Jarric

Exactly! I still feel pretty stupid for falling for it, but it was made to look like a healthy choice. Well it's good that your at that stage now. Hopefully I'll make my peace with buying water soon! Ah, well it might be worth doing more volunteering then!

Your eating clean plan looks really solid - I must admit I was totally confused when I just saw "Badgers" on your bujo page before I read the explanation though Hope today is less frustrating for you. House hunting stuff can be really rubbish, but it'll all be worth it in the end. I like your sketch! Are those little baby icky plant monsters in the bottom left?

I love this phrase, I may have to steal it from you! Well done on your marathon, sounds like a great race with that scenery. How long is your ultra?

Monday - W1D1 Soda: 14XP Beer Blanket (weekly): 0/10, 14XP T-shield (daily): 4/4, 10XP Got up (after 1 snooze again) and hit the gym yesterday. Squat day and the top sets of 80kg (~176#) for 5 x 3 felt HEAVY. Still, I got them done, and at a bodyweight of 78.2kg I'm pretty happy that I'm hitting my weight consistently. I even had a guy I vaguely know come up to me and give me some encouragement/tell me my strength was levelling up, which was kind of cool. Snooker in the evening and it turned out that the place we were playing at had no bar or even any staff, it was just a shed with snooker tables in it. We went to a local shop to grab some beers for Hopalong and some water for me. When I got there I looked at what was on offer, and I hate paying for bottled water when I can get the stuff out of the tap, so I got some strawberry flavoured water instead. That strawberry flavoured water had 70 FUCKING GRAMS of sugar in it. That 2.5oz of sugar! Seriously?! I had a think about it and decided to take the XP damage as though it was a soda - I've kicked enough barrels in the past that I should know which ones explode by now, and I absolutely could have read the label before I bought it, so silly damage taken and a lesson learned for next time. I did at least win a good game of snooker. Tonight is Pathfinder night - really excited about that

Thank you! The thought had crossed my mind . Seriously looking at some more volunteering for next year though. TM worked out as saving about £125 off the ticket for a 12.5 hour shift, so it's kind of like a second job at £10 per hour. Not mega bucks, but I can't think of any casual/freelance work available to me at the moment that would pay better or be as much fun. Thanks! We both have wildly different incomes and expenditures, so it was really good to look at that side by side and be clear with each other. I was also conscious that we are both in a little debt and I don't want either of us to end up hiding anything (that probably sounds worse than it is - I know we would never hide a real issue from each other, but it would be easy to be embarrassed about a small problem and let it go too far before talking to each other). Sticking to the budget will be more interesting! It's all a bit theoretical at the moment anyway so we'll see how that goes!

Oo, thanks, I'll give her stuff a read! A paella pan is basically a large frying pan, but with little handles on each side rather than one big one so that you can take it off the hob and fit it in the oven. Thank you! I'm feeling pretty good about things right now . How far through Critical Role are you now? It's such a time sink but I love it!

Well done on your muscle up and pistols progress man! Hope you have a good holiday!

Sunday - W2D7 Soda: 15XP Beer Blanket (weekly): 10/10, 14XP T-shield (daily): 4/4, 10XP Saturday night/Sunday morning I was drifting in and out of sleep with dreams of being forever in debt and never owning my own house. God it makes me feel old to have worries like that. Anyway, I mulled it over during my morning run (6 slow miles, which felt really easy) and realised that it's the one goal I had for 2017 that I've made very little headway of any kind on. When I get home (and got fuelled with a bacon sandwich) WW and I sat down and wrote out a proper budget. We 're going to pay into our joint account for more things than just bills (like groceries) and pay in an amount to budget for stuff we can anticipate like car insurance, Christmas presents and holidays. Then I did the same for my own expenditure, budgeting my general leisure spending, my car costs and clothing. I also added an events budget at £100 per month to go on music festivals and OCRs, because we all need a hobby, right? Still, I feel a bit more confident just having something written down to review my spending next to, and hopefully when I look at it in 6 months time we'll be out of debt and actually starting to save some money. The rest of the day was spent being hyper-productive with washing, hovering, cooking a roast dinner, prepping lunches and dinners for the first half of the week and all that kind of stuff. I also successfully resisted soda when WW and I popped out briefly (she actually asked "can you drink any of this stuff?" when we were looking at the selection, so she's definitely on board to a point). All in all another good day, ending in a very early night just before 10pm.

True enough! What he ran on Saturday was 25% faster than my PB, and his Parkrun PB is 18:01 which is about 30% faster than my PB. Somehow putting it like that makes is sound more manageable. It was really nice thanks. We ended up being a bit lazy with it - when I got out our paella pan (which we've had for years and never used) we discovered that it came with a pre-made paella seasoning mix. So it was some veg, a bag of mixed seafood we had in the freezer, the seasoning mix with lots of added garlic, and the paella rice that had also been sat in the paella pan since whenever we bought it!

Yeah, definitely! Link to my Fitbit is here. ( @deftona and anyone else feel free to add me too)

Great race report man, love it! Sounds like you had loads of fun. Admittedly this is my answer to many things, but bouldering. Particularly working on overhang climbs would help with the technique and balance as well as the strength aspect. That said, all the time your weight's coming down and you're working on pull ups you'll get better at these anyway.

Hey T2, mega late but finally following! I'm gonna have that stuck in my head all day now

Friday - W2D5 Soda: 15XP Beer Blanket (weekly): 9/10, 14XP T-shield (daily): 4/4, 10XP Friday I managed to get up (although I still hit snooze once) and got to the gym for bench day. Tops sets were 55kg for 5 x 3 and they felt heavy! After work we had company mid-year drinks, so at 5 it was straight to the pub where we had a tab put on for free beer for the evening. Needless to say my beer blanket took a lot of damage that night! From getting there around 5 and not eating anything I ended up getting through 6 pints and leaving at half 10! It was a really fun night, I reminded myself that the people I work with are actually awesome, and I only left so late because I lost track of time enjoying myself. On the way home I stopped to grab a Dominos pizza, which ended up being a large because due to the special branch of reverse economics that applies to Dominos orders that was the cheapest option. I did successfully avoid getting a coke however when I would usually grab at caffeine to try and counter some of the beer. Stayed up late watching TV and eating my pizza. Not ideal health-wise, but this was a genuine one-off event and I had a great night. Saturday - W2D6 Soda: 15XP Beer Blanket (weekly): 10/10, 14XP T-shield (daily): 4/4, 10XP Against all odds, yesterday was a pretty awesome day. I got up early with the obligatory hangover, and left to volunteer at Parkrun. I was on "talking clock" duty, standing by the start line (which is separate to the finish line) and shouting out the time as people came past to give them an idea of their lap times. It's a 4.5 lap course for 5k total so I ended up announcing times nearly constantly for the first half hour as the course spread out and people started lapping each other. The guy running in first was incredible - he finished the 5k in 19:13, and yet every lap he had shouted out to me "Thank your marshal" without the slightest sign of being out of breath. I doubt I will ever get to that level of running fitness, but it's nice to dream! After that I went home and chilled out in bed for a bit, catching up with some fitness videos and articles, and grabbed a bowl of cereal. Around half 12 I got out for my run, 4 easy miles and they really did feel easy. The hangover had almost completely passed by some magic, which helped enormously. Then I got in the car and went out to bouldering and had an excellent, chilled out couple of hours there. I was there so long that I even found time to stop for a cup of tea and a sausage roll half way through. Finally I got home, made paella for the first time ever, watched Critical Role, and crashed out in bed early jut before 10pm. A properly good day all round.

You're absolutely right. I will try and say it more. To be honest I don't really like working out in the mornings either. Trouble is I do things most evenings which means I can't regularly go our running (plus WW objects if I don't spend at least a couple of evenings with her!) so mornings are the only reliable workout time I have. Honestly, is exactly the same except for the adverts. Even then I don't think they've cut anything, they've just made the run time longer to accommodate ad breaks.

Well done dude, I knew you'd do well. It sounds absolutely disgusting, and I'm kinda excited thinking about it. Sounds good to me mate, count me provisionally in. It'll be a few months before my budget is sufficiently replenished to book anything, and I need to see what volunteering I can do next year to assist with that, but this sounds like one I can't miss.

Thursday - W2D4 - it is week 2 right?? I've been writing week 1! Soda: 15XP Beer Blanket (weekly): 3/10, 14XP T-shield (daily): 4/4, 10XP I slept in again yesterday so no run was had. I might be back to sleep challenges again soon if this keeps up - I'm better than I was but I can't afford to throw away all this workout time! Work was fairly busy, went grocery shopping afterwards, successfully avoided the Diet Coke I would have usually drunk on the walk round the shop. Then shepherd's pie for dinner, vegging on the sofa in front of bake off and critical role, and to bed by 10:30.

Hey Red, I'm mega late here. Hope all's well with you?

I've made it a rule that I don't count myself as having done a workout if I don't warm-up before and stretch after - it's the only way I ever manage to stretch! I have tried yoga and things at different times, but I never seem to be able to make those habits. I'd wish you luck for tomorrow mate, but honestly you don't need it.

True. I could drive it in about 3 hours though - not sure if I could get through the airport that fast!

That sounds really good, especially if her stuff has worked for you before. I think it's definitely good to have a solid plan to follow - I don't think I'd even make it /to/ the gym if I didn't have a plan before I went in.

True, thank you Good idea, I'll try some more positive phrasing. That's cool! I think you live a bit far for me to pop down for a night but it's still cool

Sounds like a pretty damn good day to me . What's the new strength program if you don't mind me asking?

Good luck for your marathon trip, hope you have fun!