100 in 100 Days Challenge: Done!

10,000 sit ups plus 100 days of planks, arm circles, splits, and miles complete! 

Roughly 100 days ago, Sean came up with a challenge: to do 100 pull ups every day for 100 days. He invited me to choose my own 100 day challenge and join him. I opted for 100 sit ups per day each day. As an added challenge, we each did at least 1 mile on foot — walking or running — per day (yes, that's often more than usual for me). I also worked on planks, the splits, and arm circles every day and Sean did push ups, sit ups, and other work outs between pull ups. Other Facebook friends joined in with their own challenges as well. 

So, to wrap up our last day of the challenge the other day, Sean and I went to our gym for the first (and possibly last, due to the current state of the world) time since maybe spring or winter. For my last mile(s), I opted for a 30 minute, 3.5 mile treadmill run, including warm up and cool down time. 

As for challenge results, Sean and I will be getting progression videos up on YouTube eventually. In the meantime, I'll just say that I'm unquestionably feeling like a stronger and more flexible me than 100 days ago and I'm excited to push on going forward. :)

Thank you so much to those of you who joined us and huge congrats to those who stuck it out through this challenge. WE DID IT!!!

5 Hour Workout Yesterday: ITG, DDR, Running, and 100 Day Challenge

After work yesterday, Sean and I spent roughly 5 hours working out. Here are the details:

ITG: I decided to check out the Girls Coast Stamina 3 pack. With difficulties ranging from 9 to 19, I played two of the three 19s (including Dodgeball for the billionth time 😂), kept working on my footspeed with some easier stuff, and messed around with a few good-sounding songs to warm up and for breaks between harder ones. I still have the 222 bpm 19 to get another day. A lot of fantastic packs have come out recently too and SRPG4 is reopened, so that should help with dance game motivation for the next few months. 

Running: Relaxed 1.5 mile jog. Doggies came with me for the first part but got tired after a few minutes and started refusing to move, so I dropped them off halfway before jogging on a little more. Though this wasn't much, it was a nice way to break up the workout session and actually get out of the house for a few minutes today, plus the baby steps back into regular running feel good.

DDR Extreme Pro: Sean and I played a bunch of Oni and other 1x stuff — something it's taken me 17 years to come around to and appreciate. Our trips to the Mesquite, NV DDR Max 2 machine in recent months have me improving at old school DDR a little and finally finding a little enjoyment there again! (We've been spending ~4 days per month in Mesquite these past several months, and their old Max 2 is one of the best ways to exercise there when it's over 100 degrees outside.) Despite their worsening pad issues, I did Maxx Unlimited on extra stage and some challenging songs, such as Insertion, while playing Oni with Sean last visit. Back on my own pad last night, it was easier than ever before. I still can't do lots of stuff I try on Oni, I'm not good at DDR by any means, and I probably won't get into playing very regularly again, but I'm having fun dabbling when it's presented to me. :)

100 in 100 Days Challenge: I'm getting the left-foot-in-front side splits pretty regularly now. I'm still inconsistent with other splits, can't quite get on the floor other directions, and always feel sore. Not much else to report except that I feel a little healthier and stronger thanks to the daily miles and various exercises. With less than 2 weeks left in this challenge, it's time to start thinking of the next thing to keep my fitness goals on track! 

From my Maxx Unlimited extra stage pass in Mesquite. 😂:

East Coast Stamina 9 - Lower: 3rd Overall / 1st Female

Now that I'm getting back on my feet after East Coast Stamina 9, I guess it's about time I share the video of my set and post about how I did!

As for results, I placed:

-3rd out of 58 overall in Lower. (In reality, I'd say this means I was 21st place out of 76, as there were 18 people in Upper.)

-1st place female out of 14 in Lower. (Amy was the only female in Upper, so this should technically place me 2nd female out of 15.)

Video: JOKR - East Coast Stamina 9 - Raw Output (ITG ECS9) on YouTube https://youtu.be/5aKohk3jldY

My ECS9 set this past Saturday literally floored me. I gave it all I had, finishing my 7 song max/1 hour set with one 19 and six 18s. (I'm used to taking longer breaks between songs when I play, so this was as much as I could've demanded of myself.) Though the support I got from Sean Gee and friends in the Twitch chat and elsewhere was what really inspired me to push through the pain, my biggest achievement was unquestionably not quitting when times got tough, and ooohhhhhh did they ever! The FA (well, lack thereof) says it all. 😂 Anyway, MASSIVE thanks to Sean for playing coach and supporting me, Jean-Philippe Moal for the song recommendations when I needed them most, Ian Pyles and all the other contributers for making this all possible, and all the friends who messaged and joined in on Twitch to hang with us and cheer me on. Maybe if you guys cheer harder next year, I'll do a set of solid 20s or 21s. 😝❤

Stamina RPG 4: Final Results

While stamina is always in season 'round here, and ECS9 is now underway, SRPG4 is now done and dusted. I won't pretend that I achieved great things; in fact, I was relatively disappointed in my performance this year. I didn't make any huge gains or exceptional breakthroughs. What I did do, however, was give it my all every chance I got to play. Perhaps that all-or-nothing attitude — playing either hard or not at all — was actually what held me back, or maybe I'm just getting old and eating too many corn dogs. 😄 Either way, it seems I'll need a new strategy going forward, and I'm all ears for any suggestions and constructive criticism people have to offer! For now though, I'm just going to allow myself a moment to smile over the small wins — that I made some footspeed progress, that my stamina probably didn't get any worse, that I stayed in fairly decent shape amidst all the event cancellations and everything going on in the world, and that I stuck it out with you guys through SRPG4 from start to finish! I managed to pass a new 20 called Space Box For Business too. Thank you to everyone who participated for keeping me company in the rankings and to everyone else who cheered me on, despite how silly my dance pad shuffling must've looked to many of you. Now, on to ECS9!

Charleston Peak Summit: North Loop up & South Loop Down - 7/17/20

Sean did this hike last year and had been wanting to take me since, as I'd never been. I was appropriately reluctant and terrified, but I agreed in exchange for him teaming up with me for the ECS 8.5 ITG team tournament recently. Was it worth it? Welllll....maybe ask me once I've had my rum and like 17 hours or sleep. In the meantime, here's how it went:

We woke up yesterday and got our mile and the rest of our 100 in 100 Days daily challenge in. (More on that later!) Then we munched a bunch and stayed up all night working. At 5:30am or so, we took off to Mount Charleston to hike up. An hour drive and couple of Rockstar energy drinks later, we were at the trailhead!

The hike took us nearly 19 miles in a little over 9 hours. We hiked up 4,769 feet to an elevation of 11,863 feet at the summit.

Tbh this was one of the hardest hikes I've done. It probably doesn't help that I can't remember the last time I did a notable hike or tried more than a slow, 1 mile jog max.

Some hike highlights:

•We passed the remains Sean had told me about of the airplane that'd crashed into the side of the mountain years ago.

•We encountered an expansive forest of trees, dead from an old fire and extending for miles in seemingly all directions, a couple of miles or so into our South Loop descent.

•There was a small clearing that was swarming with large dragonflies! We had no clue why, but it was quite a sight.

•Aside from smaller wildlife, we encountered a wild horse near the South Loop trailhead.

After like 18 hours without food (beyond a few chips), we grabbed some Burger King and headed home to Netflix and knock tf out. Sooo...lots more pics later. We've been up since who knows when yesterday, and I'm destroyed, so it's way past time to grab some Zzz's.

^My Strava type-up from the hike. Pics are now up on my Facebook. Vids coming on YouTube soon!

Check out my activity on Strava: https://strava.app.link/Rlt31IcOd8

And Sean's: https://www.strava.com/activities/3778103309?utm_source=com.twitter.android&utm_medium=referral

ECS 8.5 ITG Team Tournament: July 5th marathons AND raw output with Sean

The day after Independence Day was the final day of the ECS 8.5 ITG team tournament. I'd been meaning to enter, but time had gotten away from me, so I woke up on July 5th with a mini hangover and no team. :( Fortunately enough for me, there was a husband but one room away from me when I realized this. Hmmm... Needless to say, I'm now massively indebted to him. In fact, he's cashing in on that debt by making me hike like 16.6 miles up Mount Charleston and back next week or so. x.x

Anyway, after doing most of our 100 in 100 days challenge (see my post on that for details) that day, we hopped on ITG to squeeze our 3 half hour or so marathon segments and 4 hour raw output session in juuuust before the 9pm PDT deadline. Here's how that went:

-Sean did one marathon segment, getting nearly 98%

-We did raw output. Though we'd both exercised a lot two days prior, my legs were still much more fresh for it than Sean's. I've been playing ITG singles while Sean goes for runs, plays PIU, or plays ITG doubles this year and Sean already had a marathon segment down. Also, he had far more pad and machine issues than enthusiasm so this was more my thing. That said, he stepped in and knocked out a couple of 14s for me in addition to eventually convincing me to spare my legs and cut the session short when we knew we would already be fine on points as far as qualifying for shirts. (It was getting late, I'd done eighteen 16s and 17s with an average difficulty rating of 16.44 between them, and we had other things we still needed to do, e.g., work and the 1 mile minimum for our 100 in 100 days challenge, so it was for the best.)

-The machine got laggy and even stuttered and froze halfway through my marathon segment. Lucky for me, it started and caught up again without causing me to fail. I was able to finish, though the sound was messed up and the charts were significantly off sync for the second half. At some point, perhaps we should consider upgrading our setup from the computer we found at a thrift store and shoved in our machine. Lol I'm kinda curious if my timing would then get back to being at least as good as it was roughly a decade ago.

-We restarted the machine, and it was pretty much fine, so Sean wrapped up our entry by doing the last marathon segment, finishing with another near 98% score.

Finally, we squeezed in a couple of celebratory drinks, A LOT of food, a much needed bath, and our daily mile. Speaking of that mile, we almost felt as if we were getting paid a bit to work out when we took our dogs out to get that small distance in with an around-the-block walk and came home $20 richer after finding a bill someone had dropped in the road. Not a bad conclusion to a very sweaty day!

4th of July in Vegas!

Our day:

-Went to the park with dogs

-Did a bunch of work at home

-Drove to the crazy busy Lake Las Vegas area and parked in a turnout with everyone else (all properly socially distanced) to watch fireworks

-Pulled over and admired more fireworks all across the Vegas skyline on the way home

-Used app deals and got two kids meals and two Rodeo Burgers at Burger King for ~$2 total

-Climbed on the roof at home to watch the fireworks in our neighborhood

-Ate and got pretty tipsy in the backyard while lighting our own fireworks and watching everyone else's in the neighborhood and the distance