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Yay Halloween! One of my favorite holidays! Time to start making costumes, and work really hard to get in shape to wear mine! So many exclamation marks to start! Let's see...goals... Eat Better: Building on my goal from last challenge, I'm going to keep working on cooking at home more. This time, I'm going for 8 meals/week cooked at home, with at least 2 of them being dinner. Not going to track this right now, but I'm also going to try to eat more paleo. Might try to track it later, but for this challenge the focus is really going to be on cooking meals at home. Get Bendy: I need to increase my flexibility to get better at roller derby. Also, I'm planning to be Black Widow for Halloween, so, ya know. I've got an awesome strength and mobility (beginning cross training) program for derby that I'm going to be doing twice a week. It goes for 6 weeks, and since I started it last week, it'll finish at the same time as the challenge. I'm also going to do yoga or other stretching for at least 15 minutes on non-practice days. Pretty much straight copying this one from last challenge. Edit: realized our practice schedule has changed, so I needed to adjust the number of workouts to get in. Clean the House: I'll come back and edit this one after zero week, because exactly what it entails will change a bit depending on what I get done this week. I have two rooms and the storage closet left to deep clean in the house. Then the whole thing will be done. I would like to get that taken care of this week. If I succeed, the challenge goal will be maintenance of the house - everything picked up and put away before bed, no dishes left out. If I don't get that done, I'm going to incorporate getting it done into the challenge in some fashion. Edit: We got part of the remaining two rooms picked up, so week one goal is going to be cleaning up the rest of the house. Then weeks 2-4 will be keeping it picked up. Make the Costumes: Exactly what it says. I have a tiny Captain America and Winter Soldier to make, as well as a full-size Black Widow. And I need to make/acquire a Hydra pin for Husband. If I can get them finished by the end of the challenge, awesome. If not, I've got one extra week. I would really like to have them done by the end of the challenge, so I don't have to go crazy doing everything last minute for once, and can actually enjoy Halloween and the various events we might want to go to in costume ahead of the big day. Score card for easy tracking: Eat Better: 0/32 meals, 0/8 dinners Get Bendy: 0/21 17 workouts (edited to account for a couple extra practices that got added over the course of the challenge) Clean the House: 0/21 days picked up, 0/2 rooms cleaned Make the Costumes: 0% done

With the very real hope that I will set off some kind of throw down, what is everyone doing for Halloween costumes this year? I'm doing a Pictish warrior. Unfortunately I don't have a picture of that, but here's me as Albert Einstein a few years ago. It was at work and I had my whiteboard covered with several of his equations (which no one noticed).

Nightcrawler_Bamff Joins the X-Men! Nightcrawler awakens in the medical center of the X-Men's mansion after his defeat by the Blob. Professor Charles Xavier is at his bedside. "Welcome back, Kurt. How do you feel?" "Like I was hit by a bus" "You took quite a blow, but with a couple days rest, I expect you'll make a full recovery." "I am sorry, Professor. I failed and Blob got away." "No, Kurt, he didn't. Your efforts kept him busy long enough for me to arrive and telepathically subdue him. The police were able to handle him from there." There was a knock at the door and with Professor X's beckoning, a tall man dressed in dark blue and yellow with a visor covering his eyes entered the room. "Kurt, this is Scott Summers, Cyclops. He is the leader of the X-Men." "Hello, Kurt. I hear you are the one we need to thank for stopping the Blob." "But I failed. It was the professor who stopped him." "Without you, Professor Xavier would not have gotten there in time and there would likely have been numerous injuries, if not fatalities. As part of a team, one is able to accomplish so much more than they would be able to on their own. I watched the footage from the encounter; your skills are impressive. With some training, I feel you could be a valuable member of our team." "And you do not mind the way I look?" "Don't hassle me about my shades and we'll call it even." "Zen I shall give you my best." Challenge 10(!!!!) Time to start training for the X-Men! Main Goal: Slim down and tone up. We got tickets to San Diego Comic Con this summer, so I need to look my best to try to fit in with all the amazing costumes I know will be there! Gymnastics: Continuing to work on back handspring combinations and aerials. Specific Quests: 1. T25! Got the program from a friend and I will be following this workout program IN ADDITION TO gymnastics workouts. I've done P90X and Insanity with great results, but got burned out from the minimum of one hour workouts seven days a week. I'm really excited about this program because it is supposed to be Insanity condensed down to just 25 minutes a day. 2. Eat right! I will be following the Weight Watchers program throughout the challenge and tracking my food/activity points. 3. Splits! Haven't made too much progress the last challenge, but going to continue working on these. Wont be devoting as much time to this as previous challenges due to time constraints (see "life" section!!). Stretching sessions will happen once daily, seven days a week. Life: Yet another super busy challenge! 1. School: I'm currently taking two classes, which are turning out to have a lot of homework and will need to be my priority. 2. Star Wars costume: I decided on Kyle Katarn because his costume is relatively simple and goes with my friend's Mara Jade costume. I would like to have this costume at least most of the way completed by the end of the challenge. 3. X-Men costume: Continuing to upgrade Gambit. By July, I will need to have an extendable staff, boots made of foam and warbla, inside pockets added to the trench coat, and sew a bodysuit. Current Gambit:

And what are you wearing? I love Halloween - I always have and always will. This is the first year I can dress up for Halloween at work in about eight years - my old work wasn't really into that - and so I'm going to dress up and it's going to be awesome. I found the perfect costume - blue Star Trek dress uniform + pointy ears + pixie haircut = fem!Spock. I just hope everything gets here in time, otherwise I'm going to have to go with my backup plan - pirate. So, who else is doing the costume thing? I want to know!!

Hello again nerds, Shukar here. Quick introduction for those of you who may be new around here. I'm a runner who used to be a big fat guy, and now is just a slightly overweight tall guy. I hit my heaviest in college and decided that I was done with being fat and not doing anything about it and started running. I've done a lot of things for my health and fitness journey since then but running has been the constant refrain in my efforts. I do a number of other things mainly to improve my running but also because I just want to be the most awesome I can be. My Mission is to finish my upcoming races and be a better healthier me for having done so. The whole package of how I aim to accomplish that can be broken down into a few parts. • Running: I've got a training plan that I put together to get me to and through this race and I'm most of the way through it already, just have to keep up with it and everything should go awesome. Since I'm already signed up for a couple more races after this one I'll also be putting the finishing touches on the training plan for my next races as well. • Energy: Running takes a lot of things and energy is one of them. For me that mostly means food and sleep. Last challenge I upped my average daily sleep from 6h to 7h and that was a good change, will more be better or have I found the sweet spot already? I'm gonna try and find out by having at least 1 week with averages at 7h30 and hopefully 8h (that one is gonna be the trickier one) and see if I feel better those weeks. Food is a little more complicated but I know from experience that cutting out gluten will give me a lot of bang for my buck in terms of my overall health and especially keeping down GI issues during my runs, so I'm shooting for trying to keep as many of my meals gluten free as possible (start with 50% and work up), and the 3 days leading up to my race weekend 100% gluten free. • Power: Power can mean many things, but here it means Strength. Strength is going to take 2 approaches this challenge. First a streak. For the last few challenges I've been doing some streaking with my resistance training and found that it's good for keeping me on track with things, but that I was just adding too many things and not putting enough focus on any of them. I'm correcting that by making my streak 4 things that I'll do every day; Pistol work, Pushup work, Handstand work, and Pullup work. I say "work" because none of them is really a completed movement with good form at this stage, but I'm learning to be better at all of them and that's the point. The other part of my power play is kettle bells. Twice a week I'm going to do 5 minutes of Turkish Get-Ups, and 5-10 minutes (starting lower and working higher of the course of the challenge) KB Swings; once a week I'm going to do some lunges, squats, and single leg deadlifts using the bell. The goal of both sides of my strength work is that by making myself stronger I will become a faster, less injury prone runner, and burn off some extra fat in the process when combined with some work on my diet. I'm not looking to get huge, and I probably couldn't if I tried while being a runner, I'm just looking to lean out a little and become a better version of me. Level Up Quest: I've spent a lot of time plotting and planning for various projects over the years to try and have fun adventures. This time it's time to settle down and make some happen. This may take the form of a few life enhancements over the course of the challenge, but it's going to start with me completing the costume I'm hoping to wear for the race, and helping the wife finish hers. It's honestly not that difficult, I just could use the push to make sure I actually do it instead of just letting time get away from me again. So there's my goals for the challenge, now to go out and complete them. I'm going to try and get some starting photos and measurements into place before the end of the first week, but we shall see how that goes.