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[Sylvaa]

Oh look, I started a Battle Log! My goal here is not to replace a challenge thread, but to rather consolidate my goals into a single, manageable thread. PRs and other assorted goodies will be kept here also. Because why not aim for the stars.

 

Sylvaa's Big Why: 

• I'm not happy with myself. I enjoy doing physical things, however my body is not up to the task of actually completing those things I like to do. 
• I want to be able to, with minimal training, be prepared for anything that comes my way. If a friend wants to do a 5K tomorrow, I want to be able to run it. I want to get through a Spartan Burpee free (maybe not counting the spear throw - let's not get too carried away). 
• I want to have the confidence in my physical abilities I do not have in my self. 
• I want to be vain. I want to have self confidence in my looks and appearance. 
   

 

Without any further ado, here is my 100%:

• Run like the wind (or at least a gust)
  • 5K Race Time:
  • 10K Race Time:
  • Half Race Time:
  • Marathon Race Time:
  • Ultra Race Time:
• OCR's (aka - slogging through the mud)
  • Spartan Sprint
  • Spartan Super
  • Spartan Beast
  • Spartan Ultra
  • Tough Mudder
• Triathlon (why not?)
  • Sprint
  • Half
  • Full
  • Ironman
• Bodyweight Exercises
  • 25 perfect push-ups
  • Hit a Handstand
  • Finally do a pull up
  • Balance in crow pose
  • Pistol Squats (R&L)
• Lifting!
  • Deadlift
  • Squat
  • Bench

[Sylvaa]

2017 was kind of a holding period for me. I didn't really accomplish anything I wanted to, but I didn't really fail at anything either. My workout goals are going to be a work in progress, depending on the success I see going forward. 

 

2018 Road Map:

 

• Onederland
  • I am a person who weighs between 170 and 175 lbs or with a bodyfat between 20 - 25%
    • January: Awareness and Tracking
    • February: Reduce Liquid Calories
    • March: at least 50% of my meals contain a veggie
    • April: I do not eat real pasta
    • May: I do not eat non-fruit sweets
    • June: I do not eat bread
    • July: Every meal has a vegetable
    • August: I do not eat white potatoes
    • September: I track my macros
    • October: I adjust my macros to meet my goals
    • November:
    • December:
• Be the Best Me
  • I am a person who takes steps towards self-improvement
    • I consistently hit 5K steps per day
    • I read at least one book on my monthly book club list
    • I write on a monthly prompt
    • I organize my life through my bullet journal
• Badassery
  • I am a person who trains consistently to hit my 100%
    • January: Yoga with Adriene monthly challenge
    • February: I am a person who completes a C25K program
    • March: I am a person who can stick to a month of training

[Sloth the Enduring]

Ummm, wow. That's a well-thought out list. Good luck with it all.

 

P.s. I'm sorry I broke up the flow of your chapters.

[Sylvaa]

2018 Challenge List & Recap

January - January challenge isn't totally over, but it kind of is for me. With the life upheavals that happened, I'm lucky to have finished standing. I'm going to give it 3/5 stars

• January Writing Prompt Document Link
• January Book - Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
  • I didn't hate the book, but I didn't love it either. If you've never read the book (or watched the movie apparently), it's hard to tell a lot about it without spoilers.                                                                             

 

• It follows our protagonist, Kathy H through memories of growing up at Halisham, and her life after graduation. It was really interesting as you learn more about Kathy and her friends as the story progresses. I felt the characters were underdeveloped, but there is a twist to the story which makes me wonder if the characters were written that way on purpose. It was an easy read and the story was entertaining enough. It was probably a 3.7 star book for me.
• 2nd book Murder on the Orient Express - I'm actually a huge Agatha Christie fan, so this was a re-read for me. It's not my favorite of hers, but I think it's a great way to see her style of writing. 

 

February - So this challenge is still ongoing, but I wanted to include a February update. Reducing liquid calories went much better than anticipated. It wasn't perfect, but the times I drank my calories, it was with conscious forethought. Being organized has been horrible lately and it's kind of a downward spiral. I'm ready for a vacation.

• February Writing Challenge Document (note: as of 2/22/18, this is empty as all of my writing has been school related)
• The Picture of Dorian Gray - I finally finished this in April. Meh. I mean, I knew the premise of the story before starting the book, so it wasn't a surprise or anything like that. But I ended up being unimpressed with the final result. There were only a few times where we "saw" how Dorian's choices impacted his picture. And very few of his choices were truly outlined for the reader. So I was left with this fairly lackluster idea of how truly bad his life had been. 
• The Hate U Give - okay, I absolutely loved this book and then gave it to my daughter to read. The plot is fairly straightforward; our main character Starr is witness to a police shooting. The story revolves around not only the impact to her life, but also to her community, and the town as a whole. It made me think a lot, which is more than I would have expected out of a technically YA (there is swearing, so maybe older teen YA) novel. 

 

March - This challenge is over, but I'm still trying to get this updated. Nothing much to report - the full month was dedicated to surviving my last class and graduating (spoiler alert: I did). The nice thing was that this challenge was to make sure meals contained veggies. The only hard part of this for me was breakfast. Being on the road a lot means that I eat a lot of hotel breakfasts, which don't feature a large amount of veggies. Salad went back into the lunch and dinner rotation though, giving me a lot more veggies than I had been eating. 

• Astrophysics for People in a Hurry - I enjoyed this book a lot, but I wanted more. I'm not one for reading a lot of nonfiction unless the topic is really interesting to me and I really enjoyed NdGT's writing style. That being said, the book lived up to it's name, but I would have liked a little more in depth understanding of fewer topics versus a high level gloss over a lot of topics. If all of his books read like this, I'll read more of his by choice.
  • Fun story: my brother (the one that lives with me) currently works for a printing company. The copy of this book that I read was one that he printed!
• I was supposed to read something else, but I'll have to look and see what it is - it didn't happen.

 

April - I dislike the challenge set up to an extent because challenges don't run monthly like all the rest of my stuff does. I should fix this for next year. 

• Something Wicked This Way Comes - Note: this is not actually a book club book. I just couldn't find a copy of one of the books easily, so I decided to read this instead. I've read the first book in the "series" (Dandelion Wine) and decided to get some more Bradbury. I like his writing style and the chapters are really short, which makes it a little easier to find time to read a bit. 
• All the Light We Cannot See - hey, I think I'm only a month behind with a book now! I liked this, but I feel like it was kind of a let down at the same time. The book builds separate story lines to connect together in a climax. Only, the climax was kind of .... meh. Not really a big bang, but kind of a fizzle. The book did a good job of humanizing the characters though! 

 

May - (No challenge link due to it being part of April's challenge)

• Zorro - I read through this in a hurry as I was less than in love with this book. It wasn't bad, it was just a lot of prose with not a lot of action. Which isn't exactly what I was expecting from a book about the younger years of Zorro. This was supposed to be Zorro's backstory, however, while there were pieces that could have shaped him as a person, the connection seemed to be lacking for me. 
• The Night Circus - Meh. I loved the beginning of the story and the way it flowed between characters and timelines. And then it ended. The culmination didn't really click for me well. Like, I got it, but then I didn't. And we're left with the idea that the circus will continue, but no real insight into how or what happens to the characters. I have been reading through the spoilers thread in my Goodreads group and it seems like that is a fairly common reaction of the overall story. The writer does an amazing job writing, just maybe not so much with the full story line. 

 

June - (Challenge link in signature because I'm lazy). June ended up being an amazing month for me! I got my eating together and finally conquered my plateau. Also, I ran like I was supposed to instead of just pretending like I did...

• No books this month. I am currently finishing 1Q84, which is almost 1000 pages long, so July finish to occur!

 

July

• 1Q84 - This was a good, but frustrating book. The story was solid, I loved the ideas and the progression. Unfortunately, I felt like this book should have been about 500 pages shorter than it was. There was so much build up for so many intersecting story lines that the ending seemed really fast and disjointed. I swear there were 15 chapters in a row where nothing actually happened. At the same time, I liked the story. It was very solid and the way the author made the whole thing flow was amazing.

[Machete]

19 hours ago, Sylvaa said:

I do not eat white potatoes

 

[Sylvaa]

4 hours ago, Machete said:

 

 

To be fair, the only type of white potatoes I eat are the crispy fried kind, so there really isn't a sacrifice here.

[Machete]

On 12/28/2017 at 4:12 PM, Sylvaa said:

 

To be fair, the only type of white potatoes I eat are the crispy fried kind, so there really isn't a sacrifice here.

 

And those are the best ones.

[Rooks]

I'm always in for a good list. Good luck in mashing through this list with utter dominance!

[jstanlick]

Nice list! Looks very well thought out. Good Luck!!

[Shello]

Nice roadmap! 

[Sylvaa]

Updated February! Much excite!

 

Workouts have slacked for me. It's a double-edged sword because the worse I feel, the less I exercise and the less I exercise, the worse I feel.

 

My goal is to spend at least 30 minutes 3 x/ week working out in March. It's a baby step towards where I should be. But it's doable. 

[Loyster]

On 12/28/2017 at 10:17 AM, Sylvaa said:

I want to be vain.

 

I love this. I may have to steal that for myself this year.

[Sylvaa]

5 minutes ago, Loyster said:

 

I love this. I may have to steal that for myself this year.

 

Out of everything, that is what you choose to take out of my year long road map? I totally approve! Steal and go forth with pride!

[Loyster]

1 minute ago, Sylvaa said:

 

Out of everything, that is what you choose to take out of my year long road map? I totally approve! Steal and go forth with pride!

 

I had a joke (kinda) goal for this year that I want a lat spread that scares people, so I can definitely get behind some vanity haha
In all seriousness though it looks like you've got a great handle on what you need to do this year. You'll smash this!

[NeverThatBored]

I just found you here! Sneaky sneaky. This is a great list.

 

The Hate U Give was a great book! I read it about a month ago. 

[Sylvaa]

On 4/17/2018 at 3:18 PM, NeverThatBored said:

I just found you here! Sneaky sneaky. This is a great list.

 

The Hate U Give was a great book! I read it about a month ago. 

 

My daughter is now reading it. We are discussing the amount of times we cried through the book. But she is really enjoying reading it too. 

 

Also, did some updating to my above post.

[Sylvaa]

2018 Recap

Is it possible to be both successful and not at the same time?

 

My One-derland goal was to get between 170 and 175 lbs. Guess what?! I GOT THERE! But, I definitely didn't get there as anticipated (and didn't hit my body fat % goal). My diet isn't perfect like I outlined above. But it's also more realistic. Could my bodyfat be lower? Absolutely! Then again, I've also gotten further in my athletic endeavors than I had in previous years.

 

One of my biggest successes has been around bullet journaling. I found a system that works for me and I have been able to incorporate into my professional life (yay!). This will continue to be a focus point for 2019. I hit my Goodreads challenge goal for 2018 and am planning on updating this with more books for 2019. I also rediscovered my love of the library, renewed my card, and am making monthly forages for new reading material. 

 

I've also really gotten into a great habit with working out. I've successfully done something active for a few months now, which I'm going to continue with into 2019. I've run further in one go in 2018 than I ever had previously (this weekend, I hit 6 miles). I've successfully been able to work with my husband on finding a good balance of what we can do together. 

 

What did not work:

• I'm working on finding a good creative outlet. A monthly writing prompt was a good idea, but my ideas aren't necessarily that organized. I want to find something that allows me to be imaginative, but also structured.
• I'm still struggling with yoga. I know it's not a requirement, but I also know I need to incorporate more stretching / flexibility into my life. So if yoga isn't going to be something I'm going to be able to stick with, then I need to find something else to do instead. 
• While I lost the weight I wanted to, I'm still struggling with eating due to my own stomach issues. I can't physically handle an all encompassing diet. I need to do a better job of tracking my foods and resulting stomach issues. It's important to figure out whether certain foods are the issue or if it's something else.

[jstanlick]

That is a pretty good year! Nothing ever goes perfectly as planned. You lost weight, ran farther than ever before, and you've gotten your journaling figured out. That's success in my book! Here's to an even better 2019!

[Sylvaa]

7 minutes ago, jstanlick said:

That is a pretty good year! Nothing ever goes perfectly as planned. You lost weight, ran farther than ever before, and you've gotten your journaling figured out. That's success in my book! Here's to an even better 2019!

 

I guess I should act more excited about my progress, huh?  For me, I've really had a lot of lackluster success over the past few years. So this year being a success is kind of anti-climactic because I should have had this success before. So yes, it's definitely been a win. But it should have been a win from like two or three years ago. But 2019 is a new year to make awesome.

[Sylvaa]

How Sylvaa is going to rock 2019

Month by Month

 

• January - This could have gone better, but could have gone worse. Having an early baby come into play made a few weeks harder than they would have been normally. That being said, the gym is definitely more of a regular occurrence than a one off. My current journal has a habit tracker, but I'm not in the habit of using the habit tracker yet. I did get (most) of my home maintenance check list completed though, so there is that.
  • Habit Tracking
  • Fitness
  • Home Maintenance
• February - 
• March - 
• April - 
• May - 
• June - 
• July - 
• August - 
• September - 
• October - 
• November - 
• December - 

 

2019 Reading Goals Book List

• Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
• The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter
• The Song of Achilles
• The Food Explorer