Jarric

I feel like keeping it simple is the theme of a lot of challenges this month. It's quite pleasing.

Really takes me back to being a grotty teenager watching a show about grotty teenagers Awesome stuff on the stopping drinking, will look forward to hear how you feel after a few weeks of it. And of course, very much here for cat pics.

Hope you have a good flight! Some big changes happening for you this challenge by the sounds of it - good luck to you!

A very Rangerly challenge indeed - following!

I like the simple approach, looks good to me.

The wood elf at the bar eyes the adventurers, eagerly collecting their cloaks and arms and preparing for adventure. Surely, he thinks, there's time for just one more before he has to leave? His decision made, he spins on the stool, looking away from the gathered throng. "Pint of the black stuff, barkeep," he says, with a smile.

I've got a few half-baked ideas about what to do for this challenge, and at some point this week I plan to come back and flesh them out. Last challenge I very much disappeared for a couple of weeks. And because I wasn't reporting here I wasn't tracking my goals properly. Not that I was hitting my goals very consistently anyway, but lack of tracking and lack of consistency definitely feed into each other. So, for week 0, I only have 2 goals: Check in here every day Run a marathon on Saturday Ok, so goal 2 was already a goal that I've had for quite a while, but it's a big milestone and I'm looking forward to it. That's enough for now, I'll formulate my goals for the rest of the challenge and come back to them later. * * * Edit after zero week: Actual goals! Well, having hit 100% of my goals (and run a bleeding marathon in the process), it's time to write this challenge up properly. Usually, I start with my road map for the year. And let's have a quick recap of how last challenge went too: So, with an over-complicated and ultimately not very successful challenge last time, I'm going to be sticking to 3 simple goals: The documancer: update here daily [+2 SAN] The face: brush my teeth, twice daily [+2 SAN] The muscle: track food, every day [+3 CON] The plan for the rest of this year is to lose some weight - maybe 10-15lbs - and to get as strong as possible whilst doing it. I'll be cutting running down to 3 days per week (starting in week 3), and focusing on speed and power rather than distance. And I'll be increasing crossfit to 4 days per week, and settling in to 2 days per week of bouldering. All of that made me think of a concept that @Wild Wolf used to talk about of being wolflean, which conjures up a great image that really matches the getting stronger and leaning out that I'm planning to do, and that ultimately lead me to my challenge title, hungry like the wolf. I'll probably be rambling about various other things in my updates too: How to manage my time with my (still relatively) new Wednesdays off work How to balance managing calories so that I'm losing weight but still not compromising performance too much Maybe sharing some drawings - it's still Inktober after all I'll be keeping my Duolingo streak going Trying to work out why I'm so bad at being on time for stuff, and/or why I procrastinate I have one more race this year, Nuclear Fallout, which is in a couple of weeks How my new running plan (starting after that race) and my workouts are going

Thank you! And yes, I'm with you on the timing thing - I know it takes 10.5 minutes to get to work, and with rounding down I get it in my head that I can leave home 10 minutes before I'm due to start. Then by the time my shoes are on and I'm out the door 10 minutes has become 5. I need to lie to myself about what time I have to leave, so that when I'm late for that time I still have enough time. but I also need to believe the lie I'm telling myself I love that gif btw. Haven't seen the film, but it's a good gif.

Challenge wrap-up The chronologist: 5/25 = 20% = no stat increase The muscle: 12/35 = 34% = no stat increase The second-story specialist: 6/15 = 40% = no stat increase The translator: 14/35 = 40% = no stat increase The cartographer: 12/15 = 80% = +2 CHA The face: 12/35 = 34% = no stat increase Overall I've scored pretty fucking poorly this time round. Timekeeping was rubbish - I think I need to look at the root causes of my lateness, because just setting a goal isn't working. Am I just a time optimist, who always expects things to finish quicker than they do? Am I subconsciously putting off things I don't like. Am I just incredibly easily distracted, and if so why? Answers on a postcard please. I gave up on calorie tracking through lack of mental energy. Climbing was a stupid goal to set during race season - I was never going to hit this and it would have risked overtraining to try. I've had fun with climbing when I've gone, just should have had the foresight not to set the goal. Duolingo mught have gone better than the numbers suggest, as I can't remember what I did when so haven't been able to tick it off. I've passed a 400-day streak, so I'm definitely doing stuff. Next challenge I'm going to have a goal around being present here, because this challenge I've struggled as much with tracking the goals as with actually doing them. Drawing, at least, went really well. Inktober was a bit help here, even though I'm 8 days behind I've had some fun working on it. Evening teeth brushing has very much fallen by the wayside, which probably shows how drained I've felt. I need to get back into the habit of this. In the last few days I've been starting to feel better, and I think the 4-day week is starting to make me feel less stressed at home (even if work remains stressful). I feel positive now, so next challenge I'm just going to cut down the number of goals and try and be more present here. And hey, this challenge I ran a Tough Mudder and the British OCR Championships, and next weekend I've got a marathon. I've achieved some stuff I'm really happy with, even though that stuff wasn't the goals I laid out.

Oh my god Hiko is gorgeous ❤️ . I'm not surprised he's full of energy at 4 months old - that's the fun of kittens Good job on taking a break from the booze; not always easy to recognise when you need to do that.

One week today - Saturday 21st. Looking forward to it, but it's hard to believe it's finally here.

Yesterday was a good day. I actually updated here, being the main achievement. Also did a run first thing - 6 miles - not long now until my marathon ? I almost did some drawing, in that I at least got the sketch pad out before forgetting to do anything with it. Random aside, I bought a new set of scales on Wednesday. Mainly I got it to weight the cat, but it also does body fat percentage, bone density, and all that kind of stuff for me. I'm under no illusion that it'll be super accurate with those metrics, but hopefully it'll show trends accurately at least. I was absolutely shocked when I stepped on the scale and it showed me as 5lbs heavier than I thought I was, which put me just into the 'overweight' BMI category. Thursday morning I got on again and those 5lbs had miraculously disappeared - I never realised that my weight ciuld fluctuate that much just by weighing at a different time of day! Plan now is to weigh in daily, and see what I can learn from the data.

Wow, you have been busy. Impressed you've managed so much after so little sleep Tuesday night.

I second @Severine, I've been thoroughly enjoying following along with your updates (and wondering if I'll ever find time to give Angband a go!).

I've been AWOL on this challenge for far too long, and it's time I showed up. So this is me showing up. I never did a race report on Tough Mudder, did I? Well, it was fun. There's never that many obstacles at Tough Mudder, but the ones they have tend to be big and interesting, and I'm generally a fan of a lovely run in the countryside. Because of injuries (not mine) it was a fairly slow , but that made it pretty chilled too. Then last weekend it was the inaugural British OCR Championships. It's the kind of event you won't have heard of unless you do quite a few OCRs, so the field was pretty small. Then it's split into elite male/female/para athletes, various age groups for male and female, and an open wave. I went age group and there were only 10 in my category, and I finished 9th of those 10. It was fun to be part of the first championship though, and I only failed 1 obstacle (a rig - I wish I'd had a chance at a second go at it, it feels like it should have been doable). Drawing has been ok thanks to Inktober, though I've fallen behind over the last few days. Instagram links don't seem to embed here now, but if you want to see my doodles they're here: Jarric (@jarric42) • Instagram photos and videos Timekeeping has been rubbish. I've not had the mental capacity to track calories, and then I ran out of one of my shakes because I forgot to order more so couldn't hit that goal anyway. Climbing has hit and miss as I taper for and recover from races (in hindsight it was a bad goal for this challenge). I've kept my Duolingo streak alive (coming up on 400 days!), but mostly I've only studied one language per day so haven't hit the goal. Fallen out of the habit of evening teeth brushing too. I'm not expecting much progress for the last few days of this challenge, but I'll try and update here a little bit at least.

Thank you! I fully don't remember how Pathfinder went because of how long I've left it between updates, but we levelled up last session! After 18 months we're finally level 4 I'm good thank you. The challenge is going pretty terribly I think - I've not done a great job (or indeed any job) of keeping track.

If you are able to speak to a physiotherapist that would probably be the best thing. You could try rolling it - I find the handle of a kettlebell or dumbbell quite good for that - lay your leg on top of it and roll side to side gradually working up the calf. You can put your other leg on top of the affected leg if you need to add more pressure. Also maybe calf stretches off a step would help (with your heel dropped below the hight of the step).

Wow, that's amazing. What causes the rivers to be such different colours? Is a Chongqing Hotpot somehow different to a normal hotpot? Because that sounds foul.

Really sorry to hear about this man, that's absolutely fucking horrible.

I don't really have time to write a full update right now, but I want to keep this thread ticking over for the habit at least. It's been a good weekend, particularly Tough Mudder on Saturday, which I might talk about properly later. I spent all day Sunday watching TV and playing on my phone, and thanks to that I now have an incredibly uncomfortable bunch of tight muscles in my shoulder/neck. Yesterday was payday, so I worked out my average goal completion for the last month. Turns out it came to 62.68%, which is vastly better than I was expecting actually. As a result I got to keep £73.87 in my savings account, and transferred £43.99 as an overpayment on my mortgage. Today I'm feeling stressed and anxious and I don't really know why. I've got Pathfinder tonight, which I hope will make me feel better. And regardless of how I feel today, at least tomorrow's a Wednesday and I have the day off to recover.

Thursday - week 2, day 4 Yesterday was a good day. Got up late and did some yoga (should have set my alarm late rather than having to turn off 3 separate alarms ). I was feeling pretty dreadful, between a cold and a headache - not sure if that was the late Wednesday night, the 4 beers I had, the cold I've got, or a mixture of all of that. Getting up early gave me plenty of time to get to work on time, and I totally failed to do that. I can't even remember why, but I ended up late late (rather than just challenge goals late), and stumbled in feeling crappy and sorry for myself. It was a busy day but I did manage to get a handle on the most urgent thing on my list, and after a few hours and a lemsip I started to feel a bit more human. In the evening I had to go into town for a networking event that I really didn't want to go to. I'd be dreading it all day (and really regretting having signed up all week), but it was too late to back out. Then my train was cancelled so I found out I'd be arriving late as well. And you know what? After all that, I had a really good time. The talks were interesting, the people I spoke to afterwards were nice, and I came away feeling much better than when I'd arrived. Funny how that happens. Despite travelling for 4 hours for a 2 hour event, I did find time to do token French and Dutch lessons, and to brush my teeth before bed. Calories were tracked at 3,000 (lower than the 3,800-odd that I had on Wednesday, but enough to mean I've exhausted my buffer for the week and then some). No drawing or hangboarding today, but I am catching up with reading the Daily Dracula thanks to all the train journeys - think I'm only a couple of days behind on the plot.

Excellent! Spread the Fascinating Aïda love! I'm currently at work, and will not be clicking on any of those videos Remind me to go back to them over the weekend.

That makes a lot of sense; I'm a fan of morning workouts for similar reasons. Luckily WW goes to bed about 10pm, so we don't miss out on that time together, though I often miss walking her to work by the time I get home from the gym. The afternoon break is a good thing to learn - I'm also a fan of taking plenty of breaks (if I can get them!)

That's definitely a big victory - consistency is key and not letting the weather derail you is mega important. For the workouts, I was going to suggest something similar to what @Elastigirl said for the housework. If you don't have time for a full workout, maybe do something like the Darebee daily dare - that only takes about 3 minutes and you can almost always find 3 minutes somewhere. It's not as good as a full workout, but on a day where you otherwise wouldn't workout at all it's better than nothing. Edit: apparently it's now called the 'Exercise of the Day' rather than the 'Daily Dare'.

Hey Sylvaa, good to see you! Do you think this is likely to end up being the long-term plan, rather than mornings?