Jarric

Yeah, it was really good! Would have been great to see them back then though. I wasn't around in '87/'88 to see them tour it, so it was good to now (though I've actually seen them a few times).

So, "how's week 4 going?" I hear your cry... silently. Monday my shoulders and arms were absolutely wrecked from climbing. The obvious thing to do therefore was to hit Crossfit in the morning! We had bench, where I hit a new 5RM of 57.5kg (~126.5#), and a WOD of 8 minutes AMRAP of 5 plyo pushups and 5+5 kettlebell snatches. I got 7 rounds, which wasn't great compared to the rest of the class, but then I could have got another round or two if I'd have scaled to normal pushups and quite frankly I'd have been cheating myself if I did. I don't think I've even known upper body DOMS like it though! Work was busy, though it is starting to drop off slightly as the week goes on. Monday evening I cooked a really good risotto and we ate it in front of Critical Role. I'm only part way through the latest episode, but can I just say... Yesterday I got up for my run, 1/2 mile warmup, 5 miles alternating fast and slow, and a 1/2 mile cool down. Fast miles were 9'08", 8'51" and 10'13" respectively. I probably could have pushed harder on these, although sometimes it's hard to judge running off-road and in the dark with a headtorch where the limit to my speed is not all down to fitness. Yesterday evening I went to see Def Leppard on their Hysteria tour. It was a really cool gig, if slightly bizzare because they started by playing the Hysteria album in its entirety, which basically meant that all the big hits that they would usually end the show on were actually in the first 8 or so numbers. Got back home very late at 01:15, in bed about 01:30... ...and then up at 06:00 this morning for Crossfit. Hit a new max on Deadlifts today at 127.5kg (~280.5#) for 5 reps. Then 300ft heavy sandbag carries - I hit 75kg on that, but gave up on the 85kg attempt after the first 100ft.

I guess I just didn't realise how close the two of you were It's a shame the sound isn't clearer on this. Or possible a really good thing; I'm not sure which!

I'll let her know you said that, she'll appreciate it. Hope you get some more sleep soon dude.

WW was fine, honestly. I'm surprised, because if i came home on my own that drunk I'd probably get in trouble, but somehow she really was ok with it. I think this was all in your head - once you got going you were doing really well. It takes a while to get used to a new place, and different route setters have different styles and judgements on difficulty.

Week 3 Wrap Running - went poorly. I overslept and missed both Tuesday and Thursday's runs. Did Parkrun on Saturday, but then skipped Sunday (for reasons I'll explain below). I'm at 49.48 miles after 3 weeks; I should be around 75 to be on target :/ . Food - ??? probably not great Pullups - I had a bit of a lighter week at home and ended up skipping some, chiefly because I did lots of stuff at Crossfit and totally destroyed myself climbing Saturday. Still hit 86 for the week, which isn't the end of the world. Budget - yeah right... I had the most amazing day on Saturday, because it was a Ranger Christmas meet with @jonfirestar, @Charlie_Quinn & @Rhovaniel. We went climbing and had a really good laugh there (videos exist I believe), went out for a Christmas meal, exchanged secret santa presents (Jon got me running gels and powders and all those things I need to learn about for endurance races, which was excellent), and then went to a craft beer pub and got very very drunk. The pub drinking included us reading, and in my case dramatically over acting, this week's battle speech, which can be found in the Ranger Guildhall. We had such a whale of a time that everyone ended up missing their trains home, and so we all poured back to mine so that Charlie could sleep on my sofa, Rho could sleep on my floor, and Jon could sleep with a pizza. The most amazing thing though was how comfortable and at ease I feel around these guys, bearing in mind we only really meet in person at races our aggregate real life time together has been pretty limited, but I feel like I've known them for years. Anyway, after all of that, and a truly epic quest to find a fried breakfast the following morning, I was in no fit state to do any running or exercise on Sunday. I don't regret it, to be honest.

Yeah, momentum is an odd coordination problem; I need to get down to Wild Forest with you to practice it. I envy you your quiet time, I'm only going to get more busy and stressed until Friday!

It has been a really busy week. I won't bore you all with a blow-by-blow of every day, but here's the short version. Friday I got up at 5am, went for a horribly early run, then got a train up to York (just shy of 5 hours) to watch the snooker UK Championships. Had a really brilliant day with Hopalong and The Captain, drank far, far to much, spent a couple of weeks worth of budget money, and then got the train all the way back Saturday morning. Because of this I missed running on Saturday, so I would have had to do running and bouldering on Sunday. In the end I skipped bouldering and did my 11 mile run instead - even though I'd have more fun bouldering the long run is more important for me to do right now. Monday I had a meeting in Telford, which meant leaving home at half 5 in the morning for a 10am meeting. It was a long long day driving there and back and having the meeting in the middle, and because I got up so early I had to miss morning Crossfit. I went to the evening Crossfit session instead - an interesting experience going whilst I'm awake and with a totally different crowd of people. I didn't enjoy it that much, but I think that might have been stress getting the better of me together with being surrounded by new people. I've overslept twice this week - Tuesday and Thursday. Interesting that I can't haul myself out of bed on those days to run, but that I got up in time for Crossfit fine on Wednesday and today. What that means though is that I haven't run all week, which is pretty bloody silly given that I've signed up for an ultra-marathon OCR next year. I think I just need to snap the fuck out of whatever funk I'm in and get back on this. Work is stressful at the moment - having Friday off and all day out at meetings Monday and Tuesday left me with a lot of work for the rest of the week and little time in which to do it. Add to that that it's Christmas, I haven't bought any Christmas presents and I'm slowly pushing more and more stuff onto my credit card which I've been working so hard to clear and I'm just... struggling. I'm going to stop moaning about it though, because I'm sure it's no more fun for you to read than it is to write, I guess that I just wanted to admit that I'm struggling at the moment. I won't hit my mileage goal, though I'll get that number as high as I possibly can. I haven't tracked variances all week but I've had a lot. Pullups are going strong, though I'm not sure if I'm stronger for it. Budget is dead and buried.

Mission accomplished . Don't worry Puck, I won't be dropping strict pullups any time soon. Not least because my bar at home hangs from a door frame, and I think I might rip it off the wall if I tried kipping on it! At the moment I'm more worried I might develop a habit of leaning back into my pullups like I would with ring rows, rather than going straight up. I feel I need to ask on the kilts - was that a good thing? I hadn't really thought about that, which is daft given that this is exactly the kind of transferance I was looking for from Crossfit to OCR. There's definitely a coordination challenge with kipping which I need to master. It's alright, the weekend @jonfirestar, @Charlie_Quinn, @Rhovaniel and I are meeting up to climb and drink together is actually tomorrow. I'm sure we can post a few pictures on the chat for you. Thanks for needling me to come back here guys (and thanks for chasing me on Discord too, I wouldn't have seen it otherwise). It's been a busy week, and a challenging one. I'll get an update together now.

I must confess I haven't watched your first 2 blogs yet - I haven't been on the forum for about a week and I can't watch videos at work anyway - but I'm game for this.

So yesterday afternoon was indeed very busy, I had a mince pie as another variance (we've run out for now thankfully, I love mince pies!) and then I went home and cooked dinner before snooker. I'll try and channel @Tanktimus the Encourager for my description of that. *clears throat* I started by peeling 9.75oz of white potatoes, cutting them into roughly 1.5" pieces and put them in a pan of water to boil. Next I seasoned two pork loin steaks with salt and pepper and set them to one side. I sliced an apple lengthways into 8 segments and removed the core, chopped a leek and diced 4 cloves of garlic (tip: if you are frying garlic for any period of time it's better to dice it than crushing or grating, to help prevent it from burning). I held the pork fat-side down in a frying pan with olive oil on a medium heat. After about 90 seconds I got bored of that, and laid the pork down in the pan to cook for 3 minutes on each side. I removed the pork from the pan and set it to one side to rest. Using the same pan I fried the apple slices in the oil and pork fat for around two minutes, before adding the leek and garlic for a further three minutes. I then added 150ml of water, 1tbsp dijon mustard and 200ml whole milk to the pan, reduced the heat to low and stirred and simmered to create a sauce. Whilst the veg was frying I drained and mashed the potatoes with a dash of milk, salt and pepper. Finally I remembered that I had meant to put some thyme in much earlier in the process, so I threw far too much thyme into the sauce, stirred it through, and served. It was actually really good. Could do with less thyme next time. Yesterday evening I had snooker. We won 4-1 which was nice, not a particularly interesting night though. This morning was Crossfit, which I felt slightly worse the wear for after getting back home latish and a few pints at snooker. Still got in there, worked my squats up to 72.5kg (~155#) for 3x5. Then we had an absolutely disgusting WOD: 10 forward lunges at bodyweight (I scaled to 50kg/110#) 20 calorie assault bike. 30 calorie row. That absolutely killed my quads, and left me feeling slightly sick as I went home!

Well you could definitely manage the distance solo. I'd imagine the hardest part would be keeping your arms from cramping carrying the barrel. That could definitely be a possibility. It's mad to think it was so long ago for me! I was mega nervous when I met you guys, which may have contributed to the hangover the following morning!

I could do, but I don't think I'd get much benefit from them (aside from scoring some points!). I'm also a bit worried about putting loads of volume in from an injury point of view, bearing in mind my pullups are in addition to 3 workouts and 1 climbing session every week. Definitely stop or at least back off if things aren't feeling right. PvPs can have a tendency to make people go a bit mad and jump in too hard into an exercise (I've definitely blown up a shoulder on a push-up PvP before, and I've done some silly things for Daily Dares. I'm sure you could find a lot of other stories around this forum!)

So, it's week 2, yeah? Monday Crossfit Monday was really good. We had squats to start - after my hideous squatmornings in week 1 I spoke to the trainer and we decided to drop the weight back to 70kg from 75kg (~154# from ~165#). That felt much better and I managed to stay upright and tight for the full 3 sets of 5. Then we had the WOD, which was: For time (12' time cap), 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1: Chest to bar (I scaled to pullups) Toes to bar (I scaled to knee raises to concentrate on/try and learn the kipping motion) Handstand Pushups (I scaled to normal pushps, could have managed decline pushups in hindsight) I got through it in 8:27, which made me the last in the class to finish and I was absolutely gassed. Still really good fun thought and it was nice to do a hard, timed WOD. Went food shopping in the evening and then chilled out in front of Critical Role. For anyone who's seen the latest episode: how fucking tense was that!? 10 pullups (in the addition to the 28 at Crossfit), no variances, no money spent (from my budget). Tuesday I got out for my run yesterday morning - 5 min warmup, then 4x1 mile fast with 2 minute breaks in between The miles were at 9'47", 9'45", 9'10" and 9'52" pace respectively. Would like to get those down a bit more, but it was a solid run and it's pretty hard to go fast in the dark, across a farmer's field, with a headtorch. You can clearly see which mile was entirely on road! After work we pretty much just chilled out and watched the remainder of the last Crit Role. Probably should have cleaned the house but work is mega busy at the moment and I just crashed afterwards. I also rage ate a mince pie on my way out of the office - not my finest use of a variance. 12 pullups, 1 variance as above, no money spent. Today This morning I had Crossfit again. It was generally a good session, because bench is fun and I hit 65kg (~143#) for 1 rep which might just be a new 1RM. One guy was mouthing off about the workout loudly and obnoxiously though, which really dragged the tone down at the end. Will continue to be mega busy at work for the next couple of days, but I have at least got a 3 day weekend to look forward to.

Ah I love that picture! We've all changed a bit since then - we'll have to recreate it next summer for comparison purposes. To be honest I still think the best way to run a marathon is to split it amongst a giant team, particularly when it means you get a break for beer and pizza . I'm doing Oblivion because I think it's a fantastically silly idea and it scares the hell out of me! That's ok Pike. I mean Puck . Hope run day went well. Definitely have hope though, as I said you have bad days, but as long as you keep consistent the good days come back. I decided to Google that image in case it was a reference I wasn't getting. All I got as an explanation was this: So thanks for that . We don't wear kilts though, that's Scotland (and, rarely, Ireland). Also, wearing a kilt without pants means a totally different thing in British English

Added 12 pullups from Monday and 10 from Tuesday, bringing me up to 1,480 points total. I'm under no illusions that I'm ever going to catch @jonfirestar or @Tobbe now, chiefly because without doing negatives or assisted pullups I can't hit that kind of volume.

Holy shit dude that awesome! I can't hit a full 5x5. You'll be racing me across the rigs next time we-re at an OCR. That's awesome, well done sir! This is what a PvP is all about!

Ah, ok, that time might have been my fault! I was thinking of Dirty Weekend, not Barrel of Laps

Week 1 Stats Run! - 23.8 miles (goal is 125 miles in 5 weeks) Pullups! - Got my GTG pullups in every day, and hit 111 total for the week. Eat Accountably! - 5 variances this week, the last two of which I'll detail below as I haven't reported yet Budget! - I was at least £36 over budget this week, but I lost track a bit Saturday Friday night I did get an early night and a decent night's sleep, so Saturday I got up and did my long run. It was exactly the same 10 mile route I'd done the week before, but this time it felt about a million times better for some reason. That's in spite of my legs having been having issues in the days leading up to it, and the fact that I had squats and yoke carry at crossfit the day before. It might have had something to do with the fact my cold was finally going away. In the afternoon WW and I did a load of cleaning, as we need to sort the house out and we have a landlord inspection this week. I also had to head up the shop to buy bacon, and WW asked me to come back with a treat. I resisted some of the sillier options, and instead got a really nice two-pack of decent mince pies. We had one each, so one variance for me. Sunday Sunday was a fairly busy day. Up earlyish, bouldering from 9am for about 2.5 hours, then home to change and go over to my parents, chopping a load of logs up for my Dad (with a combination of axe and hydraulic log splitter), Sunday roast and more log splitting. We got away from there not long before 6, and I still needed to have my 5k run for the week. We stopped at the supermarket on the way home and I gave in to a big Belgian bun. It didn't feel like a great choice at the time, but it probably gave me the energy to get out for a nice easy 5k when all I really wanted to do was sit on the sofa eating. Got home from that, cooked us both an omelette for dinner, boiled some eggs for this week's breakfasts and got an early night!

They recovered surprisingly quickly actually - having been really worried about them I got out for 10 miles on Saturday and it felt great. I've seen your pullups; you're already a monstah! I think they were as surprised as I was that it had turned up so soon to be honest! Great to see you both! When you put it like that you make it sound like it was my fault! Great to have you Terra! And thank you, it's keeping me busy! I didn't see this early enough, but actually the 5k felt really good in the end. I don't know why, I was absolutely shattered, but once I got out I enjoyed it

There is definitely something to the last rep being the hardest because you know it's the last rep.

Just got to updating for all of last week: (Monday, doesn't count but 13 pullups) Tuesday: 10 pullups Wednesday: 11 pullups Thursday: 10 pullups Friday: 24 pullups Saturday: 23 pullups Sunday: 20 pullups So that's a total of 98 for the week. Plus 28 at today's crossfit session puts me at 126, so 1,260 points so far (and briefly in first place ) Awesome to see people already improving through this PvP - keep it up everyone!

So having said that my new office chair would take 3 weeks to arrive, it actually turned up after about 5 hours, which is nice. It's actually just about big enough for me as well, which is nicer! Aaaanyway, the gig was really good fun last night, I went with my Dad and sister, and it was particularly great to see sister because I haven't been out for a drink with her in years. I had 5 pints in the end, but I was done drinking at 20 past 10 so by the time I'd had some water on the way home and got back at 1am I was pretty sober and pretty ready for bed. Blew my budget for the week with the train to London and drinks out. Hit my 10 pullups. I did question whether going to Crossfit on 5 hours sleep was a great idea, but I did it anyway. I also questioned whether squats and yoke carry were a good idea with niggly legs, but I did those too! Got to 3 sets of 5 at 75kg (~165#) on the squats, which is about my body weight. They were ugly as anything and definitely need work, but at least they went up. The yoke carry was 100ft in under 20 seconds, with the highest possible load. I just about got 125kg (~275#) within the time cap, but I was a couple of seconds over on 145kg (~319#). This morning I turned down cake that a colleague brought in for his birthday, and then immediately said yes to some rocky road which was a very good use of a variance. Tonight I will be having some much needed rest and sleep, tomorrow will be long run (10 miles) in the morning and house cleaning, and Sunday is bouldering, log splitting, lunch with my parents and at some point I need to fit a 5k run in there too.

Heya, following along for Crossfit and all of the good things! I fully support all of this tomfoolery!