Jarric

This is good! It's all for your own benefit anyway; comparing yourself to others doing it (some of whom are professional/semi-professional artists) sucks the fun out of it a bit. I do love seeing what other people come up with, particularly on a real tangent to the prompts, but I like to compare interpretations rather than ability. Guess you'll have to make a gif of yourself doing it to show us

I just make sure I'm in a lot of photos, and then I only share the good ones You should do another race though! You know you'd rock it. All of my musician pics are of me as a skinny teen/twentysomething; it's not the best look to be honest Thank you sir - you are too kind.

Summer Nuts 2022 - race report A little while ago, on my last challenge, @DarK_RaideR asked me for a race recap of Summer Nuts Challenge. I started writing it whilst on a train, then ran out of time, and I've left it since. I'll pick up from what I had, and we'll see what else I can remember! It was a good day for a race, warm and dry without being too hot. I was running with two guys from work, lets call them Tall and Wide for ease of reference (man I'm bad at coming up with names ). Tall drove us to the race. When we picked Wide up he told us he'd had 11 pints of beer the night before, which seemed like a bad omen. He spent a lot of time before the race joking (or half-joking) that he wasn't going to do it, and most of the first lap joking he wouldn't run a second. When we lined up at the start line we found ourselves at the front of the group, and as we lead out Wide picked up the pace to give us what we hoped was a great photo of us leading the race for the first few hundred yards. Here's how it came out: It quickly became apparent that Tall wasn't keeping up with us, so I dropped back to run with him, and after the initial burst of speed Wide dropped back with us too. Once the initial pack split (mostly overtaking us) it was weirdly quiet on course. We were in quite an early wave, and there would be times when we'd run for a couple of minutes without seeing any other runners. Nuts doesn't have a lot of technical obstacles, as OCRs go, unless you run in the competitive wave where you get access to the technical area. The start of the run was mostly woodland, interspersed with walls to climb over, beams to jump, and other low-level wooden obstacles. Tall, to his credit, leapt over the walls with no real technique but apparently massive springs in his legs, which was cool to see. An early highlight was a traverse wall, with rock climbing holds on a board above a big net. Everyone got across, with Tall even taking on the harder wall behind me. Being a 7km lap, there's never far between obstacles. The longest running section usually takes you up a big hill through some woodland, but when we got to that section of the course we found it closed. I was a bit disappointed at that, as it's quite picturesque, but Wide was extremely pleased to avoid the hill run. The course then leads into the river, where you spend a lot of time climbing into the river, running along the river bed, then clambering up the bank before dropping back in. The water wasn't too high due to the recent droughts, but this was a fun section. At one point you have to drag yourself up a thin narrow tube to come out of the river - an obstacle that Tall was dreading but that he completed confidently, which was pretty cool. Here's me coming out of the tube on lap 2: The most challenging obstacle is probably the rope traverse. It's long enough that it takes a while to get through, but also at the far end it's almost impossible to climb on to the far bank unless you're on top of the rope. Usually on a traverse I would hang under the rope like a sloth, but unless you can manage a rope regain (something I can't do) then that's useless at the far end. So instead I had to crawl on top of the rope the whole way across, which requires a lot more shoulders and is quite a bit more painful! The last section of the course has you crossing the lake a couple of times, first on some wooden pontoons, then on some massive rubber rings, and finally on some big yellow blocks. The pontoons and the blocks are a bit of a leap of faith, but pretty straightforward. The rings however are surprisingly tiring, as you haul yourself crawling across them. Here's me pretending that they aren't as tough as they are: Lap 2 was better than lap 1. Whilst I was flagging, Wide found a second wind as his hangover wore off, and we all said it felt shorter knowing exactly what was coming the whole way round. There were also a fair few more people by the time the second lap rolled around, which made the course feel a little more lively and fun. On our way round, we'd talked about the fact that it would probably take about 3.5 hours to do the course. As we got out of the lake the second time I looked at my watch, and realised we had two minutes to beat that goal. We legged it for the end, despite being pretty tired, and all managed to get to the end inside 3:29. All in all, it was a fun race, and it was nice to do it with some other people rather than running solo. Also nice to run with people I don't usually run with - I've never done a race with Tall and it was his second race ever. After we showered (well, hosed off) and changed we went for a pint and some food at a local pub. I think went home and had a beer in the bath, which felt excellent. Finally, a couple of bonus photos:

Thank you! I work in insurance; the last modules I have to do are strategic underwriting and marketing insurance products. Neither are very applicable to my day-to-day work unfortunately, but now I've got down the technique for writing the essays they're pretty manageable.

So "what happened last challenge?", I hear you cry (silently). Well... Jarric's race season 4-week challenge In what would have been week 1 of this challenge, I was on holiday in York with WW (short of Wonder Woman; my fiancée). And in hindsight, I think I was pretty burned out too. So having not even looked at the forums for that week, I'm starting a challenge now to run for 4 weeks and line up with everyone again next time round. It's also race season; I had Nuts Challenge the week before last, Nuclear Blast last week, and I've had this weekend off. Next weekend is a Tough Mudder, then a weekend off, then the end of my week 3 will be the big one, a Spartan Trifecta. It's also the Spartan European Championships, so it'll be cool to see some really excellent people start in the pro waves before I head off on my own, and maybe see the podiums too. Track Calories - +3 CON This is simple, track everything I eat in My Fitness Pal. The idea is that the next 4 weeks of tracking and weighing myself will allow me to establish a pretty accurate weekly energy expenditure. Next challenge I'm going to go on a short cut, and then for the following couple of challenges I'll be bulking up (because lets face it I'll be eating plenty over Christmas anyway!). Physical maintenance - +2 STR Whilst I don't have specific physio exercises for my knee, I do need to keep an eye on it. I've also been having some tightness in my neck and right shoulder, which I want to work on. And of course there's the constant possibility of injury coming from the races I'm doing and from general crossfit and bouldering sessions. So the goal is to simply do something intentional every day to help with physical maintenance. That could be stretching, foam rolling, strengthening/activation exercises; really whatever. It's just about intentional care. Study - +2 INT I now have 4 more 3,500 word essays to write for my professional qualification. As a minimum I would like to get one of those scratched off this challenge. The goal itself is 4 hours study per week. I do get 2 hours of study time in the working day each week, so really it's about fitting in the other 2 hours on evenings and weekends. Languages - +2 INT I've recently started learning Dutch on Duolingo, as I'm hoping to go and run a race in The Netherlands next year with some nerds here and some of Willy's IRL friends. I've also just got back into working on my French, mostly thanks to @Keladris mentioning an excellent free resource called Language Transfer. For this goal I need to practice both languages every day (the plan is that Dutch will be Duolingo and French will be Language Transfer, but any practice counts for this challenge). Teeth = +2 SAN Brush my teeth twice per day, including electric brush and interdental cleaning in the evening. I have done poorly at this recently, so I'm upping the stat points associated with it in the hope that that's a bit of a better incentive.

Challenge wrap-up This is very late as I thought I'd already done this, but here we go! Barbarian 21/35 (6, 5, 4, 3, 3) = 60% = +1 STR As my knee got better I got worse at doing the physio, which I think is pretty natural and not overly surprising. The important thing is that my knee is substantially better (though not quite 100% of the way there perhaps), I've been signed off by the physio and I feel like I can move forward with a less strict regimen. Druid 28/30 (6, 6, 5, 6, 5) = 93% = +3 CON I was generally able to stick to this. It's a bit of a weird goal, because I was going out and drinking quite a lot, and the only thing I was planning to avoid was drinking at home. I'm not sure that I've learned much from this, or that I'm going to take anything forward, but I've ticked the box for this challenge. Bard 14/35 (4, 4, 2, 2, 2) = 40% = +1 CHA I think I need either a better plan structure to my drawing in order to get more done, or I need to lower this goal to a more realistic expectation of what I can do in a week. I'll likely drop this goal for next challenge, but I'll do Inktober so the latter half of next challenge should have a good bit of drawing in it. Sorcerer 10.5/20 (2.5, 2, 4, 2, 0) = 53% = +1 INT The good news is that I finished one of my essays, so I go into next challenge needing to write 4 rather than 5. The bad news is I really wanted to make a decent start on the next essay, and I haven't done that. The worse news is that if I'd have hit my goal I would have smashed through that essay. In week 5 work got busy and that cost me a couple of hours of study, but I really need to focus on the home study sessions if I want to get this done. Paladin 12/35 (3, 1, 2, 5, 1) = 34% = no stat increase I just need to do better at this, plain and simple. Maybe I need to wager a little more against it; make the stakes a little higher. Overall not a bad challenge; I got through and some of the stuff got done. I also managed 2 races, which I should really report on at some point if I can still remember what happened!

I'd forgotten about Inktober! I was just trying to think of whether to do a drawing goal for this challenge (yes, I know I'm very late!), but I think Inktober will have it covered.

This sounds incredible. I never know what to do with fish, so I'm pinching this for later use.

Week 5 wrap-up Barbarian: ??? ☠️☠️☠️☠️ Druid: ??? ? ☠️ ? Bard: ?? ☠️☠️☠️☠️ Sorcerer: ☠️☠️☠️☠️ Paladin: ⚔️☠️☠️ ☠️☠️☠️☠️ Last week was a good week. I lost track of tracking after a while, so the scores above are just my best guess, but hey ho. The main thing of note was that at the weekend I ran Nuts Challenge with a couple of friends from work. One of them started the day seriously hung over, and the other one hadn't run more than 1km at a time in training for a 14km race, so it was fairly slow going. Still, it was good fun to get out on course for the first time in months, and they're both keen to do more races so I guess they enjoyed it too. After the race, we had a celebratory beer. On Sunday I went back to Nuts Challenge, this time to marshal. It was a bit quiet, which was disappointing and a little worrying for the future of the event (and dare I say the future of UK obstacle sport?). Nonetheless I had a lovely time, I got talking to a lot of cool people who were racing and spectating, and it being quiet made for a fairly easy day. First place to run 4 laps (28km) was less than 1 minute slower than our 2 laps the day before, which shows how amazing how some of these competitors were and how amazing our time was not! That took most of the weekend, so not a lot of challenge stuff done, but really the racing is what it's all about so I'm not upset about it.

"I'll have what she's having, barkeep," says the wood elf who slides onto the next bar stool, grinning.

That's an excellent plan - the challenge time should serve you, not the other way around.

Wise words - I think you've got a really good handle on how to refine this goal after this challenge, and that's useful.

Sounds infinitly sensible. Hope we'll see you around here a bit though?

Good on you. You deserve to be happy, and to move forward.

Wednesday - week 5, day 3 Barbarian: ? ? ? - - - - Druid: ? ? ? - - - Bard: ? ? ☠️ - - - - Sorcerer: - - - - Paladin: ⚔️ ☠️ ☠️ - - - - Yesterday was a good day. Crossfit first thing, with a workout of handwalking, pullups, and toes to bar. My handwalking wasn't fantastically successful, but hopefully I'll gradually gain confidence as I force myself to do this in the middle of the gym rather than towards a wall. After that was bench press, with sets of: • 56kg (123#) x 8 • 66kg (145#) x 2 because I can't do plate maths, straight into 56kg x 7 • 56kg x 9 Physio was done when I got in - it's pretty minimal at this stage; the physiotherapist said I don't really need to do anything so I'm modifying it for goal purposes. Work was busy. Not bad, but I feel like I'm working very hard to stand still. In the evening I went out to play snooker with Hopalong. We haven't caught up in ages, so that was really nice, even though it took me almost two hours to remember how to play snooker No time for study or art with the evening out, but there's no real excuse for me not brushing my teeth before bed

It has been good. Thanks for checking in

Monday and Tuesday - week 5, days 1 & 2 Barbarian: ? ? - - - - - Druid: ? ? - - - - Bard: ? ? - - - - - Sorcerer: - - - - Paladin: ⚔️ ☠️ - - - - - Monday was an excellent day. It was a public holiday, so I slept in, went to Crossfit late, and chilled out. I hit 95kg x 3 on my squats at Crossfit too, though depth may have questionable as I'm still trying to protect my knee. In the afternoon I worked on the digital version of Pallisof, my dragonborn ranger from the previous post. In the evening I headed up to town to see @DarK_RaideR whilst he's in the UK. We had an excellent time; with no real plan and D_R's ability to find a good pub we ended up in a blues bar watching a great guitarist, a lovely little steak restaurant in a random basement, and a pretty typical pub discussing races and fitness and marvel plots. All in all a wonderful day. The only thing we failed to do was take a photo together for you guys; sorry! Yesterday was a good day. Physio first thing, who said that she'll give it a couple of weeks and if I get through my next couple of races without re-injuring my knee she'll sign me off and close my case. I'll still need to look after the knee for the rest of the year I reckon, but it's definitely positive. In the afternoon I went to the optician and amazingly my eyes haven't got worse in the last 2 years. I think this is the first time that's ever happened. I spent a long time working out the right deal on glasses (including 5 minutes with one of the staff their and a calculator trying to work out what I was due to pay). I was hoping to find some glasses I can sensibly wear for races, but the only ones they could offer were £110 and that's not gonna work for something I might lose on my first race. Instead I picked up a very small pair of plastic glasses for £19, and I'll tie them to my face and see how I go. In the evening we had Pathfinder. We'd left last session surrounded by jackals, and after trying to work out what to do they inevitably attacked. It was a really fun combat - the increased mobility in Pathfinder 2e really shone as the jackals could hit and run rather than having to be locked in static combat with us, which much better represents how jackals actually hunt. Emerging victorious we tried to follow the guys we think has been training said jackals, but ended up getting quite lost and being ambushed at night by a pack of lemures. I know these creatures as devils in Pathfinder and D&D, but I didn't realise they're from Greek mythology, and I definitely didn't expect them to be such a tough fight! Our wizard went down, but we managed to bring him back and eventually we won out. Goals-wise I'm doing ok. Main priorities are to find some study time, as I didn't study at work yesterday what with all the other stuff I was doing, and getting teeth brushing more consistent.

Thanks ?

So on Saturday I played a D&D one-shot as a goth, black-scaled dragonborn swarmkeeper ranger. Swarms of bats followed him around and attacked his enemies, and he talked a bit like Richmond from The IT Crowd - he was fun. I decided to draw him and came up with this: On Sunday I decided to try to digitise him. I spent a few hours last night and a few more today to get to this stage: The trouble with him being goth and black-scaled is that everything is very dark. If I can figure out how filters work I might see if I can lighten up some areas to make him look a bit clearer.

Week 4 stats Barbarian: ? ☠️ ? ? ☠️ ☠️ ☠️ Druid: ? ? ? ? ? ? Bard: ☠️ ? ☠️ ☠️ ☠️ ? ? Sorcerer: ? ? ☠️ ☠️ Paladin: ⚔️ ⚔️ ⚔️ ⚔️ ⚔️ ☠️ ☠️ I was pretty bad at tracking stuff last week, but this is the best guess of where I got to. The trouble is that if I don't update here I don't update my journal, which is a bit of a double whammy. I had a good week though. Wednesday night I had a few beers in front of the TV (and a couple of whiskys, if I'm honest) for my one day of drinking at home. On Thursday I went out for a drink with The Captain for the first time in a very long time, which was absolutely lovely. The weekend was pretty chilled. I climbed Saturday morning, and played in a D&D one-shot Saturday afternoon. Went to a garden party briefly on Sunday afternoon, then spent the rest of the day chilling out. I also spent a chunk of time drawing my character from the D&D one-shot for one of only 2 bard sessions for the week (I'll share that in a separate post). Physio has been hit and miss, but the knee is a lot better. I'm still focussing on protecting it, limiting running and avoiding going past 90° of flexion on my lifts. Race season starts this week, and I feel a lot better going into it than I was worried I might. Didn't study at the weekend. I had plenty of time to do it, but I just didn't. I'm just at the start of my next essay, which seems more straightforward than the last one, but I don't want to lose momentum. Week 5 will be interesting, as today is a bank holiday here and Saturday I have a race, but there's no reason I can't get great marks if I put my mind to it. EDIT: I got my day wrong; I started drawing my character on Saturday, then started a digital version on Sunday, so I actually got one more drawing day than I thought.

Thanks mate - I know I totally failed to respond to this at the time, but I did see it and I did end up drawing stuff (which I'll share here in a bit).

I wasn't a DS9 fan, for the most part, but I really liked Voyager. I generally find my opinions of the two shows are opposite of most people's. I liked DS9, but much preferred Voyager. I never realised that this was an unpopular opinion.

Tuesday - week 4 day 2 Barbarian: ? ☠️ - - - - - Druid: ? ? - - - - Bard: ☠️ ? - - - - - Sorcerer: ? - - - Paladin: ⚔️ ⚔️ - - - - - Yesterday was a good day. Went for a 5k run first thing, and that felt ok. I'm still going slow keeping runs short, but it's good that I can start to run a bit more consistently. I wasn't feeling 100% when I got back, so decided to do my physio exercises later. Unfortunately, later never came. Work was ok; and I finished off and submitted my assignment! Only 4 more essays (or, to look at it another way, 14,000 words) to go! I stayed on a bit late getting important things finished though, which made us a bit late for Pathfinder. We ended up getting a Co-op meal deal for dinner, eating it in the car in the Co-op car park, and then heading straight down to the game. Pathfinder was fun - we had a very RP heavy session getting new quests and talking to some of the exiles that we have been trying to protect. We then ventured out, and then ended the session as we heard the howls of jackals and saw them starting to surround us. Got plenty of drawing done at Pathfinder, and miraculously managed to persuade myself to do my teeth before bed, so all in all a reasonable day goals-wise.

Thank you! I look forward to seeing what the rest of the series has in store.

Wow, you've been doing a lot! Hope the gym trial is good; it'll be nice to go to the gym for a break I'm sure