Jarric

Yesterday was a good day. Started off with Crossfit, doing 3 picks of farmers' handles followed by a 50ft farmers' walk. I worked up to 164kg (~361#). That was followed by some max duration free handstands, which felt really solid, and sets of max reps pullups where I managed sets of 8, 6, 8, 6, 5. Not quite where I want to be; I'm sure I hit a set of 12 at one point during lockdown, but it's still not bad. Work was good - spend most of the day working on one big thing; it's nice to have it out of the way in good time. In the evening I finished painting the kitchen (pictures to follow), and cooked pork steaks with a mustardy peppercorn sauce, tenderstem broccoli and crush potatoes - it was lush. Then I spent the rest of the evening wrapping up last challenge and writing up this one. Oh, and I did a couple of tiny doodles on my challenge tracker for the creativity goal. Teeth were done, calories were on point, no running or revising today.

A half elf wanders into the bar, looking around in a slightly dazed manner. After a moment he seems to remember where he is, and strolls over to prop up the bar. Pint of the black stuff, barkeep, he says, with a smile, knowing that the drink will be poured before the sentence is finished. ...I wrote the word dazed, and now I can't get this out of my head. Enjoy! I want to meet your friend, partly because they make their own mead, but mostly because of what they named it.

Thank you! I will do the thing!

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. * * * Last challenge I think it's good to pick up where you've left off, so here's my summary from last challenge (spoilered because it's real long guys): * * * Rolling up a character This challenge looks very like the last one, but I want to plan a bit better around real life events. I have an exam in week 2, after which my study goal will change. I'm in holiday in Wales for the entirety of week 3, so I need to ensure I do my best that week and get back in the game straight afterwards. It's also my birthday in week 3, but I'll probably go out to celebrate that at the end of week 5. Finally, in week 0 of the next challenge I'm going to the memorial service for a friend who died at the end of November. That last one's not in this challenge, but I am expecting to be stressed and emotional leading up to it, both because of the reason for the event and at the idea of seeing a lot of old friends I no longer have contact with. Run 4 times per week [+3 STR]. Last challenge I spectacularly failed to run 3 times per week, so now I'm going to 4 instead! If that sounds daft, I'm also changing the plan for how I do this. I'm now going to go to Crossfit 5 mornings per week, because I'm really enjoying it and it gets me out of bed. Morning runs are out, and lunchtime runs are in. I'm working from home two days per week, so that's two lunchtime runs, and then two runs at the weekend. Planning: In week 2 my exam changes my work schedule, so I'm going to have to go for a run the day before the exam when I go home to study. I will play this by ear in week 3 when I'm away. I also need to make sure I get runs in at the weekend around watching the rugby on TV. Calories - 600 x 4 x 8 [+2 CON] I don't feel up to tracking calories too exactly at this point, so I'm sticking with the plan from last challenge. Estimating my calories as best I can, I'm going to aim for 600 calories per meal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and 600 calories worth of snacks throughout the day. That's 2,400 calories per day, 7 days per week. The 8th day of the week is beer . There's no restriction on when I drink, but I'm aiming for no more than 2,400 calories of beer over the week (about 10 UK pints, 12 US pints, or 5.7 litres). Adding that to my 2,400 of food per day gives me a daily average of ~2,743 and, if I'm at all accurate, that will lead to a reasonable amount of weight loss. Of course, I'm estimating calories, not recording them formally, so I might be well out, but just the mindfulness towards eating and drinking will still be helpful. I'll score my days based on if I feel I've got it about right. I don't have too much weight to lose, and it's not a priority, but if I could shed 5lbs over the challenge that would be nice. Planning: There's no particular life events that should stop me being mindful of this, even if I'm not always successful. Creativity every day [+2 CHA] I don't mind what it is, whether I do a little doodle in a sketch book, or play with a bit of digital drawing, if I pick up my guitar and strum out a couple of chords, or even write a little narrative on here. I'd like to work on the D&D adventure I'm writing up; that would be good. Hell, this could even be prep work for my own D&D game. It doesn't have to be much, but I want to do something. Planning: I should always find 5 minutes for this. Study 4 x 30 minutes [+2 INT] In weeks 0 and 1, this will be revision for my exam in week 2. In week 2 I want to double this all on the Monday, and I have leave from work just for that study time. I want to pass this exam damnit! I'm then taking week 3 off, as I'm on holiday and realistically I'm not going to pretend I'm going to do this. For weeks 4 and 5 I'm going to use the time to write my next work essay, and hopefully get it out of the way so that I'm only studying one subject rather than doing 3 concurrently! Planning: is baked in to this one. Teeth brushing twice daily [+1 SAN] This is something that I do better when I'm accountable for you guys about doing it*. It's also inextricably linked to my mental health and, though I've never figured out where the cause and effect lies, I'd like to think sticking to this will stop me spiralling when I'm having a bad time. Planning: I should be able to do this regardless of life events. *in theory at least - last challenge went pretty poorly** **then again I also didn't check in here very much, so maybe that checks out Right, if you made it through that whole intro, congratulations! Lets go do the thing.

My full challenge wrap-up is here. Successes I've learned some things about how my brain works this challenge, and learned some stuff about the world I live in too. I'm not being cryptic, just my challenge wrap-up was massive and I'm trying to be more succinct here Stumbles All of my challenge goals, for a start! I got de-railed quite easily with some time off work and really struggled to come back from that. Set-ups I'm mostly sticking with the same goals and trying to get a cleaner run at them. What I do need to do is figure out a strategy to not lose my goals when I go on holiday, and to hit the ground running when I get back. Basically, I need to plan around life events better.

Challenge Wrap-Up General thoughts I feel like this challenge started well. Then I had a week and a half off work, which I partially spent painting my kitchen. That meant a few things: A break in my normal daily routine A break in my routine of updating this challenge My kitchen being out of action for quite a while, particularly as it took me almost 4 weeks to getting to finish the damn job All of this did not bode well for my challenge goals, and I struggled to come back from it afterwards. Those first two points are a particular concern, as I'm going on holiday in week 3 of the next challenge, so I need to have better systems to deal with a break in routine, or at least to recover afterwards. I've also spent a lot of time where I could have been updating here, or completing goals, reading up on stuff. And it's all stuff which might be important, or is at least interesting, so I need to balance that with challenges too. In order of appearance, this challenges distractions were: Monster of the Week - I did some reading up and decided I really, really wanted to play and run this RPG. I've spent a lot of time reading up on rulebooks and watching actual play stuff, and I'm really loving it. Limitless Heroics - this is an RPG kickstarter I backed, to model disability in D&D 5th edition, and it really caught my imagination. This lead me down a rabbit hole of looking into ableism, in general and in tabletop RPGs specifically. My sister had cerebral palsy, and was quite severely disabled, so this is something that's quite close to my heart and brought up some emotion when I started looking into it. Aphantasia - this is a condition where a person is unable to voluntarily create images in their brain, and I'm pretty certain I have it. I only came across the word a few weeks ago, so I've been doing a lot of reading into this to see if there's anything useful I can take from research into this, in that knowing more about my brain might help me to work with it better. Anyway, before I get too distracted talking about the things I'm distracted by, lets talk about the goals! Running Lol no. Instead of 3 runs per week, I managed 2, 2, 1, 1, 1. I struggled to drag myself out of bed most Wednesdays to go for a run, and I didn't prioritise this on the weekends either. The mad thing is, I've really enjoyed my runs this challenge, I've just really struggled to get out of the door in the first place. I have a plan to change this up slightly for next challenge, as I need to get on those running events. 7/15 runs: +1 STR Calories I dropped off this pretty hard from week 3, which is pretty much the same with all of my goals. Despite this I think a bit of mindfulness around what I ate really helped, even when I didn't actually hit the goal. I'm about the same weight I started the challenge at, and that's fine. 12/40: no stat increase Creativity I didn't do a very good job of hitting this even before I had time off work. Part of this is the other distractions I mentioned, part is kitchen painting, and part is too much time staring aimlessly at my phone. I think this goal is important though, and it's here to stay. 8/35: no stat increase Revise I massively failed on this, only beginning to start in week 5. Why is the amount I procrastinate directly proportional to how important a task is? 1/20: no stat increase Teeth This didn't start too well, but it really tanked when I had time off work. It's a routine problem partially I think, as well as a mental problem as alluded to above. 7.5/35: no stat increase Final thought A single point of stat increase was not what I had in mind for this challenge. Not much is going to change with the plan for next challenge, but hopefully my attitude will!

Week 5 Well, I don't remember what happened for most of this week - it all seems so long ago. Here's some random snippets: Tuesday night was D&D night, but we had a few people who couldn't join again so it became top trumps and character creation night I didn't run Wednesday morning, though I tidied the living room so I could do a brief yoga session. Morning runs seems to be getting harder, while morning Crossfit is going great, so I want to adjust things here Wednesday night I drank beer and watched Questing Time, always a treat On Thursday we played Pathfinder - our Rise of the Runelords game - and managed to not be killed by a horrifying mutated lamia creature. I did however stay up too late drinking after we got home. Played snooker on Friday night with Hopalong. It's good to see him, particularly as we're still working through the death of a mutual friend, so I'm trying to take the chances I have to spend time with him. Saturday was a busy day, starting off with bouldering which I really feel like I'm making some progress with. Then I went straight from there for a 3.5 mile run along the seafront. On Saturday afternoon I did some painting, then went to the pub to watch the rugby with WW. It felt refreshingly normal to be out drinking and watching sport for a change. In the evening we watched trash TV and sobered up a bit before bed. Sunday was spent either playing games on my phone or painting the kitchen. WW cooked a massive Chinese feast from a recipe box for dinner, which was bloody lovely. The kitchen is now nearly finished, and the fridge is no longer in the centre of the room, which is great because I feel like that disruption is making everything feel a bit more out of whack than it should. Goals-wise, I didn't track very well, but here's what we've got: Run: 1/3 - just the Saturday morning. Calories: 2/8 - this could have been more for all I know, but half the point is the keeping track. I went over on beer thanks to failure to allow for drinks watching the rugby. Creative: 0/7 - worse than I thought. Revise: 1/4 - I've finally started this! I also did an hour of study during work hours, but I'm not counting that as the goal is specifically to study outside of work. Teeth: 0/7 - need to get back on this. Average completion percentage is 17.38%, meaning that I get to keep £6.95 and will transfer the remaining £33.05 to my mortgage now.

Thank you! Shame about the rest of the week's worth of updates I was very impressed with the homemade pesto - it was so easy and tasted amazing.

Monday - week 5 day 1 Yesterday was a good day. Crossfit first thing, and it was leg day. I hit 110kg (~242#) for 3 reps (almost certainly a new 3RM, matched my new 5RM at 100kg, and then 90kg for 7. That was followed by glute bridges, split squats, and Nordic curls until I could barely walk. Work was ok - back in the office with almost a full team which was a bit odd. Ended up doing less than I wanted and scrabbling to get things finished at the end of the day, which is an all to familiar story. In the evening I really didn't feel like doing anything. I made some spinach pesto and poured it over roast chicken breast (from Sunday's roast chicken), boiled new potatoes and some spring onion. It was lovely, and only slightly over on calories despite the copious amounts of olive oil. Overall I managed to hit my calories, by reducing my snacks slightly to accommodate the extra 40 on dinner (snacks were a glass of milk, an apple, a clementine, two chocolate digestives, and a couple of those polystyrene rice cakes with dark chocolate topping). Nothing creative today, no revision, and teeth weren't done. On the plus side, no beer either.

Right, I'm back in business! Week 3 the only thing I can say I definitely did was 1/3 runs. That's 1/3 on 1/5 goals, which gives me an average completion of 6.67%. I get to keep £2.67 (woo!), and the remaining £37.33 goes into my mortgage. Week 4 suffered from a similar lack of tracking, and only 1 run. I did however do some D&D prep on Tuesday and some drawing on Sunday night, giving me an average completion of 12.38%. £4.95 I can keep and £35.05 to my mortgage account. I'm trying to keep track of other stuff I did whilst off the boards: I still haven't finished painting the kitchen, and the floor is still covered in dust sheets, but with just the woodwork to finish it already looks much brighter and more welcoming We've got some people quoting to fit new windows in our house - it'll be nice to be able to close the bathroom window at some point given it's the middle of winter! I hit a new 5RM on squats - 100kg (~220#) means I'm finally in triple figures! Had a handwalking workout, and I'm definitely getting better on that Had a go at some weighted ring dips for possibly the first time, and my weighted pullups are still looking good. Climbing is improving too, which must all be related Took the cat to the vet for a scratch on his eye, and apparently it's healed up nicely so that's a weight off my mind. He has a cataract, but the vet doesn't think it should cause issues. Went to watch Nightmare Alley at the cinema on Saturday, and it was absolutely harrowing. Really well done, but my word that was uncomfortable to watch. I backed a book on Kickstarter which aims to provide rules and guidance to represent disability in D&D. It looks very cool, and it's something I think is really important, so I'm looking forward to that coming whenever it gets made. This week I intend to get fully back on the wagon, including digging in to the revision I've been avoiding terribly!

Do it! If you think you'll enjoy it anyway - it's not like you have to do anything with it once you've written it if you don't want to; writing for the sake of writing is great. Well don on week 4 Puck - you're on a roll!

Aww, those two! If you do get wraith and phantom to breed you might just create the cutest cats the world has ever seen. Hope you feel better soon mate.

Thank you for the nudges guys! (And thank you @DarK_RaideR for letting me know I was being gif'd). Challenge goals have gone out the window a bit, but I do intend to get back on them. I had a week off work, which I mostly spent either painting the kitchen or procrastinating about painting the kitchen. It's been lovely to have some time off, but all sense of routine went out of the window and with it a lot of my challenge planning. Now I'm back at work and trying to catch up from the time off, so I'm just going to try and get myself together as best as I can and come back strong for next week.

It's weird, because we speak more-or-less the same language, I often forget that a lot of food is totally different here (and the same food sometimes uses different words). Toad in the hole is a great example of a food that's really hard to explain in another country. Toad in the hole is a giant Yorkshire pudding with sausages, vegetables, and gravy served inside it. A yorkshire pudding uses a what I would call a pancake batter, and I guess you would call crêpe batter - my recipe is 4oz. flour, 1 egg, ¼ pint milk, ¼ pint water. That's poured into a very hot baking dish with a little oil, and left to cook in a hot oven for about an hour. The batter rises around the edges of the dish, creating a bowl shape. For toad in the hole you usually put the sausages in before the batter is cooked, so that they get stuck in the structure of the Yorkshire pudding. WW usually puts the sausages in at the same time as the batter, whereas I would tend to give it 20 minutes to start cooking first. I think gravy is also a different think in the UK and the US, but I'm not 100% clear on what US gravy is. We usually have instant gravy for this, but if I was making it from scratch with a roast dinner I'd take the roasting juices from the meat, add flour and make a roux, and then add a stock cube and boiling water until I get a thick sauce. Or, because a picture paints a 1,000 words: (Not my pictures, but this is what it should look like before adding veg and gravy.)

You could always go for some Morrowind, if you want something else to scratch that Elder Scrolls itch? Looking forward to seeing how this is coming on once you have a computer again.

Oh, I remember that, yeah! What kind of sausages do you normally get then, are they more like (what I would call) hotdog sausages? And thanks, here's hoping!

Week 2 wrap-up Running: 2/3 - I could have found time to run on Sunday, but I didn't. Still, the runs I did do I enjoyed. Calories: 3/8 - this isn't great, but it's just a little thing each day I failed rather than any days of complete madness. I need to be stricter on this, but it's not as bad as it looks. Creativity: 4/7 - better than last week, and better spread throughout the week. It's a start. Revise: 0/4 - I need to get on this. I've got most of week 3 off work, so really no excuses. Teeth: 3.5/7 - I'm hoping I can build this habit back up some more, but this is better than I'd do if I wasn't tracking. That gives me 42.26% completion for this week, which means I get to keep £16.90 and have to transfer £23.10 to my mortgage account. Worse than week 1; time to work on making week 3 better!

Sunday - week 2 day 7 Yesterday was a good day. Got up at half 8 and went straight into D&D prep for an early game with the Ranger D&D group. It was our first game since before Christmas, and I managed to very nearly kill everyone with a group of 4 stone giants the party had chosen to ambush. I was amazed that they managed to all get through that combat without anyone dying and without running away, but somehow it happened. The rest of the session was a bit more investigation and roleplay heavy - it was a good time all round! The plan was then to grab lunch, do a little prep for next session, and then go for a run. By the time I'd gone out to get bacon, and we'd cooked and eaten, things were getting a bit late. Then I got distracted watching Twitch while doing D&D prep, and then ot was getting dark and I opted not to run. In the evening I roasted a turkey thigh for our Sunday roast, and watched the snooker final. I also did a load of prep for a Pathfinder 2e one-shot I'm running on Tuesday, so did very well on the creativity goal today. Food was a bit of a balancing act, and I don't really know the calories on the roast, but I stopped eating when I was full and was mindful about everything so I'm calling it a pass. I did however have a couple of beers (only 2 cans) with dinner, which put me over for beer day. Managed to persuade myself to do my teeth, though I missed the morning so it's only a half point. Still no revision.

Great job on week two, you've done so well on all the things! The cooking strategy sounds like a great way to deal with weekend food too. Sorry to hear about your BIL; hope the treatment is swift and effective.

Saturday - week 2 day 6 Yesterday was a good day. I went climbing first thing, and managed to climb some fairly challenging stuff. After that I stayed down there and went for a run along the coast. I managed 6 miles, and had a really nice time as well. When I got home I made myself some scrambled eggs on toast and settled down for a really long bath while watching the snooker on TV. After and hour or more of that, I did a bit of tidying went and got some more beers, and spent the evening in front of Critical Role with WW. I messed around drawing on the laptop a bit until the cat jumped on my lap and interposed himself between me and the screen. After that I was falling asleep watching Crit Role by 10pm, so WW ushered me up to bed. Food was about on track until dinner - WW cooked a marvelous toad in the hole which was most certainly way over on calories. Teeth were not done as I sleep-walked to bed.

Friday - week 2 day 5 Friday was a good day. Crossfit in the morning was deadlifts. We started with banded deadlifts and I went way too heavy for the band I was using, and felt a pull in my back as I lifted it. No real damage done, just a warning shot from my body to calm the fuck down. I dropped to 120kg (~264#) without a band and did a few sets of 5 at that. Afterwards we had weighted chinups and Nordic curls. I did the chinups with a 12kg (~26.4#) kettlebell strapped to my waist, doing sets of 5, which I'm pretty happy with given that it's over 15% on top of my body weight. After that I went up to London for the day to watch the snooker. Had a really nice time; it was a pretty good match if a bit one-sided, and always nice to be out with friends. In the evening I reheated the remaining lasagne, and had a few beers in front of the TV. Stayed up fairly late and watched First Dates - probably my favourite bit of nice, mindless TV. Calories were over, thanks to the leftover lasagne being massive. Don't think I did anything for creativity - well I won't count it as I can't remember. Teeth not done due to the late night - not a good day for goals really.

Thank you! I need to keep them firmly in my mind I think.

Thursday - week 2 day 4 Yesterday was a good day. Crossfit was squats, and for some reason I woke up feeling really really good. Must be the beer and the late night beforehand . Anyway, for 3 x 5 squats I was due to work at 95kg, but after the first couple of sets I set myself a new 5RM at 100kg (~220#) . That was followed by 7 rounds for time of 2 cleans and 3 dips. I did the cleans at 55kg (~121#), and standard ring dips, and finished in a very reasonable 4'18". Work was pretty busy, I'm off today and most of next week, so I was trying to wrap up a lot of stuff before that. I finished fairly late, and then set about cooking a lasagne, which is about the slowest thing I could have been planning to cook. In fact, I didn't immediately set about doing that; I walked to the shop first to buy some mushrooms, just to make myself a bit later. The lasagne was actually brilliant, even if we didn't eat until quarter to 9, and I made enough to have some tonight as well. Food-wise I was on track until the lasagne. The recipe said 650kcal, which I probably would have allowed, but then I realised that it was from a recipe box and the calories would have been for the supplied. That means it didn't include the 700ml of whole milk of the 60g of butter I put in the bechamel, which would have put that number up considerably. Other meals and snacks were on point though, and no beer. After that I didn't have much energy for anything, so no creativity and no revision. Teeth were done.

Thanks! Yeah. winter doesn't help; when it's dark and cold the bed is that much more tempting. And my trouble isn't staying awake (usually), but stopping scrolling through my phone and actually getting up!

I love that tea strainer! I 100% do not need more tea paraphernalia, but I want it! Personally I tend to go with high bar squats over low bar, largely due to the things explained in this video: