Shukar

All you have to do is find the wild Shukar and hugs can be had.

Sunday again, I'm here to update!

Did some purposeful walking this week and some planning of my future running schedule, but I've only got a month until my next race so I'm gonna have to do more than that if I wanna be prepared. Also, holy cow it's only a month until my next race.

Lifting, didn't do any more of that this week but did change up the pushups I'm doing as part of my daily streak, moved from knee pushups to partial reps of full pushups to try and work on that for a while to make the transition. Also thinking I need to work handstand practice back into my daily movement plans again since my breathing seems to have cleared up and being upside down is fun.

Tracking I've been doing well with, and so far the results seem to have paid off in the form of having lost some poundage since the challenge started. Haven't even been tracking calories, just being more mindful of them and logging the what rather than the how much. Most likely helps I'm also implementing some of the lessons from camp about my meals and making some improvements as a result. So, hooray results and hooray avenues of further progress.

I'm gonna do my best to get at least 3 updates between now and the end of next Sunday, as part of trying to get myself back into the habit of it, but I'm not promising that just gonna try and see what happens for now. See ya real soon.

So Friday.

Lots of walking today, no run though. Good day as far as food went overall and just a nice relaxing day of a trip all around.

As expansion on my earlier quick statements about metrics: my gut instinct (and the reason I'm gonna test this because hypothesis and testing!) kind of went "I get warm after heavy activity, I wonder if that influences my actual temperature or just my perceived temperature, if it's the former I bet that would correlate to recovery status somehow. Even if neither of those is true it would probably be an early warning of if I were getting sick or something so it won't be entirely useless to track that data, and I already have a thermometer." So that's basically where that's coming from. There might be a connection or there might not. Either way, should be able to learn something that may come in handy eventually. I suspect that sleep and heart rate data are probably much more closely tied to recovery.

As for my favorite part of camp: definitely the people. Nerds are by far my favorite part of any activity that involves them. The fitness bits are entirely an excuse to see and interact with more nerds.

I don't know what it tells me, I've gotta test and see if it's actually anything! My gut says it might tell me something but I actually have no clue.

Day, also Thursday.

Wow, been doing really badly with this challenge as far as updates go haven't I? Well, let's summarize eh?

Camp! I went to CampNF again this year and it was all kinds of fun and games, even after somebody got hurt, and I think a good time was had by all. Learned things, hung out with awesome nerd friends, met knew nerd friends, all kinds of fun. Also set new PRs on my squat and deadlift (205 and 305 respectively). 

Been getting good traction on all 3 goals so far. Getting my runs/walks in each week easily so far. Got 3 strength workouts in so far, very little work on lunges but progress on the other three noted movements. And I've been tracking my data, though not started on the body temp I'd been planning to start doing. Now it's just a matter of making my work on the goals consistent.

Bis Morgen!

You know you like it.

You're on the calendar for next Sunday! Have a good run!

Well, if the sleep doctor has failed, perhaps try the witch doctor? I did that once and he told me what to do.

Day 11, Thursday.

Lunch today was chipotle burrito with guac and some chips. Dinner was a salad with chicken, and some extra chicken (strips but still). 

Entertainment today was some music, and Enchanted, plus nerds who are always entertaining. The lesson of the day was that if you want something done right you'll probably have to ask a lot of times.

Activity today included, 3.4 miles of walking, and the Streak. Got 6h15 of sleep last night, woke up early to get in some activity but didn't get what I planned for in sadly, and exceeded the daily water goal. 

Bis Morgen!

So there's a thread here, hi Teri!

So, week 1 I didn't get in any runs (shameful), but did get in a dedicated walk so that's something. No lifting yet. Have been tracking things, trying to find the happy medium for tracking weight without becoming neurotic about it (I've had issues with that in the past). I do need to try and sit down with my sleep data and see what I can learn about it, it's been a couple weeks now on the current set of variables and I need to do some math on them to see how they compare to the baseline values. 

I've been bad with the updates, I am shamed. Gonna try and get better about that again. 

Day 10 (I think?) Wednesday.

Lunch today was a tasty bento box from the teriyaki place that had sushi and teriyaki and tempura, and rice and was amazing. Dinner was thai food with chicken and egg, also delicious. I had some ice cream after dinner.

Entertainment today included some podcasts (Security Now, The Heart, Radiolab, and Cordkillers), plus some Big Bang Theory. Todays lesson was that sometimes it takes being told something you know is a fact by someone else before you actually take steps to act on it, and that it helps if that someone is your boss.

Activity today included 6.4 miles of walking, and my usual squats and pushups. Got 7h sleep last night, and hit my daily water goal. 

Bis Morgen!

On the calendar now.

You're both on the calendar, good luck and happy training!

Mm, lambik.

You're on the calendar.

White potatoes are whole30 now aren't they, why not use those for gnocchi?

Requires a jailbroken phone, which isn't the greatest alternative but is what you can expect from iPhone for the near future at least on this matter.

I'm obnoxiously cheerful basically throughout races, ticks my wife off. But we should totally run into each other anyway.

You're on the calendar!

I also will be at that race. Being awesome, or at least that's the plan.

I love the fusion dance there.

Can I replace the pancakes on the King with biscuits and gravy? If so I'm sold.

Well, less Rock and Roll, and more the foundation of previous challenges, but hey you gotta start somewhere.

So I've been on a low the past few challenges but I'm turning things around now, which is why I'm here and one presumes why you're here.

Who am I? Well, I'm a nerd (though, why else would I be here I guess), I'm a runner, and I'm a pretty big dude. I could stand to be a smaller sized big dude though and that's one of my long term goals right now, that and getting my half marathon times and capabilities closer to where they used to be, slowly but surely I can make it there if I put in the work.

So, what steps am I taking to make that happen?

1) Running. I've not been doing enough running at all of late, like at all, and it's time I start to turn that around. This challenge I will go for 2 runs a week, and if my schedule does not permit that I can replace 1 of those runs with a walk (defined herein as going outside and walking around for the purpose of taking a walk rather than walking for other purposes.

2) Lifting. As it's been a while since I did any real strength training I'm going to set out to do 4 Strength workouts during the course of this challenge. My primary goals here are Squats and Deadlifts, with lesser goals of improving pressing and lunges.

3) Tracking. I'm letting myself get back into some amount of my old data tracking and doing science to it. I used to track a lot of things almost obsessively and I don't want to get there, the goal here is to keep a rough track of things and not let it detract from the results I'm hoping to facilitate by doing the tracking in the first place. So what am I gonna be tracking? Sleep, steps, heartrate (thanks to new fitbit), water intake, probably body temperature (1/day in the morning), and weight (1/week) as well. I'm going to stay away from tracking food in any more detail than a rough log of what I ate until I've shown myself that I can stay in a good headspace with the other metrics. So the goal here will be consistent tracking, and trying to figure out what things I can improve on with some simple intervention, like the sleep I was playing with at the end of last challenge. Things like using Heartrate and Temperature to help gauge recovery/training status, or figuring out how my workouts interact with my sleep, or other analysis like that, (while likely in my future if I keep on this trajectory) is still a ways down the road at this point but something I'm definitely looking into.

So there we are for now, 3 "simple" goals to work on for the next 6 weeks or so. Oh and I'm going to Camp in this timeframe, so there's that too. Woohoo Nerds!

Alright, time to wrap this puppy up I think.

I did actually pretty well at the running goal, I got in a run or two a week (usually below my target but It's at least something each week and that's good itself). I finished both of my races, though one of them was finished basically on fumes. I know what I did wrong in training for it, namely not training, so now it's just a matter of solving the problem.

Did awesome at the Sleep goal. The alarm helped me get to bed on time, and the alarm woke me up on time, and I mostly got the right amount of sleep for what I'd expect. 

Could have done better on the vegetable goal, but I didn't actually do that bad either.

So all told, nothing out of the park, none of it really even all the way to where I wanted to be, but all of it better than nothing by leaps and bounds, and that's a good start.

See you in the next challenge folks!

Damn, for a night race that's insane. The Disneyland Half last weekend was pretty damn hot and humid but it wasn't that humid for sure. Also, yay Disneyworld!

I love it when a plan comes together. Smart getting the wife involved in the food plans. That's a battle I too have faced.

Are horses allowed on the Whole30?