Jarric updates his challenge

[Jarric]

Right, I'm going a bit more low-key this time. Lets start with the wrap-up from last challenge:

 

Spoiler

August challenge wrap-up, such as it is!

 

It's actually been a good couple of weeks, so here's some stuff that happened (which I may or may not have mentioned already):

• New Deadlift 5RM at 140kg (308#) - which pleasingly is 3 big plates on each side
• New Squat 3RM at 107.5kg (237#), and 5RM at 97.5kg (215#) (and probably a new 7RM at 87.5kg (193#))
• Yesterday I ran Nuts Challenge! We took it pretty slow, as I was running with a work colleague and he wasn't quite as quick as me over the distance. Still, I had fun for 14km (8.7 miles) and for 3 hours and 25 minutes. I may do a fuller report in my next challenge.
• I had a week off work, and used it to paint the bathroom, do a bit of DIY, and spend quite a lot of time relaxing.
• I finished the D&D mini-campaign I've been running online today, and had a lot of fun with that
• We have some new people who've started at work, and though it's going to take me a lot of time to train up the guy I'm mentoring, I'm optimistic that there's light at the end of the tunnel from a workload point of view

Goals-wise I haven't been doing great, other than exercise which is always a pretty easy win. Still, whilst I haven't been hitting my goals, I don't feel like food and drink have been too disastrous. Overall, I'm ready to move on to the next challenge, which I'm going to really strip back and just make about being present here.

 

So this challenge I'm not ready for a lot of goals, and I just want to make sure that I'm staying here and staying accountable. To that end, I have one goal:

1. Update here ever day.

 

That's it, it's that simple. Which isn't the same as it being easy, but it is simple. There's no restrictions on what I can talk about, so it'll just end up being a general blog about stuff I suspect.

 

I meant to post this yesterday and didn't, so I'm currently 0/1, and posting this today puts me at 1/2. 

[TiogaGirl]

Yay simplicity, and you’re right, that is not the same as easy. 

[Mr_Willes]

35 minutes ago, Jarric said:

There's no restrictions on what I can talk about,

 

 

 

[Jarric]

2 hours ago, TiogaGirl said:

Yay simplicity, and you’re right, that is not the same as easy. 

 

It's not! But it still feels like a good thing. Also, hi!

 

1 hour ago, Mr_Willes said:

 

 

 

 

[Cheetah]

3 hours ago, Jarric said:

a general blog about stuff

 

Sounds lovely. 

 

Happy Challenge!

 

 

[starpuck]

I for one, really love reading the slice of life that is Jarric posts!   Seriously.   I've said it before, but the way you tackle the day and how wonderful it sound just from your simple posts, has always really inspired me to strive for that kind of day in day out pleasantness toward life.

 

Glad you are making it a goal to check in daily!!!

 

[Terra]

5 hours ago, Jarric said:

 

It's not! But it still feels like a good thing. Also, hi!

 

 

Simple can be so hard.   BUT... you got this!!!

 

[deftona]

I'm looking forward to following this one  

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

Following also as well. Agreed on the simple does not equal easy theory.

[Jarric]

On 9/7/2021 at 4:46 PM, Cheetah said:

 

Sounds lovely. 

 

Happy Challenge!

 

 

 

Thanks man!

 

On 9/7/2021 at 7:55 PM, Starpuck said:

I for one, really love reading the slice of life that is Jarric posts!   Seriously.   I've said it before, but the way you tackle the day and how wonderful it sound just from your simple posts, has always really inspired me to strive for that kind of day in day out pleasantness toward life.

 

Glad you are making it a goal to check in daily!!!

 

 

Oh thank you, that's really sweet! Given that I missed yesterday I'm not of to the best start, but hopefully I'll get back into the habit over the next few weeks.

 

On 9/7/2021 at 9:36 PM, Terra said:

Simple can be so hard.   BUT... you got this!!!

 

 

Thank you

 

 

On 9/7/2021 at 10:37 PM, deftona said:

I'm looking forward to following this one  

 

Looking forward to having you.

 

On 9/8/2021 at 2:17 AM, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

Following also as well. Agreed on the simple does not equal easy theory.

 

Good to have you Tank.

[Jarric]

So lets talk about the week so far. In fact, lets start with last weekend.

 

Last weekend I ran Nuts Challenge, a local OCR. It was a fun little race, doing two laps of the 7km (4.35 mile) course. I ran it with a mate from work, who hasn't run a race in a few years and is a bit out of training, so we took it fairly slow. It was nice to be on course with someone, rather than running solo, and to take things at a more leisurely pace for once.

 

The pictures have come out for it too:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So that was fun. On Sunday I finished off a short D&D adventure I've been running over the summer whilst our normal Ranger D&D game is on hiatus. I failed to kill any of the party, and I didn't even get to turn anyone to stone, but the paladin killed the last basilisk but fighting it from the reflection in his shield, Perseus style, and that was pretty cool. They were a fun group, and it was interesting to run something that had a time limit and a defined end.

 

At the gym on Monday I hit another new deadlift 5RM at 142.5kg (314#). I'm feeling like I can keep building this to 150kg over the next few weeks, all being well, and that'd be pretty cool.

 

Tuesday evening I had a session zero for a new Pathfinder 2e game I'm going to be playing in, now that our Mummy's Mask game has finished. We're mostly the same group, with a couple of new players (one of whom we decided pretty quickly isn't going to work out, due to an immature attitude and lack of personal hygiene, but such is the way with inviting new people to the table). 

 

We're going for a fairly monstrous party of lizard folk, kobolds, and tengu, with me playing a Gnoll bard, whom I think I might describe in more detail once we've had our first proper session.

 

Yesterday evening I packed up my car and took it over to my parents house, and then signed the paperwork to sell it to my sister. For the first time in 12 years I now officially do not own a car. It's a weird feeling. At the moment the plan is to be a one car household, as WW and I both walk to work and we rarely, if ever, need the car at the same time. We'll see how it goes, and if after a few months we don't like it I'll have at least saved a few months' worth of tax and insurance.

 

Update counter: 2/4

[DarK_RaideR]

Always happy if this means you'll show up here more often.

[Terra]

Sounds like you had a great time at the Nuts Challenge.  Mud and smiles are the best!!!  

[starpuck]

Omg.  Did the photographer tell you all when pics were being taken and ask for poses and smiles?    If not, you are the most photogenic "natural" pose OCR person I have ever seen!!  Those are fantastic pics!!!   

 

Lots of gaming on the table, hah, I punned.   Sounds good there too.    I am curious how you handle uninviting someone to the group?  That's something my main peeps never managed to figure out well.

[deftona]

How do you manage to make all that shit look so effortless, Jarric? I agree you're the most photogenic person in the goddam world. 

[Cheetah]

Great work in the race!  It's love to do one of those some day.  🙂

[Jarric]

On 9/9/2021 at 9:57 AM, DarK_RaideR said:

Always happy if this means you'll show up here more often.

 

Thanks man! That's certainly the plan (though it's not going that well so far!).

 

On 9/9/2021 at 3:19 PM, Terra said:

Sounds like you had a great time at the Nuts Challenge.  Mud and smiles are the best!!!  

 

I did, it was great, thank you.

 

On 9/9/2021 at 7:59 PM, Starpuck said:

Omg.  Did the photographer tell you all when pics were being taken and ask for poses and smiles?    If not, you are the most photogenic "natural" pose OCR person I have ever seen!!  Those are fantastic pics!!!   

 

Lots of gaming on the table, hah, I punned.   Sounds good there too.    I am curious how you handle uninviting someone to the group?  That's something my main peeps never managed to figure out well.

 

I knew where the photographer was for all of them There's a few pictures where I was looking away from the photographer, but I haven't shared those!

 

Well our GM uninvited him, which made things easier. Basically I think he just said that we didn't feel it was a great fit, and that we didn't think the kind of game we were playing was the kind of game he was looking for. It helped that we met him for the first and last time at session zero - easier to deal with it up front than after weeks of play.

 

On 9/9/2021 at 10:10 PM, deftona said:

How do you manage to make all that shit look so effortless, Jarric? I agree you're the most photogenic person in the goddam world. 

 

Practice 😛 . Seriously though, I'm having fun, and I'm very deliberately trying to smile for the camera. I wouldn't say I was particularly photogenic.

 

3 hours ago, Cheetah said:

Great work in the race!  It's love to do one of those some day.  🙂

 

Thanks man! You should, they're a lot of fun, and in a normal year you have a lot of choice to help find the type of race you enjoy.

[Jarric]

Thursday was a good day. Work was a bit disjointed with lots of meetings, but I got some stuff done. Left early as we had our team summer night out (basically the company had given us £30/head to go to the pub). It was amazing to catch up with everyone in the team, some of whom I haven't seen for 18 months as we've been split it to two groups for social distancing.

 

We met at 4pm, and I was one of the final three people still in the pub at 10pm. I felt fine, drunk, but fine, when we left, and it was only when I got halfway home that I realised I was very drunk indeed. Ended up spending half the night asleep on the bathroom floor, which was not very restful - I haven't over-indulged like that in quite some time.

 

Friday was a good day. The morning was a bit of a write-off thanks to Thursday night - I logged into work for urgent things but I wasn't that productive. I felt better by the afternoon though, and had a fairly good day.

 

Yesterday was a very good day, as it was another race day. This time Nuclear Blast, a 5k lapped OCR where you aim to get as many laps as possible, and have 2 hours in which to start your final lap.

 

I would have loved to have got 4 laps of this, but I knew that that would be a tall order, and when the first lap came in over 45 minutes it became pretty apparent that that wasn't happening. Still, I had a really good time, and managed to take a few minutes off last year's result:

 

2020 results:

Lap -- From Start -- Lap Time

Lap 1 - 00:52:20 --  00:52:20

Lap 2 - 01:43:29 --  00:51:09

Lap 3 - 02:37:12 --  00:53:42

 

Yesterday's results:

Lap -- From Start -- Lap Time

Lap 1 - 00:46:27 --  00:46:27

Lap 2 - 01:35:01 --  00:48:34

Lap 3 - 02:28:53 --  00:53:51

 

My energy totally tanked in lap 3, as you can see by my time dropping off quite a bit. 

 

Unfortunately whilst I managed 3 laps, my shorts gave up after 1.5, and I ran the rest with a huge hole in the back of them

 

After some food and a beer I headed home for a nice long bath, more food, and more beer. WW and I watched a bunch of Dara O'Briain's Go 8 Bit, in which minor celebrities play a bunch of classic computer games - it's very good.

 

Update counter: 3/7

[Jarric]

Yesterday was a good day. I had a lie in in the morning, and WW cooked a mini fry up for us which was lovely. I had an argument with British Gas about their horrendous service, wrote a letter of complaint, and then delivered that on my way to climbing.

 

Climbing was fun. I was knackered from Saturday's race, so I only did about an hour of relatively straightforward stuff. Then I fell off the slackline for a while before heading home.

 

I spent a good chunk of the afternoon playing Majesty - an amazing, classic RTS in which you build a kingdom, set up heroes guilds, and then recruit heroes who may or may not feel inclined to kill monsters and protect your realm. Alternative popular options include stealing from your kingdom, in the case of rogues, gambling, in the case of elves, or, in the case of wizards, dying every time they get near a stiff breeze.

 

In the evening WW did roast chicken, and we watched some more Go 8 Bit until it was time for bed. I went to sleep relatively early, a little after 10pm, but I still feel like I need more to catch up with last week and the weekend.

 

Update counter: 4/8 (3/7, 1/1)

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

36 minutes ago, Jarric said:

wrote a letter of complaint

Isn't that comparable to a US Citizen driving a car through the front lobby?

[starpuck]

It makes sense that your final lap was slower since you pushed your first two laps with such a noticeable bump from last year!   That's still an awesome results line there!  And omg, your pants!  LOL.   How bad was the hole??

 

 

[Cheetah]

20 hours ago, Jarric said:

OCR

 

Sounds amazing.  Great job!

 

 

[Jarric]

2 hours ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

Isn't that comparable to a US Citizen driving a car through the front lobby?

 

more or less. We've been here 6 months without a working gas meter (we have gas, just no way of knowing how much we're using), and they've been sending me payment chasers and threatening to call in debt collectors for a bill that we're paying (even though every time I call them they say to ignore the chasers). It's getting a bit much!

 

 

1 hour ago, Starpuck said:

It makes sense that your final lap was slower since you pushed your first two laps with such a noticeable bump from last year!   That's still an awesome results line there!  And omg, your pants!  LOL.   How bad was the hole??

 

 

 

It took me far, far too long to remember that pants does not mean the same thing there than it does here. To be clear, my shorts were ripped, my underwear wasn't (though I guess is was very much on show  )

 

Instagram isn't embedding right now, but if you look at the third picture here you can see just how bad it was: https://www.instagram.com/p/CTr48bAojWF/

 

 

58 minutes ago, Cheetah said:

 

Sounds amazing.  Great job!

 

 

 

Thanks man! It was great fun.

[deftona]

4 hours ago, Jarric said:

It took me far, far too long to remember that pants does not mean the same thing there than it does here

 

This always reminds me of this

 

 

[Jarric]

On 9/13/2021 at 10:10 PM, deftona said:

 

This always reminds me of this

 

 

 

I never really watched The Office, and clips like this make me question that choice