Jarric

Yeah, I was kind of dimly aware that exercise helped my mental state, but I really didn't appreciate how much until this weekend.

Ok, I think I can safely say I've failed all of my challenge goals, but I still think it's important to come back and start updating again here, if only to keep myself a little accountable. Throughout weeks 2 and 3 not only did I not stick to my workout plan, I did literally nothing I had planned at all! I did go climbing about 5 times in those 2 weeks, so that counts for something, but there was no running and no lifting and no swimming. And then this weekend I went to Nuts Challenge. It's a lapped OCR which is 7km per lap, and which I last ran on my birthday in March whilst it was snowing. On the Saturday I marshalled the course along with @Rhovaniel, @Charlie_Quinn and Stu, and then on the Sunday I ran with Stu while Rho and Charlie marshalled again. The Saturday was, not exactly hard work, but a long day. I spent most of the time stood on the side of a hill cheering people on and trying to make sure they went the right way, and it was really fun and rewarding, but it was about 8-10 hours of being on my feet. The Sunday was excellent fun, it's a brilliant course with a good mix of larger and smaller obstacles, plenty of trenches and rivers to slow you down and a decent woodland run section. Stu hurt his wrist and decided it was best to drop out after one lap, while I pushed on for a second. I was slightly worried about that decision as I already had a niggling pain in my right knee by that point, but I'd set out to do 2 laps and I intended to do just that. Towards the end of the second lap my knee totally gave out, and with that on top of the normal cuts, scrapes and bruises I was feeling pretty broken by the end. And despite how busy the weekend was and what I put my body through, I felt more energetic and motivated than I had in the two weeks previous. It was a real reminder of how much exercise helps my mental state, and that I need to keep this up not to look good or to show off, but because I'm a better, happier person when I exercise. Yesterday I took a rest day, and given that I was limping all day I think it was a good call. This morning I got up and went for a slow run which ended up as 4 miles including the half mile walk at the start and about a quarter of a mile walking at the end. I already feel much better and my knee seems fine, so back to the plan for the rest of the week!

Thank you! I got no physical rest whatsoever this weekend, but in a good way! Update coming.

Good to see you back here dude, hope the finances and the family stuff come together for you.

Really late, but I just wanted to say congratulations on coming through treatment!

Hope you're feeling better today. Also, Sticks looks really cool, good stuff.

Haha, yeah, I hadn't come across saying "plant" to mean bury until I listened to that episode it's a fantastically dark way of putting it! I'm not sure if I am feeling better, I totally crashed last night and went to be about half 9! Still, it's a 3 day weekend coming up, so that might sort me out

Strangely I'd never made the connection between being knackered and the knackers yard, that's interesting. Cool, well I know what I'm trying instead of a full "race pace" run when I get to the next one then.

Glad week 2's going well for you! The lifting MWF with lower weights on Wednesday sounds like a good plan - I know there's a lifting programme that does that somewhere, but I can't track it down at the moment.

Well today marks day 3 of week 2, and the third day of sleeping in and missing a workout. Starting to feel a bit ore alive however. And all is not lost, as I at least have bouldering tonight! Food has been good - no variances. Calories probably slightly high, but at the moment I'm just tracking with no firm target so not too panicked. Reading-wise I managed last night but failed Monday - the latest Critical Role was far too funny for me to stop watching and go to bed to read!

That's a good shout, I might give that a go. I did have a running plan once that had things like "8 miles slow, 6 miles half-marathon pace)", so that might make more sense. Thank! I'm feeling a bit better today. Then again I slept in again this morning, which might have something to do with it. Well... Nah, in this case it just means very tired :p Yeah, I get the sense that we'll be getting a lot of southern accents for quite a while in this campaign! To be fair I'm impressed that Mark actually has different accents for different parts of America, most English people just have a single "American" accent which sounds like nowhere in particular. One day I'll have to try and actually learn to speak in different accents, aside from my current repertoire of "posh London", "east London" and "generic Irish"!

Today I am knackered (you're welcome @Starpuck :p ) . I don't know why. But I think I'm going to go out of the office now and spend some time not staring at a computer screen - as much as I should spend my lunch break doing a million other things I think I need an actual break! Last night I didn't do any pullups, in fact I'm amazed I did anything at all I was so shattered. This morning I slept in again so missed my run. Hoping to feel a bit more alive again soon!

Thanks That was the plan, yeah. With all the walking it ended up taking over two hours though My long run plan is basically a five-week rotation, starting at 10 miles and increasing by 1 mile per week up to 14. Every third run is supposed to be race pace, so this cycle would be the 10 and 13 mile runs, next cycle would be the 11 and 14 mile runs, and the cycle after that would just be the 12 mile run. It's a random thing I came up with to keep them interesting, and in reality races will interfere with it anyway, but I'm welcome to suggestions for organising long runs if you have any? Haha, I use that word so much I don't even think of it as slang . I am up to date on CR and HR at the moment! It helps that watching HR live is quickly becoming how we spend every Sunday afternoon at home! Mark as Lucius is almost better than Chris as Lucius somehow, if it were a podcast I don't think I'd know Chris was missing! It's a shame Mark doesn't attempt the Scottish accent for Aella though. I've also started watching one of the specials that HR did a while back - Dead Reckoning. I'm not quite prepared to watch the whole of series 1 of HR, but Dead Reckoning is only about 11 episodes so it's a bit more manageable.

Week 1 Stats Eat Real Food - 2/2 weekly variances, all food logged Don't Drink and D&D - 1/2 challenge variances Stick to the Plan - 7/7 (more-or-less) Recharge - 1/5 Stick to the Budget - spent £12.60 of £50 weekly budget It's been a good weekend! Friday I had that great squat session I mentioned in the morning, and in the evening went to the bouldering competition. The difficulty was pretty high and I only actually completed 7/25 climbs, but I still had a really good time. Was exhausted by the end of the night. Saturday I had Parkrun in the morning, at an average sort of pace, and then chilled all day. Picked WW up from work and we went food shopping, bought and set up a printer and finished booking our holiday to Ireland. Then we cooked shepherds pie and relaxed in front of the TV with some beers (drinking variance 1/2 for this challenge). Sunday morning we went climbing again, and I managed to finish a couple of the problems I hadn't managed at the competition, together with some other tricky bits I'd been stuck on. After lunch I went for my long run, which was supposed to be 10 miles at race pace. It was brutal - between heavy leg day on Friday morning and two climbing sessions and Parkrun after that I had no legs left at all. I ended up walking a huge chunk of it. Still, it was a nice day to be out and I walked/ran 9.9 miles in total, so I'm counting it as sticking to the plan regardless. In the evening I totally crashed in front of the TV and watched High Rollers. I did have the one leftover beer from Saturday in the evening, but as it was a single can I won't count it as a variance this time. Budget wise I don't know how I spent so little this week (though not really going out will have helped)! I need to remember to get to bed in time to read though for this week. ===== This morning I failed to get up for the gym. I was still feeling knackered from the weekend though, so that might be for the best? I'll get in my pullup training this evening regardless.

I've just watched that at my desk at work, on mute with subtitles, and it was glorious! So yeah, I'll have a bowl of despair, thanks. Also one of these:

Thanks, I'm glad it's helping you too. To be honest I'm not doing todo lists and stuff like that at the moment, but just having all my workouts pre-written was a /huge/ help last challenge.

Wow, it's quiet in here. Or am I just not peering closely enough into the dark corners again? Pint of the black stuff, bar...ista?

Woo! Good to see you - liking to picture too! Me too . Thank you! Glad to have you! ===== So far so goodish! I've not had and food variances yet, and no drinking for D&D is all good (no drinking at all so far now I come to think of it). Had to shorten my runs this week slightly as I've been sleeping in by a couple of minutes, but at 5 miles each they're hardly an issue, and my budgeting is going really well thus far. The only thing I haven't done at all is my recharge/reading goal, I need to get on that. I've also finally go round to photographing my challenge tracker and workout plan: Wow that looks bad on a computer screen! #nofilter #justadirtylens This morning I had a great lifting session. Squat weight was 75kg, which is approx 165#, and I weighed in at 164# this morning. Hit 9 reps, which i'm pretty certain is a new rep record for me for squatting my body weight. Then I had OHP and hit a new max of 45kg (~99#) for a double. Rounded it out with some very wobbly single leg deadlifts and some lunges. Tonight I've got a bouldering competition, which should be really good fun. I may spend a food variance before hand so that I can just grab food on the way, otherwise I generally arrive too late to have a shot at even trying all of the routes. Tomorrow morning is Parkrun, though I suspect my legs won't be up to much by then!

That's great progress on the eating mate. I think that's one of the biggest barriers with health and fitness, getting to the point where instead of having to spend mental energy deciding to do the healthy thing you have to spend mental energy not to do it, because the healthy thing is your default behaviour and happens without you really thinking about it. I'm also glad you did not explode on your run. That's a solid pace too, particularly in the current weather - my fastest miles yesterday was at 9'01" pace! What are you allowed to do next?

I'm so bad at signing up for things! I will get it done soon though. So many good choices. It mad seeing you look at committing to 2 years training towards something so massive. Mad and deeply impressive.

Got my second session in for the week: Deadhangs from rock grips - 6 x 15 seconds - 4 points Scap pulls from rock grips - 12, 8, 12, 12 - 88 points Pull ups - 5, 5, 4, 3, 5 - 66 points Alternating chin-ups and hammer-ups - 5, 4, 5 - 42 points (totally ran out of energy here, there should have been another three sets!) Total: 200 points Total for challenge so far: 467 points and currently in 2nd place. My plan is generally going to be sessions Monday, Wednesday, Friday. This week I'm probably going to enter a climbing competition on Friday though, in which case I won't have any arms left for pullup training afterwards!

Nice going, you're smashing this!

Ah, I see what you mean now. I'd probably call those assistance personally as they're closeish to inverted rows. See what everyone else thinks though. EDIT: They also sound really intense by the way, so good on you for those!

You too man. We shall see, I predict that you'll make more progress on pullups than me this challenge :p WOO, good to see you! Let's do this! Thank you! I'm glad I wrote it before we got halfway through week 1!

Thanks! Rock grips are what I'm calling these: Basically I hang them from the pullup bar to use rather than the bar for a bit of grip training variety. Hammer-ups are my made up word for something I don't know the name of. Basically my pull-up bar is this shape: - ¦ - - ¦ - I call a pullup gripping the outside two, palms away from me: m ¦ - - ¦ m I call a chinup gripping the middle two, palms facing towards me: - ¦ w w ¦ - I call a hammer-up gripping the middle bits, palms facing inwards: - E - - Э - Do you have a picture/gif of the move? Looking at Dragon Lifts on Google gives me Dragon Flags which I don't think is what you mean?