Jarric

A gig and a beach day - sounds like an excellent weekend. Hope one of the jobs is a good fit.

Great job on the workouts - that gym session sounds great, I'd enjoy that one! Also, I say go for the surgery. The process sounds scary, but in reality hundreds of thousands of people get it done every year. I wouldn't suggest that you trust a random stranger to operate on your eyeball, but in the hands of a trained, experienced professional you'll be absolutely fine.

I, too, am hideous at meeting deadlines. One thing that I find helps is having false deadlines before the real deadline. That way I pick a date I want a thing done by and tell people that's what I'm aiming for, and then when I miss that deadline I'm annoyed at myself but still have time to finish before the absolute deadline. For (big party) is there someone who would go with you as a wingman? Someone to be the socialiser that says hi to strangers and starts conversations, who you can stand next to and join the conversations? Again, that's something I like to do when I have the option, albeit the more networking I do the more I think I should really remove the security blanket eventually. The gems on your cosplay look amazing by the way (maybe the fine ass sharpie helped?), that's really impressive.

You're back! Welcome back! Took me a while to pick up on the new name (although to be fair I'm horrible at staying up to date on people's thread's anyway ). There is wisdom in this.

Great job on doing that despite not wanting to. It's hard to make these choices, even when you know it'll feel better in the long run. I really like Star Wolf, I think it's a really good fit. Or Starwolf, which is less of a Star Fox reference, but still sounds cool.

Week 2 wrap-up The decisionist - 7/7 Calories tracked every day. Finished the week at 21,978kcal against a target of 21,000. That's an average of 3,140 per day, against a daily target of 3,000. My weight has remained unchanged at 180#. I'll be dropping my target to an average of 2,900kcal per day for next week, that's 20,300 for the week. I'll also be reducing the size of my breakfast, as the breakfast biscuits seem like an easy first thing to remove. The spreadsheet is pretty boring right now, but here it is: Date Target Actual Actual kg 26/06/23 180 180 81.64663 03/07/23 178.65 180 81.64663 10/07/23 177.310125 17/07/23 175.980299 24/07/23 174.660446 31/07/23 173.350493 07/08/23 172.050364 14/08/23 170.759987 The muscle - 6/7 Forgot my regular protein shake on Sunday. I need to be mindful of this on weekends, as it doesn't fit into my routine quite as smoothly as in the week. De vertaler - 7/7 All good here, and I'm enjoying learning Dutch. Le traducteur - 7/7 All good on this too. I'm finding French pretty easy at the moment, so trying to push through and get to some harder stuff. The face - 6/7 There's still some resistance to doing this, but the accountability of a challenge helps. Week 3 will be an interesting week. I have today off work, I'm out half of Tuesday at a networking thing, have a black-tie dinner on Wednesday in town, and am playing in a charity volleyball tournament on Friday. It shouldn't have a big impact on my goals - main challenges will be tracking the posh dinner on Wednesday and getting up for my run on Thursday so that I have my recovery shake afterwards!

Weekend 2 The decisionist - calories tracked both days. I made an effort to bring my calorie average down for the week, though by this point it was impossible to be on target. Saturday WW made my favourite for dinner - Swedish meatballs - and that came in at over 1,000kcal. Otherwise it was a pretty conservative day, so I finished at 2,671kcal. Sunday I didn't want to under-fuel after my long run, but kept to a very reasonable 2,582kcal. The muscle - managed my recovery shake and creatine both days, but I nearly forgot my main protein shake on Saturday and actually forgot it on Sunday. This is just a routine thing - it's part of my breakfast on weekdays, but not on weekends, so I need to actively remember to do it. On Saturday I went for a 5k before climbing, and then (after a very long tea break) climbed for almost 2 hours. It was a good time, and I spent a lot of time working climbs with someone I vaguely know who was working on the same area - that's always nice when I go climbing on my own. Sunday was long run day, and I got 12 miles (19.2km) and 1,148 feet of elevation (350m) in. It was slow as anything, but still good training. De vertaler - Dutch done both days. Duolingo is being really slow and buggy, which is making this difficult, but I'm keeping my streak at least. Le traducteur - French done both days. Duolingo is being really slow and buggy, which is making this difficult, but I'm keeping my streak at least. The face - teeth done both days.

Thursday and Friday - week 2, days 4 & 5 The muscle - both shakes drunk both days, after my workout and with breakfast. Thursday was a running day, and a damn tough one after squats on Wednesday. I got through it, though thanks to a huge amount of procrastination got home last and was rushed starting work. The DOMS were even worse on Friday, and I did not want to cycle to the gym in the morning. I did cycle, very slowly, and got my slowest ever return journey by a significant margin. The gym session was upper body at least, even if it was a tough one. I worked up to 50kg (110#) x 3 on overhead press, followed by a set of 45kg x 5. The WOD was EMOM 20': 1 minute max reps dumbbell push press, 1 minute max reps ring rows, 1 minute max calories ski, 2 minutes rest. As it turns out, 1 minute is a long time to do these things for! It was good fun, and I was knackered afterwards. The decisionist - calories tracked both days. On Thursday WW and I went out for dinner with Hopalong, to our favourite local tapas place. It's hard to track calories in a tapas restaurant, but with bread, spicy chicken, halloumi fries, croquettas, calamari, bacalhau, and chorizitos with potato and padron peppers, plus a cheesecake for dessert, I make it 2,061kcal for that meal alone. Plus 3 beers. Plus a couple of whiskeys when I got home. All in all, finished the day at 4,554kcal. Friday I worked late and ended up snacking on a cherry bakewell in the office and an ice cream sandwich when I got home. Finished the day at 3,010kcal, which would have been perfectly on plan if I didn't need to try and get my average for the week down. De vertaler - Dutch Duolingo done both days Le traducteur - French Duolingo done both days. The face - I think I did this on both days? Not 100% sure, but I'm giving myself a pass. Both nights I stayed up too late, and I didn't sleep well Thursday night. Need more sleep next week.

You hit more than half your goals still, I'd call that a successful day.

Wednesday - week 2 day 3 The decisionist - shakes drunk after Crossfit, and for breakfast. Crossfit was squats, the first time I've done squats that weren't box squats in quite a while. Worked up to 105kg (231#) x 3, 95kg x 5, and 85kg x 7. Felt pretty good, but wow the DOMS today! That was followed by 20 pistol squats, 30 toes to bar, and 40 double unders, and I managed to string more than 1 consecutive double under together for the first time! It was supposed to be 2 rounds of that, but I was in no rush, and the double unders took plenty of time The muscle - calories tracked. Things were mostly on target until the evening, when after a long day of working late (thanks, last minute client requests!) I decided I wanted a couple of beers whilst watching Questing Time. Still, I skipped my evening glass of milk, and came in at 3,054kcal, which is about right. De vertaler - Dutch Duolingo done. Le traducteur - French Duolingo done. I also finished this section of the course, which is exciting. The face - did not brush my teeth. I was falling asleep during Questing Time, and all I wanted to do afterwards was crawl into bed, so I did exactly that

Monday and Tuesday - Week 2, days 1 & 2 The decisionist - shakes drunk. Monday morning I cycled to the gym for deadlifts. Felt weak after the holiday, but hit 140kg x 5 at least. Then we had some single-leg deadlifts, calf raises, and hamstring curls. Gonna be feeling the calf raises for a while! On Tuesday I ran before work, 5 miles including a 2 mile interval in the middle. All pretty slow, but I got round. Both days I had my recovery shake + creatine as soon as I got back. No stomach issues from the creatine, which seems to be the only real side effect people have, so that's encouraging. The muscle - calories tracked both days. On Monday I was a bit worried about calories being too low, forgetting that there would be a drinks reception at the networking event I attended. It was a really good talk and I met some really nice people afterwards. I also drank 3 beers, and then came home to quite a large dinner, so finished the day at 3,609kcal. Tuesday I made an effort to balance that a bit, and despite considering Pathfinder snacks I held off and hit 2,498kcal for the day. That puts me back closer to my 3k per day target average. De vertaler - Dutch Duolingo done both days. Le traducteur - French Duolingo done both days. I should clear this section of the course in the next day or two, which is pleasing! The face - teeth brushed both days Monday was a good day. Dispite ciming into work to 251 e-mails after my time off, it went relatively smoothly, and I had the afternoon talk/networking event which was good. Yesterday was a good day. After work we had Pathfinder. It was the first session for our main campaign in about 6 weeks, so we were really pleased to be back. We spent a bit chunk of the session deciding what to do about a Lampad that had drugged a load of people because he wanted to keep them as friends forever. Having captured him last session, his 'friends' wanted to kill him so that they could continue living in his cave. After a lot of debate we decided to relocate the lampad to a new cave, rather than forcing the relatively blameless exiles he had controlled to move on and to avoid anyone killing anyone.

Nice one on the deadlifts - being about to lift around your own body weight is nothing to sniff at.

This sounds like a good solution. Might have to see if I can negotiate a standing desk one day in the future.

Thank you, I may well take you up on that (possibly later this year if that's ok, when my French is a little better and my work hours are a little shorter). Obstacles with weights have gender splits in some races, but it varies. At Strong Viking I'm pretty sure the deadballs were lighter on the women's side than the men's side, but I think the sandbag carry was the same for everyone? Whereas I'm pretty sure the Spartan sandbag carry has different weights for men and women. I think Strong Viking also had 3 different heights for the rope climb, and often wall climbs will have a step on one side for shorter runners. The more gymnastic elements of races (rings/monkey bars/rigs etc.) probably favour someone with a climber's build over someone built like a power lifter. And the distance running element is better suited to lighter competitors, so there is a bit of balance for different body types. The balance also depends on the race - the OCR world championships like a lot of rigs, whereas Spartan really love their heavy carries. The other thing to remember is that you can always skip an obstacle if you don't fancy it. It's in the spirit of the event to give stuff a try, but unless you're competing you can always walk around an obstacle if something is beyond your ability or doesn't feel safe. Strong Viking and Tough Mudder don't even give you timing chips in the public waves, so you really have no idea how you finished compared to others; it's more of a personal challenge. All of which is to say - I think you should try a race like this.

I would argue that if you're putting in 90%+ effort it's a sprint, regardless of the pace of each interval.

Hopefully reporting here will help you remember next time. Good luck mate.

It most certainly is. Good job on a great week!

Today is day 1 of the challenge for me, so not much to report yet, but I did weigh in this morning at a nice, round, 180lbs (12 stone 12, about 82kg). Plugging that into my spreadsheet, this will be the plan for the next few weeks: 26/06/2023 - 180lbs 03/07/2023 - 178,65lbs 10/07/2023 - 177,31lbs 17/07/2023 - 175,98lbs 24/07/2023 - 174,66lbs 31/07/2023 - 173,35lbs 07/08/2023 - 172,05lbs 14/08/2023 - 170,75lbs After that I'll be looking to maintain at about 170lbs (12 stone 2, about 78kg) until early November (when race season finishes), and then cut down to about 160lbs (11 stone 6, about 72.5kg) but the end of the calendar year. Now, I have no way of weighing myself accurate to one decimal place, let alone 2, and I expect to fluctuate round these numbers a fair bit, but that's the framework. All I really need to know is if I'm ahead or behind of the plan.

Yeah, it was really good fun - definitely keen to do it again. Thanks! It really was a good event - one of the best run I've been to I think.

Hey, I'm starting this challenge from week 2 too! Hope the retreat went well.

I really like the quest reward idea - stretching on a hard floor is no fun and I fully support rewards that encourage you to do more of the thing you're rewarding.

Hey, that's what the buffer's for, right? Great job on week 1, and on your front squat improvement since last year!

Sorry for the wall of posts, but I also finally got round to scoring my last challenge, so that's here too:

Challenge wrap-up Never got round to wrapping up this challenge, and I'm not going to spend a ton of time on it, but I did realise that this whole thing can be a spreadsheet The decisionist The muscle The second storey specialist The cartographer The camp-maker The face Week 0 6 7 7 7 1 6 Week 1 6 5 4 3 2 6 Week 2 6 5 3 5 1 5.5 Week 3 4 4 0 0 0 2 Week 4 5 7 3 5 4 3 Week 5 2 5 3 1 1 3 Total 29 33 20 21 9 25.5 Percentage 82.86% 94.29% 57.14% 60.00% 25.71% 72.86% Stats +2 CON +1 CON +1 STR +2 CHA No increase +1 SAN I forgot to track the last 2/3 days of week 5, so I might have done slightly better at the end, but I can't get points for what I haven't tracked. Honestly, I thought this challenge had been a bit of a flop, but actually those scores aren't too bad. Stretching will undoubtedly need a better strategy when that goal returns, and cleaning the house definitely needs a totally different tack, but overall I'm not too disappointed.