Jarric

Wednesday - W1D3 Soda: 15XP Beer Blanket (weekly): 3/10, 14XP T-shield (daily): 4/4, 10XP Yesterday morning I woke up and decided I was tired and achy, instead of getting up and going to the gym. I need to get in some early nights because I'm not happy about that and I don't want it to keep happening. Back to work in the day for a busy day catching up after the two days off. Still got away on time though to eat dinner with WW and post the above long update on here. I managed to be very restrained at snooker and managed to eek out 3 pints over the whole evening, despite being offered more by my mates there. I've noticed that I'm not talking about soda much on here. Truth is I'm not finding it nearly as hard as I thought I would, and "didn't drink any soda" seems a bit of a non-update really.

Heya, good to have you! True enough. In that case, hugs all round! Thanks, that's a really lovely way of putting it. Honestly, I don't know if it's that much better than being at someone's house. It's a cool pub, and the staff are pretty good with keeping music down for us, but it can still sometimes be hard to hear what the DM is saying if it gets busy. That ^ is exactly how it happened. And no, apparently these were not the super scary normal Pathfinder mummies, but a slightly less intimidating rot-free version! (EDIT: I've just looked them up - yeah definitely not the normal Pathfinder version, those things look awful! These didn't have the Aura of Despair either.)

Monday - W2D1 Soda: 15XP Beer Blanket (weekly): 0/10, 14XP T-shield (daily): 4/4, 10XP I had Monday off work in order to drive my Mum to hospital. She's going through radiotherapy at the moment, the last major procedure on the road to recovery, and she has to be there 5 days per week for 4 weeks. I decided to take a couple of days off to take her in to give my Dad a bit of a break from driving her around and sitting in hospital waiting rooms, and to give my Mum a bit of a break from my Dad! It was actually a really nice day, I don't often get that long to just sit and chat with Mum so it was good to spend all that time together and to go for lunch after we got out. Tea goal was a little bit iffy here, as the lunch place served it by the pot but I swear I have mugs bigger than the pot they use! I'm calling it a win. Afterwards I was amazed to find I was still capable of hitting the gym for deadlift day, with 7 sets of 3 at 100kg, despite the fact that I'd run TM the day before. It really went rather well - I will I could go in the afternoons all the time. Tuesday - W1D2 Soda: 15XP Beer Blanket (weekly): 0/10, 14XP T-shield (daily): 3/4, 10XP Tuesday was again a day off. Mum's appointment was later than on Monday so I mostly vegged out in bed for the morning, then went for my run around lunchtime. As luck would have it my running plan has me on a deload week this week, so although I'm a bit run-out from TM I can still get through. Yesterday was 4 miles (very very) slow. At hospital we ended up waiting for Mum's appointment to be 1 hour and 20 minutes late (each appointment is only 10 minutes long; only the NHS could get 8 patients behind on a non-emergency service!), which meant a rush to get her home, pick up WW and drive to the pub for Pathfinder. We ate at the pub, a healthy combination of burger and chips, and I found enough resolve to drink water all night. It was a totally alien feeling drinking water whilst eating in a pub, and something I'd never have done without this challenge, so that appears to be working! Pathfinder stuff spoilered: Outlook for the week Tonight I am off to play snooker, which means I will have a couple of beers. I will keep it sensible though to conserve my remaining drinks for later in the week. Thursday will be a quiet night in, and then Friday I've got a mid-year party at work, which I suspect will use up the rest of my beers for the week (and bonus, they should be free!). That leaves me with a wholesome, sober weekend of climbing and running, as well as volunteering at Parkrun on Saturday.

Hey Flea, I'm glad you're alive I get feeling like you don't have much new to say - a lot of my updates start with "it's been a pretty quiet day" or something similar. Still, and I know I'm just echoing everyone else here, if posting here helps you than post, and if having a break helps you then do that. We're not going anywhere.

Well there's nothing very classically British about running OCRs either. Ok, maybe the queuing, but apart from that! It's definitely the best time to hug a stranger anyway How did you find it? Hopefully not too scary after I said that? And thank you, it really was good actually. I like being around these races and kinda like being behind the scenes on events, so it fitted well for me. Ah, that's what I was missing! I did think abut bringing some and then forgot to actually buy them before hand. I shan't make that mistake again. I'm getting a reputation around here, aren't I? Agreed, we need more hugging in the world in general. Mission HAMMAP for RRDW18 is definitely a plan. Also mission HTMA (Have Too Many Acronyms)!

Well I hope you can make it over man, but I get that transatlantic flights are silly expensive! I certainly won't be able to afford coming to the States any time soon. Glad to hear you're looking to get back into OCRs though man! Love it! If you do get that I will most certainly wear it round an OCR or two!

Weekend race report, cross posted from my challenge:

Tough Mudder Weekend Report This weekend was a full weekend at Tough Mudder London South, with volunteering on the Saturday and running on the Sunday, and I had an amazing time. Saturday was an early start - up at 04:55 to get my stuff together and get to the venue before 05:45. I felt totally knackered and a little bit grumpy arriving in the dark, but after a cup of tea and a below average bacon sandwich the sun rose and my mood with it. Had a chat with a few of the other volunteers before I was shipped off to marshal at Kiss of Mud. Kiss of Mud is a barbed wire crawl, with a trench full of water in the middle and a hay bale to crawl up and over near the end. Being there at the start of the day I got to see the front runners come through and got to stick on the music an hour later at 9am when the noise curfew was up. Lots of people running through in fun costumes, and a few I got to talk to briefly as they ran through. Not that many high-fives were offered and no hugs, which was deeply disappointing - hug your stewards people, they will appreciate it! I did have the job of making sure the mud stayed well moistened and hosed down though, which quickly devolved into spraying people with water for the camera men to capture. About mid-morning I was swapped out on to the first water station, as they were constantly overwhelmed so everyone was taking a shift at the busiest job. A not very exciting job opening endless bottles of Lucozade, putting out paper cups or filling cups with Lucozade, there were 4 of us talking increasing amounts on nonsense trying to keep ourselves entertained. We might have also been becoming delirious from the million grams of sugar in the Lucozade we were knocking back to keep us going - who knows! The mudders were more fun here as they had to stop; we got quite a few singing and got lots of thank yous from those welcoming a much needed drink. It quietened down after 1ish, with the last wave coming through about half 3 and leaving us to pack up. Being near the start of the race we managed to get away pretty early, and after going to check out a couple of the other obstacles I headed home. Sunday I had the luxury of having no wave time or need to queue, due to the volunteer wrist band I could just rock up whenever I liked and join the next warm-up. I ended up taking it easy and getting in the 11am wave. I started off, as usual, going much too fast. Early on I got chatting to a nice girl who was also running on her own, her friend having dropped out on her a few weeks before. She was running her first TM but making it look much better than I was - it stung a little when I had to tell her to go on as I couldn't keep up with her any more, but I soon got over myself and got to enjoying the race. I made a point as I went round to hug and high-five as many of the stewards as possible, after the lack of love I got on the Saturday. Speaking to one girl on Arctic Enema, she said that she had only had 1 hug and 1 high-five all day, which with 5,000 people out on course it pretty disgraceful. Seriously, hug your marshals people! Most of the race I managed to run for. Whilst there were a couple of short walking breaks I mostly found that having to stop for obstacles, narrow paths and rough terrain meant I could keep up the running the rest of the time. Speaking of terrain, this course was great! I may be slightly biased for my love of the Sussex countryside, but it was nearly all woodland, with almost no running through flat fields or down man-made paths or other such boring stuff. Just lots of hills, mud, tree roots and streams. I did at one point take a worrying fall over some tree roots and slammed my knee in to the ground, but I seem to have somehow got away with that. Obstacle wise this was a definite mixed bag. The decision to rope off Everest (a half-pipe) so that you couldn't take a run-up and had to instead walk up it using ropes was a very strange one. It is obviously safer, but I didn't run a TM to be safe, and there seems little point in having a half-pipe if you're not supposed to run up it! They also roped off Pyramid Scheme (a steep slope) in a similar way, but that worked really well at getting people to climb up each other and form human pyramids to reach the top rather than just trying to sprint up it. I don't know how the competitive wave would have managed that one, but I get that the point of the obstacle is collaboration and that did make this more fun. Highlight of the day was Funky Money: The Revolution. Around a dozen monkey bars set on an incline, a wheel on the top to grab and swing round on, and then three vertical wheels to swing from one to the other to make it across without falling in the water below. I knew this could be my biggest challenge of the day, and I only went and made it over on my first try! Mega chuffed with that, and I think I may have let out a (totally manly) shout when I landed on the other side. I'll also just say there were some amazing people on the course. I loved the Rocky Horror themed team, who ran the whole way in corsets and fish net tights. The most impressive display however were the team who pushed a girl in a wheelchair around the full 10 mile course. Quite how they managed that I have no idea but I was deeply in awe of them. With my second Tough Mudder down I'm really happy with how it went - I completed all of the obstacles, mostly without help (though I still have a couple to work on), and definitely am considering signing up for both volunteering and running more of them in the future. I finished in around 3 hours, which I was very happy with until I looked up the competitive times and saw the first finisher was at 1:13! I think I may make it a personal challenge to be at least half as fast as the front runners in any solo runs I do in future! Challenge Stuff So as mentioned above I drank lots of Lucozade on Saturday whist volunteering, and again on Sunday at the water stations when I was running. I am not going to count those against my soda goal, as I never really touch sports drinks and only had what was there to keep my energy up through two very busy days. That keeps me at 15XP for this goal. Alcohol wise I had my (quarter) share of two pitchers of sangria at dinner with WW, BIL and BIL's friend on Saturday night, which I am counting as two servings and which brought me to 10/10 for the week. Then, at the end of TM, I was given a free cider on the finish line. I was going to disregard that, thinking I deserved it for completing the run, but no. I knew that I would get a free drink at the end, and I could have quite easily only had one sangria the night before instead of two, so having made the decision to have the extra drink I take the damage for it. This goal stands at 14XP remaining. Not much to say about the tea goal, this of all of them has felt pretty easy. Still on the full 10XP after week 1.

Welcome back Chris-Tien, good to see you! For blocking social media, you could have a separate web browser for work where you literally block Facebook etc. so you would have to open a new browser to go on there and not just a new tab. Also put your phone in a different room if you tend to get distracted by that. Alternatively you could try the Pomodoro Technique and physically time you work and your social media breaks.

I'm stupidly late to this party, but here and following now! FTFY. This week will be better, because you choose to make it better. Say it until you believe it.

Welcome Super Starling! Glad to have you aboard. I'd second what @Rhovaniel said, the challenge structure is a guide to do what best works for you. Thank you for writing this Tank - it's brought up some thoughts about changing my approach which may take some time to explore, but I'd never thought of framing my flaws in that way and now I think I should. ====== Jarric pushes his way into Moes, later than he's ever been to the guildhall, and ambles up to the bar. Time to change the habit of a lifetime I guess. Black tea for me please barkeep. Make it a pint though - we don't need to alter too much at once.

Nerves can be good if they keep you training hard . You will do great though, I know it.

Hey C_Q, hope you had fun at the hen weekend. Really sorry to hear about your hand, the sucks. Take it easy and you'll be fit again in no time though. *hugs* In the meantime you could do strength training on your other side if you wanted to - 1 arm incline push-ups, inverted rows, dumbbell rows, dumbbell OHP. Or of course you can still do leg and core work and still run.

Well done on a solid 10 mile run man - you're gonna crush this Beast! Thirded! It's all about striking the right balance.

Late to the party, but great challenge! Glad you enjoyed your date with Bachelor #2.

The book was "The Easyway to Stop Smoking" by Allen Carr, and I believe that they have it in a lot of different languages. I would seriously seriously recommend it, it definitely helped me to open my eyes about smoking and to get free. Also, I agree on the running in circles thing, it's really no fun. Try and find somewhere you can run to instead. Or, as Xena says, try something you enjoy more - you definitely don't have to run to be fit.

Update - they have indeed buggered up Everest (at least for this weekend) - they've put a rope across the bottom so you can't take a run up, and then put ropes all the way along :/. Marshalling was great fun though, definitely a good way to earn a ticket for tomorrow.

Thursday - W1D4 Soda: 15XP Beer Blanket (weekly): 8/10, 15XP T-shield (daily): 4/4, 10XP Thursday I hit snooze again, and was feeling a bit groggy from the lateish Wednesday night. I still got my run in but had to cut it short - still got in 5 miles of what would have been about 5.5 so not that worried. That evening was another lateish one as I went to see IT with my Mum, Sister and her bf. Spoiler free review: it was really good, but I didn't find it as scary as most people seemed to. ====== Friday - W1D5 Soda: 15XP Beer Blanket (weekly): 8/10, 15XP T-shield (daily): 4/4, 10XP Yesterday I failed to get up. I woke up and couldn't drag myself out of bed so ended up having a lie in. Not an ideal start to the day, but missing deadlifts might work out in my favour for running Tough Mudder on Sunday. Was a busy work day with a leaving meal for a colleague who's off to have a baby. That gave me a bit of a dilemma on what to drink at the pub at lunch, and I settled on a fruit juice as the only thing I could think of that didn't break one of my goals. Then a long meeting, then working late to try and wrap things up. BIL was down in the evening as he's running Tough Mudder whilst I volunteer on course today. I could pork chilli for us all (my first group meal I've cooked in forever) and we played Donkey Kong Country and Super Mario Kart on the SNES and then a bit of Plants Vs Zombies on the Xbox. Was a cracking evening and one where I would usually have bought in some beers, so I'm glad of this challenge pursuading me not to do that

This would make a good challenge title. Love hearing your D&D stories, they sounds so much fun (and good DMing taking the fight to your players!). I think the trouble with lycans (from someone who can't draw at all) is that they're half-human, half-wolf monstrosities that actually are out of proportion compared to either race. On the other hand you really have artistic licence to make them look how you want by the same token.

Yeah, not pleasant but mostly don't hurt yourself. It's my favourite event to spectate though for the very cartoonish fails!

Wednesday - W1D3 Soda: 15XP Beer Blanket (weekly): 8/10, 15XP T-shield (daily): 3/4, 10XP Yesterday I hit snooze on my alarm. Then I had to write out my workout because I'd forgotten to do it on Tuesday, which added a couple of minutes. The gym was really busy when I got there and I was worried about getting ready for work on time for an important meeting. Basically I got my OHP done (7x3 @ 35kg) but not a great deal of the assistance work was managed. On the plus side my meeting went well, and it was such a busy day I only had time for 3 cups of tea rather than the 4 I'm allowed. The evening was a snooker match at my old club, and it was really nice to catch up with some of the regulars and my dad with a few beers. I paced myself and stuck to my plan of 4, so that leaves me 2 for the weekend when I go out to dinner with BIL.

Aha! I have found your collective Achilles heels! Hi! Good to have you here!

You disgust me in the finest way possible. I'm about to walk home in the rain, so now I'm going to get a little moist!

Thank you! Good to have you Yes, we have done our best to prepare for your arrival. Yeah, definitely mate. In my defence me on holiday is particularly bad on both counts, but I can't pretend that I'm that much better at home. Thanks for the luck!

Well we were definitely running up Everest this year at the one @DarK_RaideR and I did in Ireland. I'm marshalling at the "London South" TM on Saturday so I will see what I can find out.