So I Guess I Should Blog…

Date: November 18, 2015

Author: astottler

Ugh, I am so ready for Thanksgiving. We get a whole week off, which is basically the best thing ever. I’m still teaching my Monday spin class that week, and you better believe it’s going to be Thanksgiving themed! I spent my entire run this morning brainstorming and I think I have a solid idea! I’ll be sure to share it next week!

Speaking of sharing…I haven’t blogged much lately. I’ll almost certainly blog more over the holidays, but I honestly feel like not that much has happened, or at least not much Internet worthy. Just typical college stuff.

My high school friend visited, which was super fun! We both wanted to go shopping, so that was enough of a reason! Over the course of 2 days, I basically bought every long sleeved shirt in existence. I <3 long sleeves. The goal of shopping was actually to find lion colored clothes-more on that soon.

We also went to my friend’s Wind Ensemble Concert:

My friend is also crazy enough to want to track down a spotlight with me. There had been a HUGE spotlight in the air all week, and it was driving me crazy not knowing where it was coming from! We took to the streets and tracked it down. Success.

The course? HP. Typical. Gotta love Silicon Valley. We then proceeded to videochat our other high school friend for 3 hours…much needed!

I was met that weekend with quite the delivery-my roommate went home and brought persimmons! The obsession continues.

The following night consisted of dinner with my parents, an awesome prank, and a friend’s birthday party.

I brought a giant cake.

I feel pretty confident that none of the prankees will ever find my blog, so I’ll go ahead and fess up to it here. We got a walkie talkie (they’re pretty cheap off of Amazon these days) and hid it in our friends’ room. The next morning, after 2 hours of sleep I sat outside in 40 something degree weather blasting various things through it-notably the music from both Jaws and Psycho. Nailed. It. More pranks to come.

Other college things. The reason for lion colored clothing?

We had a big themed dinner/party at my dorm. The theme was “Who Run the World? Girls!” So vaguely Beyonce, vaguely vague. Since I sure as heck cannot pull off Beyonce, I was planning on dressing up as the lion from the music video. It actually didn’t end up working out due to a failed effort at coordinating another costume, so I ended up vaguely Beyonce, meaning I wore the one sparkly thing I own, paired with a pencil skirt and heels. Well, briefly heels. I think it’s actually been a year since I’ve worn heels so they definitely did not last the whole night. I think there’s a full outfit picture of me floating around on someone’s phone, but here’s a selfie.

Also noteworthy-hiking the Dish trail with my mom. It was the perfect day for it!

And a visit from the (kind of) pups.

I also went to a football game, which was a crazy and frustrating one ending in a close loss. Unfortunately, I only stayed for half the game because I had a retreat for my sorority.

So that’s college. I realize that is not remotely food/fitness related, so stay tuned for lots of talk of that. Spoiler: I did my final trial for my class project of improving on a fitness endeavor!

Who’s excited for Thanksgiving?

Memorial Day Weekend

Date: May 26, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

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

(Source)

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?

Ready to Run

Date: September 14, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

I can’t believe I’m going to be living in my dorm in a week. Where did the summer go? Since I’m pretty local, I’m going to do kind of a “rolling” move in. I have a ton of stuff in a storage unit, so I’m going to take all that on Thursday, and then move in completely on Saturday. And then wake up Sunday and do the brutal run I have planned for myself. It’ll be my first hilly long run.

Let’s back up a little bit. Let’s talk food. And workouts. I cleaned up my eating habits a lot since coming home from vacation, and have been hitting it pretty hard on the exercise front. And I can definitely see and feel the difference. It’s incredible what healthy eating can do for you! I’m concerned though that I’ve given myself too much energy as a result because I can’t fall asleep at night! But that could also be jet lag. So here are some eats.

A salad with spicy avocado hummus, avocado, onion, tomato, and a runny egg. I’m loving the hummus salads right now.

Caesar salad with grilled chicken. I’m trying to see how many different types of chicken salad I can eat.

Sunflower seed butter on toast, plus a white nectarine from what will probably be my last farmer’s market visit in a long time.

A new fall recipe for you guys! Baby Pumpkin Pie.

Other things:

I’ve still been having the same foot issues when I run longer distances, despite the inserts for my shoes the foot doctor recommended. SInce I haven’t had full feeling in my toe since my race over a month ago, my mom has been insisting I see the foot doctor again. I finally took a look at my inserts and realized they weren’t taking pressure off the right spot, so I made an appointment. I’m getting expensive (booo) custom made inserts that are supposed to solve the problem. Yesterday, I got the mold of my foot taken, and I should get them in about 2 weeks. However, I still have 2-3 long runs before then. I decided to try my hand at carving out a hole in the base of some old inserts to try and relieve some of the pressure. DIY at its finest.

However, I didn’t get a chance to try them out before tomorrow’s 10 mile run, so I’m really hoping it will help. Hope for a more comfortable run, combined with a few light workout days has me more than ready to tackle this run. I forced myself to take yesterday off of Crossfit because I had gone 4 days straight and on Thursday my legs were donezo. Now, I feel much more rested and have an excess of energy!

Today, I also did a little back to school shopping to avoid the dust storm going on in my house as a result of my parents cleaning everything out. I really want boots so I can wear workout pants all the time and pass it off as acceptable. I didn’t find the ones I was looking for though. Fashion question-do black boots go ok with black leggings?

Naturally, I didn’t exactly stay on task.

When I get the new laces for my new shoes, these will match PERFECTLY. I admit it, Nike shorts are my weakness.

Here are some other things I picked out:

I’m in love with infinity scarves right now. I’ve vowed not to wear regular scarves anymore, because I can never figure out how to wrap them and make them look good. Speaking of which, I started knitting my own infinity scarf! So we’ll see how that turns out!

I’m sorry this post was all over the place-I had a lot of random things to talk about.

What’s in your back to school shopping bag? What are you looking forward to most about fall?