hit up Whole Foods. Soooo have I mentioned I love Manilla Mangos, that happen to be on sale at Whole Foods from now through summer? Well….

I would say that I am now the proud owner of 26 mangos. But I’d be lying. Because I’ve eaten some since Saturday. Yes, I bought 22 mangos (I had 4), but at a good price, I swear!Image

This is about half, the other half are in a basket. Now, I didn’t just wake up Saturday morning thinking, “I’m going to buy 22 mangos today.”

See, what happened was the green mangos were at the front of the store. SInce they weren’t that ripe, why not get 10? Oh, but 2 more to make it an even dozen.

Then, in the back of the store were the ripe mangos. And since the sale is by sets of 5 mangos…

Let’s just say I am quite pleased.

I also restocked yogurt. Whole Foods brand of greek yogurt is delicious! And the vanilla doesn’t have that much sugar, which is even more awesome.

Sunday was spent mainly avoiding my long run. I meant to do it right after waking up. Yeah, I did it at 3:30. But at least I did it! One reason I really wanted to run it was I wanted to clock the distance and try out my Garmin. I got it maybe 4 years ago. I never figured out how to charge it, so it lived in my closet for a few years. I took one look at the watch and the charger and said, “I am an idiot.” Yeah, it’s that easy to charge. Apparently it took a high school degree and half a year of college to acquire the knowledge to do that.

Anyway, the run. My guess was that it was about 5 miles. It was about 5.4. And folks, this is a HILL. The run takes me up into the hills on a paved trail past 2 satellite dishes, and is pretty brutal. To get to the trail is a mile. Then, it is 2 miles up and 1 mile down. And the first mile up is STEEP. Like REALLY STEEP. But I got it done and felt awesome.

I did this run a ton at the beginning of the school year when I was in good running shape from my 10k. I ran it 2 or 3 times a week easily. Yeesh. I’m far from those days.

The only food picture I have from Sunday is a yogurt bowl.Image

Vanilla greek yogurt, Sunflower butter, and an attempt at a 2 ingredient pancake with sweet potato instead of banana. ( Plus vanilla and cinnamon.) I wasn’t a big fan.

A brief Monday recap: I began my morning with a faster paced run, about 1.5 miles. I sped up my pace at each chorus of the songs I was listening to. Then, I did this morning that I found somewhere on the internet.Image

I wasn’t a big fan, since I’m used to using weights for these exercises. I could do body weight squats FOR DAYS. Buuuut I haven’t done hardly any push ups since getting sick, so like 2 months. Yeah. They were hard. And guess what? My abs are sore. From push ups. Cool. But hey, I guess if it gets the job done…Image

Breakfast wasn’t very good. For some reason my smoothie tasted weird. Maybe the watermelon was a bit too ripe. And the eggs and potatoes were kind of greasy…Image

Lunch: chicken sandwich, minus the bread. Because I can’t afford to fall asleep. On that note, I am seriously questioning how much this whole bread thing might have been affecting my academic performance. Let’s be honest here. I haven’t gotten a ton of sleep lately, although this is totally my fault, and my choice. But I’m still WAY more alert and awake in class, and guess what? When you’re alert and awake in class, the material makes much more sense, and is way easier to understand. Given that lack of sleep doesn’t cause the extreme drowsiness that bread did, I wonder how much better I would have grasped the material if I didn’t eat it.

Dinner yesterday was weird. I ate a little early, mostly because I wanted yogurt at like 4 o clock and decided it would be dinner. Image

I’m seriously considering making yogurt for dinner a regular thing, given how disappointing the dining halls have been at dinner lately, and since I always seem to want yogurt bowls. I just need to get enough veggies in throughout the day. And since I’m up later and want late night snacks (hence the failure of Operation: Get Healthy), maybe late night veggies are in order?

This morning I went to a Spin class. I like that it leaves my legs burning a little throughout the morning. This is what I used to get last year after spin (before I got in crazy good shape over the summer).

Breakfast was a quick one in my room. Image

Microwave egg scramble with veggies, nutritional yeast, and avocado. Made in the microwave! Plus some strawberries.

Lunch was a corn and black bean salad, although there was hardly any lettuce!Image

And snack was another yogurt bowl. Surprise, surprise. And a mango…surprise again, haha!Image

Dinner was super boring, but healthy (blah blah). Image

As I was tell you all earlier, I went through the rush process, and am actually pledging today, which I didn’t really expect to do. Let’s just say I was sold when i sat down last night, and the girl who was chatting with me suggested I take off my heels. I have a celebration for that tonight.

Not going to lie, I’m a little concerned about maintaining healthy habits with a ton of social events that will probably involve food, especially since this week I’m getting serious about achieving my health goals. I’m not sure what else to say about my goals other than I really need to take them seriously, as getting back into a good routine at school has been tough (read: it hasn’t happened). I think I’m going to talk to a nutritionist to help me with all this, because being healthy in college can get difficult!

What is your favorite type of yogurt?