Jarric

Where are you feeling it out of interest? E.g. It is one side or both sides, in the centre or right across?

Yeah, that's definitely a fair point mate. For a long time the focus was OCR, which doesn't exactly have a body type, but at least gave me a direction. But now I don't really know what I'm aiming for - I want to do OCR, but I'm not sure what distance I want to focus on, and do well in this triathlon, and get my powerlifting and oly numbers up, and get some gymnastics skills like pistol squats and handstand walks, and improve my bouldering. #rangerbrain I guess! Also, if this triathlon goes well, will I want to go for longer distances on that? Then the question becomes, am I in good shape to be a good all-rounder?

Week 1 wrap-up I ran to the pool on Thursday. Got up a bit later than planned (about 10 minutes), so ended up cutting everything a bit short. I got a mile run to the pool, about 15 minutes of swimming, and then 2 miles going home the long way, which turned into a walk after 1.6. It was a good trial run; need to get the timings better this week. Thursday was the last day of the financial year, so a crazy day at work and a chilled out evening. Friday was Crossfit - squats at 90kg (198#) for 3x5, pistol squat practice, and strict toes to bar. I managed a couple of full pistol squats on the right leg, but my left is definitely weaker. Work was a little more chilled, and I finished a few minutes early to go for an office night out. We drank and talked from 5pm, and I left people still going at 11pm and staggered home. It was a lovely night. Saturday was a very chilled day thanks to the hangover from Friday night. On Sunday I got up and went for my third run of the week - a nice little 10 miles in the cold sunshine. It felt so good to do a long run again after quite a long time. I ran D&D in the afternoon, and then did some servicing on my new bike and took it out for a short test ride. I only did 3 miles and I was feeling it - I think this cycling things gonna take some practice! Final score: 3/4 runs for the week.

Thanks man! The last rep at 150kg felt really grindy, but I'd love to give a single at 160kg and see if I can. I've been thinking about that question since you posted it on Wednesday, and I still don't know. Aesthetically I'd like to have 6 pack abs, but realistically I know that kind of body fat percentage is probably counter-productive to athletic performance. On the other hand I have a bit of a belly, I just don't know whether this is the ideal weight for the things I want to do. I have literally some muscle mass now, which is more than I could have said last time I was at this weight, but that doesn't mean my weight is optimal. So having written it out, I guess I don't think I'm an unhealthy weight, but I'm not sure that I'm an efficient weight either if that makes sense?

Oo, that sounds lovely. Apart from the word slurry, which I always think is a particularly unappetising word (despite it being the right word, and the fact that I put cornflour slurry in the gravy I made last night).

Monday - week 1, day 1 No run today. Crossfit was a fun shoulder/tricep session: handstand walking, handstand push-ups, kettlebell swings, tricep extensions, rear delt flies, and behind the neck barbell press. Work was a bit less mental, and I had a relaxing evening in front of Critical Role. Tuesday - week 1, day 2 I went for a run! A nice little 4 miles first thing: Mile - Pace - Elevation 1 - 9'19"/mi - -61ft 2 - 9'45"/mi - 53ft 3 - 9'27"/mi - 24ft 4 - 9'21"/mi - -33ft 0.21 - 12'18"/mi - 17ft It was hard work, but it didn't totally wipe me out. Thursday I'm going to run to the local swimming pool, go for a swim, and then go for a run of some description. Tuesday next week I'll go for about 5 miles. Worked at home in the day; another manageable day which was nice, and another evening in front of the TV. I felt wiped out yesterday evening though for some reason, and really stressed. Could be for all sorts of reasons, but anyway I got to bed at a reasonable time and slept well. Wednesday - week 1 day 3 No run today, but I hit a new deadlift 5RM at 150kg! (~330#) That was followed by power snatches (not very practiced at these, but built to 40kg (~88#) for doubles), and weighted chinups (5s at 12kg/~26.4# on top of my body weight). It was a really fun session - exactly my kind of thing. I weighed in when I got home, and I'm now 12 and a half stone - that's 175# or ~79.4kg. That's the heaviest I've been since, I dunno, early 2017? The heaviest I've ever been was 12 stone 10 (178#/80.7kg), and that being the overweight BMI line for my height was the trigger for me getting into weight loss and, latterly, exercise. Now though I'm significantly stronger and fitter than I was back then, and I'm really struggling to work out what a healthy weight is for me now. What it also means is that this morning I lifted 188.6% of my bodyweight for 5 on deadlifts, and added over 15% of my bodyweight to my chinups, both numbers I'm extremely pleased with.

Thanks man ? Good to know, thank you. The swimming portion is in my local pool, so I should be able to practice getting in and out quickly at least.

Those are some really interesting insights, thank you. I'll try and give the full thing a read at some stage too. I didn't know anywhere did introductory programs like that. At my place you get a 1 hour induction and you're in the main class (and to be fair, they're not a big enough gym to be able to run that many 1 on 1 sessions). Scaling is pretty good at my gym though; we're almost never given an Rx weight for the workout, and everyone's encouraged to scale to a level where they aren't compromising the quality of the movement.

I tell you, I'm glad I was already eating lunch when I came to your thread; both these meals sound delicious.

Thanks dude, lifting's been really good of late. It's a shame I have to cut back to train running! And I know, I must be mad

Oo, that sounds interesting - what kind of stuff's in that? Holy cow that's one hell of a workout. Good on you for getting through it.

Welcome aboard Lively! Good to have you. And welcome back Terinatum! That picture is incredible; where's it from?

I went for a run! Two actually, both short due to time constraints. Saturday: 3.78 miles in 37:17 - 9'50" / mile pace Mile Pace Elevation 1 10:00/mi 58 ft 2 9:02/mi -77 ft 3 9:15/mi -29 ft 0.78 11:26/mi 52 ft (last bit includes a cool down walk, hence the pace) This was a nice run, on a gloriously sunny afternoon. The only downside was that my wallet and house keys were in my pocket, and now I've got a really ore spot where the keys were rubbing my skin off! Sunday: 2.24 miles in 23:37 - 10'31" / mile pace Mile Pace Elevation 1 9:35/mi -68 ft 2 10:29/mi 67 ft 0.24 14:30/mi 1 ft (again, that last section was pretty much entirely a cool down walk) It's really telling how much the elevation changes make a difference to my pace here - and these aren't even big hills. Definitely need to get back into practice running up and down hills. Today I have been out delivering flowers for Mother's Day, which has been lovely. I started work at 7:30 though, hence the very short run between getting up at 6am and going out. Even a short run is better than no run. I also signed up for a triathlon! I've never run one before, and to be honest I have no idea what I'm doing. It's a sprint triathlon, so 400m (1/4 mile) swim, 25km (15.5 mile) bike and 5km (3.11 mile) run. So far I've managed to buy a bike rack and a bike helmet, now all I need is the actual bike to get training! I'm seeing a guy about a cheap second hand bike on Monday, and if that's no good Hopalong has said I can borrow his. I'm not quite sure what I'm doing training wise for this, particularly as I do need to focus on training for Dirty Weekend (8th May) over the triathlon (12th June). I think I'm going to run to the swimming pool once per week, and then see if I can get a cycle/run combo in once every weekend. That way I keep my 4 runs (though they may be shorter), and add one cycle and one swim. Anyone who has any insight on this I would very much appreciate it!

I guess so It has been, but it's almost over now! * * * Yesterday I finished work at 6.15, so only 1¼ hours late, and went home to drink beer and watch Critical Role again. I was falling asleep on the sofa, so I went to bed about 10pm. This morning Crossfit was a WOD of running, deadball clean and press, and elevated ring rows, which was gassy but ok. That was followed by bench press: 70kg (~154# ~11 stone) x 3 65kg x 5 60kg x 7 into an epic drop set The drop set was fun - max reps at each weight and as soon as you rack the bar someone lowers the weight and you go again. So max reps at 50kg, 40kg, 30kg, and 20kg all in one huge set. Tomorrow morning I'm going climbing, and I will run either before or after so that I can actually do the thing this challenge is for!

Lovely stuff! Keep up the good work! Maybe write down a list of things you have enjoyed in the past, and then see how you feel about them once you've listed them?

Oh you ordered it in the end then? That's exciting! Let us know what it's like when you get it. Looking forward to following your progress this time around mate.

Week 0 so far: I'm signed up for Crossfit 5 mornings this week, so no morning runs. From next week I'm cutting that to 3 days, so that I will have a couple of weekday mornings to run instead. I will be running this weekend though. It's been a week! Monday was manically busy at work and I finished 2 hours late, Tuesday off for a friend's funeral, Wednesday manically busy and finished 1 hour late. Then I drank beer and watched some Critical Role and drank beer. Crossfit has been good - 150kg deadlift for 3 reps on Monday, 50kg overhead press for 3 and 65kg push press for 3 on Tuesday, then tailed off and feeling a lot less strong on squats on Wednesday and power cleans today! I don't know if I talked about it on here, but I got my first proper bar muscle ups the other week, and I got 8 over the course of that session, so I'm really pleased with my recent progress in general. Slightly worried that that's going to slip when I start lifting less often and running more, but needs must!

Good to have you, my angry gnomish friend! ...edited. You, sir, are a genius. Me too! It feels weird that we talk every week and het we've only met in person once! I don't think Jon can make it any more unfortunately. Hopefully Yeti can though! I wish I could go that fast! I don't think there was much to follow last challenge! Hopefully I'll give you more to see this time. Aww, thank you! I think you underestimate how slow I am .With all of your booty training I think I ought to be following behind you anyway! As soon as I do some running you can have some!

100% yes - in fact I'd argue you probably work best where you feel comfortable, so going into the office right now would be counter productive.

If it helps, I don't think most people would question it if you use 'they' or just your partner's name to talk about them. I wouldn't assume that someone was non-binary because they were being referred to as 'them', I would just assume the person I was talking to was being inspecific. Entirely reasonable! It's not the kind of thing you get used to over night.

In stumbles a ranger, looking dazed and confused. Pint of the black stuff, barkeep, he mumbles, as he sinks into a bar stool.

2022 Road Map Usually I start a year by making a roadmap for the year, and then create my first challenge with that roadmap in mind. This year is no different, but rather than running a battle log for my roadmap I want it at the top of every challenge so I remember what I'm trying to do (looking back over my 2021 roadmap just now I was surprised to find out what some of my goals were!). Goals for 2022 I've been trying to decide what my goals should be for the year, and that's proving quite difficult. I have the option to enter a few endurance races - I'll be doing Rat Race Dirty Weekend that clocks in at 20 miles, and then there's Nuclear Oblivion Extreme (6.5 hours), Nuclear Oblivion Maxx (13 hours). I could add in Europe's Toughest Mudder (12 hours) and even Quarry Events Longest day (16 hours 38 minutes). The trouble is I don't know if I really want to do endurance events; they're really hard work! At the same time I don't know what I would want to focus on if not that; there was talk of the Spartan European Championships being held in the UK this year, but I can find precious little information about that at the moment. With that said, I can always decide these goals later in the year. This arbitrary change of date doesn't have to be the time that I plan to do something cool in the future, so if I do find something that really captures my imagination I'll add it here. The 5 pillars So I don't really have any big goals in the same way as I had in previous years. But I've been thinking recently about what's important to me, and I worked out that it falls quite well into 5 pillars. And then I worked out that I could map the 5 pillars to RPG stats, which made it much more exciting. So my goal for the year is to advance as much as possible in the following: Exercise (Strength) this includes everything I do physically - climbing, OCR, lifting, crossfit, running etc. I really enjoy seeing progress in all of these areas, and as long as I stick with them I'm bound to improve. I couldn't really separate what would fall under STR and what would fall under DEX, and I don't think it's really a useful distinction for the kind of things I do, so I just chucked everything under STR. Nutrition (Constitution) this is about putting the right things in my body (you heard!). That includes food that fuels me well, but also things like moderating caffeine and alcohol intake, and generally balancing anything else I consume. Creativity (Charisma) being creative is really good for me, and it's a side of myself I want to foster. That includes drawing, playing music, and writing. I still want to write and publish some basic D&D stuff, so hopefully I can incorporate that at some point. Self-care (Sanity) this is really just about doing the basic stuff that I know keeps me ticking over - cleaning my teeth, cleaning and tidying my house, keeping in touch with friends. Really basic stuff, but it has such an impact on the way that I feel, so it deserves its own category. Arguably I could have stuck with core D&D stats and put this under WIS, but SAN makes more sense to me for this goal. Also, I'm a super low-WIS person; I have very little awareness a lot of the time, and it's not something I'm really interested in working on (or even know how to work on) right now. Learning (Intelligence) I feel like it wouldn't be Nerd Fitness without an INT goal. I want to get through the professional qualifications I'm doing (which feels easier said than done right now, as I've somehow ended up working on three units concurrently). I also just love learning things. I'd like to get back into learning French, which I did a good chunk of on Duolingo for a while last year. Really, all learning is good. Under the hood The plan is that my goals for each challenge will have stats assigned to them, and over this course of this year I'll try and get each of these stats as high as possible. I'll start everything at 0, and hopefully by the end of the year I'll have a decent looking stat array. To tie this in with my previous format, I'll be looking at levelling up backwards compared to most systems. Every stat point will be equivalent to 5XP under my old system, and every 20 stat points I will level up. That should mean I can gain 3-5 levels in a year, which feels about right. I don't have to hit every stat every challenge. If I want 3 STR goals one month or need all my goals to be SAN based another month, that's all fine; it'll work itself out over the course of the year Jarric Runs On the final weekend of this challenge, I'll be running Rat Race Dirty Weekend with @Mr_Willes and @Rhovaniel (and maybe some others? I've lost track of who can and can't make it.) RRDW is a 20 mile obstacle course, so it would be a really good idea if I could do literally some running between now and then. The past few weeks have been pretty tough for various reasons, and I'm not expecting life to get any easier for at least the next few weeks, so I'm not going to push it and try to do all the things™. Instead, I have one goal: Run 4 times per week - +3 STR, +2 SAN I'm going to cut down on Crossfit from week 1 in favour of running, and I'm hoping that now the mornings are getting lighter I might feel more inclined to run. Ideally I'll be running Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday each week. I don't really have a plan for distances or workouts at this stage, I just want to put some miles on my legs before RRDW. Bonus goal - wrap up last challenge - +1 SAN I'm generally a fan of wrapping up a challenge properly, but that's going to be tough as I've disappeared off the forums due to life stuff for a few weeks. I won't let perfect be the enemy of good, so I decided to get this challenge posted now, but I will give myself a little stat bonus if I go back and wrap last challenge.

Ignore this if it's too personal a question:

Thank you man! It was a good holiday. Thanks dude, and the same to you! * * * There's a lot going on right now, and I don't really have the mental space for all of it. I'm still ticking boxes in my journal, when I remember, so I'll have some kind of score for this challenge. Mostly I'm trying to work out what goals will be manageable for the next one.

I think you might be right about the stress - you've had a lot on and those are the circumstances where bodies tend to malfunction. Glad you're on the upswing though, and I'm here if you need to talk/vent.