Shukar

I live in North Scottsdale, have family in Peoria, Glendale and Ahwatukee/Phoenix, and work has me all over the valley. I'd be interested in a meet up.

Oh, it's over? How did I miss that? I'd mistakenly assumed it was continuous. I'll just stick to running the sahara and trying to top the leader boards then.

I have not heard of this book, but will now have to go take a look.

I'm in for this. Gonna be slow going the first attempt but that's what reps are for.

I did the one in Arizona last year in my Vibram Classics. They needed a couple of washings afterwards but have been fine since. As to finishing you'll do fine I'd think, I went in after having taken my unfortunately annual month or so off running, and before that nothing more than a couple miles at a time. Good luck, and hopefully they've got better beer than the Miller I had to suffer through. Interestingly while the beer was technically free you had to give them a penny out of the nearby tray of pennies since you aren't allowed to give away free alcohol in Arizona apparently.

I'm in on this, throwing my 12 miles since the start of this and seeing where things go. If only I'd tried something like this in February/March when my mileage was at it's highest values in recent memory instead of the low numbers I'm currently churning out. Guess I'll just have to run more.

For me it's my iPhone with Runkeeper, my heart rate monitor (got the one through the RK store), and my Vibrams. Love the KomodoSports for running in. So far I've stuck mostly to cotton shirts and a pair of basketball type shorts for my runs, though I've got a couple tech shirts I've used and enjoyed well enough. Been meaning to get some calf sleeves and a foot pod, but the Vibrams might make the latter a bit tricky.

Did the Run followed immediately by the Bike this morning, run time of 7:35 surprised me a little, but as I don't bike often I'm not sure if the stationary is giving me the right data, does 2:55 seem reasonable for a mile biking?

Speaking of fancy spreadsheets, I stumbled across this website which has an excel version of some running related tables. It's a pretty comprehensive spreadsheet with a lot of options on it. I made a version that works with Apple's Numbers program, the formulas didn't work properly when imported. If anyone is interested feel free to PM me, otherwise maybe someone else can have some cool spreadsheets to geek over.

I did the Tinkerbell Half last January at Disneyland, my first half, and I have to say it was a pretty awesome race. Being as it was the first time they'd done that race the few snags in some aspects were understandable, course was very different from the Disneyland Half (which I'm signed up for in September). I've been thinking of trying to make the Disneyworld Marathon my first, but the trouble I'm having with that is that I'd be flying all the way across the country for a race and I haven't even managed to find the money for a trip to visit the parks over there yet. Maybe I've found my Life goal for next round.

For a group mostly dedicated to moving forward a lot of us seem to have goals in the vertical plane. Digging the avatar btw.

Posting my weight here is a good idea, I may start doing that at least with my reference day (usually Sundays) each week. With a running background like that I'd think you'll manage 26 minutes, just have to keep at your plan and make the numbers happen for you.

Congrats on being back running again and reaching your recent target weight. I wouldn't stress out so much about the last remnants of visible fat, most people won't notice it and you're almost certainly looking way better than you did when you started if you've dropped that much weight. Besides, you can't be too awesome all at once or the universe might collapse on itself. That circuit routine you're shooting for is insane, it'll be a long time before I could even dream of something like that. Good luck this round.

Good luck with the Couch to 5k plan! It can be intimidating, especially as you get to weeks 5 and 6 where things start to jump a bit, but the results are pretty good. What are you planning on doing in terms of weights?

Everybody else had cool names for their challenges and it just kinda came to me as being appropriate. As to the fasting, it's been going alright for the most part. Hunger has been easily managed with drinking some more water, though today I found that if I nibble on anything toward the end of the fast I better be prepared to get some food in fairly short order. Haven't noticed much change in my weight or body composition yet, if anything my weight has gone up slightly in recent days. Honestly I' haven't been expecting much improvement on those fronts without cleaning up the quality of the food I'm eating, which is why that was my main goal for this challenge in terms of my nutrition. I'm also tracking when I start/end the fast and how much food and water I'm consuming over the course of the day so that I can help try and figure out what best to tweak for optimal results. I've been doing the fasting informally for the last week or two but now that I'm tracking the stats on it hopefully I can come up with some answer.

Running is my preferred followed by biking. I don't really swim as well as I'd like, though hopefully I can change that in the future, or have access to a pool built for measuring distance. Probably do the run once and see where that gets me. @Chelsea, if having toe shoes makes you faster then hopefully my two pairs stack.

This will be the second time I've signed up for a 6-week challenge but the first time I'll actually have good clear goals and such setup for it. So let's get to this (I might have gone a little overboard with the character creation) Shukar the Scout Race: Dwarf Height: 6' 5" (really tall dwarf.) Weight: 204 lbs. Resting Heart Rate: 55bpm Strength: 2 Dexterity: 3 Stamina: 3 Constitution: 4 Wisdom: 1 Charisma: 2 Goals: 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) Backstory: As a young child he was trained in many different fields, including a brief stint as a monk. Eventually he made the "wise" decision to become an Expert and devote his time to study. After having graduated from university he found that his scholastic ways had left him wiser perhaps, but heavy and lethargic. He resolved at this time to change things and took up the mantle of Adventurer! After some time spent wandering the wastes of the metaphorical world attempting to find his quest he eventually came across the way of the Scout. He trained in the ways of Scouting and completed a half marathon, in a somewhat reasonable time of 2:10:17. Though he kept up with the running for a while eventually his work got more troublesome than he could tolerate and he found himself unable to continue with the scouting he had come to love so much. But now he's back with determination and some schedule trickery to resume his pre-dawn adventures. Plans for Achieving Goals: Harder: Right now I'm doing 1.6 miles most days and a little longer on the weekends, schedule permitting, so this may be a bit of a stretch to pull off, but at only a mile a week I can probably make this happen as long as I keep getting myself up in the mornings to go for the runs. Better: This one may be tricky for me, while the wife is on board for cleaning things up somewhat and cooking more scheduling can be a problem. There are times when the day ends late and I just don't feel like cooking anything, so hopefully the crock-pot can help with that. I'm also on the look-out for some options I can make in advance and just heat up when I get home to have something both hot and quick. Faster: This one is probably the easiest of the challenges I've set for myself, run the numbers on the budget and then pay the bill, but with the likely impending purchase of a second car (straight cash on this one rather than a loan with payments) money may be a little tight. Stronger: This will be the second time I've set this as a goal for myself, the first time I managed to get from weak attempts at pistols, awkward uneven squats, and decent close squats (doing workouts based on convict conditioning for those following along at home) to decent quality doorway assisted squats. Hoping this time around, through a little greasing the groove, to improve that to real pistol squats. I'll be happy if I can just improve my numbers on the assisted squats but that's no reason to slouch. Originally I had built myself as a 5th level D&D style character (I seem to recall being told at some point that the average human walking around on the street is around 3rd to 5th level and I like to think of myself as being better than average) but after reading more of the stuff on the forums for the challenges it became apparent that the intention was for us to be first level or so at this stage, so I have shifted direction a bit and done this up as a Storyteller type point-buy instead. So here goes, by Traits (also a couple merits and flaws for good measure) Traits: Resilience: Dwarves are more resilient than the average humanoid, as such they receive a bonus to Constitution rolls to resist disease equal to their level, and one third level (round up) to resist injury. Must Do Research: Your training as an academic means that in any discussion you've probably read something at least somewhat relevant, you get a bonus of half your level to Wisdom rolls to determine if you know a relevant fact to a discussion Insatiable Curiosity: Once you get your teeth into a subject, or maybe it gets its' teeth into you, there's no letting go. Once you've set your sights on a subject your determination gives you a bonus equal to half your level to find relevant research for academic subjects. Data Collector: Your Insatiable Curiosity allows you to study not only the wider world, but also yourself. Turning your focus inward you are able to collect and analyze information about yourself and your behaviors that other people might ignore, and synthesize it into useful data to improve upon said conditions. Unquenchable Thirst: You may apply the bonus from your Insatiable Curiosity to physical skills instead of merely academic as your thirst for information allows you to find information in places that most would never think to look. Born to Run: The Scout is a natural runner and in tune with his surroundings. He receives a bonus to perceive his surroundings equal to half his level (plus 2 if he happens to be in the Barefoot condition), in addition if he does his running in either no footwear or minimal enough footwear to qualify for the Barefoot condition he receives a bonus equal to (half his level)+2 to rolls to prevent running/walking related injuries. Merits/Flaws: Large: The character is an abnormally large representative of his species, he gains a bonus to reaching high things equal to his level, and an additional hp per level. Diminished Sense(Scent): The characters sense of smell does not function as well as the majority of his species. He takes a penalty to Wisdom checks equal to his level when making checks related to perceiving odors that are not classified as Strong unless he applies expensive or exotic remedies in advance of the check. Feats: Perennial Parry:Basic levels of Monk training have ingrained into your head the knack for deflecting blows or objects moving at you, at the expense of your ability to catch said objects. Character gains a bonus equal to his level to his AC to represent his ability to deflect, but takes a penalty equal to his level to Dexterity checks to catch moving objects. I'll try and update this with some pictures, better formatting, and the rest of the work I did on my "character sheet" when I have some more time in the next couple days. But for now I've got squatting to do.

@Ziel, I'm currently using the Accu-measure Personal Bodyfat Calipers, but I'm not sure I trust them fully. In part due to the fact that I know I'm introducing at least some error when I make measurements, and in part due to the fact that even when I'm being as consistent as possible between the 3 readings I take I can get a range from 6mm to 12mm. I'd really like to find something that I can use at home a little more easily to get consistent results, even if they aren't accurate the trend is really what I'm more interested in than the number. @Jcamson, Aas soon as I've got some data from the Zeo I'll let you guys know how it works out. Right now I'm just taking notes each morning when I wake up in a text file as to how I felt like I slept, awakenings during the night, if I get tired throughout the day etc. I'll be continuing that for a while after I get the Zeo to try and figure out how they line up. Hopefully the data comes back useful.

It may not be the greatest thing but I use Dailyburn to track my resistance workouts and it does a fairly decent job.

I decided it was finally time to stop lurking about these forums and sign up for an account. Firstly, some background on the name. Shukar was the name of my character in the first Exalted game I played in. It's lots of magic, lots of adventure, and as a Solar, all about being the best anyone could possibly be in whatever you decide you want to be good at. Shukar was literally the best at everything because through careful application of nearly limitless cosmic power he had decided it should be so. I've decided that reasoning should apply just as well to myself as it does to an RPG character. Thus, I have taken his name for my own here to remind myself that I can be the best at anything if I apply myself, for no other reason than because I have decided to make it so. So far that's been turning out pretty well for me. When I started this epic journey of self-transformation it was January 2010, I was getting married in 8 months, and I weighed 283 pounds. Now I'm pretty tall at 6'5" so that's less terrible than it might otherwise be, but I was overweight, and not at all in very good shape. I decided I needed to do something about that and so I did. Started off by just cutting back on calories, amazing what will happen when you switch from 1500+ calorie meals to 700 calorie meals. That plus cutting out soda and trying to cut back on sweets got me some pretty good results, considering the small amount of real effort involved, and by the time of the wedding I was down to 249. Kept it up and added in some running around early October, by which point I was down to 227, working my way through the Couch to 5k program. by the end of the year when I finished that I made it to 198 and was looking a lot better. By this point I had excess skin from the weight change, and still too much bodyfat for my tastes. January was when I decided to go fully primal in conjunction with a friend, she dropped out after about a week and a half because she was having too much trouble figuring out what to eat, and it was the best I remember feeling in a long time. Sadly I was not able to stick with that as strictly as could be hoped leading to my current diet of trying for Primal with the addition of some rice and tubers, and not quite making it there for various reasons. January was also the month I decided to start doing the Nerd Fitness Beginner Bodyweight Circuit so by the end of the month my body fat was down about 4%, and my weight was up to 199. Since then I've tried my best to keep doing a mixture of running and resistance when I workout with varying success. There was a month or two in there where I didn't do much working out at all and my stats suffered. Since then I've run the Warrior Dash in my Vibram Classics, picked up my running substantially in terms of distance and pace, put on some more muscle (and sadly also some more fat) using some methods from Tim Ferris's The Four Hour Body, and started doing some more resistance training again, mostly bodyweight circuits as before. Runkeeper, Dailyburn, my scale, and a lot of skill with excel have served me well on this quest and right now I'm sitting at about 207 pounds (and slowly falling since I'm slacking on my resistance training) and a body fat that's slowly climbing. I'm a huge fan of personal tracking, I track my weight, body fat, sleep quality (soon to be expanded with a Zeo), running pace, distance, and now heart rate (all through Runkeeper on my iphone), my calories in/out and workouts (dailyburn), and even how much water I lose during a run (scale, weather data, and some math). So now I come to this place for like minded people who want to become the ultimate manifestation of themselves. Edit: Holy cow that was way longer than I thought it would be when I started, sorry about that guys.

I'm a mostly recreational runner working on expanding my endurance and my speed through intervals, and the application of a lot of research. I do all my running in my Vibrams and it's probably my favorite method of exercise I've tried so far. Did the Warrior Dash a couple months back in the Vibrams and survived, so now I'm going to push onward and upward to longer distances, faster paces, and possibly bigger obstacles as well. This guild seems like a good place for that.

I've done the Warrior Dash here in AZ and am currently training for a half-marathon, started out doing that because it seemed like it would be a challenge and I needed something to push myself. Right now my long runs are only about 8-9 miles a week, but that's almost to where I want to be distance wise for this stint of my training, then it's all working on time.