Shukar

Today started with 2 miles on the treadmill, that last 1/3 or so of which was at my target 5k pace for the challenge, and included an additional 4.5 miles of walking. Resistance training involved pushups and body weight squats, a nice simple day with 10 each. Been having some issues lately with pushups causing my nose to plug up while I do them leading to minor breathing difficulties while in that position. Will have to look into that. Cooked dinner at home tonight, lamb steaks with asparagus. Been doing the usual casual finance reading and will be digging into VWC again shortly. Catch you guys tomorrow (hopefully, late one at work tomorrow).

I think you've got the right of it in terms of the psychology of why people do things like that too you, and keeping a good mindset about staying on track. Keep up the good work, it's totally worth it.

Todays workouts included a 1.5 mile run with the wife, first time for the 3 minute running intervals today which pushed her to the limit, and 4.5 miles of other walking. Workouts for the day were rounded out with the first extended workout of the week with 10 pushups, 10 body weight squats, and 5 each of pull-up negatives, half bridges, and lying leg raises. As to dinner I cooked it but it was prepared chicken from Fresh and Easy so it really doesn't count. Leaving me at 1 so far on both the resistance and cooking goals. Been doing some reading today on finance stuff, including setting up some online accounts today to help track things and in the coming days automating as much of my bill paying as possible, and after this post some more work on VWC. Wife has been asking for some supplemental work to go with her running to help her "tone" up a bit and better acclimate to the running as she hasn't done much before. Being a wise nerd I know toning isn't really the right goal here even if you believe it exists so I'll be helping her by continuing efforts to clean up our diet (which are so far going well) to help with some body recomposition and probably trying to start her out on some resistance work. I'd been thinking of starting up You Are Your Own Gym in the next week or two so maybe I'll use this as a good excuse, start at the beginning of the first stage of that and work through it with her. Some new variety of exercises for me, some new activity for her, and we both get the benefit of a program laid out and ready to be crushed. So that's a sneak peak of the future I hope.

So, I think I managed this yesterday just through daily life. I'll shoot for running the 10km over the course of the week and see if I can do it without counting any walking. Who knew my standing job would come in so handy. As a result I offer myself as sponsor/partner for Ladywildross. I'm already helping my wife become "strong like bull", I'm perfectly glad to be motivating to others as well.

Today's update may be shorter than normal, or it may not. After the surprise sprints last night decided that a nice walk was a better option than a prolonged run, which added into my total of 6 miles walking for the day. For resistance I did some quick wall push-ups and bodyweight squats. For dinner, it was a crock pot green chile beef roast with mushrooms. Found the recipe for it on a low-carb forum and gave it a shot with some modifications for what I had on hand. Roast, can of green chiles, salsa, and I added some chicken stock and mushrooms to help bulk it up a bit, keep it from drying out while I was at work, and round out the flavors a bit. It was quite tasty. For reading I've got Nerd Fitness nice post today (I'm counting it.), some random research reading into using Yoga to help fulfill some of my longer term goals for my fitness, and some more of VWC. All told a pretty decent day.

Friend was explaining to me his dietary choices right now and he mentioned a body builder sounding 2 dozen eggs, some chicken, turkey, and protein shakes so I said "Screw that, I'm making a Paleo-ish dinner and calling it good." Needless to say everyone enjoyed it greatly. Hoping to continue the trend of hanging out with friends, and also eating delicious paleo type foods in the coming weeks.

Update for Sunday the 24th. Had to work early this morning so I had to cut my long run out of the schedule. Did get a couple miles of walking in today though. Had a friend over for dinner tonight who is starting his own journey toward fitness so I went nice and healthy, garlic rosemary roast pork, roasted garlic new potatoes, green beans, carrots, and mushrooms. That makes a good strong 3 days this week, and I've already got tomorrow nights roast thawing in the fridge. While perusing the boards tonight I stumbled across the weeks challenge I'd somehow missed. Well not being one to miss out on a challenge for points I velcro'd up my Komodo Sports and went out and did some sprints. Followed it up with some BW squats, incline pushups, vertical pulls, flat leg raises, and half bridges for the third extended strength session this week. So far that's 2 goals I've gotten A's on this week, one not attempted and then there's still my reading goal. So far today I've done some finance related reading and I'm planning on some reading from VKW after finishing up the post. So that's 7/4 nights on that goal this week. If we take my time from the sprint session tonight (8:42 for 1.25K) I'm sitting at around 7m/km which is not terrible, but would put me at 5 minutes over my time current PR, well short of my challenge goal. So that one isn't in good shape presently. Though the sprints should help with that in the long run. So far going strong on my goals. Here's to keeping it up and crushing them all.

I'm back. Got fed up with the whole "getting on gym clothes" and decided to say screw the shirt it's night time in Arizona and I'm going without. To the best timing I had available I ended up with 20s, 18s, 16s, 20s. (that last one is slower than it could have been had I not missed my start). For an impromptu set of sprints without much warm-up, or recent history of sprints, I'm rather happy with it.

Just saw this now, still got about 6 hours and I'm due for todays round of working out. Will be back with results shortly I think.

This evenings update is contained below, hooray! 2 miles with the wife this morning to finish off the second week of the Couch to 5K plan. Another 3 miles besides. Went out to the farmers market today for some wandering around and picked up some nice salsa that is going to become part of a crock pot roast for Monday nights dinner. Cooked lunch at home, nothing fancy just some chicken, and then did dinner with the in-laws. MIL was having a bad day so instead of the home cooked fare we usually end up with when we get together with them, a real treat, we went out for pizza to a nice little coal fired oven place in town instead. Delicious but not homemade. Did another light night of resistance with 10 each body weight squats and wall pushups. Reading tonight consisted of some light economics stuff and a little bit of Viking Warrior. All told a pretty nice day, got some cleaning up done around the apartment in advance of entertaining tomorrow night (which is to say having a friend over for dinner and a terrible movie).

I'll be running the Disneyland Half on Labor Day weekend, and she'll be running the 5K that weekend. The one we just signed up for is the Tinkerbell half at the end of January. It will be my second time running the Tinkerbell and her first half marathon. Disney throws a hell of a race.

I found Rock of Ages to be well worth my time personally, but I'm a big fan of 80s rock. Great job on the food choices at breakfast.

Best way to build a good base in my experience is mileage. Mileage and a lot of dedication to your goals. Since you seem to have the second, and a really great attitude to boot, the rest should come in it's time. Keep up the hard work!

Ambitious list of goals. Look forward to watching you crush them. That's a really great point about the distinction between "can't have" and "choose not to". Sometimes it's really all about the psychology of the thing isn't it?

Today started off with a much more successful trip to the fitness center (AC was fixed) resulting in a nice 2.85 mile run while the wife got in 5 miles on the stationary bike. Another 3 or so miles of walking through the day rounds out the cardio. Simple day for resistance today with 10 each of bodyweight squats and wall push-ups. Work ran long today so I nearly fell down on my cooking but held it together with some curried tilapia and shrimp with a little bit of rooster sauce. Which brings me up to 2 each this week for extended resistance and cooking dinner. After I finish up this post I'm going to sit down for around a chapter of Viking Warrior Conditioning before bed and call today a success. @Susie, I'm really lucky to have a wife who both understands my insane drive to get up at early hours of the morning for fitness, and is open to trying it out. This week not only did I get her running 3 times and to the fitness center for some biking twice, I got her to sign up for a half marathon at the end of January with me. I'm really excited about that one.

Another check-in, I'm on a roll. Run of around 1.8 today with the wife, she's doing really well with this Couch to 5k plan (I'm so proud). Another 4.6 miles of walking besides. When I made it home there was an extended day of resistance work (that makes 2 for the week so far) including 2x10 Wall Pushups (almost got this shoulder soreness licked), 10 vertical pulls (pull-up precursors due to the shoulder), 5 assisted pistols on each side (all the way to the ground), 10 body weight squats, 5 each of a short bridge variant and a lying leg raise. Cooked dinner tonight, stuffed mushrooms, chicken sausages, shrimp, and some garlic bread (It's a weakness). That makes 1 night so far this week for the cooking challenge. Got in another chapter of Viking Warrior Conditioning and some long-form online fiction for my reading. Things are progressing nicely on the goals it seems. Debating taking a page out of LorenWade's book and starting up a twitter account for pictures of my dinners, help keep me accountable for them and lay the groundwork for switching to eventual photography of all my meals in attempt to improve it by recording it for the public to see. @Engineman, Yeah I put a good bit of thought into this round of the challenge. I tend to put either super low amounts of thought into things, which was kind of how the last challenge worked in hindsight, or an absurd amount of thought into it. This challenge looks like it's going to be the latter and I'm ok with that. If I can keep up the good momentum I should do just fine, and learning from the things I did wrong last time is the name of the game so to speak.

Time for todays update. Workouts first I suppose. The run this morning was meant to be a 20-30 minute treadmill activity with the wife doing some cycling, she is as mentioned only just starting in on the running so heading outside for a run every day is not yet at her level, but the AC at the fitness center was dead so this turned into 8 minutes on the treadmill before heat got to me. Never really appreciate how much the moving air of real running cools you off until it doesn't. About 5 miles walking around today at work, and then this evening 10 each of wall pushups and squats to keep the resistance streak alive (though not an extended day so no counting towards the goal today on that one. Didn't really eat dinner, but what I did eat wasn't cooked at home so slacking on that goal again. That one is likely to be the hardest one for me I think. As to the reading I put in another chapter of Viking Warrior Conditioning tonight. Good so far, hoping to learn some things from it to improve my training. I've long pondered an ereader but every time I start thinking the purchase makes sense either something financially comes up, I remember that I'm a bit overdue for a laptop replacement, or I think to myself that if I'm gonna get an ereader I should just get an iPad so I can read books and all those other things too. So of the people responding in the thread I've got 1 vote for Nook and one for a Kindle. Maybe if I do well enough on my goals this challenge I'll look into rewarding myself with a nice reader to help keep the habit alive. Until next time.

*and continued terrible thread titles I return to attempt to gain my second level. Did pretty well last time, most of my failings were with my goal setting and my adherence to my workouts. This time around I'm working on both of those by trying to set more measurable goals, and by having included a workout buddy. In addition to the workout buddy I'm going to make an effort to post workout logs here at the end of every day (no promises though, life gets crazy sometimes) to both keep me accountable and because you guys are like the Justice League of sidekicks. So, starting stats: Strength:5.25 Dexterity:6 Stamina:8 Constitution:5.75 Widsom:5 Charisma:4 Goal the 1st: Running goal. 28:30 5K This time around I'm not going to work on stretching my distance as one of my challenge goals but instead shaving some time off my 5K. As one of the weekly challenges last time around I did a 5K TT and PR'd at 29:59. This time around I'm hoping to beat that time and pull a 28:30. That works out to about a 0:30/mile pace improvement which is a decent improvement, but I've done longer distances toward that pace in the not terribly distant past so I think it's doable. To help myself later when it comes to letter grades I'll make this very simple, 28:30 or better is an A, 29:00 or better is a B, 29:30 or better is a C, 30:00 or better is a D, and if I managed to end up over 30 then it's a flat out F. The prize for this one will be 1 Stamina, 1 Constitution, and 1 Dexterity. Goal the 2nd: Strength Goal. 3/week extended resistance work This time through the challenge I am improving the specificity of my strength training goal by setting a number of days per week as a minimum to shoot for. For clarification, for right now at least at the start of the challenge, "extended" means that in addition to the squats and pushups (or variants thereof) that I'm working every day I will throw in leg raises, pull-ups, and bridges. For right now that's my extended workout and my base workout (which is being extended) over the course of the 6 weeks that may move to include work on handstands, or it may move toward the You Are Your Own Gym plan that I've been debating starting. But the main point is it should be something more than my daily goal, more on that later, and it should be regular. If I manage 3 days each week that will be an A, 2 days is a B, less than 2 days each week and it will come down to how well I did on average but the grade likely wouldn't look stellar. The prize for this one is 3 Strength, 1 Charisma, and 1 Wisdom (for learning from my previous mistake) Goal the 3rd: Diet goal. Cook dinner from scratch 3/week Last time it was shooting for IF timing, which I did alright on, and the nebulous "clean up diet" nonsense. While it may have been cleaner I can't measure that, and I was a fool for it. This time I'm going to keep up with the IF timing but not bother to make that part of the goal, just part of life. The goal is to cook dinner, from the basest parts that is reasonable, 3 times each week. I've got protein in the freezer, thaw it out and put it on top of some frozen veggies and rice or something. I've got plenty of things, I'm just not always great at using them instead of taking the easy way out at the Fresh and Easy across the street (damn their delicious and not terrible for me food). 3 times a week gets me an A, 2 gets me a B, and as before less than 2 and I'm going to have to have a serious look at my record and see what is going on. Prize for this one is 2 points Charisma, 2 points Constitution. Goal the 4th: Level up goal. Read 4/Week Last time I did great with the budget goal, sadly our progress stalled a bit on that front due to having to put a down payment on a replacement car so our credit cards are not in as good of shape as they could be right now. While those are still a priority using them as my goal again was apt to depress me so instead I'm setting a goal here from my self imposed habit course (explaining that below after the goals). The goal is simple in theory, read something long form at least 4 times a week. Some journal article I found that's relevant to my interests? Counts. PDF copy of a training book? Counts. Random blog posts from around the internet? Don't count. It's about trying to be a better more educated me and helping to unplug from the constant stimulus of the internet a bit, even if I'm reading the thing on the internet. 5 times a week gets me an A, 4 times a B, 3 a C, and 2 a D, pretty easy. Prize for this one is 3 points of Wisdom. So, there's a goals. In addition to the tracked goals I've got some hustles on the side I'm working on that you should hopefully be able to expect updates on. Finally got my wife convinced to start running with me so I've been starting her on the Couch to 5K plan. We're just starting week 2 today so if all goes to plan we should be finishing week 7 (I think?) by the end of the challenge. If we make it to week 6 I'll be happy with the progress. In addition to the new sidekick/mentor thing I've got going on I'm trying an experiment in habit building inspired by the writings of Leo (of ZenHabits), Matt (of NoMeatAthlete), Tim Ferris (of 4HWW fame), and a little Seinfeld in the execution. From Tim I've stolen the idea of having a mental and a physical "skill" going on at the same time, combined with the habit building advice of Leo and Matt to start small and easy and etc. I've decided to work on Reading every day, and resistance training every day. The Seinfeld element comes in from making a physical list and checking it off every day when I do it to help keep the momentum going. My target is 28 days consecutive on both and hopefully by then the habit will be ingrained and I can work on building a new pair of habits. Started that project on the 15th so already building some good momentum. So let's start out with a log for today I guess. Got up this morning and ran with the wife for 1.73 miles. After work (which involved walking around 7 miles on it's own according to my fitbit), I made dinner (fresh and easy meal, tasty and not terrible for me but not homemade) and then did a round of 10 wall pushups (my shoulder is still bugging me a bit from my airbag injury), 5 assisted one-legged squats on each leg, 5 lying leg raises, 5 half bridges, and another 10 wall pushups. I skipped the pull-ups today because my shoulder was not wanting to behave, hopefully that will be taken care of within the week. So let the challenge be joined!

Hey all! So I had the realization tonight that I may not be the only one who will be going to Disneyland for the Disneyland Half Marathon over Labor Day Weekend for a good run. So I figured I'd post a shout out here to see if any other Nerds were heading that way and if so maybe try and meet up before/during/after the event. It's a ways off I know, but I figured post while the idea is fresh. Going out for it, going to Disneyland in general (I seem to end up there a lot for someone living in the Phoenix area), post here and see who else is gonna go out.

I decided to count it as a B in the name of not letting good enough be good enough. It's awesome and I'm proud of it, but I could have done better. So basically I didn't get an A because I didn't do better than expected? I'm a terrible grader.

Mine is here, http://www.nerdfitness.com/community/showthread.php?11294-Shukar-s-Daft-Punk-Challenge This challenge went pretty well for me, and I've already got goals in the works for next time.

Alright, last day time for the Challenge Wrap-Up! Ran: 11.2mi Walked: 29.6mi Slept: 6.5 hours Sleep Parts: REM and Deep of 2.1 hours Weight: 204.8 (+.8 from start of challenge) RHR: 53.4 (-1.6 from start of challenge) Fasting: 15.6 hour fast (About what I was pulling at start of challenge) Calories: 2108 (more than at the start but better quality overall) Water: 16.8 cups (more water overall than I was getting before) Alright so let's get some prose in here and then the summary by the points. The past couple weeks have been crazy for me. Crashed my car on the freeway and totaled it out at work a week and a half ago and things just kept up that level of stress for a while. Finally settling back into a decent pattern thankfully. Running took a hit for a while as a result of both time issues and also the fact that the airbag bruised my sternum making deep breathing rather difficult for a while. That's mostly gone away, and with the side effect of helping me focus more on my form as I was forced to run more slowly. Also got the wife out running with me twice in the last week, which is something I've wanted to do since I started running myself a year and a half ago. While I haven't been cooking as much as I'd like I've been cooking more than when things started. Working out some recipes to start trying to do batch cooking for fill the freezer with items I can cook in short time and have ready to eat for those days when work keeps me busy until after my normal eating periods. The fasting got a lot easier over the interval of the challenge to the point that I barely notice how long it is anymore, I just eat when I become hungry or when it is socially compelled (usually by coworkers during the week close to my window anyway thanks to similar work schedules, though on weekends by family) and have been feeling pretty good as a result. Picked up my strength training as best I could during the last couple weeks, pushups were out of the question for a while due to the aforementioned chest bruising causing too much pain, with some great results in my pistol work. I wasn't very good about it this challenge to my own detriment, but I'm getting better adjusted to trying to do small amounts of work often (ala GTG) which has helped me see results anyway. I'm hoping to dedicate some more time in the next challenge to this. My finances had been clearing up amazingly well in the challenge window until the accident, which luckily won't be costing me much but will require the purchase of a new vehicle. Did a lot of reading from a lot of financial sources and talking with a couple of wise friends and got a good plan in place that I think should help keep us on the right track as time goes on. Got great progress on the credit cards, figured out what our priorities should be more clearly for the other debt, and started investing in my 401(k) from work (finally). For the first time in a long time the wife isn't stressing about our finances (I rarely stress much about anything so me not stressing isn't news) and I'm confident that things are moving in the right direction at a good pace. So, how about the goals themselves? For those who don't wish to scroll, Harder: Run at least a 7 mile run, up from current 1.6 mile runs (2 Dex, 3 Sta) Better: Clean up diet by removing processed foods, making most dinners at home, packing the leftovers for lunch, and keeping up the intermittent fasting (3 Con, 2 Cha) Faster: Pay off at least half of one of our credit cards (2 Wis) Stronger: Progress from being able to do 2 sets of 5 assisted pistols on each leg to a minimum single pistol on each leg (3 Str) So let's take them one at a time. Harder: Today I went out planning to run 7 miles on my usual route of a series of loops through the neighborhood. About a mile in I decided to be adventurous and went a different way I'd never gone before. Ended up seeing some cool scenery I didn't know was near my apartment, finding some trails and running those, and seeing a lot of really nice properties in my area I wouldn't normally come across. I also ended up running 8.35 miles instead of just the planned 7. So this goal is a great success. This one gets 119% which is still only an A, just a better one. So I get all 5 points here. Better: This is the goal I struggled with the most, and I think part of that is because I was foolish enough to pick a poorly quantifiable goal on top of probably stretching a bit far. I did great on the fasting portion, fasted good hours, had very little hunger, kept hydrated while doing it. When I had leftovers they were packed for lunch, and there were some times I pulled out the crock pot to make dinner just so there would be leftovers to cover lunches. When I didn't pack lunch I was smarter about my choices of where I got lunch and that helped too. The contents of my diet improved overall in beneficial ways as well, more fruit and veggies and better quality to boot. Tried out some really nice new recipes that I will be keeping in the rotation. The part I fell down on the most was the "most" part of cooking the dinners at home. I did pretty well, but I'm not sure I'd say most. So I'd give this goal an 80-85% or so, which gives me a firm B. Only 1.75 points to Con and 2 to Cha for this one, finally dropping my shirt size to a Medium when it started at 2-3XL will do that to a guy. Faster: This one is probably the one I'm most proud of. Not only did we pay half of one of the 2 credit cards with a balance, we paid a third of the other one as well and started taking out money for the future (with employer matching). Not much else to say about this one but it got it's 100%+ so A for me, and 2 points of Wis Stronger: This one I made great progress on but I'm still not quite happy with it. Technically I fulfilled the requirements of my goal, I can now squat on one leg without assistance. Trouble is when I was picturing it in my head I was imagining full out ass-to-ground pistol squats. What I got was less glamourous but still impressive, parallel to the ground when before the option was not at all. I'm less pleased than I should be with that progress and unsure whether I should count this as an A or not. What say you all, does squatting to parallel count as a pistol squat, or must one make it to the floor? Either an A with all 3 points, or a B with 2.25 points. Also worth noting are the challenges from within the 6-weeks. I got +1 Wis from the first challenge for learning how better to pace myself for a time trial, +1 Stamina from the second challenge for running further than I might otherwise have done, +1 Wisdom for having the foresight to not only track splits but manage to have the laters ones faster than the early ones, +1 Strength for having the strength to resist gravity, and +1 Dex and +1 Sta for having the perseverance to reach the evac point. So adding that to my starting spread gives me: Strength: 2+1+2.25(+.75?)=5.25(6?) Dexterity: 3+2+1=6 Stamina: 3+3+1+1=8 Constitution: 4+1.75=5.75 Wisdom: 1+2+1+1=5 Charisma: 2+2=4 So there you have it, an increase to my overall points of 13(.75?) from goals, and 6 from challenges. Let me know what you think about the pistols if you don't mind.

11.2 miles this week, way better than most of my other weeks in the challenge, though low overall sadly.

Throwing 8.35 on the stack today. Got a bit lost during an adventurous run and there we are.

I did the Tinkerbell in January and am already in for the Disneyland Half in September. Will probably continue doing those two until such time as I convince myself to make the jump to WDW races. Disney does a hell of a job when they do anything so I imagine it'll be pretty sweet. I may get lucky in relation to my accident, while I was the one at the back of the chain and thus cited the chick I ran into failed to report the accident to her insurance and then left the country suddenly. I'm hoping this works in my favor.