[Waanie]

Last challenge I wrote down all my workouts, mostly kettlebell sport and running. I saw tremendous progress, which is great, so I will continue doing that this challenge . I had considered adding more goals, but since the next month will be stressful and hectic, I will not do that.

 

My main fitness-related goal is to qualify for the world championship kettlebell next year. I will have to do 37 longcycles in 10 minutes with 16kg in each hand, which currently sounds heavy but very doable, especially with another half year of training. Things that will help with this:
 - showing up at KB training (duh)
 - endurance training
 - losing a bit of weight to get into my weight class again
 - hip mobility
 - not getting injured or sick
 
My secondary goal is to do a 3-day hike with my father in spring in a hilly area. I love hiking in the hills, but unfortunately we don't really have those in the Netherlands. I will have to train in order to do the 20km/day hikes, although it might be easier if you have all day? Anyway, strong legs and flat hikes should help me get in shape.

 

Lastly, I will have to survive the month. My Mirena needs replacement, lay-offs have been announced (but nobody knows who or how many will get fired), I'll have to visit the in-laws for their birthdays, orchestra rehearsals have started again and we also have some other activites planned in the weekends. The first week of this challenge my husband and I have taken off work to play board games, video games and do other activities together, which at least should help with relaxing ;).

 

TL;DR:
Challenge goal: record all workouts

Nice to haves:
- complete running program for 15 minutes of running
- monitor weight
- Sunday evening yoga

[Mad Hatter]

24 minutes ago, Waanie said:

My main fitness-related goal is to qualify for the world championship kettlebell next year. I will have to do 37 longcycles in 10 minutes with 16kg in each hand, which currently sounds heavy but very doable, especially with another half year of training.

Squeeee! This still blows my mind, it's so cool.

 

24 minutes ago, Waanie said:

Lastly, I will have to survive the month. My Mirena needs replacement, lay-offs have been announced (but nobody knows who or how many will get fired), I'll have to visit the in-laws for their birthdays, orchestra rehearsals have started again and we also have some other activites planned in the weekends. The first week of this challenge my husband and I have taken off work to play board games, video games and do other activities together, which at least should help with relaxing ;).

Oof this is a lot.

 

Love that you're taking a gaming week off together, it's adorable. ?

[Waanie]

5 minutes ago, Mad Hatter said:

Squeeee! This still blows my mind, it's so cool.

It really is! I mostly want to do it because it feels like going on a nice active vacation with cool people .

 

6 minutes ago, Mad Hatter said:

Love that you're taking a gaming week off together, it's adorable. ?

Yeah, we do this every year, I love it!

[Waanie]

Today I visited my grandma and did a 12.5km hike. No gaming just yet, as this took almost all day, but productive nonetheless .

[Waanie]

Yesterday was surprisingly productive! We went to the central garbage collection to get rid of a lot of stuff. I always feel a little guilty when throwing away so much stuff, but I know that most really is garbage and that my house feels so much nicer without all that stuff in it.

 

Anyway, in the afternoon we played "Frosthaven" in the first time in forever. It's a boardgame that is similar to the fights in dungeons & dragons, including a storyline, a hex-grid and all kinds of monsters. We played it a lot when we first got it, but now we're playing other games more often. We found it to be quite finnicky to start again, but it was fun nonetheless.

 

I also went for my run, even though it was raining. 2x5 minutes of running (3 minutes break) + 2x3 minutes of running (2 minutes break). It felt more difficult than it should have. It might have something to do with running too fast, or the weather suddenly being cooler.

[Waanie]

Got my run in on Thursday, and this morning I went to strength training because I won't be able to go this weekend. I will be very sore, even though I could have gone heavier with e.g. squats and romanian deadlifts. I tried to find the balance between having a nice workout and at the same time not being too sore tomorrow.

 

Otherwise, I cooked a lot yesterday. I'm making seitan for the first time. For those who don't know, it's a meat replacement made of wheat gluten. The texture is currently very spongey, so I'm curious to see what happens when cut it up and bake it tonight. I also cooked some spelt and black beans, and made whipped tofu. I'm trying to come up with lunches that are easy, filling and high on protein, and that are not sandwiches. A bowl with grains, beans, whipped tofu, hot sauce, pickled zucchini and raw cucumber & tomatoes is nice for one day, okay for the second, so I'm not sure if I want to it again tomorrow. Maybe add some roasted veg? Or a different sauce?

[Waanie]

Oof, I'm indeed sore today, although I can still walk. I will replace my run by some yoga, and we'll go on a short hike in the afternoon.

 

In the end, I'm making goals for myself now because I've got quite some rehab exercises for my hips and shoulder, and I notice I'm getting small pains more and more often.

 

1. After every KB trainig, do some kind of pulling exercise

2. Do rehab exercises for shoulder (daily) and hips (4x per week)

3. Yoga twice per week

[Waanie]

Whoops, disappeared for almost a week there. My challenge is still going well, I'm still tracking everything. On the other hand, my exercise is diminishing it seems like, mostly due to being busy and stressed again.

 

Last weekend I visited the in-laws, and was utterly exhausted by the time we were home on Sunday afternoon. I went for a run and did yoga, but mentally I was entirely drained.

Monday I took the evening off from orchestra, since I was still shattered.

Tuesday we went to a lecture about translating "Le Petit Prince", which was recently done by two different popular comedians to different languages. They explained the difficulties in translation (e.g., do you modernise certain things, like "a house costing 100,000 francs or not) and also a lot about the author and the community around the translations. It was very interesting!

Wednesday I had planned to let my IUD be replaced, but the GP couldn't get the old one out. Now I'll probably have to wait half a year until the gyn has time. I had cramps for the rest of the day, but I went to KB training anyway. The training was intense: 4 minutes of jerks with 12kg, but at 15 reps per minute the speed was insane. Then 7x5 reps longcycle with 16kg, every minute on the minute.

Thursday Work was very stressful, so I went to strength training in the evening instead of going for a run. It was okay, and I came home better than how I left.

Friday Work was still stressful, but we had someone coming over for dinner. No exercise to speak of.

 

At work, we're really in a roller coaster. Lay-offs have been announced, but nobody knows yet how many or who will be laid off. We would like to help customers, but our managers would rather have us twiddle our thumbs than solve customer problems. For our new product, we're in the testing phase, but nobody is taking responsibility for the testing process and they can absolutely not use their common sense planning-wise. The person responsible for the customer problems got our managers to grudgingly agree that we are allowed solve customer problems on existing products for the next month, so we now have a month to get up and running with those products, fix stuff, test it ourselves and pull it through the release process (while also dealing with test-findings on our new product, if they come in). We can do it, but it's stressful and frustrating to have a deadline like this. On a more positive note, we'll mainly finish the work that I did before I resigned from the responsible department without having a new job, and I'm pleasantly surprised how well I wrote down the state I left it behind in.

[Mad Hatter]

On 9/8/2024 at 8:12 PM, Waanie said:

It really is! I mostly want to do it because it feels like going on a nice active vacation with cool people .

What a flex - casual vacation to worlds. ?

 

23 hours ago, Waanie said:

Tuesday we went to a lecture about translating "Le Petit Prince", which was recently done by two different popular comedians to different languages. They explained the difficulties in translation (e.g., do you modernise certain things, like "a house costing 100,000 francs or not) and also a lot about the author and the community around the translations. It was very interesting!

So many interesting questions here! Also what do you do when cultural concepts don't apply. Or when there's no equivalent words. And is translating poetry even a translation or a complete rewrite...

 

23 hours ago, Waanie said:

At work, we're really in a roller coaster. Lay-offs have been announced, but nobody knows yet how many or who will be laid off. We would like to help customers, but our managers would rather have us twiddle our thumbs than solve customer problems. For our new product, we're in the testing phase, but nobody is taking responsibility for the testing process and they can absolutely not use their common sense planning-wise. The person responsible for the customer problems got our managers to grudgingly agree that we are allowed solve customer problems on existing products for the next month, so we now have a month to get up and running with those products, fix stuff, test it ourselves and pull it through the release process (while also dealing with test-findings on our new product, if they come in). We can do it, but it's stressful and frustrating to have a deadline like this. On a more positive note, we'll mainly finish the work that I did before I resigned from the responsible department without having a new job, and I'm pleasantly surprised how well I wrote down the state I left it behind in.

Uggh my sympathies, sounds very frustrating.

[Waanie]

8 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

So many interesting questions here! Also what do you do when cultural concepts don't apply. Or when there's no equivalent words. And is translating poetry even a translation or a complete rewrite...

I know right! The little prince is a officially children's book, but there's so much in there. It's also quite old (1943), so some of the references are a little dated. Also, our local language apparently does not really have a written form, so do you make the language more formal, or is it then not that language any more? He has chosen to translate to the language that the older people spoke, as he sees that as kinda the real language, and hence the text reads very informally compared to the Dutch translation. Which I think is cool, cause now it sounds like how my grandparents would actually talk. I'm not originally from this region, but because my grandparents are, I can actually understand most of it as well.

 

8 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

Uggh my sympathies, sounds very frustrating.

The work is so genuinely interesting, the people on the work floor so nice, but the politics and management are the reason why so many people left in the past.

 

Saturday I did a long hike of 14km. I was planning on 11km, but I got lost. I had forgotten to download the gpx, and somehow I was somewhere without mobile coverage. At some point my coverage came back and I downloaded the map, so it was a detour of only slightly over 3km. It's also weird to see that the Germans are now checking the borders. I know they would be checking at the highway, so on my way to Germany I went over a smaller road. On the way back I was really happy for that, since they really are taking everyone off the highway. I've never seen border controls towards Germany before, I hope that they will come to their senses again quickly.

 

Sunday KB training was okay. Longcycle 3:00 + 2:00 + 1:00 with a minute of rest in between, with 16kgs. It was heavier than I thought it would be, but I kinda managed (46 reps in total). After that I had to do one-armed longcycle with 12kg, but my shoulder was noping out on me. I also got other small pains during the day, and I was exhausted and grumpy. Turns out that my period started later today. Oh well. At least I had a decent training. The rest of the day was spent doing basically nothing.

[Mad Hatter]

On 9/22/2024 at 6:18 PM, Waanie said:

I know right! The little prince is a officially children's book, but there's so much in there. It's also quite old (1943), so some of the references are a little dated. Also, our local language apparently does not really have a written form, so do you make the language more formal, or is it then not that language any more? He has chosen to translate to the language that the older people spoke, as he sees that as kinda the real language, and hence the text reads very informally compared to the Dutch translation. Which I think is cool, cause now it sounds like how my grandparents would actually talk. I'm not originally from this region, but because my grandparents are, I can actually understand most of it as well.

Ooh neat! I looked it up, didn't know there were so many languages in the Netherlands.

 

On 9/22/2024 at 6:18 PM, Waanie said:

It's also weird to see that the Germans are now checking the borders.

Do you know the reason?