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Well, I'm still here. The weather out here has taken a turn for the awesome, and we've had a very snowy fall. I have a very interesting road ahead of me now. A substantial portion of my bandwidth is going into getting this house buying thing across the finish line. The above is the view from the window. Yes, in Colorado deer are everywhere. There are issues with the inspection, and I'm hoping the Seller can meet with me near the middle and get us across the finish line. This will be fairly vague, but I'll keep you updated with the effort. Pending any luck, I'll be closed before the challenge ends. Exercise, foam rolling, and diet. This is just an on going battle. Getting away from microwaving my food, sitting on my posterior, and not taking care of myself is just a perpetual annoyance. Good news is I have been taking advantage of the weather and going for walks in the snow. My goal is simply daily activity, foam rolling, and eating right 2 days a week. Start easy. Faith. A touchy topic, but I would be remiss in not listing the biggest struggle I'm in. While I was in Korea, I ran into a sequence of men who were excellent examples on the faith. A lot of my questions were answered, and I made the decision to take my faith seriously. This means altering 20+ year old behaviors. Fret not, I'm not becoming some holy roller, the more I experience, the more I know that humility is one of the virtues I need to work on. I don't know what the metric is to measure this by, but this is where the majority of my effort is going for the foreseeable future. - Murphy's Roommate

Still here! Goals are simple. Foam roll nightly. Some form of exercise 4x a week. Elliptical, pushups, whatever. We're not being picky here, we are starting a habit. No more than a 10 hour day at work, and fight for 8's. Some days I cannot control this, some days I can. I had grandiose dreams from the previous challenge to get into the mountains. Then I worked almost every weekend. Not so good. This time, more manageable "go for a hike" instead of camping. Once more unto the breach. - Murphy's Roommate

I'm not sure if this is the best place to ask, but I am just starting a new workout routine, and have had issues in the past due to tight everything. Especially around my hips; occasionally my hip flexors get so pissed off with me that they stop working entirely for 12 hours or so (which does look hilarious if I have to raise my leg... I have to manually lift my leg with my hands). I have been told foam rolling is the way to go to prevent bad effects from my new workout routine. Does anyone have a good source for how to use it?

Overview / Motivation: This challenge will primarily focus on attacking my lingering low back pain / discomfort that I've been dealing with for way too long now. After some research, I came across some content on pelvic tilt which seems to be a big cause if not the sole cause of what I'm dealing with - too much time sitting in a chair at work all these years... I'm ramping down my training a bit to focus on yoga and some exercises to counterbalance the tilt. Fingers crossed I make some progress. Main Quest: Defeat my lower back pain and pelvic tilt Side Quests: Average 2 Weight Training Sessions / Week Points Potential: STR+4 Grading A= Average > 90% B= Average > 80% C= Average > 70% D= Average > 60% F= Average < 60% Complete 10 minutes of foam roller / stretching daily Points Potential: DEX+4 Grading: A= Average > 90% B= Average > 80% C= Average > 70% D= Average > 60% F= Average < 60% Complete 3 Core-focused Yoga Sessions / Week Points Potential: CON+5 Grading A= Average > 90% B= Average > 80% C= Average > 70% D= Average > 60% F= Average < 60% Life Quest: Complete my application to the 'Leadership Coaching for Organizational Well-Being' Program at George Mason by July 21 Points Potential: WIS+2 Grading: Pass / Fail

So my high school football season has come to an end, after a terrible, terrible season. I now will have a ton of extra free time and I will continue training, but my focus this challenge is on relaxing. Foam Rolling: I plan on lifting 4 days per week during this challenge. My particular goal is to finish up each session with a full body foam rolling session. That would mean 20 sessions over the course of this month, but I am going to Los Angeles towards the end of the month and I will be skipping that week, lowering me down to 18 session. Walking: I worked up quite a bit of steps at practice every day. To make up for those lost steps and to improve my conditioning I will be walking on each of my 4 lifting days each week. I will be following this plan to keep pushing my walks. Again, that puts me at a potential 18 sessions for the month. Weekends: During my recent challenges, my week days were really successful, but my weekends have been awful. I still want to have fun and enjoy my weekends, but I can't binge every weekend. For this challenge, I will chart and stay under my allowed calories Friday - Sunday. That means I need to chart for 12 days (I will not be counting on my trip). Painting: I love painting miniature soldiers, but due to buying/remodeling a house, getting married, and coaching football, my painting time has been nonexistent this year (only 2 models painted since I have moved into my house). My goal this challenge is to do some painting at least 3 days per week over the course of this challenge, this should put me at 14 days for the challenge. I will also post pictures of my work as I complete it. Goal: My goal for this challenge is to lose 10 pounds. Reward: There are 62 opportunities for me to work on myself this challenge. My goal is to have at least an 85% success rate which means I need to get at least 53 successes. If I can hit this goal, I will purchase my self an ab roller.

Continuing with my respawn ... I'm back with my second challenge of 2016. It's something of a two-edged sword; continuing my progress from the last challenge and also catching up on stuff I missed. My points will all be recorded in my NF character profile So without further ado, my challenge goes like this: 1. Treadlift v 2.0 Treadlift "build" workouts are a 12 week compilation, which perfectly splits into 3 lots of 4 weeks. The workouts are the same in terms of arrangement (with 4 workouts per week) but progressing to level 2 and leaving level 1 behind with the last challenge. Still 30-mins per workout but switching it up and keeping it fresh! 32 points on offer here (2 per workout) 2. Foam rolling! I foam roll my muscles for at least 10 minutes every day. 28 points available (1 per day) 3. Steppage! Not sure that's a word, but it's what I call it anyway. I strap on a pedometer and I record how many steps I go each day. I can't improve on something I don't measure so the first step to improvement is measurement. 20 points on offer for this quest (5 for each week I complete a log of steps) 4. 365 catch up! I photograph Edna every day, but for a while now I have missed days. Over the course of this challenge, I will see how many days I am behind and I will catch up to where I am supposed to be. 20 points awarded if I complete this, pro rata points if I partially complete

This song popped up on Pandora while I was on a run the other day. I had vague plans to organize my challenge around some of the lines. When that looked like hammering a square peg into a round hole, I decided to keep the song after all, as a dose of fortifying nihilism. Old School More recent take Dust In The Wind (1977)Kansas I close my eyes, Only for a moment and the moment's gone All my dreams, Pass before my eyes with curiosity Dust in the wind, All we are is dust in the wind Same old song, Just a drop of water in an endless sea All we do, Crumbles to the ground, though we refuse to see Dust in the wind, All we are is dust in the wind Now don't hang on, Nothin' lasts forever but the earth and sky It slips away, And all your money won't another minute buy Dust in the wind, All we are is dust in the windDust in the wind, Everything is dust in the wind Mission: Run with my wife in the Scenic City Half Marathon in February 2016. Goal 1: Run three times per week. I have a conservative training plan leading up to the race. Keep to the plan or it doesn't count. The first week I am running two miles Monday and Wednesday, and then three miles on Saturday. By the end of this challenge I will just be transitioning from "building the foundation" to "ramping up the mileage", up to ten miles per week and a "long run" of four miles. Goal 2: Focused cross-training twice per week. I am going to use body-weight and dumb-bell exercises chosen specifically to complement my running: single-leg deadlift, dumb-bell lunge, glute bridge, things like that. Extra exercise is a bonus, but I need to be more specific in my effort. Twenty minutes or more per session. Goal 3: Stretching and rolling daily. I usually do some static stretching after running, but I need to re-incorporate foam rolling and using The Stick roller-massager. Five minutes or more per session. Non-fitness goal: Write every night. Before bed, I plan to spend a few minutes writing. Diary, creative journal, food log, something to get me writing.

[i think there should be a prize for having the longest challenge intro post. I think I’d be a contender... -ed.] Mobile Frame Zero is a tabletop war game played with lots of multicolored dice and customized robot armies made of LEGO, engaged in a full-contact capture-the-flag battle (there’s so much Nerd-Force in that sentence, I blew out three keyboard trying to type it. o0;). The rules and setting are suitably dorky and complex, so I’ll leave it to you to decide how much you want to try to understand them, but the important part here is that customized LEGO robot armies are awesome. I think we can all agree on that. Confession: I’ve never actually played this game, but I love the concept so much that I’ve made a hobby of designing mobile frames and sharing them on Flickr. Main Quest: Become My Own Hero If you’ve been to one of my threads before, you probably know where this is going. My Red Mage balance-lust can never be sated, so when thinking about how I might build a company of frames to field in a game, I was compelled to create a group of specialized individuals that add up to a well-rounded whole. There are risks to this approach, of course, but those can be minimized with flexible tactics. I love me some tactics. tl;dnr Front-Liner: Explosive drills 5x/week Fire Support: Foam rolling 2x/week Assault: Rope Dart Target Practice 3x/week Scout: Sleight of hand tricks 2x/week Rifleman: HabitRPG goals met 7x/week Generalist: Mini Challenge Let’s get versatile!

This is my first challenge as an actual assassin-type-gargoyle-thing, and the first challenge I am starting with injuries! Yay!... and not-so-yay! Backstory: I was silly and failed to fall properly from kind of really high while bouldering so went and injured my ankle 5 weeks ago. It still bothers me every now and then but is definitely improving. I also seem to have injured my shoulder....some...how 3 or 4 weeks ago. Over-use? SILLY ME. Both are nearly at 100%, though the ankle is lagging behind since... it's kind of hard to not use it. I have not gone climbing since. I shall return to this glorious scaling of walls very carefully, avoiding any routes where I have high chance of slipping off holds, being unable to climb down due to exhaustion, or putting my foot into really uncomfortable, injury-aggravating positions. My first climb will be a very cautious test run - any pain whatsoever and I'm out of there for at least another week. This sucks, but it is necessary. Main Quest Long term goal: Be a healthy Cinalyc that can conquer the harshest of trails. Summit a snowy mountain that wants to eat everyone for breakfast. Explore that there Earth and conquer her hills. Six week goal: Once again, complete all level 1 climbs at the gym. There are apparently plenty of new ones since I last went (5 weeks ago) and I am recovering from two injuries. I must reclaim the wall. Carefully. Complete all level 2 climbs at the gym (still just as carefully), as I almost cleared every level 1 on the first day Motivation: I aim for continuous improvement in all things. It's much easier to do that while healthy. Crushing challenging hikes and climbs is also just simply enjoyable - what more do you need? Objective A: Werkit (+3 STR, +1 CON, +1 STA, +1 DEX) Work out every other day, following this (flexible) four day pattern: Day 1: Stronglifts + inverted rows. Inverted rows become full ROM pull ups once I can get my chest to the bar. Day 2: Mobility work (see below) Day 3: Climb for 1.5 - 2.5 hours... or Stronglifts + inverted rows if my ankle is not yet keen to climb, or a free-weight circuit. Day 4: Moar mobility work! .... repeat Objective B: Flexit (+2 DEX, +1 CON, +1 STA) Fix my body with mobility work. In case that's a little too vague, here's how: Foam roll pecs, T spine, hip flexors, hip adductors, and quads. T spine extensions on foam roller, ~10 sec per vertebrae 2x30sec hip flexor lunge stretches. 2x30sec doorway pec stretches. 2x30sec arm crossover stretches. Stretches will be alternated / mixed to avoid boredom and taking breaks. OR Hot yoga. Most likely rarely, though I do have an odd yearning for this torture as of late. Objective C: Nutritionit (+2 CON, +2 STA) Eat healthy food. (Eat some bad food too ) Avoid: Most starches, most grains, processed food, etc. Added sugar (drinks) must be less than 30g/day (down from 45g). Eat: Vegetables: So many vegetables. Majority of food intake. Protein: Chicken, beef, wild fish, eggs, quinoa, unsalted nuts, 100% plant based protein powder. ~100g/day. May increase if necessary. Fruit: Berries, avocados, apples, pears, pomegranate, tomatoes if we're being pedantic. Drink: Water, black coffee, tea with stevia, almond milk, coconut milk (more like eat). Starches, Grains: Yams, sweet potatoes, long grain brown rice and pasta made with it. Some carbs outside of this is fine. Cheat: Once a week: One less-than-healthy snack, one less-than-healthy meal. Life Quest: Rockit (+1 WIS) Play guitar for at least 30 minutes on at least 3 non-workout days every week. I slacked off on my guitar playing over the holidays. Boo! And with that, I hereby swear to obliterate these injuries... with great care. I shall climb again. It shall be excellent. Edit: Goal upgraded. I'm apparently not as disabled as I thought. Yay 5 week healing window! Edit: Updated descriptions to include stat points, and names!

Main quest Be a strong bad ass and look killer in a bikini. Taking a challenge off has been helpful in a few ways – redefining my goals and looking at what I really want to achieve. I started here on NF just over a year ago. I was a bit disappointed to look back and think that there isn’t really anything specific that I have done in the last year that I can say “Yay! I achieved Xâ€. In the spirit of always growing, I do feel like I’m more awesome than I was a year ago, and that I’m armed with more knowledge too. I’ve definitely done some things I never would have over the past year if I didn’t participate in these challenges – especially completing my first whole30. One thing I found I’ve been lacking is specific fitness goals for myself. My post a year ago was that I want to reduce my bf%. That’s great, but I had no measure, no pictures, no big driving force. Upon (many!) chats with a good friend around here (Teros – honestly, I’m not sure how he had time to talk to anyone else, plus be the awesome guild leader that he is, with the amount of PMs we had flying back and forth! ) I’ve realized that yes, losing that fat would be awesome and make me happy, but it’s not a big driving force. When I was cheerleading in university, we would do fitness testing a couple of times a year and I loved feeling that strong, squatting my own body weight and more. My new main quest is to be a strong bad ass and look killer in a bikini. The strong bad ass is because I need to set specific goals to hit that will motivate and drive me. Right now, it’s the end goal of a pull-up. This is the ultimate in badassery. As far as looking killer in a bikini, this still keeps with the idea of dropping bf %, but I’ve taken photos to make it more measurable (I'm not brave enough to post them yet, but they exist, I promise). Don’t get me wrong, I look decent in a bikini, and I do go to the beach like that, but if I dropped just a little bit more body fat I would look killer I’m short, and so I know what is realistic of my body and what isn’t, so my definition of “killer†is rooted in reality. I was looking for examples of what my goal would be, but honestly, every picture I found was either some girl who was too skinny or too ripped. So I'm just gonna do me. My three goals to achieve my main quest are: 1. Whole30 – I have completed one and once I set my mind to it, it actually wasn’t that hard. It’s like going to the gym – the hardest part is deciding you’re going to do it and get your butt there. Once you’re there, you have a good workout and it was totally worth it. I haven’t been able to make myself commit again, and it’s been discouraging. For me, bad eating is a super slippery slope. It tends to be all or nothing. When I did the first one I saw major results – the overall shape of my body changed, I lost pounds, and I felt great. My boyfriend even said that I felt smaller. This one is 100% 7 days a week. Doing a whole 6 week challenge is 42 days, plus I started this on Oct 27, so technically my whole30 ends November 26. Another part of my reason for doing a whole30 is that I have psoriasis on my scalp, and I'm hoping that reforming my eating habits will help get this under control. 2. Bedtime routine – I have a few goals that I would like to roll into one, and luckily they work together. I would like to spend more time working on my flexibility, rolling with my foam roller and using my yoga tune up balls (amazing!!) and doing some meditation. Hopefully getting enough sleep too. Luckily it makes sense to do all of this at once/in combination. I might night get to EVERYTHING every night, but I want to make sure I do some of it, if nothing else a few minutes of meditation. I should be getting a book in the mail on this next week called The Role Model, which is very exciting for me, and should hopefully help keep me motivated. I would love to do this every night, but weekends might not be realistic, so I'm going to shoot for 5 days a week. 3. Rows – Here’s where my fit bad ass part comes in. I want to work on inverted rows daily as a progression to pull ups. I will do inverted rows daily, adding one rep/day with my TRX suspension trainer. I will be marking where my feet are (aka the steepness of my incline) and once I reach a certain number of reps (maybe 20?) I’ll move the mark so that it’s harder, and likely reset the number of reps down to 10. This goal is going to be 6 of 7 days a week. It's kind of like the PLP challenge (but just the one P!) so I don't see a problem doing it every day and giving myself one day off. Side/life quest – I plan to start working towards my CanFit Pro personal training certification at the beginning of December (when most of my fitness classes wrap up for the year). At that point, I want to create a timeline for getting my certification. Until I get the material though, I really can’t make a schedule for myself. Motivation is the part I always have a tough time defining. I have a passion for health and fitness and I just want to keep growing, learning and getting better, being better. I'm going to be a personal trainer to spread my love of fitness, and one day in the near future own my own fitness business and I feel it's important to practice what you preach, show people that' it's doable. I think it's important for clients to see that you're not perfect either. I will never be tall and thin, but I can rock what I have going on. It's always a journey, and different phases of our lives will require different things from our bodies and minds. Scoring: 1. Whole 30: 7/7 7/7 3/7 1/7 0/7 0/7 2. Bedtime: 5/5 4/5 4/5 1/5 1/5 0/5 3. Rows: 6/6 6/6 4/6 1/6 1/6 0/6

A little late but here goes... So tomorrow marks my 1 year NF anniversary. And while I wish I could say my life has drasitically improved or changed since then, it hasn't. This doesn't have anything to do with NF, it has to do with me and how I've been approaching this journey... my brain has certainly changed dramatically in the way that I look at the world and what I do with and put in my body. But somehow everything I've been working on just hasn't stuck. I've had bouts of sucess and bouts of failure over the year, but nothing really consistent. Going over my past challenges (excluding my most recent) I notice a trend of doing really well in the beginning, and falling off towards the end. Or doing well all the way through only to lose a lot of my progress during the zero weeks. Essentially, habits have not been formed as I had hoped. Basically I've been having some trouble getting through the every day stuff. Even after my vacation I came back and instead of feeling refreshed and jumping back into things I have kind of just been sitting around for 2 weeks and doing not much at all. So now I am switching everything up. Instead of assigning myself specific tasks, I am going to just make sure I do a few things every single day. I have gotten into the habit of meeting my goals on a weekly basis instead of a daily one. I'll cram in 3 different work outs in one day (morning, afternoon, evening) or do extra sets to make up for a missed work out. But, shockingly, my body doesn't respond well to that and I'm really just playing mind games with myself pretending I'm doing what I've asked myself to do. I've also been struggling with how to eat healthily. Mostly because the restrictions I've put on myself (which really do make my tummy feel awesome) my boyfriend has a hard time enjoying. Even if I make something that I think is delicious, he still wants pizza or cheese fries or something of that nature. And it's hard to have to try to stick to my guns and eat what I made and try to convince him to eat it too nearly every day. So I end up giving in a lot and we eat something terrible. So I'm going to back off on some of the restrictions I've had in place and see how I feel and will possibly work them back in at a later date, this is in the interest of cooking healthy things that hopefully the boyfriend will want to eat, and that we can enjoy together. I'll be not considering gluten a failure anymore, as long as it is in whole grain form. I will also not be so picky about dairy, since I have learned I can't not eat pizza, I just need to think more when I eat things that are "bad". If I don't think of it as bad it will hopefully be easier for me to eat a normal human amount instead of like 20 slices. More on this down in my food mission. So. I will do small things. Or big things. Or medium things. My choice depending on how I'm feeling as long as I do something from each category every day. Every day I will focus on myself and improve myself a little bit. Even if I'm exhausted and it's something super tiny, it's still something better than yesterday. Every Day Missions 1) Move. This can be running, yoga, strength work out, swimming, or going for a walk. Or even hopping onto my mini stepper for a bit if I'm super busy. Even stretching and foam rolling counts here if it's a rest day or I'm super sore or sick. Just do something every day. Especially if it's capoeira. 2) Meditate. I started using Headspace before I went away and continued to use it on vacation but I kind of lost track of it since. It's small little meditation sessions that build up over time in length and intensity (ie - become less and less guided) and eventually begin to branch out into different aspects of life that I can focus on. I absolutely love it, so I'm going to make a commitment and really start doing this every day again. 3) Make Healthy Choices. Try to avoid gluten, but when neccessary make sure it is whole grain. Also portion control is key. Don't over eat. I know when I've screwed up, if it's one thing I've gained over the year it's knowledge of what's good and what's bad to put into my body. Actually following through with this hasn't been super sucessfull but I do know. So this is kind of subjective but that's also kind of the point. I want an overall feeling of making healthy choices and really thinking about what I put into my body every day. I'm not too worried about the nitty gritty. 4) Improve My Space. Clean something, or organize something, or make something look a little nicer in my space every day. Even if it's tiny, even if it's just scooping the cat litter. If I'm not home for a day, this can be as simple as organizing my purse, throwing receipts out of my wallet or cleaning my hair brush. Just something. 5) Sleep. Get at least 7.5+ hours a day. This can be supplamented with naps in extenuating circumstances. No excuses. 6) Be accountable. I have tapatalk, I have access to it everywhere. I can get on here every day even if I'm not at a computer. Even if all I say is something like "Today: 1235" beecause I everything on this list except for number 4 sort of thing. It's not that hard. I can do it. This doesn't count towards grading but I'd really like to keep on top of it. Bonus Activities These will make sense once I get to the grading portion. 1) Brain Train. I don't expect to do this every day, but I do want to do it a few times a week. I have a free Luminosity account and also a brain exercise thing on my DS. So either one will work. (MAX 5 POINTS/WEEK) 2) Snake Love. Not sure if I've mentioned this before here but I own 4 snakes. I completely love them but sometimes I don't play with them as much as I probably should/want to. So once a week or so I'll try to take them out and handle them. (MAX 1 POINT/WEEK) 3) Pamper. Take a bath. Give myself a face mask. Get a manicure or a pedicure (or do it myself). Do something nice just for me. (MAX 1 POINT/WEEK) 4) Boyfriend Time. Do something romantic with the boyfriend. We have been living together for 3 years now so the romance is starting to be more like let's lay on the couch all night in our PJs and order in as opposed to going out for a nice dinner or see a movie. I feel the opportunities to be healthy are much better in going-out situations too. Plus I enjoy dressing up and looking/feeling nice. (MAX 1 POINT/EVERY 2 WEEKS) 5) Volunteer. I've been volunteering on occasion with HRC, if the opportunity arises during this challenge I want to volunteer more! (MAX 2 POINTS/CHALLENGE) 6) Duolingo. This is basically a free version of Rosetta Stone. I've been on and off using it for Spanish for about a year now. Hopefully I can find the time to work on this a bit. (MAX 5 POINTS/WEEK) Grading I will start off with 175 points. If I miss an every day task, I lose one point. If I do a bonus activity, I gain one point. But I can't get more than the max points per week from the bonus activities listed under each bonus activity (so I can't just take 20 baths in one week and get 20 points haha) At the end of the challenge I will grade myself based on my end total points. 175 is 35 (days left in the challenge) times 5 (number of daily tasks). So I can't actually get below 0. 210+ points: A (15 stat points) 190-209: B (11 stat points) 175-189: C (8 stat points) 125-174: D (5 stat points) 100-124: F (1 stat point) 0-99: F- (0 stat points) I will award myself the above number of stat points. Since my end grade isn't broken up into how well I did in each category, I will decide at the end what kind of stat points I get depending on what I feel I improved upon the most during this challenge. And I'm off!

I'm a very driven hobbit who works harder and harder until she accomplishes her goals. Often I push a bit too hard... until I fall completely to pieces. Last challenge ended with the threat of falling to pieces. I don't want to go there. Maybe if I take enough time to stop DOING new stressful things, I will enjoy BEING the hobbit I am. Maybe it's time to simply be my whole hobbit-y self. Maybe it's time to refocus on the things that I know are good for me. Main Quest: Lighten the Load At the end of this challenge, I plan to hike the presidential traverse in New Hampshire with friends. I'm going to use this challenge to care for my body as a whole and hopefully drop fat in order to tackle this challenging new hike! Starting Stats (7/14/2014) Weight - 177.5 lbs Caliper Body Fat - 26.1 Body Fat Calculated - 27.2 Waist - 38" Hips - 41" Chest - 38" Thigh - 25.5" Arm - 14" 1) Whole Mind [+4 STA] - Meditate 6 days per week I need to get my mind back in the right place. I've been flirting with meditation for a while and finding that it really helps me to be aware and accepting of myself in the moment. I'm commiting to follow the plan outlined in Full Catastrophe Living and use the matching app that has the guided meditations. One week down, seven more to go. 2) Whole 60 [+4 CON] Last challenge showed me that I will game any food system that I come up with. Also it's too easy for me to "get behind" and give up on posting photos of my food. I started a whole 60 (my longest yet) on 7/14, which means that I'm currently finishing up day 12. Sept 11th (the first day of our hike) will be day 60. Perfect! I already feel so much more at home in my skin. Anybody wanna be good food buddies? 3) Whole Body [+3 STR] - Bodyweight Training 3x per week. I love doing bodyweight stuff at the playground (or at home when it's raining). Plus, this will give me the functional strength that I need to lug my pack through Mordor the Presidentials. Side Quest - Foam Roll [+2 STA] Time to get my IT bands ready for the mountains. No more excuses. Life Quest - Make Music [+2 CHA] - 3x per week This is good for my soul, mind, and mood. Sounds like the perfect supplement to a challenge searching for wholeness. Ready, rebels?

Basically, follow my training plan for the Semi du Cep half marathon on 9 March. Complete Whole42. Photo document all food eaten. No logging. Handstand work every day, including inverted posture work during Monday yoga. Complete mini body weight workouts M-F and Sun. Wear more black. No stats. No badass points. I'm on a mission to unlock prestige class: ninja. A hybrid scout/assassin with sensory skills and strong genjutsu. Whole42 Meal Plan: week 1 brekkie: bacocauli omelette, coffee w/ coconut, green beanslunch 1: tuna salad pepper cups, avocado, brusselslunch 2: mexican meatza cakes, raddicchio, zucchinisupper 1: choco chili n fixinssupper 2: brats, sauerkrat, sauteed shrooms n leeksPWO: beet salad, boiled eggs week 2brekkie: ham egg cups, coffee w/ coconut, sauteed zucchinilunch 1: spicy almond baked sole, bacon brussels sprouts, lunch 2: pulled pork salad w/ avocado and veggsupper 1: beef and eggplant bake, green beanssupper 2: sambal roasted chicken, ghee soaked cabbagePWO: pikant sardines week 3brekkie: brekkie meatloaf cups, scrambled eggs w/ peppers, coffee w/ coconutlunch 1: sardines, mashed cauli, green beanslunch 2: chicken stirfry lettuce wraps w/ cashews, green beanssupper 1: shredded asian chicken cabbage bowl w/ avocadosupper 2: bacon, mushroom, and beef chili, sauteed zucchiniPWO: cashews Repeat for weeks 4-6

Hello! Hi. This is my first time here, so a bit of introduction: female, 27, originally from the US [Wisconsin!] and living in Portugal these days. Recently got involved in roller derby and will probably start actually playing in bouts starting in the fall. Getting more and more interested in weightlifting - have been doing Stronglifts on and off. Have never really been at a normal, healthy weight / body fat. Luckily, I don't hate my body or anything [most of the time!], but I know it's capable of so much more, in terms of both strength and aesthetics...so it's time to really go at it, especially now that the semester is winding down and I'll have more time. Side note: Despite being involved in roller derby and enjoying running [some days more than others...], I won't have any goals related to those because I'm trying to figure out some foot pain. I think it's extensor tendonitis, resulting from overuse [started with a lot of activity after a few months off with an injury] and/or trying to get into minimalist running [Vibrams, also after a few months off - was using C25K and taking it slow, with only a maximum of eight straight minutes of running after several weeks, but maybe my form still wasn't quite right, or trying to get into minimalist running while also skating several times a week was the problem...]. Anyone have experience with this? I could babble on plenty more, but I have six whole weeks for that... #1: Consistent strength training Joining a powerlifting gym tomorrow! I want to follow a consistent program and see where that gets me. Will either continue with Stronglifts or see whether the owner has any particular suggestions or programming that he thinks would be good for me [at first, this may be more about working on form than a set program, since that's what we focused on when I went there to check it out]. He'll be busy with a week-long meet this week, so I'll probably just do a few Stronglifts-style workouts to see where I'm at after taking some time off, but hopefully I'll have something concrete figured out by the week after next. The main point here is to do strength training at least three times a week, preferably with some kind of consistent programming. #2: Mobility/"pre-hab"/flexibility I usually do a bit of stretching after workouts, but I could be doing much more. I want to do at least two hours of yoga and two sessions of foam rolling each week. #3: Nobody likes cookies, anyway I've been eating a lot more salads and vegetables in general lately, but some delicious cookies have been my downfall - I open a package and go a little wild. So...no packaged/processed desserts / dessert-y snacks! And I'm really referring to things like store-bought cookies, not, say, Greek yogurt, even though of course it comes in a package, too. Dark chocolate is okay. I bake occasionally and go a little wild then, too, but it happens much less often than reaching for a package from the pantry, so it's not a focus this time around. #4: Do it nooooooow My procrastination just seems to be getting worse and worse, and it's one of the things I like least about myself. Aren't I supposed to be an adult who doesn't do that sort of thing now? It'll be a long, tough struggle to work on this aspect, but I'm trying to make more of an effort to apply the "do it now!" principle to my life. The end of last semester was miserable for me because I put off my term papers so long that I had to do all of them in just a week or two and I had no time to relax. It was awful and I don't want it to happen again this semester. I have four papers to write, so I'm going to give myself a week to do *each* of them, with one each "due" on June 9th, June 16th, June 23rd, and June 30th. And they need to be done in a relaxed way, not entirely in the two days before each deadline! Ideally, they'll all be done just in time to have a completely relaxed week in Italy the first week of July. When I get back from that, I plan to apply "do it now!" more to keeping the house in a reasonable state. Some aspects of these goals are still a bit vague, but since it's my first time doing this, I want to see how it goes and what I'm capable of. I'll grade each goal on a weekly basis and average it all out at the end. And like I mentioned, there'll be one week of vacation - I don't plan to get out of control or anything, but I'll be suspending the challenge for that week. I'll also be spending a long weekend in England to cheer on my team [and spend a little time in a country where I understand (almost) everything going on around me - that'll be nice!] in a couple of weeks, but it shouldn't disrupt things too much. Sorry, I get wordy sometimes! Any feedback/input/etc. is definitely welcome. I'm ohnonebraska on Fitocracy, as well. I'll try to keep up with a few other threads, too, but hopefully not to the extent that it gets in the way of my fourth goal!