IceGiant355

Cross-posting from my challenge Day 17: A Bitter Pill New friends, fellow Skull Crushers, and everyone else who has taken the time to invest a little piece of their lives in my story, it is with a heavy heart that I say this Ice Giant is taking his challenge offline. Nothing wild, dramatic or terrible has happened, and the challenge and new goals will continue to be at the forefront; however, the wife and I have made the family decision to unplug from the inter webs for a while and be more plugged in to the life we have around us. That means as of today, I will no longer be posting as it's not really an option from the office. Thank you all for your support during these 2+ weeks - it has really made all the difference! Until Ragnarok my friends. IG355

Day 17: A Bitter Pill New friends, fellow Skull Crushers, and everyone else who has taken the time to invest a little piece of their lives in my story, it is with a heavy heart that I say this Ice Giant is taking his challenge offline. Nothing wild, dramatic or terrible has happened, and the challenge and new goals will continue to be at the forefront; however, the wife and I have made the family decision to unplug from the inter webs for a while and be more plugged in to the life we have around us. That means as of today, I will no longer be posting as it's not really an option from the office. Thank you all for your support during these 2+ weeks - it has really made all the difference! Until Ragnarok my friends. IG355

Thanks! I'm going to call the protein intake lots of "cheating", by which I mean 3 days a week I get 60+ grams from my pre- and post-workout shakes. I also load up at breakfast with a quick little stir fry of 2 eggs, 4-6 oz. ground beef, and the veggie du jour. I won't say I can coast the rest of the day, but I don't sweat my protein intake much after that . I just make sure to have some with every meal.

Day 16 Morning Update: Standing at the Edge of Greatness Ever have one of those days where you are a little slow to get up, but then rock your workout and all of a sudden realize something important just happened? Not a major event or anything, but an almost imperceptible shift in awareness. Today is that day. With my hands and apparently feet/toes covered with the signs of dying blisters (didn't even notice the feet until today), I realized that today was a turning point and I started to truly see the possibilities that lay before me. Everything changed from "it would be pretty cool to be able to do X again" to "X is a good starting goal, but I'm going to destroy that". The fundamental shift above is not the only victory this morning. Today, I have reached my level B running goal of 10 straight minutes at 6.5mph, while hitting the 2-mile mark in 21:47, and tacking on 3 sets of 90-120 seconds at 7.0mph in preparation for killing the level A goal set for myself. Sounds like I'll have to manufacture a new running challenge for the remaining 2-3 weeks Based on the above, I now declare my short-term goals to be breaking the PRs set during my basketball days for squats and mile time. Therefore, I say to you all, by this time next year I WILL squat more than 315lbs (142.9 kg) 5 times and run a sub 6:15 mile! Until tonight, friends.

Why thank you. Doesn't hurt that beer is my second favorite food group

My thoughts exactly. I'm pretty stoked about yesterday

That's great, Kenyo! Just try not to intimidate everyone when the crew assembles

Killer week - congrats on the pushups!

Glad that's been helping! Still, the sloshiness is no fun, so good luck with that

Excellent day! Keep up the great work Also, thanks again for helping get my head out of my ass the last couple days, it is very much appreciated!

Hey, wait! A fellow St. Louisan is here? Sorry for the mini-hijack, but nice to see another one of us, PachaTisai!

Learn to love those rest days! They're super important to keep from getting burned out. Also, what time of day are you running and how much water are you drinking throughout the day? Just thinking that if you load up on water at the non-running times, you might be able to cut down a little on the in-run consumption without compromising performance.

Congrats on 15 months if that was something you were ever shooting for. If not, then I beg to differ - any time after they go down for the night is the right time. All the more so if you're cutting out cardboard bats

Day 15, Part 2: Food, Food Everywhere Okay, so this is the dietary part of today's update since this morning's workout was too exciting not to share right away. There was a lot of good in the day, so I'm feeling pretty good about how the day went. First off, tale of the tape: Calories: 1,917; Protein - 174; Fat - 94; Carbs - 82 So the couple things that jumped out at me were the blow up on my fat intake today, about 50% higher than goal, offset by nearly a 50% undershot on carbs. Considering that a) I was a whopping 17 calories over goal, most of the fat is due to the beef I consumed at breakfast and dinner, and c) I had a good, productive workout this morning, I feel zero remorse. Had an egg, beef, and broccoli stir fry for breakfast and dinner and a salad with all sorts of good stuff at lunch (spinach, feta, tomatoes, sunflower seeds, edamame, and avocado with a lemon vinaigrette), so totally kicked today's butt food-wise. The salad was even from a restaurant, so IceGiant 1 Old Ways 0. Really wanted to hit this new calzone place by my office, but thought better of it for what are hopefully obvious reasons. Especially as the calzones are big enough to be 2 meals. They look and smell amazing, but yeah, nothing good was coming from that. Therefore, 3 meals with at least 1 serving of fruits or veggies down!