To Get Faster, You Need to Run Faster

Date: June 1, 2014

Author: astottler

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

But let me back up to food pictures!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Color Run!

Date: May 31, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hey guys! As I type this, my hands are still stained a bit blue. Yes, I’ve long since showered and I’ve washed them dozens of times. Why, you may ask? This morning, my friends/sister and I did The Color Run! I’ve never done a race that was at all like this before, so I was pretty excited! I woke up bright and early to pick up my packet and eat a banana.

I brought a ziplock bag to carry my phone in during the race, but pretty soon just threw in the towel on keeping my phone remotely un-colorful. I wanted to document how pretty we looked after the blue station (my fav color!) and my phone quickly got covered in colorful dust, and then my ziplock decided to refuse to zip. So, here’s a recap mostly with pics!

I think it’s definitely important to document the “before” of a race like this!

Waiting for the start!

When we first started running, my legs felt heavy from standing around and doing a rough Crossfit last night (my #1 sign that I had regained my strength post-illness!) but by the time we went through the first color station, I was warmed up! We didn’t really know what to expect of the color stations. We jogged slowly through while volunteers squirted powdery color onto us.

I think I got the most colored at the blue station! I loved how it matched with my shoes 🙂

Next, we came upon a cloud of purple.

We then proceeded to go through yellow and pink as well. I thought the colors of The Color Run were really pretty. In my opinion, some of the other color runs use much darker colors that blend together and don’t look as good!

Before we knew, it, we reached the finishing shoot and received additional color packets to throw after the race.

I was trying so hard not to get it in my eyes! This is after the first color throw, where everyone just throws their color packets at each other. Note the color of my face: unpainted.

We then met up with the rest of the group for the second color throw. Someone nearby us must have had green, because I got covered in it!

One cool thing is that the race was sponsored by KIND bars, and they had free samples after the race. The exciting part was that they were giving out their new bars that don’t have nuts, so I could actually have one! Yay!

Back to the pictures-notice the color of my face. Well, I was still under the impression that I didn’t have any paint on my face. My cleaned off the best we could (I brought wipes to clean my hands/phone) and then put on our clean Color Run t-shirts to go out to brunch. I didn’t realize I had paint on my face until we walked into the bathroom to clean up a bit…and I realized I had developed quite a nice mustache.

The brunch place we went to was fantastic, and they didn’t seem to mind all the colorful people! (We weren’t the only ones coming from the race!) If you’re ever in San Jose, I highly recommend Bill’s Cafe, on Willow Street. The menu looked fantastic, and it was hard to decide what to get! I ended up ordering the veggie skillet-veggies, egg whites, and cheese atop hash browns, and topped with avocado!

They also had amazing looking pancakes and French Toast, including cinnamon roll French Toast! We all agreed that we need to go there again!

All in all, it was a great morning! I then proceeded to take the longest shower of my life. I’m mostly not blue, and even though I can’t find any dye in my hair, it was somehow dripping blue…I have yet to see how my laundry will look!

Also-PSA: running in workout pants with a hole is probably not the best idea ever. I have the worst chaffing of my life, which is currently patched up with gauze, a bandaid, and Neosporin.

Have you ever done a color run of any type? Or other fun run?

Memorial Day Weekend

Date: May 26, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

First, a huge thanks to all those serving or who have served.

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I also want to spend a moment honoring those killed in the Santa Barbara shooting. This truly is a horrific thing, and I can’t imagine what it must be like for the students there. They are all in my thoughts!

I hope everyone had a nice weekend! I had a pretty busy one-not a million pictures but packed with fun, friends, and family! As we speak, I’m fighting heavy eyelids, and it’s still early!

Friday night was a retreat for my sorority. The girl’s house we stayed at had a wood burning oven, which was awesome!

And a cat-even more awesome!

Here are some other Friday food pics: cappuccino, berries+banana+sunbutter, and dining hall lunch.

Saturday morning, I drove the early car back to campus and went to 10am Crossfit. The workout included lots of ring dips, ring rows, and burpees, plus a long farmer’s carry at the end! (Farmer’s carry is holding a heavy weight-I had 2 20kilo kettle bells!)

Saturday was spent doing housekeeping related things-I FINALLY got a car wash, cleaned, and did some laundry.

I then proceeded to stay up much too late prior to an early morning run. I went home to run with Crossfit people there-at one of my favorite places to run! It’s the trail I did all my long runs on last summer!

I did 6 pretty fast (for me) miles. Running with a group definitely makes me run faster than I would have otherwise! Our overall pace isn’t indicative of how we ran most of it, since the first mile was pretty slow. When I split off with a few other people from the main group, we picked up the pace quite a bit and ran most of it around a 9:15 pace.

I was definitely sore from this! I then returned home to visit my parents and kitties-but not before being convinced to spend the night at home so I could do Murph at my home Crossfit today.

I refueled with a simple egg sandwich and some of my mom’s leftover birthday cake.

After catching up with my parents, I was off to the mall for business casual shopping with my high school friends! The only picture I have from that was a froyo break.

Dinner with my family was a favorite of ours-BBQ chicken salad. The salad consists of chicken breast with barbecue sauce, on top of a salad of lettuce, fresh corn, red pepper, onion, tomato, avocado, and olive oil and lime juice.

I also managed to get plenty of kitty time! Although my allergies definitely flared up. Worth it!

Monday morning, I did” Murph”! Murph is a Crossfit workout named after a fallen soldier, Mike Murphy, and is traditionally done at Crossfit boxes on Memorial Day. It’s one of my favorite Crossfit workouts, and consists of the following:

1 mile run

100 pull ups

200 push ups

300 squats

1 mile run

It’s one of the longest Crossfit workouts, and is recommended if you’re beastly to be done with a weighted vest (which I of course did not do).

I’ve done this workout once before. Like last time, I broke up the middle circuit into 20 rounds of 5 pull ups (banded), 10 push ups, and 15 squats. I was conservative on the run, but I’m definitely slower running than last time I did this (although my legs may have been a bit heavy from the previous day’s run). I was about 20 seconds off of last time on the first run, and significantly slower on the second. 300 squats makes the second mile feel like death! Although I didn’t beat my previous time (3 minutes off), I was the 3rd person to finish, and the first female! My time was 47:30. But here’s the super crazy part. The pull ups were so easy! I used the same band I always use for WODs, and it just never got difficult like I was expecting! So after I finished the workout and gulped down water, I figured, what the heck. I’ll try some unbounded pull ups. (If you’re keeping track, I’ve done one pull up once.) So, I just did it. And it wasn’t hard, at all. So I did another. And another. What…?!? It felt just like doing the banded pull ups! So I’ve clearly been slacking off! I think doing 100 pull ups with the band really honed in my kipping technique..or something. It was awesome though! I’m going to try to keep up this new found ability!

And here’s a group shot post-Murph.

Right before leaving this morning, I threw my experimental loaf in the oven. It was good, but still needs some work before it’s worth sharing. Any guess as to what it is? 🙂

After Crossfit, I refueled with some of that, plus some egg salad and roused carrots. No pic, so here’s breakfast pre-Murph: egg sandwich with Monterey Jack, on whole wheat.

And some of MY leftover birthday cake was consumed as well.

And now here I am! I may not have had the healthiest weekend in terms of sugar consumption, but it was definitely active-I got some great workouts in! And I loved the time spent with friends and family. Now, I just gotta push through these last few weeks until summer!

What did you do for the long weekend?

Egg Diaries Day 1

Date: April 21, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Happy Marathon Monday! Of course I had to start my morning with a run-not 26.2 miles unfortunately! I did an easy 3 first thing in the morning, which felt surprisingly good given the sugar coma I had all weekend! Run fuel? Maybe?

Did anyone watch the Boston Marathon this year? I didn’t but I had fun following the various tweets about it! My first real experience with marathons came a few summers ago when I somehow got hooked on the marathon running. Which is an unfortunate event to be hooked on, given how long the race is! Everyone thought I was crazy for being so enthralled-who knew that now I’d have run 3 half marathons?

I also love the outpouring of support for Boston. I’ve seen a few Boston Strong t-shirts here on my super isolated campus. I remember last year being sort of upset by the fact that no one here seemed to care-I wrote a rather heated blog post about it at the time!

I also remember wishing I could run 10 miles on my birthday that year….but knowing that wouldn’t be possible. But guess what? My birthday is in 2 weeks-this year, I could run 10 miles on my birthday if I wanted to. I probably won’t, but it wouldn’t be that big of a deal anymore. It’s amazing how much can change in a year!

Today, in terms of food, I began my journey to eat the Easter eggs. I can’t believe my mother sent me home with 18 hard boiled eggs…and that I didn’t realize it! So…expect a lot of eggs for a while. I may need to pick up an avocado for avocado egg salad.

Egg #1-totally necessary to match my eggs to my clothing. Clearly.

And eggs #2,3, and 4.

This is the before.

And the after-egg salad with spinach and tortilla chips. What do you guys put in your egg salad? I usually do mayo, mustard, lemon juice, salt, and pepper. I didn’t have any lemons so I improvised with an old orange that was too sour to eat anyways! My family likes relish in it but…blech. It’s not for me!

So, Mission Eat 18 Eggs Day 1 has ended. I am 4 eggs in. Stay tuned.

What’s your favorite use of leftover eggs?

My Current Exercise Routine

Date: March 13, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

I call this a food and fitness blog when I tell people about it. But I don’t usually go into my exercise routine, for some reason or another! I’m going to go through a typical week, and explain why I do what I do.

Generally, mornings are for running. It’s local (I don’t have to drive there-I just walk outside), I get it done, and once I’m up I’m not going to back out. If I tried to run in the afternoons, more likely than not it just wouldn’t happen. I either get lazy or eat too big of a snack, or am just not motivated. I usually do Crossfit or yoga in the evenings-which is scheduled and which I can’t back out of!

I run 3-4 times a week depending on what is going on. Last week, I ran 3 times. This week, barring an unknown, it will be 4. At this point, I do maybe a day of speed work, 1-2 non-paced runs, and a long run. More than anything, it depends on my schedule and where I can fit it in. Here’s this week (proposed), which is more or less typical for me. Sometimes I go to Crossfit less or lift more on my own, depending on how much time I have or what the Crossfit workouts for the week are.

Monday: easy 4 miles+ Crossfit

Tuesday: Crossfit

Wednesday: 6 miles hilly run+ Crossfit

Thursday: AM spin+yoga class

Friday: 4 miles speed work (I’m planning 16×400 @ 10k pace but not sure if I’ll get that many in)+Crossfit

Saturday: Crossfit

Sunday: 12 mile run

As you can see, I like Crossfit! This is more than I would typically go in a week, but I liked the looks of all the workouts. One thing about Crossfit is that the workouts are more or less designed so you can go each day, or many days in a row. I get sore a lot, but it’s in different places, and the intensity is not that high that I’m immobilizingly sore (at least more than 1x/week!). In contrast, when I lift on my own, I won’t be walking for a week. If my only goal was to get as strong as possible, to be honest, I’d probably be better off lifting on my own, 2-3x a week. But I like Crossfit. It’s fun. It’s endurance as well as strength, and I’m still getting stronger. I just really like lifting weights. If there is anything going on with me, or if I don’t feel great, or I’m tired, I always feel better and accomplished afterwards.

For example, I had a great time yesterday because we did Atlas stones. Which is where you pick a giant concrete ball off the ground and lift it onto your shoulder.

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I’ve only done this once before, but I feel so legit! I was even able to move up to a heavier stone! (95 lbs).

Now that I’m doing more distance running, I’m really trying to be better about fitting yoga in. It’s the first thing to go when I get busy, but I get so tight during distance running that it really is essential for injury prevention. My legs have felt pretty tight all week, especially my calves, so I was glad to make it out to a class today! The last couple of weeks I’ve just been practicing on my own.

In terms of food, I have some things to share. Let me just say that my roommate is amazing. She made Nutella Stuffed Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies with Sea Salt. Take a moment to absorb all that.

They have been a staple of my diet these last few days. After eating so many cookies, I’m trying to clean it up a little bit to fuel all my studying! Here are some eats of late:

Plain greek yogurt, fruit salad, berries, and a pancake.

Lots of salads.

Scrambled eggs with oranges.

It’s deadweek so I get a heart in my cappuccino. Speaking of which, the other day I met up with a friend in the afternoon for coffee to catch up since I haven’t seen her much since last year. We went to my normal coffeeshop, and when I ordered a decaf cappuccino, the barista looked at me like I was crazy. I think I get coffee too much…

My prize-gotta love Nutrition class! I won these for my title page for a paper-local organic strawberries! I’m excited strawberries are starting to be in season (at least around here!).

This is still a work in progress. You can’t tell from the picture, but there are a few green streaks in there! I think I need more baking soda, and I think it needs to actually bake in an oven. On a different note: mashing up banana with sunflower seed butter and vanilla tastes amazing. I may never buy granola bars again, and just make my own! YUM.

What’s your favorite type of exercise?

P.S. I just saw the announcement for the the Open WOD 14.3 and I’m PUMPED. Deadlifts+box jumps are my favorite!