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Remember the Animorphs from the nineties? I was a big fan, and I recently got the books back from my mom who stored them for me for the last 10 years. I'm reading them again, and actually enjoying them that doesn't happen often when re-reading books from when I was a kid. This challenge will contain a lot of spoilers, but I doubt there are a lot of nerds here that are reading the series right now, and definitely none that are reading it for the first time A small recap for those who don't know: The animorphs are a group of 5 teenagers: Jake, Marco, Cassie, Rachel and Tobias and an alien teenager (an Andalite they call Ax) who are fighting an alien invasion. The aliens they are fighting are called "Yeerks" and look like slugs. They crawl into your head through your ear and take over your brain. Trapping you in your own body, still seeing, hearing and feeling everything, but unable to move or talk yourself. People with a yeerk in their head are called a Controller. The animorphs have one weapon: the power to morph. To change into any animal they have 'acquired'. Acquiring means touching them to absorb their DNA, don't ask me how, it's andalite technology that isn't explained much in the books). It does have a downfall though: if they stay in a morph longer than 2 hours, they become trapped and can't change back to their human shape. To extend the analogy: I have to change my behavior, my thought patterns to fight this battle. During the challenges in 2017 I plan to bring down my brain weasels, my yeerk so to speak. The thing inside my head that makes me do things I don't want to. Like eat the entire chocolate bar, skip exercise and makes me feel bad about my body and myself. To guide me, I have made a roadmap for 2017 I will make new goals every week. Or keep them the same. Just what I think I'll need that week.

It’s time to turn it up a notch. My last (un-)challenge worked out phenomenally in unexpected ways. Not only have I had a great, awesome, epic time the last few weeks, I’ve also fallen back in love with fitness. Specifically running. God, have I missed running. I’ve spent a long time thinking about how to set up this challenge. I’ve looked at what has worked for me and what hasn’t, and I’ve made a plan! Achievements work for me. They work much better than rules or numbers. My most successful challenges were those that made me go for shit and not do a certain thing X number of times a week. I like to accidentally clutter my challenges. I feel like I have to put everything I do into my goals and it’s silly. So I’ll be doing much more than what I challenge myself to do and we’ll see how that works out. I like turtles. So for this challenge I'll have goals, they will be rather broad. Within these goals, I'll have certain achievements I can collect along the way. Please feel very free to add achievements if you think of some that I have missed - I like being challenged by you guys. Enough planny shit, here’s what’s going down. I'm going to get fast and strong and eat and live. That is my main goal. And it is especially important in times like this. Unbeknownst to most, the Yeerks have taken residence not only on our planet, but inside many people's brains. It's time I got them out of there. Luckily, I am an animorph. Oh wait - you didn't know that? Well, now you do. Unfortunately there's only so many animals I can touch, and only so much that can be done in 2 hours (don't want to go down Tobias' road and get stuck, that'd blow!) so I've assembled a few animals in my basement to practice with. They shall help me fight off Yeerks. Every achievement unlocked while animorphed kills off one of the Yeerks. I plan to litter the floor with the bodies of dead slugs, yo. Goal Number 1: Run. Horses have always made me happy. Also when I googled animorph pictures and this showed up I laughed for at least five minutes and so I really had no choice but to get a horse and shut it in my basement and abuse it to run from zombies. I'm not a psychopath, I swear. Anyways, apart from the animorphing, it's simple. I want to run. I need to run. Running makes me happy. It makes me feel free and alive and gets rid of all sorts of things like crappy moods and tiredness. I want it every day all day. This goal includes everything run-related. Here's the list of achievements: - Finish the Zombies, Run 5k Trainer - Do an air drop mission - Do a zombie chase and don't get eaten - Run with another person - Run trails - Run through the city park - Run in a different place far from home - Run a 8 minute kilometer - Updated: Run 8 minute/kilometer average on a 5k run - Do 10 uphill sprints up that really steep hill and don't die - Run for 20 minutes straight - Run for 25 minutes straight - Run for 30 minutes straight - Find someone to plan an epic air drop mission with and do it - Run 35km in one week - Run every day for one week - Do a lunch break city run - Do a zoo run - Do an early morning run before work - Run through the rain Goal Number 2: Push it. Push it real good. Everyone thinks that kangarros are just great at kicking but psh you don't know the half of it. MY kangaroo is a total stud and animorphing into kangaroo form is going to be the best thing ever. The goal is to up my push up game. I recently discovered (and have been overjoyed about it ever since) that I can sort of do knee push ups. It feels like push ups are a thing that are possible and more recently I could sort of feel muscles in my arms - what is happening to me, am I stuck in kangaroo form? I don't know. But push ups shall happen sooner or later. Here's the list of achievements: - 1.30 min plank - 2 min plank - 2.30 min plank - 1.30 min elbow plank - 2 min elbow plank - 2.30 min elbow plank - 3 min elbow plank - 30 sec low plank - 1 min low plank - negative push up - push up - 10 incline push ups - 20 incline push ups - 10 knee push ups - 20 plank-to-elbow-plank-and-back-s - 30 plank to elbow-plank and back-s - try those spotted push ups Goal 3: Ditch the candy. And the take out. And stay the eff away from the bakery. This is going to be a tough one. That's why the third animal in my basement is a cat. Cats are picky f*ckers. They don't eat everything. And if they don't like something, they shove it away. Or kill it. Or puke on it. They're assholes, really. I need to be more asshole-y about my eating. I have tasted candy for the first time in years and the best example of how it has ruined me would be the evening that I spend spooning canned frosting with thin mints. It's bad. I love that I'm eating so much, I hate that there's so much junk in there. I'm also spending too much money on lunches that I can simply make at home. So that's the goal. Healthy eating. Pretty basic, right? (I'm typing this as I'm eating the last bits of the reeses heart that I got for valentine's day). Here's the list of achievements: - Prepare lunches in advance for a week - Make a meal plan - Have breakfast BEFORE leaving home every day for a week - Don't eat candy for a week - Don't buy any type of food (unless it's groceries. I'm talkig about the 'Oh I'm hungry I should get a kreppel) for a week - Stay away from the bakery for a week - Cook. Just, whatever. Cook it. Goal Number 4: Sunday Funday Who could be a better teacher to become a party animal than a pug? So much to learn from them. I like fun. I like being busy and never home and just out there. I also like my list of dares that I've not yet completed. There's a lot going on in my life that I could focus on, but as most of those things aren't really a challenge, I just love doing them, and I don't want to overburden myself and set myself up for failure, I'm going to keep this simple. No achievements to be unlocked (currently, I might work on something) but feel very free to dare me. My past sundays have been awesome. Truly awesome. Filled with adventures and amazingness and fun. I want to keep that streak going. Rest days are for the weak. It doesn't matter what sort of fun I'll have on sundays, I just want to use them and not let them slide by. There are too many things to be seen and done. Do you have any other achievements that would work well with my goal? Please share them with me and I'll make sure to add them! No grading. No stat points earned. No rewards. Actually, I might re-think that whole rewards thing. I like rewards.