WIAW-The Battle of the Can

Date: July 8, 2014

Author: astottler

Happy Wednesday! Thanks for your feedback on length of posts-I’ll try to Goldilocks it and have it juuust right-not too long or short!

Thanks to Jenn for helping us celebrate this day!

My morning began with a hazy 5:30am wake up call. I’m pretty sure I was hungry when I woke up but too dazed to realize it. I’ve had the worst time falling asleep lately so I’ve been dragging a bit!

Somehow I made it out the door…but managed to drop my iPod on the cement twice. The on/off button jammed down and it turned itself off…indefinitely. Hopefully it can be fixed!

The first run of the week was a 3 miler. I’m going to run the same 3 mile route for a while to compare paces.

And you can’t beat this view! It never gets old.

My pace this week was 30s/mile faster than last week, which is much closer to where I need to be! My legs have still been feeling sort of off though!

Breakfast was a quick fruit bowl with a beautiful glob of sunflower seed butter.

…And then coffee at work.

I had a lunchtime meeting thing at work so I didn’t have time to buy anything there, and I got back too late last night to deal with cooking anything. So I grabbed what I could.

I swear, this was the crunchiest lunch ever! Everything was SO loud, in a very quiet room. Whoops!

After work, I headed to Crossfit. It hasn’t been anything too crazy the past couple of days. Today we worked on split jerks, which really needed work for me. For the past 3 years, I’ve had my left leg forward as my dominant leg. Today I learned I’m much better on my right leg now. Go figure…

The WOD was a 10 minute EMOM of 10 double unders (or 20 single unders if you are me) plus 2* russian kettle bell swings. Except every minute, the amount of swings increases by 2, so the last set had much less rest time!

As soon as I stepped outside, I could tell a storm was coming. It was INSANELY windy, and also dark! I wasn’t worried about getting rained on though because every time I’ve carried my umbrella, the rain has held off. And I had my umbrella. I literally got back 2 minutes before the storm started.

While it was all dark and gloomy outside, I whipped up a new to me recipe. Anne’s “Cheesy” Mushroom Quinoa. I added extra kale in place of boo choi (I could’t find it) and olive oil in place of coconut oil because I couldn’t rationalize buying an entire jar of it. I also had a nice little moment when I realized my beans were in a can and I lacked a can opener. I got it open, but I certainly wouldn’t recommend my methods! But I still have all my fingers so I guess it’s all good!

This was such a good dish for a gloomy evening, and i’m already looking forward to leftovers!

I also whipped up some more banana bread! This is the third time since I’ve been in DC! It was lemon-blueberry banana bread, but the recipe is not ready to share yet.

It tasted good still, but I’m having a lot of trouble getting the lemon flavor to come through. Any suggestions? I used the juice of a lemon, lemon rind, and 1.5 teaspoons of lemon extract. More lemon juice? Maybe lemon concentrate? Is that a thing?

And there’s my day!

What was the best thing you ate this week?

Accidental Throwback Thursday

Date: August 1, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hello! I’ve been trying to post for a while, but my internet connection at home just was not having it!

Since this post was supposed to go up yesterday, this becomes accidental throwback Thursday!

And what, my friends, are we throwing it back to?

Last year’s Giant’s Race!My sister and I ran the 10k last year. What’s this? Yeah, um. I won my division last year! What? How did THAT happen?

Well, I’m super proud of that! To be fair, my age group isn’t huge. But I’ll take it! Next year I’m considering doing the 10k again…and training to win. We shall see!

Back to the important stuff…food and exercise.

Yesterday morning was an early spin class. Yes, I get up at 5:10am in the summer for my own pleasure. Yes, I’m a college student. Yes, those are oxymorons.

My calf continues to feel better, especially after spin. I refueled with a chocolate protein smoothie, with 1/2 cup less almond milk than usual. Plus a small slice of toast with sunflower seed butter.Yesterday morning I took my dog out to the park to participate in his favorite activity ever-soccer. He goes absolutely crazy for soccer balls. I wish I had gotten a picture of him, but I left my phone in the car so it wouldn’t get slobbery. It’s funny, he got mistaken for a puppy again. This happens regularly! Umm no, he’s almost 12?

Before class I whipped up a quick lunch of leftover spinach quiche. After class, I hustled over to Crossfit. It was a little close-I hate rush hour traffic! The WOD was 7 rounds of 100m run, 5 toes to bar, 10 deadlifts (115), and 10 overhead squats with a 25 pound weight. I Rxed the weight, but did knees to elbows. It took me about 17:00-on the slower side. I wasn’t going to really push my calf on the run! (And *knock on wood* it’s feeling good as new!)

I made myself a little snack plate, plus the leftovers from that morning’s smoothie.

Trader Joe’s spinach and kale bites-not bad but they shouldn’t be microwaved (not that they have microwave directions…) They heated super unevenly! But tasty other than that!

Plus crunchamame, peas, and half a mango. It was perfect!

Sadly, I did not get enough sleep last night. I had to get up early this morning for the kitten nursery, and I had to stay up to sign up for fall classes….and the system failed. Grrr. I can’t believe I’m already signing up for classes though! Where has the time gone?

-Granted, I still have almost 2 months of summer….

Also, please tell me how much I’m going to hate myself this quarter-here’s the current schedule plan: Chem, Chem lab, Physics, Physics lab, Bio, a unit of labwork.

Ughh not even one fun class in there….

And since I love you all, here are some pictures from the kitten nursery this morning; we got 5 new litters of really little kittens! I had to syringe-feed a litter and I came home covered in cat food….sacrifices people!I love this.

After changing out of my cat food caked clothes, I made myself a fruit bowl topped with sunflower seed butter.

And one last thing-how cool is this? At the lab I work at, I had to take pictures of printer cartridges to be returned because they were defective….3D printer cartridges! The “ink” that was leaking everywhere was wax and plastic. Crazy.

What was/is your favorite subject in school?

WIAW-Procrastination

Date: July 9, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Do you guys know how much I like Tuesday nights? Why do I love Tuesday nights? I get to write up my WIAW post! Thanks a ton Jenn!

I’m actually going to do this post sort of backwards, starting at dinner because I have a recipe for you all!

As you’ve seen on my blog before, at least once a week during school I would head over to one of the bazillion Coupa Cafe’s on campus and order the Beverly Hills chopped salad.

Well, tonight, my mom and I decided to try and recreate it. And I must say, it turned out pretty darn good! However, since this is Northern CA, I’m renaming it the California Chop Salad, because we need some love up north here too.

California Chop Salad

Serves About 3

For the dressing:

3/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
3 tablespoons Dijon mustard
2 shallots, quartered
1 garlic clove, halved
Pinch of sugar

Blend in food processor until smooth. We actually had leftover dressing, so add as much or as little as you choose.

For the salad (roughly):

1/2 large heirloom tomato
2/3 c grated gouda
8 asparagus spears
3 c mixed greens
2 shredded chicken breasts
10 chopped kalamata olives
1 chopped avocado

Feel free to chop everything up as fine as you like. Toss everything together except for the cheese, and then serve with the cheese on top. Enjoy! I know I did!

And now that that’s out of the way, let’s back up. First, let me start by saying I have to write a paper tonight, but I figured blogging would get my writing juices flowing. The paper was on a sleep intervention I gave myself. Let’s just say it didn’t go as planned, but it’s fine if the intervention sort of failed. Let’s jump back to this morning, shall we?

No pictures of my breakfast, but it looked about like this.

The plan was to get my 4 miles in before yoga, but I quickly realized I scheduled myself way to tightly and that was just not going to work out. After yoga, I was feeling a little too zen-ed out to run, so I went to Whole Foods for lunch. I got the salad bar-and I’m not one to pass up the opportunity to try avocado vinaigrette!

The dressing wasn’t bad but I just didn’t enjoy this salad. I’m terrible and putting together my own salads from the salad bar-I just can’t get the correct mix of things. Oh well.

After shopping around a little, I decided on a blueberry muffin. I guess this was my one last test to see if gluten affected me-or whatever. I’m not really sure what I was thinking.

It was delicious and totally what I was wanting, but I pretty much immediately got a stomachache. Boo. Also, have I mentioned that carbs tend to make me crave more food? Here are some snacks from the day. At least they were delicious and somewhat healthy!

I saw these on a giveaway yesterday and was intrigued. Nut and gluten free! I tried a bit of one, because I can’t buy something new and not try it right away.

I also got this Chobani to try. OMG was it good! I can’t wait until just the coconut is available in stores! I mean, I can’t describe how good this actually was. So do yourselves a favor and go out and buy it.

I also enjoyed the company of this guy.

Aaand one more snack-Smoked Gouda popcorn. And yes, it is as good as it sounds.

This evening, I went to Crossfit. It was hard, but good. For the strength, we worked on snatches, which felt really good. I haven’t been able to do anything like hang cleans or snatches in a loooong time because my gym at school didn’t have bumpers, so this was a lot of fun for me. Plus, not gonna lie, I like showing off my weight lifting. I didn’t go super heavy for me since it had been a little while and I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it was fun.

The WOD was HARD. I think it was because the push presses were pretty heavy for me-75 lbs, but I Rxed it. Here it is:

3 rounds with 1 min rest in between of:

5 minutes: 400m run and then AMRAP of push press and Sumo Deadlift High Pull.

I got in 3 rounds plus 15. I don’t think I’ve ever done a sumo deadlift high pull before, but I’ve done a sumo deadlift and a high pull, so basically the same, right??

And here are some last eats from dinner. My mom had a stressful day so she got us eclairs 🙂 I can’t complain-I’ll start the whole no gluten thing tomorrow.

Are you a procrastinator, or is it just me?

Burnt Out and Burnt

Date: July 6, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

First I want to take a moment to recognize the tragedy of the plane crash at the San Francisco airport Saturday afternoon.

I haven’t gone into much depth with my workouts lately, so let’s talk about that here!

Here’s a good one for you to try. It’s tabata style, meaning you work for 20 seconds, and then rest 10 seconds. You repeat this 8 times, for a total of 4 minutes. In the following workout, you do a full tabata of each exercise. Hand release push ups are where you lower yourself chest to the ground, and then bring your hands up off the ground, and then back down and complete a push up.

We did this at Crossfit Tuesday night, and combined with a warm up full of Romanian deadlifts, my legs are still sore! I actually Rxed the deadlifts, at 95 pounds.

So let’s go through some of the workouts this week.

Monday: Abs class and Spin with one of my favorite teachers. I actually saw her at the Farmer’s market today!

Tuesday: 4 mile run-2 miles were intervals. Yoga class. Crossfit that evening with the above WOD. I also practiced handstands! I’ve never done them before and actually got kind of close against the wall. Between those and a ton of downward dogs after not much yoga, my shoulders were done.

Wednesday: Morning spin, 4 mile run (split up. I hate the treadmill). A Jillian Michaels group exercise class. This class convinced me that I’m way too uncoordinated to teach any type of group exercise (hence why I want to teach spin. Not a whole lot of coordination is necessary).

Thursday: 10 mile easy bike ride

Friday: 4 mile run, Crossfit with this WOD:

10 Minute AMRAP

5 box jumps

7 burpees

10 dumbbell snatches

We worked on pull-ups then and my arms were sore. I also got a couple of double unders-progress!

Saturday: Crossfit. The WOD was:

400 m run

6 chin ups

10 push jerks

15 toes to bar (or knees…up in my case. I’m not that flexible)

It was a good one! I’m glad they are finally letting my lift the big weights! Heehee.

Ok, so I know this seems like kind of a lot of exercise. But my body seriously can handle it-crew was 2-a-days every day, and was a lot more intense. Plus, I’m doing a ton of different things so it’s not the same muscle groups every day.

Ok, so I know this seems like kind of a lot of exercise. But my body seriously can handle it-crew was 2-a-days every day, and was a lot more intense. Plus, I’m doing a ton of different things so it’s not the same muscle groups every day. Right now I’m feeling good so I’m just going to go for it. You know how I was talking about how I lost so much muscle in my arms? I’ve done a lot of upper body strength stuff this week and I swear my arms have already grown. Crazy!

Next week is my heaviest week of half marathon training, so a lot of non-running stuff won’t be in there then. So let’s talk running.

The title of this post pretty perfectly describes my last run. Burnt Out and Burnt. I made the mistake of doing 2 treadmill runs, both over my mental treadmill limit (which is 3 miles, if you’re interested. And that’s barely). The first one was okay, I did intervals which made it a little better. Then, I thought a 5 mile treadmill run on Wednesday morning would be a great idea. Hah. I gave up after a mile. I then did 3 more miles that evening on the treadmill (again. Yeah, I’m really smart). It was not fun. I can’t accurately describe my hate for the treadmill. I don’t get how people train for long races only on the treadmill!

Friday, I ran down at school after working at the lab. I was feeling pretty burnt out pre-run. This is the hard point of the training-the load gets heavier and you’ve been doing it for almost 2 months. Beth knows what I’m talking about! I had loosely been planning on trying to beat my last time for this particular run. ….And then I realized trying to do a pace run when I’m already burning out would be stupid, so I ran un-timed and un-Garmined (yes that’s a word). Plus, my Garmin was dead. I always wondered what it takes for it to run out of battery-I used it for about a month before bothering to charge it and it was fine. This time, I accidentally left it on, which I figured out when my purse beeped and it was dying. Sad.

Anyway, running without my Garmin was a good decision. But the run wasn’t very pleasant, and it was 100% my fault. I wore my new shoes and didn’t wear my anti-blister socks. I figured it would be fine since it was only 4 miles but things didn’t really work out that way. I think my new shoes might be a size too big. My other Nikes have always been half a size down, but the guy at the store at first thought I’d be a full size up. Anyways, my feet were rubbing like crazy and burning up! At some point I didn’t know whether I’d be able to finish. The 4 mile run isn’t that important. I’d rather not finish and not have blistered feet for the 11 miler. I ended up finishing, but it wasn’t the prettiest thing.

Where am I going with this? I need to be smarter about not burning myself out. Why run on the treadmill if I know I hate it? I just need to get the runs done, and not worry too much about speed, etc. And I feel better about tomorrow’s 11 mile run. The unfortunate thing is I need to start training for my Nike Women’s half like a week after I run this one. I think I’m going to train this a little differently though. I’m going to take an extra week off and jump into week 2 of the training plan, and I’m probably only going to run 3 days a week instead of 4. I think the plan is especially important the first time around, and it’s not worth burning out. So we’ll see how that goes! And since this post has had like no pictures, here are some scenes from my weekend.

How do you prevent burn out?

Arts and Crafts

Date: May 12, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hey guys! I actually writing this post Saturday night, but I’ll delay it until tomorrow. That way I’ll be all caught up in case things begin to get busy (they should get busy- busy studying).

First off- HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY to all the mother’s out there, especially my own, who has put up with me through a lot.

Also, to all mother’s out there: make sure you’re not the only on taking pictures! Many years from now your daughter may be writing a blog post for which she will have trouble finding pictures of the two of you together.

Although she does not know it at the time I am writing this post, my sister and I are surprising her my coming back for lunch! I’ll let you know how that is tomorrow!

There are a few things I want to touch on about Saturday. First. It was very unproductive. And I skipped some events because I wanted to get things done. But that wasn’t great. It’s ok though, it was only Saturday. Some R&R is necessary.

Brunch. I have a love/hate relationship with it. The food is really good, but it completely messes up my entire eating schedule for the day. This may be why I struggle with eating well on the weekends. I went with half of a whole wheat bagel, toasted with cream cheese and eggs, plus a salad with guacamole. Half of a waffle was also consumed, although it went unphotographed.

Brunch always leads me to snacking. Which causes problems. I had a big grand workout planned, but I kept eating and then having to digest. Here are some snacks:

Greek yogurt, cranberry orange quinoa, and cocoa sesame seed butter. Citrus+chocolate works, right??

Blueberry-pomegranite kefir, zucchini bread (from the freezer), and sunflower seed butter.

Numerous other snacks included bananas with sunflower seed butter, and granola with a protein bar. Dinner was just meh but here it is:

Well guys, this is it. It is the ending of an era. That’s right, I’m finally getting over my sunflower seed butter and my yogurt obsession. Since ditching some of the sugar in my diet, I don’t find these items as enjoyable. Or maybe consuming 10,000 jars of sunflower seed butter in a quarter is too much. I’m not sure. But I’m feeling ready to move on. It’s not that I dislike these things, but they don’t hold quite the same level of joy for me as they did in the past. :'(

I may try plain yogurt and see if that is more appealing. But as it is, I only have a bit of yogurt remaining anyways. I guess I’ve been more into produce lately: fruits and veggies. Produce kind of shaped how well my week went last week; I focused more on eating fruit and veggies, and it helped me eat more healthfully overall. Which takes us to the next topic of conversation.

As any normal American, I don’t eat as nutritiously on the weekends as on the other days of the week. For me, starting Monday on a positive note is crucial, and sets the tone for the week. Last Monday, I really focused on clean eating, and ate mostly fruit and veggies (minus the pizza that may have slipped its way in). As a result, I felt great the whole week, and had no difficulty eating well. Which is why I want to try something different this Monday. Before I say anything. let me first iterate that it is not necessarily something I believe in, but just want to give a try. A juice cleanse! I was inspired when last Monday I tried Trader Joe’s Green Juice and actually enjoyed it. It is a bit sugary (from the fruit) so the plan is to mix it with a more unpalatable and veggie heavy drink. I wasn’t sure whether to blog about this, but since it’s only a day, it’s not really going to change anything anyways. And the idea has always intrigued me.

But on to the title of the post! Lately, I’ve been finding workouts online and writing them on Post-its. I regularly take these post its to the gym with me when I work out, but they get really rumply and crinkly and gross. So I decided to laminate them with tape!

Most of them are WODs, and I thought it would be easier to have them in one medium, together. The ultimate plan is to make some type of pretty poster to put on my wall that I can stick all of them to for easy access when I want to pick one for a workout. I haven’t figured that part out yet, but I’m satisfied with the finished cards!Most of them came with names, but I gave names to most of the ones that didn’t for ease of reference. For example, the one I did the other day that featured pull-ups, push ups, and squats I titled “Popeye” because it killed by arms for several days after. And Popeye has huge arm muscles, right?