Jarric

That's an exciting adventure you have ahead of you - good luck!

Eat well and lift things - sounds like a perfect recipe.

Glad you're back and coming out of quarantine; I'm looking forward to seeing your adventures with the bass. I'm also starting to get excited about drawing again, and your arting always inspires me to do more, so that's a good fit!

And I'm back again - let's see if I can get all the way through this challenge without getting overwhelmed by life's challenges and/or getting injured! Pint of the black stuff, barkeep

Challenge wrap-up Not a wholly successful challenge, though not really through fault of my own. My one goals was to run, and I managed: Week 1: 3/4 runs Week 2: 3/4 runs Week 3: 4/4 runs Week 4: 1/4 runs Week 5: 0/4 runs Total: 11/20 runs My last run was Tuesday of week 4, then I picked up a knee injury on the Wednesday and haven't run since. I'm going to try a short run tomorrow morning (Tuesday of week 0), and then on Wednesday I've got a physio appointment to find out what's going on with my knee. Timing isn't ideal with Dirty Weekend falling on Saturday, but logically the best choice was to rest and my knee feels a lot better than it did when I hurt it (though still not 100%). Despite not running I haven't been idle. I've kept up Crossfit and just made modifications as necessary to work round the knee, I've done a couple of yoga sessions, and been swimming a couple of times. I've not been exercising as much on the weekends, but I think that's ok for now. Perfect completion would have given me +3 STR, +2 SAN, so with the swimming and some genuine effort made I'm going to call it +2 STR, +1 SAN ETA: Between the 15XP for 3 points of stat increase, and ticking off an old goal on my list (completing a professional exam), I've hit level 16!

Good on you for keeping it professional with that manager mate - ultimately if you don't rise too it I think you'll be in a much stronger position to get things sorted.

Well, my leg still hurts, so I think I'm injured. I'm trying to get a physio appointment booked, and hopefully they can shed some light on what's going on. Yesterday morning I went for a short swim. It was easier on my leg but not perfect, so I did a bunch of arms-only stuff and called it a day after about 20 minutes. This morning I went to Crossfit, theoretically for squat day. In practice I did deadlifts, which don't seem to aggravate the leg, and then a workout of deadball deadlifts and skiing in place of the front squats and running everyone else was doing. It was nice to do something, but I think I'll skip it on Monday unless things have really improved/the physio says otherwise. Work's been pretty busy, but I do feel like I'm getting somewhere with it. I'm not sure how long that feeling will last. Other than that it's been a fairly chill couple of days - my MIL has been staying with us, which has mean lots of chilling on the sofa really.

Glad to hear it Wolfman. That deadlift complex sounds brutal - I'll have to try it sometime!

Too bad WW doesn't like barbeque sauce, because that sounds exceptionally good.

You are an evil genius - I love it

That's an excellent way of putting that.

With all of the conflicting responses to this, I'm even more convinced that this isn't a useful metric

Well I've been absent too long. In week 3 I: Went for a 5 mile run on Tuesday Did a very short run to and from the swimming pool on Thursday Went climbing first thing on Saturday Had lunch on Saturday, then drove out into the hills and went for a 6 mile cycle, followed by a 5 mile run Did a 4 mile run Sunday morning Work was crazy again last week, and then I got a cold over the weekend meaning I spent a lot of Sunday and all of Monday on the sofa. Still, 4/4 runs for the week can't be bad. Week 4 so far has been mixed. Monday was a bank holiday here for the Easter weekend, and as mentioned I spent all day on the sofa feeling sorry for myself (other than Crossfit first thing). Yesterday I went out for a 3 mile run, and was knackered throughout. This morning was Crossfit, and we had a nice workout of 7 rounds for time of 1 bar muscle up, 2 power snatch, 3 burpees over bar. About halfway through I remembered how to do bar muscle ups, which was quite satisfying. The second part of the session was natural leg extensions, nordic curls, and side bends. During the leg extensions something felt really painful around my knee, so I stopped and started doing some stretching and rolling. It's now lunchtime and the whole leg really hurts, so I'm pretty worried right now. Just over 2 weeks to Dirty Weekend and I might have picked up an injury - wonderful

Hopefully it means that you're building muscle. You're lifting numbers are going great mate, well done.

I am very late in responding, but thank you for this absolute gem. I may inflict this on a D&D group someday. Oh yeah, I get this too. I should do more of that kind of stuff really, it's a fantastic core workout.

Of course! I'll get on that immediately!

Would you not be able to eat chocolate? Horses can't, but a centaur is not a horse. From a brief bit of googling, it looks like the main issue is theobromine, which humans metabolise quickly but horses and dogs metabolise slowly, so the question is does a centaur deal with theobromine like a human or a horse? It would probably be less dangerous to experiment with this at least, because unlike horses I would assume that centaurs are able to vomit if they do overdose on chocolate.

Weekend 2 On Saturday I went bouldering first thing (well, early-ish anyway). After that Hopalong met me for a cuppa and a chat, which was really nice as I've not seen him in a couple of weeks and he's now going on holiday. Between the climbing and chatting I was a bit short on time, but I managed to squeeze in a 3.5 mile (~5.6km) interval run to the beach and back. Splits were all over the place, mainly because I didn't know how the interval setting on my watch worked: 1 - 8'41" 2 - 9'33" 3 - 9'39 0.5 - 12'25 Saturday afternoon I went up to Town again to see a friend, who I'll refer to as Genius. It's Genius's birthday next week, so I hung out in his swanky apartment with a few of his other friends and drank cocktails. I meant to leave early, but ended up staying late and deciding to catch the last train home. There was a problem with that decision, which became immediately apparent when I got to the station to found that my train had been cancelled. Speaking to a guard, I was told that the only option was to race across Town to get another train from a different station. I ran, drunk, a good chunk of the way before I managed to hail a cab to get me there with about 5 minutes to spare. I was extremely pleased to get there, and tipped the cabby well, but it was still a bit more energetic than I would have liked to have been at that time and I wasn't home until half 1 in the morning. Sunday was a good day, but I did not run. I got up a little late and plowed on with some D&D prep - the party are exploring an ancient temple which has some interesting surprises for them, and I wanted those to be ready. They killed some ice spiders, I nearly killed the monk's pet pig with a giant boulder trap, and a good time was had by all. In the afternoon I did a little more D&D prep, and then went out for a tea tasting session that WW had bought me for my birthday. It was really good fun; we tried lots of different tea blends and had a few tea cocktails, and I walked away with a massive haul of various teas to try. We also blended our own teas, which might turn out horrible, but it was fun to give it a go. 3/4 runs again this week. Mission for week 3 is to get all 4 runs in, and at least a short bike ride.

Yeah, it was really good thanks! You're right, musicals are not know for their complex plotlines . Weirdly I feel like the opposite is true of opera, which I always imagine to be excessively convoluted.

Hang on, it's week 3 already? Well in that case I guess my week 2 can best be described as 'fast'.

Like a centaur? Awesome! Being patient and trusting the process is hard, but it'll be worth it.

I mentioned this on the Discord, but thought I'd throw out the question here as well. In the UK the health service are looking at an official recommendation that a healthy person's waist measurement should be no more than half of their height. I get correlating waist measurement and health risk factors (it's a pretty blunt tool, but for a layperson it's an easy number to come by), but 50% seems very low. Is that just me, or is a waist measurement of 50% of your height pretty skinny for most people? Article if you're interested: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/apr/08/ensure-waist-size-is-less-than-half-your-height-health-watchdog-says

Another busy week buzzes by. I had to go to the City early on Wednesday, so moved my workouts round a bit - ended up at Crossfit Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and running Wednesday and Friday. Wednesday's run was pretty short, as I was worried about getting back on time and suiting up ready to go to Town. I did a not-so-quick 2.24 miles, first mile at 9'21" pace and second at 9'56". Friday I ran to the pool (having got up and out later than planned; quelle surprise). 1 mile there, and 2 miles back the long way, at 9'24", 9'35", 10'54" pace respectively (including the cooldown walk in that last split). Otherwise, things are going well. I was out of the office all day on Wednesday and most of the day on Thursday (doing work-related events), which means that I've now got a mountain of work to catch up on. On the other hand, I had a good performance review and I'm being sent to a conference that I really wanted to go to, so it all balances out really. On Thursday I went from my work meeting straight to the Theatre to see Moulin Rouge with my dad. Having never seen the show before or the film I didn't really know what to expect, but it was great fun! The plot was paper thin, but the stage show and the singing were really impressive.

Hey Yasha, how's the second half of the week going?

Raw carrots and celery are my go to for raw veg snacks (I should get back on those actually...). Are carrots coming into season for you now? Glad you're on the mend and you've kick Covid's butt!