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War weary and tired of the road, the Rangers return from Loki’s stronghold with their reclaimed leader to where the guildhall once stood. For the last three mini-challenges our guild has been at war. Demons attacked and ultimately destroyed the guildhall in the first challenge, then we attacked back in the second challenge, then our leader was kidnapped and we rescued him and a friend in the last challenge. Now we have come home, and it’s time to rebuild the guildhall. This will be done in several phases, each of which will be described as the weeks progress. For now, we still have the use of our Guild Tent thanks to the barkeep, who has traveled with us the whole way. If all goes according to plan, we will have our new guild hall up and running by the end of the challenge. We are combining the feat system with the cumulative goal system. Three of the four weeks we will be working together on measurable things like we have done in the past. One of the weeks will be a Domestic Rangering (taking care of your household) feat. If you want to help out with the rebuilding of the new guildhall, put your NF username down on the mini-challenge tracking spreadsheet and post below introducing yourself and any construction related skills your character might have and declare your Domestic Rangering feat. This could be cleaning a certain room in your living space, or making sure all your cleaning stuff gets done for that particular week, or maybe organizing that one closet. The Barkeep seems to have gone on ahead of the rest of the guild, consulting with the architects about the new hall. The site will be the same, the old hall stood over a storage cave where most of the goods were kept and had managed to be kept safe from the destruction. The tent is already set up for us to use till the hall is finished. ___________________________________________________________________________ Week1: You Must Gather More Resources. Before we can begin rebuilding the Guild Hall, we need something to build it with. So for week 1 we will be quarrying stone, chopping down trees, and gathering dirt for mortar. This will be represented by several activities from which you can choose. Wood Choppers will represent cutting down trees and milling them. Kettlebell Swings will represent mining for stone. Shovelglove workouts will represent gathering supplies for mortar. We will track it by multiplying reps times weight. It would get to technical trying to keep the three separate, so any of the three, in any combination, counts toward the goal. Keep track of how many reps you do at each weight, and post your totals in the mini-challenge tracking spreadsheet. Wood Choppers: Here's a video showing you how. Use any weight you want. I recommend doing the same number on each side, but so we're clear, 1 swing = 1 rep. So if you do 20 to the left and then 20 to the right, count that as 40 reps. Multiply reps times weight for the number you put in the spreadsheet. KettleBell Swings: Here's a video showing you how. Again, weight times volume. As for what swings count, if you swing it like in the video, it counts. Doesn't matter if you use both hands, alternate hands, or even get it over your head, each time the kettlebell goes up and down that's a rep. Elastigirl is our resident expert here. Shovelglove: Here's their website. If you do anything off of their website, multiply reps times the weight of your hammer. Sloth the Enduring and Lady Shello are our resident experts here. You can do any combination of these three and it counts. You can do all KB swings, or all Wood Choppers, or all shovelglove, or mix and match. We need a total of 50,000 to get enough materials to build the hall. Week2: Return to Base. We have gathered all the supplies we need to re build the guild hall. Now we need to get them to the construction site. This weeks feat is a distance feat. We need to log 220 miles as a guild to get all the wood, stone and mortar supplies to the fort so we can use them. The barkeep is getting positively giddy with anticipation. Apparently the rubble we cleared from the old hall was organized in our absence, which means the new hall will be even bigger and more impressive than the last. Any mileage counts, whether its real world stuff or on some sort of cardio machine, just log your miles on the tracking spreadsheet. Count anything from 12:01 am Sunday morning your time to 11:59pm Saturday night your time. Week3: Construction Commencing. We have gathered all the supplies we need to rebuild the hall and transported them to the construction site. Let's build this thing! To represent moving the supplies into position, shaping them, and actually assembling them, we will work with over the head weighted exercises. By that I mean anything that involves moving something weighted over your head. That could be any of the Olympic lifts or their variants, over head press, push press, thrusters, squat thrusters, squat press, Turkish Get Ups, any of it. Again, multiply weight times reps to get yours score and post it on the tracking spreadsheet. We need 50000 lbs to finish. Week4: Putting the Tent Away Well done everyone, we've got the project done on time and under budget. The only thing that remains is to give the guild tent a thorough cleaning before folding it up and putting it away one last time. That's right, it's time to do your Domestic Rangering feat. When you finish, put a 1 in the week 4 column by your name in the tracking spreadsheet. At least twenty of us need to get our feats done to get the tent cleaned and fully packed into the cart.

Holy crap guys! This is my first themed challenge of 2016, and I’m hoping it will be a silly/weird/fun one! This month is definitely going to be an adventure - the Crossfit Open is in progress, podcasting is getting super serious, St. Patrick’s day and my Mom’s birthday are this month, I’m going to be making some big adjustments in my diet, there are serious changes happening at work, I have some health stuff going on to plan for, aaaaand I’m partaking in my first ever Ranger Mini Challenge. So, in light of all this, I figured what better theme to cover all the shenanigans than... ____________________________________________ Adventure 1 - I don’t want to hurt you, but you should know - things get crazy when I’m hungry. Meet protein goal no less than 5 days/week. +2 CON | +1 STR | +1 WIS Per my coach (who is also a certified nutritionist), I tracked my food all of last week to find my baseline intake for protein. Starting this week, she wants me to increase my intake to 145-150g per day - slightly less than 1g/lb. I’m averaging about 82g/day right now, so this is going to be somewhat challenging for me. To take a little of the guesswork out of it, I’ve come up with a super basic daily meal ‘plan’. It only lists proteins, everything else (sides, veggies, how the protein is cooked or served, order in which I eat them, etc) is up to me when I’m doing my weekly meal prep. The majority of my protein is going to come from shakes (protein powder), chicken, fish, eggs, and greek yogurt. Other suggestions are welcome Adventure 2 - Puncha yo buns! Increase Crossfit to 3 WODs + Open every week +3 STR | +2 STA At the end of the last challenge (so, last week), I made the decision to upgrade my membership at my crossfit gym. RIght now I have the 3x/wk plan, but I have always had the intention of one day upgrading to the unlimited option. Well, I think now is that time. I’m becoming more confident in my abilities, I’m starting to lift heavier (though nothing crazy yet), and I really want to put more time towards attaining my goals. My membership won’t upgrade until the middle of the month, but because of the Open we’re allowed to come in to complete the WOD (or re-do it). This is the perfect time to start getting into a 4x/wk schedule, join in on the Oly class weekly, and then eventually crank it up to 5x in a later challenge. Adventure 3 - Let’s go kick their digital bootays! Participate in my first Ranger Mini Challenge +2 STA | +1 DEX I think it’s finally time that I join in on the Ranger Mini - and what a time to do so! I was part of the generation that grew up on the original Pokemon show, it was a big part of my childhood. I can’t believe the franchise has reached it’s 20th anniversary already... Anyway, my team is in the next post. Adventure 4 - Ah nah...I am not getting eaten by zombies tonight… Keep on top of my research for the podcast +2 CHA | +1 WIS For those of you who do not know, my friend and I host a horror themed podcast where we talk about a different movie every week. We started working on this at the beginning of the year, and now we’re about 10 episodes into recording. At this point, we’re looking to add more structure and elements to the show - reformat it a bit. We’re branching out to video games, books, possibly comics, and whatever else we can find. This is awesome and I’m super excited, but it also means more research and time working on it outside of the ‘studio’. Recording is done every other week, which gives me plenty of time to complete my set of show notes. It’s going to be a matter of making the time, and setting up a prioritized schedule for myself so that I’m not going crazy at the last minute (which is what I’ve been doing…). For this I’ll be using my new-ish planner; I’ll fill it out in 2 week sections to keep the work manageable and spread out. I’ll post pictures of my planner if necessary to keep myself on track. What I have to do: - create check list of topics - set schedule in planner - complete research/type up show notes