Fordzaphod

Hey. Looking forward to this! So far I have gathered that I need to look for a long armed man with a nerd fitness t-shirt. Make sure you keep waving your arms, energy conservation be damned!!! The wife and I are scheduled for the 11:30 start but we will be getting there by 9 to hopefully sneak into the 10am group! I will wearing a yellow shirt with the arms cut out. I have a longhorn tattoo on my left arm and ancient Greek on my right calf. /giddy

Speaking of sprints... I just saw the new mini challenge! To bad I am locked down in full study mode at the moment. Sunday will be a mad day of sprints! Hopefully I can maybe get some in tomorrow as well.

Good news and bad news! Good news first! - Woot. Signed up. Bad news - The 10am time was full the closest time I could get was 11:30am. Oh well. Anyway this looks to be a blast!!

I am sooooo down for this! I am going to make the wife do it too. I have always wanted to do one of these but could never get myself to do the "Tough Mudder" (electricity... really?). I am signing up now. We live in Austin (very close to sixth street actually)... and there is a surprising amount of free parking by our place if you don't mind about a 1 mile walk. I just noticed that November 10th is a gameday. Keep that in mind for you travel plans. Things can get pretty hectic around campus/the freeway on gameday. On the plus side... free tailgates! Ok. Time to put my money where my mouth is!

I am up to 150 burpees for the mini-challenge. I hate and love burpees. I have been doing 50 a day. I think I will try to squeeze another few out today. Something like 5 an hour just to keep moving. My workout Friday was mostly burpees with a 1.5 mile walk at a 3 degree grade on a treadmill. Some days I feel like walking outside and some days I feel like reading while I walk. Friday was the later. I also did 10 non-consecutive pull ups. Today it will be just the burpees... so I will try to do a few more. I have also started to undergo a sort of n=1 experiment. I am trying to maintain a ketogenic state while eating about 75-100 grams of carbs a day as per a variation of the Perfect Health Diet. I am doing this by keeping a total calorie deficit, eating coconut oil for the MCT's, and eating BCAA's for lysine and leucine (ketosis promoting amino acids.) I am still staying paleo (except the BCAA's of course). Ok. Time to update the spreadsheet.

I figured I would start my first full day of the challenge with some baseline numbers. This way I can adjust my goals if needed to the appropriate difficulty. Goal 1) Ran 1 Mile in 8:20 flat. I think I may modify my mile goal to be 7:30 given my performance today. Thoughts? Goal 2) Did 30 push-ups in a row, 4 proper pull-ups and a plank for 45 seconds. I may need to move the push up number up by 10 or so. I will think on this some more. Goal 3) So far so good. Goal 4) Alexandretta and I have made plans to go to a meditation class on Saturday Morning. On top of that I have done 50 Burpees for the challenge so far. I am hoping to do about 75 a day for the team! I will probably do this once a week. The rest of my work outs will be toward aimed at gaining strength and endurance in a single area to hopefully put it all together in 6 weeks.

And boom goes the dynamite! Good work!

Well played Grunk... Well played indeed! I accept your challenge inside the challenge.

It's funny because I have the opposite temptation with paleo. Gluten upsets my guts and giving up dairy was the challenge. I found out recently that I hate coffee without cream... So I gave up coffee. After I cut out the cream the rest of the dairy seemed easy to leave out. Perhaps you could do something similar with grains? Start with no pasta or bread and then cut it down from there. You will be surprised how much you don't miss it, at least most things. Oh, to be able to eat a normal pizza again.

Just push-ups are for insects!

The construction is bothering me with "Specialization is for insects! Do all the things." I don't know feels.. clunky? Could we maybe go with something like "Rangers do all the things because specialization is for insects!"? Perhaps I just need to sit back and learn to love the bomb.

Hello World! First time contestant long time lurker. How are you? Me? Well, i'm fine! Background: After being overweight for my entire adult life I hit a low point while working retail for a few to many years. I peaked out at a mostly unattractive 250 at 6' tall. I trimmed down the old fashioned way. I ate less and exercised more. However, like most people you end up hitting a wall. Enter paleo. I have been mostly paleo/primal for the past year. I am finally tidying some things up with my diet and this challenge came around at the perfect time to make some other much needed improvements. Sadly, I have let some things slip recently as I study for the LSAT (cursed test - you will kneel before me!). Now that all of that is almost behind me I figure I could wait six more weeks or I could get busy getting on with my life now. So, I choose now. Yay! Goals: Goal 1) Fitness - Run 1 mile at 7:45 or faster. My current best time for a mile is about 8:45. I am pretty sure I can knock that down by about a minute. I will utilize mostly sprints with the occasional long run for endurance and to change things up. In a few challenges from now I want to look (more) like a sprinter and not a marathoner. That is why I will not focus on distance running or even the mile distance per se. I will run a timed mile each week and log that time hear. I am hoping to see something resembling a linear trend line. We shall see. STR +3, STA +1 Goal 2) Fitness - I will complete the following exercises in a row: 10 Pull-ups, 50 Push-ups, and a 2 minute plank. Currently I am at 4 pull-ups, 30 push-ups, and 1 minute plank (all done separately). So the goal is two fold - 1)doing each exercise individually and then 2) doing them as part of the same work out. Each exercise is to be completed without stopping (though I can take a short break between sets). I will post updates on my progress as I go. I will probably focus on each exercise on different days and then work on putting it all together. DEX +2, STA +2 Goal 3) Diet/Life - Drink less. True confessions time. I drink more than I want to. Ok, that is kind of a lie. Its not like someone pours it down my throat but you get the idea. So, for this challenge I will (mostly) abstain from drinking. I am doing this for two reasons. 1) I tend to use drinking as a crutch to be more social at parties and 2) its just needless calories that are almost never worth it (especially the next day ). So the point of this goal is to stop drinking needless calories and be more actively engaged in social events while not drinking. To measure this goal I will not drink for the next six weeks with one exception. I will allow myself to drink while tailgating. I go to about six football games a year and I will allow myself this one indulgence over the next six weeks. This comes out to be about 2 Saturdays during the challenge when I can drink. CHA +2, CON +2 Goal 4) Life - Meditate. I have reached the point in my life where I need to start separating out what is important from what is not. I need to find a center. For the longest time I have thought about learning to meditate and maybe even go to a Buddhist temple. I guess this is the perfect time to do it! I will start by attending one meditation class/workshop/session a week. By the end of the six weeks my goal is to meditate daily (if only for a few minutes a day). If/when I acheive total conciousness I will let you all know. WIS +3, CON +1 That about wraps it up in a nice bow for the day.