Jarric

Personally I like the small ones I am deeply confused though by the idea of bread being involved - that doesn't seem right.

Wow, that's a solid workout - nice one!

Week 2 round-up The Chosen 5/7 for the week, due to a surprise meal on Monday and not planning the week with Saturday's race in mind. I finished the week at 17,815kcal (average of 2,545 per day), against my target of 16,486. I did drop 2lbs however, and I'm now 12 stone 3 (171lbs, or 77.7kg). In 3 weeks I've lost 4lbs, which is pretty much bang on target. This week I want to lose 1.28lbs, and I'll be sticking with that same calorie goal of 16,486 while it seems to be working. The Wronged 6/7 for the week, and my knee feels ok despite the race so I think this is working? The Expert 3/7 - a pretty poor show really. I did want to finish my interviews before getting stuck into this, which I have now done, so no excuses not to crack on this week. The Monstrous 6.5/7 for the week. A total lapse in concentration on Saturday before the race, but otherwise teeth are being brushed quite reliably. The Spell-slinger 7/7 - I'm still enjoying learning languages, and the flexibility of this really helps me keep on it (i.e. one Duolingo lesson or 5 minutes of a podcast is enough to count). Most days I've done well over the bare minimum.

Sunday - week 2 day 7 Yesterday was a good day. I'd decided Saturday night not to set an alarm, and really give myself a good lie in, so I was less than amused that someone rang out door bell at 06:50. I stayed in bed chilling for a while, then got up and did some yoga. I procrastinated my way through the rest of the morning, until it was time for D&D, which we ended up having to postpone. Instead we went to Tesco and stocked up on all of the grocery shopping we've been putting off, and then came home and chilled in front of Strictly. Food was on track; scrambled eggs on toast for breakfast, a protein shake and a solitary scone for lunch, and a lovely roast chicken dinner cooked by WW. We picked up enough pigs in blankets* to last us the rest of the year, so they'll be an important part of our roast dinners for a while. About 8pm I decided I probably ought to do some studying, and wrote the first part of my essay. I actually think this one might be quite straightforward, which is handy as I only have a couple of weeks to finish it! 5/5 goals for the day - lovely stuff. *No @WhiteGhost, I'm not making that up ?

You're not wrong . Thank you mate, I did have a lot of fun! Thank you! It was a lot, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The ankle doesn't seem too bad today. My left shoulder was a real problem yesterday, but that's already starting to feel better so hopefully nothing serious.

Race report - Nuclear Challenge Cup Yesterday was a good day. I'd set my alarm for 05:55, as I knew I absolutely had to leave the house by 06:30 to give myself plenty of time to be race ready. So I laid in bed for 20 minutes catching up on Discord, muddled about having breakfast and making tea, and eventually left the house about 06:50. I still had time to down a little bit of tea, change shoes, change glasses, and get my back checked before running. I was in the Challenge Cup, the competitive wave going off first. Not that I was expecting to compete; I've barely run more than 2 miles at a time all year, and Friday night was spent in the pub for Tall's leaving do. But the Challenge Cup has an extra 1km of obstacles on each lap, and given the choice of more obstacles on course there is only one answer. It was a coldish morning, and I had wrestled with what to wear for a while. In the end I plumped for t-shirt and shorts, and trusted that I'd get warm by running around. Looking at other competitors I second guessed myself a bit, but you see everything from vests to multiple layers; it's such a personal choice it's hard to rely on others. The course was 2 laps, coming in a 16km (10 miles) in total. All obstacles were mandatory, with the normal obstacles allowing retries (or, if you really couldn't manage them, burpees), and the Challenge Cup obstacles allowing only 1 attempt and requiring a heavy carry penalty on a failure. It was an interesting how the course was split. The first couple of miles/3km or so was basically all running. There was some in and out of ditches and a bit of woodland, but no real obstacles as such. There was one challenging obstacle - the Spinning Monkey which was a series of horizontal spinning hoops and rings over a pool of water, and then we were on to the lake zone. There was no full immersion for the Challenge Cup (whereas the other racers had the Death Slide, which kicks you up and dumps you in the lake), which was good for keeping warm but a bit of a shame as I do like a swim. We did at least get a zip line dumping us into the lake. That was where the course split, and we headed into the Challenge Cup obstacles. By contrast to the previous running section, this was really obstacle-intensive. One of the first obstacles was just a series of balance beams a few inches off the floor, which was really interesting because it wasn't mega hard, but knowing I only had one attempt made it really high stakes. The last thing I wanted was to get most of the way across, fall off, and then have to do a long wreck bag carry. After that were the Long Rig and the Monkey Bar Rig - both variations on swinging from ropes, beams, bars, and spinning things to totally wreak your grip. The low rig was fun. This wasn't quite the setup, but to give you an idea: It focussed a lot on keeping a really tight core, spinning around with legs high, and transferring from one item to the next. It took me so long to methodically work my way across it that the heavy carry would probably have been quicker, but this was definitely more fun. The Low Rig went straight into the High Rig, a set of mostly hang tough rings which were murder after blowing my grip on the Low Rig. Finally we headed to the Coathanger, yet another overhead grip challenge. And finally, my favourite obstacle, Stairway to Heaven: (not me, just a handy video I found). As you can imagine, this was tough with all the grip stuff that had gone before, but I got there In fact, I got all the way through lap 1 without any penalties! I could tell by the end of lap 1 I was getting tired though. I slipped climbing onto an obstacle and nearly hurt myself. Then I failed to run up the halfpipe, and didn't get to the top until my third attempt. Bearing in mind this was just a regular obstacle, not a Challenge Cup obstacle, this should have been more than doable, so that was a worry. The race ended with a travelator, which was pretty easy but a lovely moment to climb to the top and see the finish. ...and then it was time to do it all again. I had a lot of fun on lap 2, but man it was hard work. I was definitely tiring, it was a good bit slower than the first lap, and I was getting clumsier. I landed badly on my ankle at one point and felt a crunch. My run of no penalties disappeared, and they started to rack up pretty quickly. I still got the balance beams, and even they felt like a real core workout. I even managed the low rig, which I'm ecstatic about because that was a real technical challenge. Granted I got to the rig at the same time as another guy, and he fell off and did the penalty carry and was still long gone by the time I had worked my way through it. I should talk about that guy actually. His name wasn't Dusty, but that's what I heard when he introduced himself so lets call him that. Dusty was a lovely bloke, we kept catching each other - him being the better runner and me succeeding on more obstacles balanced us out for a while. It got to the point that by the end of the race we were cheering each other on and saying hi like old friends. Hopefully I'll see him again next year. When I got to the end of the race I was pleased to get the halfpipe first time - sliding down that thing really hurt and I thought I might have psyched myself out of it. Then up the travelator once again, and over the finish line to a welcoming cup of tea. The warm showers was very welcome; though I think t-shirt and shorts was the right choice I really could have done with neoprene socks by the end for my frozen feet. And that's it, my last race of the season complete. I finished last in my age group (12/12), 38th of 43 for gender, and 44th of 56 overall. About what I expected, and bearing in mind that there were some proper pros in the Cup it's hardly surprising. Cheers! Saturday - week 2 day 6 Calories were well over yesterday, though I had had no intention of sticking to them. I had a decent breakfast, half a dozen energy gels on my run, a beer and a burger post run, a protein shake when I got home, a mince pie as a snack, and a carbonara ready meal for dinner. having beaten the shit out of myself I felt I needed the fuel #noragrets I took a long bath to soak my aching muscles when I got back, and I'm fulling counting that for my Monstrous goal. It was much needed; I felt battered. I did my Dutch between watching the rugby - Wales v New Zealand was good and Ireland v South Africa was an excellent match. Rather than practising French I decided to see if I could get the France v Australia match up with French commentary. Turns out that france.tv isn't region locked, you just have to sign up and give them a French postcode, so I can see myself watching more French TV in the future now I have an account. I'd forgotten to do my teeth in the morning - I usually do it when the shower is heating up but I didn't shower and so it slipped my mind. Half a point for getting it done in the evening. I once again couldn't summon the energy to do any essay writing, leaving me at 2.5/5 for the day.

Yeah, sometimes I have to look at those different words to work out measurements in a recipe. If it's courgettes, aubergine, and coriander then measurements are in British cups, and if it's zucchini, eggplant, and cilantro then I have to convert from American cups. To be fair, I have never in my life cut toast into strips for any other purpose.

I'm using Krita at the moment, because it's free and I'm very inexperienced with digital drawing. I can't really say how it compares to other software I'm afraid. @starpuck might have some good recommendations on that front.

Touché

Awesome, thank you! I will let you know how I get on.

I've had this happen to me once, maybe twice. My theory at the time was that I hadn't dreamt at all, whereas perhaps if I dream it feels like time has passed (even if I don't remember dreaming). I have no idea whether there's any validity to that theory. Why not re-start mid-week?

I got a Wacom tablet that I could draw on the screen with as my first drawing tablet, because I couldn't be bothered to learn how to use a normal drawing tablet properly. I am certain that it's possible to get just as good with a plain tablet as with drawing on a screen, but I didn't want to commit the time to learning. If you decide to go that route, Wacom do sell approved refurbished models direct from their store, which is a bit more cost-effective than buying new. I got a Wacom One, which was the smallest, cheapest option.

Why have I not thought of this?? I know what my next slow cooker meal is now. Do you have a good recipe you can share?

That's disappointing, I've only just worked out how to pronounce his name. Congratulations dude! Really pleased you've got some reliable work.

Glad you've got some more information, and are on track to getting treatment for everything

Thursday - week 2 day 4 Thursday was a good day. Did some yoga first thing, to start tapering for today's race. That and some stretching ticked off my Wronged goal. Work was busy, but I'd already made a decision to work late. Somehow I'm less tired staying almost 2 hours late at work than I am rushing to try and finish anywhere near on time. There's also no guilt of getting home late when I've planned for it and warned WW in advance. Food was good - normal breakfast, leftover butternut squash soup for lunch. I couldn't be bothered to cook dinner as I was getting back so late, so I picked up a Co-op steak pie that was both cheap and about right for calories, and stuck that in the oven. I was still hungry late on, so I sacrificed my evening glass of milk to have some grapes and finish almost bang on my calorie goal. 4/5 goals for the day - I had planned to do some studying whilst working late but that didn't happen and I ran out of steam. Friday - week 2 day 5 Yesterday was a good day. More yoga and stretching in the morning, and another busy day at work. It was tall's last day at work yesterday, so the plan was to go straight from the office to the pub for his leaving do. Knowing that I had a race this morning I knew I had to eat and keep the drinking in check, so I picked up a sandwich and a cous cous salad and had those about half 4 as an early dinner. The pub was excellent, we had a really good turnout of people from the office, and it was the first time in a while we've got together and had a good night out. I also found out that someone has accepted the job to replace tall, so we've only got to wait until January to have a full team again. I had 5 pints of beer, and a couple of cigarettes, but sensibly stopped drinking at 8pm and left the pub shortly after. So not the most sensible night before a 6am wake up and a 16km race, but not the silliest either. When I got home I drunkenly packed my bag for the race, put away the washing, did some washing up, and generally had a very productive time before going to bed at 10pm. I'm not sure that WW was entirely impressed with my clattering around, but I'm glad that I used the energy to get some stuff actually achieved. 5/5 goals for the day - I interviewed a colleague at work for my latest essay, calories were really high thanks to the beer, but the food component and beer component were both within their respective goals, teeth done, languages done, stretching/foam rolling first thing.

Oo, what are some of the other words you've learned? Yeah, neeps are swedes or turnips, tatties are potatoes, and neeps and tatties is a specific dish of swede and potato mashed and then roasted with butter. Talking to some people about it, I think I chronically under-seasoned them. Palmiers are French pastries. Palmier literally means palm tree, because the pastries (apparently) look a bit like a palm leaf. So in summary @WhiteGhost, blame the Scots and the French

This sounds quite familiar - I had the opposite issue a year or so ago; putting my old hard drives in a new motherboard. Ended up having to find drivers for them on another computer, stick that onto a flash drive, and then reinstall Windows including the new drivers?‍♂️

I'd read that - I understand almost all of those words so I'd be interested to see what they're doing together . It sounds really interesting.

I've never actually done a watch party, so I don't really know. I like the idea of watching stuff together, but in practice I think that time zones may prove prohibitive. Thank you! Thank you mate! It's actually been going really well; I haven't missed a day this challenge. Generally I only talk about it when I'm missing it, so all is good!

Wednesday - week 2 day 3 Yesterday was a good day. Crossfit was bench press; I hit 65kg (143#) x 3 x 5, which was a bit lighter than last time I benched but it was definitely feeling heavy. I had time for a bonus set of 60kg x 5 too. After that we had 3 attempts at a 50ft sled pull straight into max handstand pushups. I managed 40kg and 5 reps, 40kg and 7 reps, and 45kg and 5 reps. Quite happy that I can now, suddenly, do full handstand pushups. Long may it continue. Work was busy. I had a long chat with my manager about the state of our workload, and I'm hopeful that we might have some more staff soon. I suspect not enough, but at least more. I was exhausted from the conversation though. When I got home WW had bought me a palmier pastry. I didn't have the calories planned for it, but it wouldn't keep and I had no inclination to stick to my goals, so I had it. Weirdly I still managed to rejig the rest of my food to stay roughly in budget. I also had been planning to not have beer to make up for my high calorie day on Monday, and because I have a race on Saturday, but I very much wanted beer by the time work ended so I got a small amount. I kept it sensible and got to bed early at least. 3/5 goals complete - I've decided to count the calories as I got them back on track and the beer fits the week. Couldn't be arsed to stretch or do any studying though.

Very true. And I can do a great many things with the size I have. Unfortunately most GMB programmes cannot be counted amongst tjose things. Ah thank you! And you are right, of course, repetition is good. Then invited you shall be!

True, although the investment in support does increase. Which also makes it sensible to offer a limited time offer, see how many stupid questions you get, and then try and restructure the programme to avoid stupid questions before opening it to a wider audience. All the workouts so far have been 20 minutes, if you know what you're doing, and without rests. The first session took me 45 minutes including watching the tutorial videos for every single exercise; I'm hoping I can reduce that with practice. Yeah, I don't even have a hallway; I can lay on my living room floor, but I can't stretch out with my hands above my head at the same time; it's really small. I'm up for this. Same; I probably wouldn't have got round to it otherwise.

I did not know such a device existed. I do however have a stovetop vegetable steamer, so I think I'm going to have a go with that at the weekend! I hope you feel better, and better rested, soon.

5lbs is still a big bump for OHP, just because it tends to be a high percentage. I don't know what you're lifting, but that would be 4% on my 5RM, compared to say, 1.5% on my deadlift 5RM. Or to look at it another way, the same percentage increased would add 13.6lbs to the deadlift, which is quite a big jump on a max. By all of which I mean to say, good job on adding 5lbs to all 4 sets!