Jarric

Thank you! I wasn't planning to do it, so apparently that's my reaction when I know there's a camera in front of me

Awesome job on getting 100%! Sorry to hear that your back's gone again.

Snooker is hard. Make you realise just how good the pros are when you actually play a few frames yourself doesn't it? Unrelated, because of the way my phone formatted your post I only saw the quote marks at the end and not at the start. Took a couple of re-reads to realise the gane wasn't called 'Snooker 19 inch' Soubds like you had a really fun weekend!

Sounds like that was a really worthwhile exercise, I'm glad you got so much from it.

Glad the physio went well, hope it helps swiftly. How's C25k going? Didn't we all

Got my photos through from the race last weekend. One at the top of the death slide: One at the bottom: The travelator was the final obstacle: And then a photo op at the end:

Thursday - week 2, day 4 Thursday was a good day. Except, as it happens, when it comes to completing goals. The decisionist 3/7 There was beer. I spent the day at a work meeting; it was a really good day, but a long one, and I had a couple of beers throughout the day. When I got home I was feeling ill, and very tired, and I had a taste for beer. Picked up a 4 pack, along with a 2-person pizza and 2 Belgian buns. This would all sound better if WW was home that evening, but it was just me . I did save her a Belgian bun. I was also so tired I only got as far as 2 of the beers before WW came home and instructed me to go to bed because I looked life death. The muscle 3/7 Think I did this? My memory appears to be shot, so I'm gonna give myself the benefit of the doubt, I know that I went for my run at least. After 5 miles on Tuesday, and box squats and walking lunges on Wednesday, the 5 miles yesterday morning was pretty tough. I got round it though, and that's what counts. The second-storey specialist 2/7 At the meeting, with people all day, and then when I got home putting the pizza in the oven was about as much movement I wanted to do. So, no stretching. The cartographer 3/7 Same story here, busy day and knackered evening, The camp-maker 0/7 No cleaning done. You may, at this point, be sensing a pattern. The face 3/7 Teeth not done. I was half asleep when WW got home, and just about managed to drag myself to bed.

Wednesday - week 2, day 3 Wednesday was a good day. The decisionist 3/7 No beer drunk. I ended up working really late, and then felt rubbish when I got back. Left work after 7, and went to bed about half 9. The muscle 2/7 Totally forgot to drink my shake after Crossfit. It was a good session, but I was pretty out of it when I got there and felt pretty tired and weak. I was still trying to convince myself that it was just tiredness/hayfever, and I didn't have a cold. Managed box squats at 90kg (198#) x 3, 80kg x 5 and 72.5kg x 7 (I don't hate those numbers, but bear in mind the week before they were 105, 95, and 85 respectively). That was followed by 3 rounds for time of 30 walking goblet lunges (my poor glutes!) and 15 weighted kneee raises. The second-storey specialist 2/7 My neck was really hurting, so I spent some time rolling my neck and back before bed. The cartographer 3/7 Did a little doodle of an eye - just a token gesture so I wouldn't completely fail this goal. The camp-maker 0/7 No cleaning done. I was tired, and though I got as far as thinking about it, that's all I did. The face 3/7 Teeth done before collapsing into bed.

Tuesday - week 2, day 2 Tuesday was a good day. Going to experiment with updating a little bit differently here. The decisionist 2/7 No beer drunk (excluding the alcohol-free stuff while playing Pathfinder). The muscle 2/7 First shake drunk after my run, where I hit 5 rather slow miles. I really wasn't feeling up to it, I had what felt like the beginning of a cold in the back of my throat (though I managed to convince myself that it was hayfever), and it was hard, but I'm glad I got out there. Second shake drunk with breakfast. The second-storey specialist 1/7 No stretching done. Just remembered, I did do some token stretching whilst working from home. The cartographer 2/7 Plenty of drawing my notes at Pathfinder. The game itself was good too. We are currently trying to reason with a lampad that has drugged a group of humanoids into staying with him and being his friends. It's all particularly galling because we sent the people there to be his friends and live safely in the cave in the first place, and they would have quite happily stayed if he hadn't started drugging them. The whole thing turned into a proper farce of the drugged people trying to grapple us and hold onto us so that the lampad could drug us, and us repeatedly casting grease on them, watching them fall over, and then trying to tie them up or knock them out. We also summoned a spider to web a couple of them, which helped. It was a fun, Benny Hill-esque session. Next session we need to free the last of the people, and work out what the hell we're going to do with the lampad. The camp-maker 0/7 No cleaning done. It's hard to fit this in before Pathfinder, but also I made fuck all effort to do so. The face 2/7 Teeth done before bed. A late-ish night after the game, and I was absolutely knackered. We had talked about playing late, and I'm very glad we didn't.

*hugs* me too. It feels like 5 minutes and a million years all at once, and I'm not prepared to accept either. Don't apologise for being AWOL though - I know you've been off doing awesome things

Monday - week 2, day 1 The decisionist 1/7 - No beer The muscle 1/7 - shakes drunk The second-storey specialist 0/7 - no stretching The cartographer 1/7 - Did some figure drawing The camp-maker 0/7 - No cleaning The face 1/7 - Teeth done Yesterday was a good day. Crossfit first thing was single-leg deadlifts - I built up to 3 sets of 8 each side at 50kg (110#). That was followed by a few round of 50ft farmers' walks and chinups. I didn't push myself to the absolute limit as my hip felt a little off, but I managed sets of 64kg, 104kg, and 4 x 144kg (317#) on the farmers' walks, and 5, 5, 5, 5, 6, 5 on the chinups. Work was busy. I spent a bunch of time just filing e-mails and clearing things, and after a long, busy day it didn't really feel like I'd achieved anything. I was also absolutely starving all day. on top of a normal breakfast and lunch I had 6 pieces of fruit during the day, and then a breakfast biscuit and a chunk of Easter egg before dinner. Not sure what that was about, maybe it was the deadlifts - I clearly needed it anyway. I obviously wasn't starving myself last week either, because I weighed in yesterday morning at the highest weight of my life. Another few weeks of bulking, and I want to see if I can put on another 3lbs to hit 13 stone (182lbs/82.5kg) before I start cutting. In the evening WW cooked a lamb and lentil curry with our leftover roast lamb, and we crashed on the sofa and watched Critical Role. I had no motivation to do anything, but I was annoyed because I felt like I ought to be doing something. In the end I persuaded myself to do a bit of life drawing from a reference pose website - I did 20 x 1-minute sketches, and then one longer sketch to finish up. It wasn't that exciting, but it's good for me. After that I just crashed and dragged myself to bed as quickly as possible without doing any cleaning or stretching. I barely pulled together the willpower to brush my teeth, which at least counts for something.

I like the idea of the weekly mental health tasks; hope you find something useful from them.

Sunday - week 1, day 7 The decisionist 6/7 - No beer The muscle 5/7 - shakes drunk The second-storey specialist 4/7 - foam rolled in the evening The cartographer 3/7 - A little D&D prep The camp-maker 2/7 - Tidied away the spare bed The face 6/7 - Teeth done Yesterday was a good day. Went for a little 5k recovery run first thing (I say first thing - I had a very chilled start to the day and probably didn't go out until 10). We were supposed to have D&D at 12 but one player had to cancel due to work and then another two players didn't show up (they'd only just flown back to the UK from Canada, so I suspected they might not make it). Instead WW and I went for a bit of a walk, then caught up on Taskmaster. I spent pretty much the rest of the day catching up on here and watching Critical Role, but I did get time to cook roast lamb (with a pre-mixed salsa verde which gave the gravy an excellent flavour), boil eggs for this week's breakfasts, and do some foam rolling of my achy back and ankles. Overall this week has been fine, except of the creativity and cleaning fronts. For this week I have written out what cleaning I'm going to do each day, so that I don't have to decide what to do in the moment. Not sure what the answer is for creativity yet, I think it might be JFDI.

Thank you!

That looks like a fun little workout - quite fancy giving that a go

Wow, sounds like you really needed that sleep. The barn looks great! The boarding has such an impact.

Race report - Nuclear Rush 2023 Yesterday was a good day. Got up about 6am, had a chilled breakfast, and then headed over to Nuclear Races. Despite a diversion I got there with loads of time to check in, get a cuppa, get myself together, and take an obligatory pre-race photo. It was a chilly morning, but the forecast assured me that the weather would warm up during the race, so I went out in just a vest and shorts. I was cold waiting in the holding pen before the race, but it was nice to get the pre-race briefing in a normal group. Quite often I do these races in a competitive wave, and it was refreshing to be in a group with first-timers, with big teams of friends and charity runners, and not too many people taking it too seriously. The course was really good. They'd changed it up a bit, effectively reversing the direction of the first part of the course, here's a map for a bit of context: The course itself had some lovely runs through bluebell-filled woodland and across fields full of bright yellow rapeseed, and of course lots of obstacles. Lots of crawling through tubes, being dunked into lakes, and swinging across spinning monkey bars and rigs, There were some good rigs, nothing exceptionally challenging but enough different things to keep it entertaining. Another nice thing about not running in a competitive wave was that there was no real requirement to follow strict rules on the obstacles. A few times I asked marshals how an obstacle was supposed to be completed, and got a response like 'however you want' One of my favourite bits of the course is always the lake zone. That starts with the Death Slide - a big ass slide with a kicker on the bottom that fires you up in the air before you plunge into the lake. In the event village at the start they had a live feed to the slide, so when I got to the top I gave the camera a little wave before going down - I hope someone saw it. After that there's a massive zip line back into the lake, then some big swings where you have to swing out and hit a bell before dropping into the water, and finally a simple platform where you just step off and drop. The last one is the scariest - it's so simple but it's much harder to just step off than to go down a slide or out on a swing. The end was good too, the half pipe and finally the travellator feel so badass to finish off with. Both require a lot of energy, so having them at the end is tough, but feels really cool. For the whole race I felt pretty strong really. I didn't push too hard, had to stop to queue for obstacles and chose to stop and chat to marshalls, but I had enough energy to run at a reasonable pace the whole way. I finished in 02:26:22 - almost an hour slower than first place but almost 3 hours faster than last. Overall I was 127th out of 1471, 112th out of 966 for gender, and 16th out of 157 for age/gender category. After the race I showered off, changed, had a beer and a big burger, and watched some people setting off and others going down the Death Slide. Also watched some of the demonstration of the new Nuclear Fit race - a new Hyrox/Crossfit-style competition Nuclear will be running. I don't really have any desire to do anything that includes 100 thrusters, but it was interesting to see. Saturday - week 1, day 6 The decisionist 5/7 - No beer at home The muscle 4/7 - didn't get my main protein shake in The second-storey specialist 3/7 - took a long bath for my muscles when I got home The cartographer 2/7 - No drawing The camp-maker 0/7 - Tidied a bit in preparation for WW's mum staying over The face 5/7 - Teeth done When I got home I chucked my stuff in the washing machine and had a very long bath to soak my muscles. The rest of the day was very chilled out - WW made leek and potato soup and we spent the evening watching Eurovision. It was fun, mainly as I spent the whole time discussing it on various group chats and commenting on people's hair, but it just wasn't as weird as last year somehow. Also, Finland were absolutely robbed.

Friday - week 1, day 5 The decisionist 4/7 - No beer The muscle 4/7 - didn't workout, so no post-workout shake The second-storey specialist 2/7 - a few stretches before bed The cartographer 2/7 - A quick doodle The camp-maker 0/7 - No cleaning The face 4/7 - Teeth done Friday was a good day. Having dragged myself from the sofa to bed at 1am I also cancelled my Crossfit session. Laid in bed late and slept it off. When I eventually did get up I got my stuff together and headed off to WW's parents'. It was a long drive - 3 hours 20 for a journey that should have taken less than 2, but it was ok just chilling out in the car and listening from the radio. Had a late lunch, went shopping with WW, and then chilled at WW's parents'. I did get in about 5 minutes of stretching, though I felt like I might throw up in a couple of positions so it didn't last long, and I did do a bit of doodling to tick off the creativity goal.

Thursday - week 1, day 4 The decisionist 3/7 - No beer at home (but lots in the pub) The muscle 4/7 - shakes drunk The second-storey specialist 1/7 - stretched after my run The cartographer 1/7 - No drawing The camp-maker 0/7 - No cleaning done The face 3/7 - Teeth were not brushed Yesterday was a good day. Went for a run first thing - just 5k (3.1 miles), as I don't want to push too hard befofe the race on Saturday. Work was busy - knowing that I had today off work I was really pushing to complete everything that I needed to before the end of the day. I didn't get to everything, but I got a lot done. It was someone's leaving do after work, so I walked into town to join them. I had a vague plan that I'd stay for a few drinks, then head home and cooked myself some dinner. The trouble with vague plans, is they don't often actually happen. I got to the pub at quarter to 6, had quite a lot to drink and a couple of cigarettes, and left about 10pm. I did have a lovely time, and some good chats with friends, but I am feeling rough for it today. When I got home I thought it was important to ear something, so I had some bovril on toast. I then tried for a bowl of cereal, but gave up half way through it, fell asleep on the sofa with the cat, and woke up at 1am and dragged myself to bed. Needless to say, not many goals got hit.

Wednesday - week 1, day 3 The decisionist 2/7 - Beer was had The muscle 3/7 - shakes drunk The second-storey specialist 0/7 - did not stretch The cartographer 1/7 - No drawing The camp-maker 0/7 - No cleaning done The face 3/7 - Teeth brushed Wednesday was a good day. Crossfit first thing was 30 rounds of 1 heavy bench press rep, 3 pullups, 5 cals erg. Rather than do it for time most of us took it easy and just went through the rounds until we ran out of time, which was nice. I finished 17 rounds with 70kg (154#) bench, strict pullups, and air bike. One weird thing was that I spent the whole session feeling quite dizzy/light-headed. I'd felt it a bit Tuesday night but had just thought it was tiredness, but it persisted through Wednesday morning and I felt really odd every time I laid down or gor back up off the bench. No idea what that was about - it passed over the course of the day. In return for that going away I started to get pain in my right arm in the afternoon. I think I must have trapped something in my shoulder, because 2 days later it's still present. Pain might be the wrong word, but it's uncomfortable, and there's a dull ache in my right wrist. I'm a bit worried it might affect me at the race on Saturday. WW has the week off work, so she went up to see her parents for a couple of days on Wednesday. That meant I had the house to myself, and the plan was to stick some food in the oven, wash up and clean the kitchen while it was cooking, and then tick off my other goals in the evening whilst watching Questing Time. What I actually did was procrastinate for a while, put a pie in the oven at pretty much the last minute, do a little washing up while it cooked, and proceeded to do bugger all whilst watching Questing Time. Having decided against buying beer when I bought dinner, and decided against going to get some whilst dinner was cooking, I spoiled that by deciding to go and buy beer at the interval in the show. Then I stayed up too late watching Twitch and finishing my beer after QT finished. Overall, a pretty poor day for goals. I did at least enjoy QT, even if I lacked the motivation to do anything whilst watching.

You are not alone. There or otherwise.

You're gonna do great in your interview mate. I look forward to hearing about it.

Tuesday - week 1, day 2 The decisionist 2/7 - No beer The muscle 2/7 - shakes drunk The second-storey specialist 0/7 - did not stretch The cartographer 1/7 - was going to draw at Pathfinder, then we didn't play The camp-maker 0/7 - No cleaning done The face 2/7 - Teeth brushed Yesterday was a good day. Went for my 5 mile run first thing. Ended up getting out later than planned, through a masterstroke of procrastination which included 10 minutes of laying on the floor staring at the ceiling. It was a really tough run as well after Monday's squats, but I got round. Work was really busy. I got done the thing I needed to get done, but with the rest of my work backing up as a result. In the evening we went to play Pathfinder, our Greek campaign. Unfortunately, it turns out that at the pub we play in they have a singer on the first Tuesday of every month, which meant it was too loud for us to play. We hadn't ever realised this, because a) we somehow have missed our game on the first Tuesday of every month in 2023, and b) yesterday wasn't the first Tuesday of the month, but the singer decided to do their slot a week late. I usually do a lot of drawing during the game, and it didn't occur to me until today that I hadn't done any drawing for the challenge. Generally Tuesdays are a tough day to hit other goals with rushing off for the game, but to be honest I didn't put a great deal of effort into them. I could have stretched for 2 minutes before bed easily enough at least, had I thought of it.

Thanks. In the long run, I think talking about it can only help. ?

Pleased to be a source of inspiration 11 hours of sleep sounds good! I always think that I need to catch up on a sleep deficit before I feel better - it's not enough to get 7 hours a night and assume I'll get over that one night where I had 3.