catscratch

That's a nice lookin Cosplay!

Woot!

Oh snap! 2 things: 1.) Great job on keeping up with your challenge goals! 2.) EFF YES CHAINMAIL!!! I love that stuff.. armor, swords, you name it! You are a great person for doing the things you do. Fact.

Man.. sounds rough trying to keep workouts going amidst a schedule like that! Now I feel bad about slacking off because "I'm tired" or "I'd rather cuddle with my girlfriend." Keep up the great work, soldier!

Happy to hear you had a great time! Balancing life and health can be a bit of a hassle, but it's TOTALLY worth it! Congratulations on your work towards your goals!

Now every time I stop on by to ask how you're doing and hope you are well, I am always preceded by others! Sometime, I'll be the FIRST to ask! lol. Hopefully this extended break is due to being so thoroughly entranced in a myriad of Scottish country dances!

I hope to see you again for the next challenge. Thanks for stopping in and commenting on my own challenges so often, it's been a huge help!

I was doing the box jump last week at the State Gym here at ISU. I went up the staircase to the old track that's pretty much seldom used by anyone. I went up the stairs partway and found a nice platform to jump from. I think I did 12 reps jumping up to the fourth step? I couldn't quite reach that 5th and final step though. I love these things for some reason!

Today was a much better day in terms of working to achieve me goals. I painted 40k models while watching Evangelion (thus working towards a nice sum of money for the job). At the end of every episode I'd stop and do pushups or pullups to exhaustion. Today I did 126 pushups and 30 pullups! I also ate pretty healthy and drank more water than I normally do (albeit less than I should). I'm trying to balance workouts with this damnable chest cold that I can't seem to shake. It hasn't gotten worse, it just won't bloody go away. Bah! Anyway, yay for goals. I'm still doing pretty poorly on working on my "drummer alias" so I need to practice more.. and by "more" I really mean "some at all." I'm really excited about the current mini challenge #4. For some reason I've always absolutely LOVED doing anything that tested my balance. I'll look into what the best option for me to do would be and then I'm going to destroy this challenge!

Been awhile since I posted but unfortunately there's not a whole lot to post about. I have been taking it easy killing the beginnings of a chest cold and trying to balance that with work and a good friends birthday this week. Sooo... for the past couple days I've only done about 30ish pushups per day. I've managed to do 8 pullups in a row though, so I'm feeling good. Only 7 more to go for the goal... I think I can maybe make it, I just really need to focus on working out and kick it up a notch. Drumming has been a failure for practice, but I think I'll at least be able to get some practice in tomorrow before work again. Working at a bar for St. Patty's day is a little rough sometimes btw. Anyway, the good news is that my girlfriend bought me a sweeeet pair of Asics running shoes!

That looks incredible! Such quality craftsmanship!

Yay for progress despite the pitfalls life throws your way! Assassins don't fall for traps, elude them with style and flourish!

Oh man, today was great! I went to the gym with my friend Sean today (2nd time I've been in a gym in 2.5 years). We started off with running for about 15 minutes.. and it was hard to gauge how far we ran because the track we used was 5.5 laps for a mile.. and when we're running and talking we lost count. We estimated at a little under 2 miles. Then we hit the bouldering wall! Apparently the rock wall closed at 5 so we were't able to get on that, but the bouldering wall was still lots of fun. We proceeded to monkey around on that for 30-40 minutes until our fingers and forearms were basically lifeless flesh lol. I'm always amazed at how weak those muscle are compared to the rest of me. After we decided to call it a night for bouldering we walked through the rest of the gym so I could see what there was to offer. I found a machine that had a set of what basically looked like wide set metal handlebars, so I did about 4 pullups before we continued on with our little tour. After I saw what there was, we headed back up to the track. I ran for THREE MILES doing a little interval sprinting during the last mile and a half of it! The way we did intervals was going a lap at a comfortable pace, then the next lap we'd boost it up gradually until near the end we were going at a pretty decent pace, then back to an easier pace for the next lap. After THAT we walked a mile... then proceeded to do a mile with interval speed increase, but for this one we were just shy of an all out run. I'm feeling absolutely GREAT, you guys! I want to do that more often.. I just hate spending the $6 every time. I know it's not a LOT of money, but it adds up when you're already struggling a little bit to pay bills. I also decided that I'm pretty much done smoking. I don't want to smell like cigarettes anymore and I'm tired of paying for them. So I had the last one in my pack today and I'm not going to smoke another for a long time. It's time for change! In other news, I got my Warrior Dash kilt in the mail the other day!! I also bought a sporran off of Ebay yesterday so I'll be in style when that comes in. I know I just complained about money, but these are things I've wanted FOREVER and I feel like I needed to treat myself for finally making the decision to improve my life.

I did a good 30 of those single leg glute bridges.. definitely started to feel it after about 30 for each leg. I was only holding for 5 seconds, so I think tonight I'm going to hold for 10 and see how THAT feels.

Get better soon! Hopefully you're bronchitis will realize it chose the wrong person to mess with and will be all "Peace, I'm out!"

Your approach to this challenge is very positive and go-getting.. I like it! I have power outages.. but it's sort of fun to do things by candlelight... except freeze.. freezing by candlelight sucks just as much as freezing in regular light.. Keep up the good work, I'm sure you're going to rock this!

Seconded!

You're pretty much getting this exercise thing down pat, eh? Great job on your progress and grats on the one armed pushups! I'm going climbing tomorrow morning and I've ALSO been playing Fable 2! My girlfriend started playing at my house and I realized that I hadn't played that one for some reason... so I did what any true to form nerd would do.. binged for 5 hours on it lol

How's the progress coming along? Did Week 2 treat you well?

Yesterday I did around 50 pushups and probably around 20-25 pullups throughout the day. It was a lazy day of video games with workout breaks. I liked it, I felt really good all day.

I did a couple sessions of pushups yesterday and I'm now able to get up to 30 in a row with being a little fatigued at the start from previous exercises. I'm pretty excited about my progress so far on that front. I also ran a little over a mile instead of taking the bus yesterday because it was pretty nice out (read: it was above 30 degrees and wasn't blowing a freezing wind in my face). I did some pull-ups today and I was able to eek out 7 of them, so progress is still good. I'm going to do some more pullups when I get home to flesh out my 3 sessions to exhaustion plan for gaining strength. I keep forgetting to do more of those Mini-challenge exercises when I'm at home! Dang it all.. I'll be doing some tonight before bed I think.

Well played, sir!

Missed this post earlier! I don't recall if I was able to even make it into the cosplay contest.. damn.. silly brain is having trouble recalling a lot of Detour...

I've been looking at Tough Mudder ever since I decided I'd sign up for Warrior Dash and I really want to do it. The $100 sign up fee is a bit rough for me right now but who knows, I've got a couple months until they hold them in my area! Thanks! I haven't heard of Spartan.. I'll have to look that one up. Have fun at your events as well!

As a follow up to my last post I DID make the jog last week.. if not exactly as smoothly as I'd hoped. I'd forgotten that my destination lay entirely up hill!! So I ran a mile with the backpack on, uphill, and through the snow until my calves really just couldn't take it anymore. I alternated between jogging and walking for another mile after that. Then I went to sleep! The real day started with not much in the way of exercise. I'm being commissioned to paint a Warhammer 40K force for a friend so I sat down and started working on that. I managed to squeeze in about 15 pull-ups and 5 single leg glute bridges (for each leg) for the mini-challenge. Then it was back to painting! I managed to eat fairly well today I think. I started with a two-egg burrito with LOTS of onions and peppers! Then for dinner I cooked up a salmon fillet on a bed of wilted spinach with a side of steamed broccoli seasoned with just a dab of butter and garlic salt. OM NOM NOM! I'll have to do some push-ups before I go to sleep. I've been so bad with doing those the past couple days! I NEED TO BEAST MODE THEM INSTEAD OF PUTTING THEM OFF ALL THE TIME! /cruisecontrolforcool