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We can get away with completely recycling goals from one cycle into the next, right? A four-week cycle is very short, much shorter than my typical training cycles. Here is a look at the upcoming six weeks: Week 0: March 11 to March 17 - Waiting for Spring, Week 9 Week 1: March 18 to March 24 - Waiting for Spring, Week 10 Week 2: March 25 to March 31 - Waiting for Spring, Week 11 Week 3: April 1 to April 7 - Waiting for Spring Deload Week - And Spring better be here by now! Week 4: April 8 to April 14 - Meet Prep Program, Week 1 Week 0: April 15 to April 21 - Meet Prep Program, Week 2 So Week 3 I am goofing off and finding creative new ways to get into trouble. Week 4, I am obtaining new programming. I might as well shamelessly recycle all of my goals into the next cycle! So here we go! Important upcoming dates: March 16 - This is Groundhog Day, plus 6 Weeks. It should be spring by this date! As I am typing this today, it is snowing. Four more days of winter! April 14 - Good Friday April 18 - Tax Day Quest 1 - Solve the Iron Crisis! This is pretty straight forward. The biggest part of this is behind me already. That would be accepting that I have an iron shortage and take steps to deal with it. Just keep eating and popping those red pills. There is no retest until April and that will be somewhere in the next Challenge Cycle. But it is presented here because this is apparently the foremost issue I am dealing with. Other than that, maybe I will be lucky enough to notice some changes as we deal with the iron crisis! Same thing. Somewhere around the Week 3 break, I should get my iron tested again. Quest 2 - Waiting for Spring, Part 3 Right at the start of this year, I got new programming to follow. I named the program after one of my favorite winter activities: Waiting for spring. It is a 12-week cycle, broken into three blocks of four weeks each. We will be completing the second block in this Challenge Cycle. Going from memory, it kind of looks like: Day One: Snatch complex, Hang Snatch for heavy singles, Clean and Jerk complex, Cleans for heavy singles, Squat and Push Press 5RM with backoff sets. Day Two: Paused Overhead Squat 3RM, Paused Deadlift 3RM, Overhead Press 5RM with backoff sets, Farmers Carry, Lower back extension and lateral raises. Day Three: Snatch complex, Snatches for heavy singles, Clean and Jerk complex, Clean and Jerk for heavy Singles, Front-Squat 1RM with backoff set. Day Four: Snatch Complex, Hang Snatch for heavy singles, Jerk complex, Clean and Power Jerk for heavy singles, Deficit Clean Pull heavy 3x3, Squat 3RM with backoff sets, Lunges and planks. Day Five: Squat 10RM with backoff sets, Deadlift heavy triples, Dumbbell bench press, pull-ups, and single dumbbell rows. This should keep me well distracted while I wait for spring. Quest 3 - Don't Die Track the number of times I die. The last time I died was on January 22, 2017. So. Number of Cycles: 2 Number of Deaths: 1 Quest 4 - Tracking This is almost a copy and paste of the previous cycle. Just adjusting a couple of things. Still working on IfItFitsYourMacros and being a little bit less extreme on IfItFitsYourMouth. We have approximately one year's worth of data showing a slow increase in weight at 3350 Calories per day. Setting my goals slightly lower and using slightly less than 0.9 g Protein / pound bodyweight and splitting the rest of the calories in a 3:1 ratio, I get something like: 3240 Calories 360 Carbs (270 to 450) 120 Fat (90 to 150) 180 Protein (160 minimum) So we are not shooting for any kind of precision here. Let's just see if we can hit the broad side of a barn. When we miss, then I can go looking for the culprit and evaluate from there if I should be making a different choice in the future. We will come up with a list of things we can get away with and things we cannot! Meal prep once per week. One outing per week, even if MB would have me become a hermit. One dessert between now and the end of the cycle. Try to be original and post the picture! Track weekly weight over 2017. Track open, high, low, and close. The candlestick chart from last year was fun! Last cycle we hit 26/35. This cycle we are backing off on the minimums a little bit, because I thought it was pretty lame that I have what I think is a good day on MFP and I am just a little bit short on a macro. So we are widening the target again. Quest 5 - Life Hax - March Edition List things to do for March and cross them off. It's still Tax Season! And I finally have enough information to start assembling it! Maybe I will be early this year! Update Last Will and Testament. More stuff as I think of it. The last cycle did not work out nearly as well as January did. I might do well to coordinate everything into my program's break week. But we will see. Taxes come due in this cycle, so I finally have to do it. I was rewarded for my procrastination with a pdf tax organizer I can work with. It is really just coming up with a pile of papers and stuff to hand over to the accountant. Quest 6 - Plan and Execute Zero Week in the Program The program consists of three four-week blocks and we have Zero-Weeks between each block. The NF Challenge Cycle and this Program are off by one week in alignment. So Zero Week in the Program corresponds to Week 4 of this Challenge Cycle. I have made it a Quest to come up with things to do over this Zero Week. This zero-week was rather boring. I took a lot of rest days and hit a set of 20 squats at 224 pounds. I also did a lot of exploring MBTI personalities. At the end of this Zero Week, we will be obtaining new programming! Quest 7 - Other Quests as they Appear And that's it.