#I became crazy and drew for 16 hours straight

[valhahazred]

Cryptid Mythos bonus! Everything that appears on this sheet is an entity reported by real people. Why no Mythos this time? Because these encounters are so strange in appearance or behavior that they could slip right into the Sothic multiverse with little to no alteration or alternative explanation. Good luck Investigators!

All Colours Sam In 1973, in the town of Sandown, 7 year old “Fay” and an unnamed friend encountered a very strange individual as they explored the fringes of a golf course. They first became aware of something weird going on when they heard a sound like an ambulance siren in the distance. Following the sound to a footbridge over a creek, the two children were confronted by a three fingered hand wearing a blue glove that beckoned them from beneath the bridge. Awaiting them was a seven foot humanoid figure wearing strange clownish clothing, seemingly reinforced with wooden slats that protruded from his sleeves and pant-legs. The figure had a book in his hands, which he immediately fumbled and dropped in the water. He splashed around cartoonishly before recovering his book, leaping out of the creek and away from the children. He moved to a small metal shed with a high-kneed hopping gait and disappeared inside. The children went to leave, only for the mysterious entity to exit again with a microphone that appeared to be the source of the wailing that drew the children in the first place. It spoke into the microphone in a friendly, non-threatening tone. “Are you still here?” The children were curious and unafraid, so they moved towards him. He held up his book and pointed at the words in order to introduce himself. “Hello and I am all colours, Sam”. They asked if he was human and he said no and when asked if he was a ghost he replied, “well, not really but I am in an odd sort of way.” The children asked what he was then and he simply said, “You know.” During their conversation with the entity they learned that although he went by Sam, he didn’t really have a name, he claimed that there were others like him and that he was afraid of humans and that he was a pacifist, refusing to harm others even if they should attack him. He invited them into his hut, where he shared some wildberries and showed them a magic trick, where he placed a berry into his ear and seemingly teleported it to his mask’s eyehole and then to his mouth with quick jerks of his head. They continued to converse for almost an hour before the children decided to leave. Was he an alien in a make-do disguise? An animated scarecrow? A figment of childish imaginations? Or just a strange homeless man dressed like a clown? Whatever the truth, All Colours Sam, also known as the Sandown Ghost Clown, was never seen again. The Crazy Critter of Bald Mountain This weird looking creature was sighted by three people in the week following a fiery object that passed over the Bald Mountain near Newaukum Lake in Washington. When the local Sheriff began an investigation into the sighting he was visited by heavily armed and uniformed men who claimed to be from the Air Force and forced him to give up the case. Old Saybrook Blockheads Mary Starr was awoken in the early morning on December 16, 1957 by a bright light shining into her bedroom. She looked out the window to witness a 30 foot cigar shaped craft hovering over her yard, less than 10 feet from her house! Inside the apparent spaceship she witnessed a pair of small creatures with fleshy skirts and clear cubic “heads” containing a floating red bulb. They raised their right arms and as a third entity appeared in the portholes the ship brightened before shooting off into the sky. Space Brains of Palos Verdes As John Hodges and Pete Rodriguez were leaving a party at two in the morning they were not expecting to meet anything from out of this world but as the car turned on its headlights illuminated two bizarre entities! The men panicked and drove away, ending the story for Rodriguez as he made it home with no complications. However, in Hodges case he next became aware of himself two and a half hours later in the driveway of his home, sitting in the car as if in a trance. Troubled by the missing time, he eventually went for hypnosis in an attempt to recover his memories of the night. While under regression he claimed that while he got his friend home safely, when he returned to his own residence the disembodied brains were waiting for him! He asked them what they wanted and suddenly he was elsewhere, in a dark room with entities that looked like the classic Greys but very tall and with webbed six fingered hands and yellow eyes. They explained that the brains were “merely translators” used in order for these beings to interface telepathically with humans. He claimed they warned him that Earth had “too much power” and showed him a map of the planet covered in lights that indicated places where humans might destroy themselves. They showed him images of dead planets and made several inaccurate prophecies before he suddenly found himself back in his car. Unlike many other abductees with similar experiences Hodges did not try to make excuses for their bunk predictions or feel like it made him important in any way. He simply assumed the aliens were untrustworthy and were playing with him. The Casa Blanca Entities This is one of the strangest and most confusing accounts of a Close Encounter of the Fifth kind, as eight children ranging from the ages of four to fifteen were terrorized by a parade of extraterrestrial monsters one summer day in 1955. It started with an array of UFOs, sun-like, disk-shaped and semi-transparent, appearing and disappearing with musical pings. Then came the entities. First was a ghostly being bearing a shiny belt buckle that was so brilliant it could blind someone looking straight at it. It was followed by disembodied arms in riveted armor that seemed to beckon to the children, small strange men that used dual ray guns to paralyze and finally a many limbed creature. All through this strange arrival something spoke to the children telepathically, offering to take them away. The kids they spoke to often seemed to be entranced, moving to the dancing UFOs mindlessly and required physical force or even being hosed down to snap them out. One child even fell off a roof in an attempt to reach a UFO, only to be protected by a red force field. The weirdest part of all is that not only did adults not see anything, they couldn’t. Despite being present for the event a mother of one of the children was unaware of the paranormal happenings. Does this mean it was all in the children’s heads, as they were overtaken by some kind of playground hysteria? Or is there some alien force that not only wants our children but can make themselves invisible to undesirable observers. The Garson Invaders In 1954 three of these insectoid entities appeared to Canadian miner Ennio La Sarza. Their appearance was already exceptional by the usual standards of reported alien contact but in a particularly striking detail their faces appeared to glow in colours La Sarza had never seen before! The beings asked La Sarza to do something for them but he refused, not only to do it but to even speak of it. It was so awful and “outright apocalyptic” that he even considered asking the RCMP to lock him up in case the creatures he’d met had some way to enforce his cooperation. The Poole Pyramid This multi-hued metallic pyramid appeared in 1965 to seven year old Terrence Druce of Poole in Dorset when he awoke to it hovering over the foot of his bed. He shrieked in terror, waking his younger brother in time for him to also witness it as it faded into thin air. That encounter might have never been recorded if the brothers hadn’t seen it again the very next day, lurking in a parking lot. They said it seemed aware of their presence and turned to watch them but it did not follow them when they decided to flee the scene. Delta Dogs An anonymous woman was driving through a snowstorm on route 07 through Syracuse in January 1958. She came across what at first seemed to be a downed plane but as she approached her engine slowly ran itself down and the car stopped itself. As she desperately tried to restart the car the snowstorm calmed and more details became apparent. Projecting out of the large object she’d thought was a plane crash was a 50 foot illuminated pole. Two strange beings rose up along the pole, floating by it as it started to retract. When the pole finished sinking into the object the creatures disappeared and the craft took off so fast she couldn’t make out where it went. The Electric Serpent of Tacoma This is easily the most unusual sighting of a sea creature that I’ve ever heard of. Seven men camping on the shore of Black Fish Bay in 1893 encountered a sea monster that appeared to be cybernetic, if not entirely biomechanical! Disturbed by a horrible noise and blinding lights the men left their camp to find a huge, hairy walrus-like animal with steaming horns, bands of coppery metal and a revolving propeller-like tail! One of the men approached it to get a better look, only to be struck by an electric blast from its copper bands and fell to the ground as if dead. When one of his friends tried to pull him to safety, he was likewise shocked by the impossible animal. The other men fled into the woods after seeing two of their number seemingly killed and the Electric Serpent seemed to lose interest and swam out into Puget Sound. Once they were sure it was gone the remaining men returned to the beach and were elated to find their friends burned and stunned but still very much alive! So what happened? Was it just one of the sadly common newspaper hoaxes of the time? Or did a bunch of 19th century fishermen find a literal fucking pokemon? You decide! Stickmen The Stickmen are an extremely recent phenomenon, with reports starting within the last 10 years or so. They are described as being stick thin and roughly humanoid, sometimes with bubble heads, glowing eyespots or even top hats. They range in size from human-like to towering in excess of 20 feet. What is most interesting about them is their apparent two dimensionality, sometimes appearing the same no matter what angle they are viewed at and sometimes being able to turn to the side and vanish as though they were never there. They are also frequently reported as being accompanied by a feeling like static electricity and of aggression or hostility. Despite those impressions the Stickmen do not appear to be hostile, instead seeming surprised and immediately retreating from a witness.

[acuppellarp]

Welcome (again) to A Cup-pella, Ace! We’re excited to have you and Mercedes Jones in the game! Please go through the checklist to make sure you’re ready to go and send in your account within the next 24 hours.

OOC INFO

Name + pronouns: Ace + She/Her/It Age: 32 Timezone: CST Ships: Mercedes/Success, Mercedes/Chem Anti-Ships:Mercedes/Being Ignored

IC INFO

Full Name: Mercedes Carmen Jones Face Claim: Amber PaTrice Riley Age/Birthday: 25 / August 19th Occupation: Background singer, actress in The Untitled Abrams Project. Personality: empathetic, passionate, honest, stubborn, ambitious, insecure, kind, diligent Hometown: Chicago, IL

Bio: The Jones Family was that of picture perfection. Richard and Amelia Jones wed while in their last year of Medical and Law school respectively. They’d had a long romance prior, having grown up as neighbors their entire childhoods. They’d loved one another for as long as they could remember and when Richard proposed at their high school graduation Amelia cried and turned him down. She said they needed to wait. They needed time to grow up a little. The young man had been hurt and didn’t talk to his love for nearly a week after, which was as much torturous for him as he intended it to be for her. When they were finally reunited Amelia cried again and slapped his arms before jumping into them. From that moment on they’d never gone more than a day without speaking to one another. They attended Morehouse and Spelman colleges in Atlanta Georgia then moved to Washington DC to further their educations together at Howard University, which they and their families where more than proud of. And when Amelia got an offer at a prestigious Law Firm, the newlyweds packed up and moved once again

Richard and Amelia waited a while to start a family, wanting to be settled in their careers, much to the dismay of their own parents. But It gave them time, the time they needed to grow into their marriage, grow into a mature love that was more than just fun and heart eyes. A love they were willing to fight for and work at. It wasn’t until about 7 years into their marriage that their first child was born, Daniel, another two years later Matthew appeared and just three more brought the one and only official star of the family, Mercedes Carmen Jones.

Amelia used to tell young Mercedes she was born under a starry night; that there were more stars in that sky than she’d ever seen. It made the little girl feel special. God put all those stars in the sky that night because it was her destiny to shine bright. And she believed that with her whole heart. Mercedes started singing before she could speak and it pleased her mother to no end. Amelia loved music deeply, and though she never had the desire or talent to pursue it, shared that great love with her only daughter.

Mercedes lived a pretty charmed life for most of her childhood. She was doted on by her parents and older brothers, lived in a beautiful home in an upper middle class neighborhood, she was a favorite in the children’s church choir, and was always surrounded by love and encouragement. It wasn’t until her middle school years that she was met with the unfortunate realization that this world could be a very cruel place.

Inheriting her mother’s love of music created a special unbreakable bond between the two, and the further nourishment of Mercedes undeniable talent was certainly one of Amelia’s favorite pastimes. Mercedes let her entire family know how serious she was about her future as a performer at the tender age of 4.  At first there were just lessons, all kinds, singing, dance, acting, piano. Then came the auditions. Around age 7 is when Mercedes actively went out for local auditions. She honestly loved the process. Everyone was so nice and they smiled so bright whenever she sang. It filled her with an unspeakable joy. There was many a role she didn’t get, but her mother always explained that everything wasn’t meant for everyone, but all the things God had in store for her were beyond her wildest imagination, as long as she worked hard and lived every moment. And work hard she did! The little diva became a perfectionist about her craft.

The year Mercedes began to doubt everything was the year she stopped auditioning. When the young girl was 11 years old she went out for a local musical theater role. It was a pretty prominent part and Mercedes had worked on it for weeks. When she was told a polite thanks but no thanks, she was disappointed but grateful at least to be given a smaller less noteworthy role, even though she made it a point to tell her mother, she definitely deserved the bigger part. Next time! That enthusiasm waned when she stumbled upon the notes one of the casting directors had tossed out. Apparently she needed to go on a diet and wasn’t the right… complexion for the role. She didn’t tell anyone what she found, no matter how much her mother prodded her about why she didn’t want to go out for auditions anymore. She never let it slip.

Mercedes spent the rest of her middle school years as a regular kid. She had lots of friends, was a straight A student and sang in the school and church choirs. She missed auditioning but her insecurities continued to get the better of her, but all things considered she was a really happy kid. Very happy, until life dealt her the blow the knocked all of the wind out of her lungs. Mercedes’ mother was sick, really sick. Her parents sat her and her brothers down about a week into her first year of high school to break the news to them all. Breast Cancer. Her world was officially turned upside down. Mercedes was scared out of her mind.

Richard and Amelia did their best to make life as normal for their children as possible, they wouldn’t let Daniel come home from Howard, and Matthew and Mercedes were expected to go about life per usual. That became increasingly difficult as Chemo began to take its toll on Amelia. Mercedes life became about taking care of her mother, which seemed crazy to her because her mother was literally Superwoman. She didn’t mind though, she wanted to be there, she wanted to pitch in. Amelia wasn’t just her mother after all, she was also her best friend. The one thing her mother wouldn’t allow her to give up was her music. ‘Music wasn’t taking a backseat to that damned disease’, her mother’s words. So she sang, went to school, and helped take care of her mother for two years. She’d always been close with both of her parents but the ordeal definitely brought her and her father much closer. Near the end there, Mercedes almost completely lost herself. It had broken her down to see her mother so broken down.

Two years after the diagnosis Amelia Jones was in remission, and the Jones family rejoiced. Their prayers had finally been answered, but they were all changed forever. As Amelia gathered her strength, she made it her mission to get Mercedes back on the path she knew in her bones her little girl still wanted to be on. Mercedes passion had never wavered but her confidence took a hard hit and when Amelia finally found out why, the woman had beat cancer she could get a secret out of her 16 year old, the new mission was to find that casting director and kill him after helping Mercedes find her way again.

Mercedes had her mother back, life was good and she should have been happy, and she was, but not completely satisfied. She knew the choirs weren’t enough. She needed to pursue her dreams she needed it like air. Mercedes was revitalized and with her families continued encouragement she went hard. Resuming classes and auditions, snagging roles left and right. She booked actual singing gigs and became an official force in the Chi. Her social life had taken somewhat of a backseat, which was fine with her because she was on that stage tearing it up and making people happy, and that along with her family was all she needed, until Chase. Turns out she needed time with Chase too. The beautiful tattooed covered persistent “bad girl” annoyed the hell out of Mercedes, but there was something about the other woman that drew her in. Oh and Surprise to her… she liked girls. Well that was something she’d have to deal with later.

After a painstakingly long conversation about how she was breaking the HBCU family tradition with her father, Mercedes set her sites on NYC. Chicago began to seem limited as far as chasing her dreams was concerned and New York was so much more about substance than a place like LA which seemed so superficial from the outside. Mercedes studied Music at Barnard College of Columbia University. Balancing her studies along with trying to find professional gigs proved to be more work than Mercedes anticipated but she was nothing if she wasn’t hardworking. She Learned so much at Columbia and once she graduated the worked rolled in continuously, but she’s still waiting for that big break project.

Pets: N/A

Relationships: [ Only for OC applicants and Canon/Semi-canon characters not currently part of the Masterlist. Both OCs and Canon/Semi-canons not currently on the Masterlist must fill a wanted connection. Please provide brief headcanons for possible roommates and/or groups. ]

EXTRA INFO

[ This is for the masterlist, but also a fun little way to get to know your character! ]

The Mercedes Jones /@DreamGirl_Cedes/Beyonce’s New Protege, even if she doesn’t know it yet. Aretha, Whitney, and Mariah - In that order. Give me a microphone and a stage and everything is right in the world. Mama’s girl.

Five latest tweets:

@DreamGirl_Cedes: Chiiiiile, If I don’t get a good 8 tonight tomorrow somebody is feeling the wrath

@DreamGirl_Cedes: Lord knows I asked for this life, but did I need all this stress on top. Yoga Anyone?

@DreamGirl_Cedes: Performing tonight at the Village Underground, be there or be missing out on a great night

@DreamGirl_Cedes: Feeling like a PYT tonight [https://66.media.tumblr.com/13d58524efc5dbda806a9b04a232f35e/tumblr_pn57j7fQ5j1ulewqf_540.jpg]

@DreamGirl_Cedes: When the plus size department is lacking you gotta break out the needle and thread #SheASeamstressToo

[donheisenberg]

Top 20 TV Shows of 2017:

So this is the bit where I talk about how difficult it is to write a top 20 list because of peak TV, yada, yada, yada. If you are into TV criticism you have read it all before several over the last few years, the thing is while it might feel like a cliche it is totally true and with every year it become more true. Trying to watch everything out there is impossible and trying to then narrow down what you have watched to a list of 20 is almost as difficult. Every show on this list had an outstanding year as shown by some of the shows I left off of the list. In any other year the likes of Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Americans would be givens even if they just had middling seasons but not this year. It was truly a great year for TV and here are my top 20 shows of 2017.

Shows I Did Not Get Around to Watching/Completing That May Have Made My List: The Deuce The Handmaid’s Tail (to watch) Legion (to watch) Better Things Search Party Difficult People

Honorable Mention: Rick and Morty (season 3): Shout out to Review as well, which was excellent but just had to few episodes for me to really count it. In terms of Rick and Morty it was often in the news (or at least the twitter news) for the wrong reasons this year as a group of its fans decided to act like complete dickheads for a period of time. All of which deflected from the fact it had its best season ever. I’ve always had issues with the show and basically how pro-Rick and his asshole behavior Harmon and co seem to be and this year didn’t necessarily dissuade me of that but on a week to week basis it was crafting, ambitious and well thought out stories, at a rate the show had never before.

No 20: Fargo (season 3): As many observed this was not Fargo’s finest year and it maybe took a while to get going. It is also the case that 3 seasons in it is tougher for a show as idiosyncratic as this one to surprise us. When a seemingly major character dies in episode 1 it is less of a shock than it should be because that is what happened in season 1. Yet at the same time I so enjoyed this season and the performances by the likes of Carrie Coon (more on her later), Ewan MacGregor and David Thewlis and you still had episodes as excellent as The Law of Non-Contradiction.

No 19) Veep (season 6): Similar to Fargo this was a just slightly below average year for Veep, but even then the quality of the ensemble is so far above any other comedy out there and the quality of the writing/jokes/insults is again just of the highest order. There are few shows I enjoy more than Veep.

No 18) Master of None (Season 2): In my review I did write about how aspects of MON did frustrate me. For it’s social awareness, it is a show that wants me to desperately feel sorry for the man with seemingly the nicest/most privileged life in the world. The extent to which the show is essentially lifestyle porn at times can be a problem and the extent to which the show never questions Dev’s actions can also be a little off-putting. Yet having said that the good outweighs the bad and then some. The show crafts so many beautiful fully realized episodes and months after watching it is episodes like Thanksgiving that stick with me, more than the show’s flaws.

No 17) The Young Pope (Season 1): I’m not sure I get The Young Pope. I love it but I’m not sure I get it. Even in this age of weird TV there is something truly odd about this show. So difficult to write about because it does not conform to any conventions or labels and that’s why it makes this list. Having said all of this I’m not quite sure the show ever hit the heights of its pilot (even if it remained excellent throughout) and that’s why it is not a little bit higher.

No 16) Brockmire (Season 1): Brockmire is exactly the sort of gem that can get lost in this golden age, but for those few of us who did see it we know that it was one of the most raucous, hilarious and endearing comedies out there. I don’t know or care about baseball at all but I do love Brockmire and can’t wait til it comes back.

No 15) Brooklyn Nine Nine (season 4/5): Just as Brockmire can get lost in a sea of amazing shows, B99 is the sort of show that you can take for granted so easily but 5 seasons in and it is still full of heart and brilliant gags. More than that though this year on a couple of occasions we saw the show break-out of its comfort zone with episodes about Terry being racially profiled and more recently Rosa coming out to her less than progressive parents. Those episodes showcased a different side of the show and demonstrated how B99 is not just a great sitcom but an important one. Nine Nine!

No 14) Preacher (Season 2): Parts of season 2 of Preacher were as good as anything on TV. The opening scenes of the first two episodes, as well as standout episode Sokosha plus a whole host of other moments, showed how Preacher could execute some of the most ambitious TV out there to near perfection. It was not all perfect and the season might have benefited from being 10 episode long rather than 12 but nonetheless I love this show and it seems to only go in one direction. Bring on season 3.

No 13) GLOW (Season 1): GLOW was sort of the perfect summer show. It was funny and likable and so binge-able. Netflix makes a lot of deeply serialized shows, designed to be consumed in one sitting so as you find out what happens next. Glow was not that. What GLOW was, was a show that quickly established an ensemble of distinct and interesting characters who you wanted to spend time with and for that it was a standout show.

No 12) Better Call Saul (Season 3): It pains me to put BCS at number 12, in any other year this could be a contender for my number 1 spot but here it does quite make the top ten. Part of the reason why it is a little lower than you might have excepted is that at this stage I don’t have to tell anyone how good this show is. Into it’s third season and BCS was possibly better than ever. Certainly episodes like the chilling Lantern and in particular Chicanery mark series high points and some of the finest TV I’ve seen all year.

No 11) American Vandal (Season 1): American Vandal is a curious show. It is ostensibly a parody, yet by the time you finish it you look back and think that was funny but not funny enough to be making this list necessarily. What it was though was the most engrossing show of the year. And it all centred on the question “who drew the dicks?” Yet for the silliness of the premise I could not have been more intrigued. AV found new ground for the most tired of sub-genres, the mockumentary and in the process delivered an absurd but in many ways tragic story of a stupid but well meaning kid in high school whose life goes array for reasons that have little to do with him. Defining the pleasures of the show may not be straight, but boy was it insanely watchable-the Netflix model at its best.

No 10 )Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (Season 3): Similar to B99, UKS is the sort of consistent joke machine that you can take for granted, and that many have, but for me this year there were few shows enjoyed nearly as much as it. I thought the show delivered its best season. The work of Ellie Kemper and in particular Titus Burgess can match any comedic performers on TV. Again though amidst all the laughs is a very human character study piece of an abuse victim and maybe where the show’s genius thoroughly lies  is in the way the show balances these two sides of itself.

No 9) Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (Seasons 2/3): Rachel Bloom’s musical comedy/drama goes from strength to strength. Like many shows of this list it perfectly balances cartoonish sensibilities with discussions on mental health and never more so than in the first half of season 3. In addition to that though are the musical numbers. At times I’m just in awe of how spot on and clever their parodies, my favorite this year being “Let’s Generalize About Men” and for that it had to make my top ten.

No 8) Bojack Horseman (Season 4): In its 2nd and particularly 3rd seasons Bojack became a show that delivered some of the most outstanding individual episodes of television, possibly ever. Escape From LA, Fish Under Water and That’s Too Much Man are just incomparable half hours of TV. Season 4 did not deliver a single episode of quite that standard. What season 4 did do though is deliver quite possibly the show’s most consistent, revealing and hopefully season. Something we all needed at the end of the show’s previous season.

No 7) Catastrophe (Season 3): Okay it was only 6 episodes along, but I ask this question every year, is there a better written show on TV? There might be snappier dialogue out there, there might be more profound existential musings on some other show, but there is no show with more wonderfully naturalistic dialogue on now or possibly ever. Also there is not really a couple of TV I root for quite as much as Sharon and Rob and I really just want to watch the two of them on screen together as much as possible.Plus the final episode of season 3 was just the perfect send-off for Carrie Fisher and for that alone it deserves it place on my list.

No 6) Jane The Virgin (Season 3/4): Now four seasons in Jane the Virgin still has the power to surprise and hit me emotionally as much as just about any show on this list. I would go as far as to stay no episode of television this year hit me as hard as (spoilers) Michael’s death which was absolutely devestating. But when it comes to Jane the Virgin it is not just the big gut-punches that count, it is the smaller moments as well. The other scene that sticks with me most from its episodes this year is when Rogelio (often the show’s most comic presence) opens up to Xo about how he hasn’t been able to grieve properly for Michael, who was his best friend, because he knew he had to be strong for Jane while she was grieving. It is a comparatively small moment but every bit as resonant. I can take or leave all the intrigue concerning the Marbella but week after week the show delivers moments that really effect me, which even in this golden age can’t be said of too many show.

No 5) Twin Peaks (Season 3): It seems to me that Twin Peaks has either been number 1 or completely absent from every critics list. And I can understand both positions. Twin Peaks was fascinating in a way that television and art more generally rarely is. It was also incredibly and deliberately frustrating at times. I’m almost reluctant to point out how obviously frustrating parts of the revival were because I feel like I might be missing something. On the other hand because its Lynch and because he is a widely and rightly acknowledge genius I think some critics have been too forgiving of some pretty blatant narrative issues, that on another show they would have lambasted. Ultimately though it was the TV event of the year and nothing quite engaged me on a week to week basis like it did. More than anything though there were certain moments, particularly toward the end of the season, that were greater than anything else on TV this year. Moments I completely lost myself in, in ways that are quite difficult to explain and for that I won’t be forgetting the revival for a very long time.

No 4) Mr Robot (Season 3): If season 1 was clinically perfect, in a way no show since Breaking Bad has been, season 2 was an over-ambitious, definitely fascinating, mess. I was a bit of an apologist for the largely disliked second season-but even I was somewhat disappointed after the heights of season 1. Season 3 not only got the show back on track but it found a balance in the ensemble that neither season 1 (which was almost all Elliot) or season 2 (which felt like very little Elliot) had. It also starting making sense again and the show successfully battled the urge to be overly opaque or to have unnecessary twists. All of which meant that we got some of the show’s finest hours yet specifically the thrilling fifth and sixth episodes as well as the surprising and heart-warming eight hour, not to mention the finale which had a bit of everything. And for all its pessimism few shows made me happier this year, because I was so delighted to see this great show prove all the doubters wrong.

No 3) The Good Place (season 1/2): Michael Schur has secured himself a place in TV history with The Office, B99 and in particular Parks and Rec, already but with The Good Place he has gone one further. We all knew he could craft wonderfully funny and likable sitcoms, but here he has delivered a show as twisty and as engaged in huge philosophical issues as any prestige serialized drama. The Good Place is not necessarily a sad-com like many of the show’s on this list but it is possibly the most plot driven network sitcom ever. The thing is the plot has real stakes and is completely unpredictable as well. The huge twist at the end of season 1 showed that even in the age of Reddit you could pull out the rug from underneath your audience and I did not think that was possible. I don’t know how much longer they can continue it but as of now The Good Place is just about a perfect piece of television. 

No 2) Halt and Catch Fire (Season 4): Without spoiling what is number 1 on my list, when it aired I thought nothing would come near it but Halt and Catch Fire came very very close. Back in its much derided first season Halt was a jukebox spitting one antihero cliche after another. In some ways it never strayed too far from the conventions of the antihero drama but what made it different was that at a certain point it just wasn’t about antiheroes. Sure all the characters were deeply flawed, none more so than Joe, but their constant strive for something more, for some kind of connection felt so human you could not help but love them. The final four episodes were TV drama at its best and when it ended I really struggled with the notion that I would not be spending more time with these characters, but if anything made it okay it was how well they stuck the landing. Speaking of which..

No 1) The Leftovers (Season 3): No show has ever made quite the impact in such a short space of time. The Leftovers conclude its mere 28 episode run this year, just 28 episodes yet about half of them are nothing short of masterpieces. That includes just about every episode in this final run. It’s tough in just a paragraph to breakdown what made The Leftovers such a transcendent piece of television-so to be glib I’ll say it took the ambition and phantasmagoria of Twin Peaks and combined it with the heart and focus on character of Halt and Catch Fire. LOST-one of my absolute favorite shows of all time-will define Lindelof’s career but The Leftovers is ultimately a more complete and mature piece of work. The writing, performances and direction coalesced to give us something often hilarious and surprising and always deeply powerful. There may never be a show like The Leftovers again and for those reasons it was always going to be my number 1. 

[junker-town]

See you soon, Hannah Roberts

How one of Team USA’s potential breakout Olympic stars is handling the wait.

Luscious green trees surround the outdoor skatepark and grandstands at the UCI Urban Cycling World Championships in Chengdu, China. Freestyle BMX star Hannah Roberts — atop her pink bike, rocking a black full-face helmet — drops in and pedals hard toward a spine ramp. As she launches off the ramp, Roberts begins a 360-degree spin. In the middle of her rotation, she uses the handlebars to whip the bike around separate from her body, becoming the first woman to land a 360 tailwhip in competition.

The historic trick, thrown down on her sport’s biggest stage, epitomized Roberts’ young career. She has never stopped building to bigger and better things.

Rather than give the crowd a fist pump, or take a breather to soak in the momentous occasion, Roberts immediately hits a vert ramp and busts a flair — a backflip with a simultaneous 180-degree turn.

The year before, she took a disappointing third in the event, behind fellow Americans Perris Benegas and Angie Marino. On Nov. 10, 2019, Roberts avenged the loss, winning her second world championship at just 18 years old with a score of 90.0 out of 100.

After wiping away tears, she stood above the rest on the podium, smiling as she accepted a gold medal and a stuffed panda with a leaf in its mouth. She wore UCI’s iconic rainbow jersey, bestowed upon world champions of every cycling discipline since the 1920s.

Just one week earlier, she had won her fourth straight FISE World Cups Series, which also held its final event in Chengdu. Roberts left no question whether she was the best women’s freestyle BMXer in the world.

“I wanted to have the rainbow jersey going into the Olympic year,” Roberts says. “It was more for myself. I put so much work in, and I was so focused on showing that I wasn’t going to take second or third again. I wanted that year to be all about me, so I threw down some of my bigger tricks.”

Her mother Betty made the trip to Chengdu to watch, after she and Roberts had spent half a year apart. In order to train for the world championships, Roberts effectively emancipated herself from her mother and father in June 2019 while she was still 17.

She moved in with long-time medical trainer Trish Bare Grounds and Trish’s 18-year-old daughter, Olivia, 750 miles away in Holly Springs, North Carolina. As she moved, she changed her diet. More importantly, she strictly budgeted her modest income. Being a teenage action sports prodigy with international acclaim isn’t as lucrative as one might think.

There was no giant check waiting at the podium in Chengdu to signify the €10,000 in prize money she earned, but the win was huge for Roberts. Just four months prior, she wasn’t sure she could sustain her freestyle BMX career into her mid-twenties unless the sport became more financially stable.

The World Championships are one of the few annual competitions to award equal prizes to men and women. By comparison, when she won the final contest of the world series, the Men’s Elite winner took home €8,000 while Roberts received €1,500.

And though Roberts’ accomplishments show how far women’s freestyle BMX has come in recent years in terms of talent and viability, they are also a reminder of the wage and sponsorship gap that persists between male and female athletes. As impressive as Roberts and her peers have been, the most famous annual extreme sports event, the X Games, still won’t let them compete.

The now-postponed summer Olympics were supposed to be a launch pad for the sport and for Roberts. The games drew an estimated 3.6 billion viewers for the Rio Games in 2016. Freestyle BMX will be an event for the first time ever in Tokyo, and Roberts is the clear favorite to take home gold.

“Women are the future of our sport,” says Nina Buitrago, a pioneer of women’s BMX who continues to be one of the sports biggest advocates. “They’re very marketable, and it’s a big thing that BMX has needed for a long time. It’s just incredible that with something like the Olympics, it’s catapulted all of us in to try to progress more and just own our journey.”

Roberts is ready to lead the charge; unfortunately, there’s only so much she can control. She did everything right heading into the 2020 games — kept herself afloat financially, trained relentlessly, won everything she needed to and then some.

But she couldn’t predict the coronavirus pandemic that has put her Olympic dreams, and those of countless others, on hold until 2021 at the earliest. Roberts is used to addressing her problems through sheer willpower. Being forced to wait, a budding star without a showcase, has been an entirely different challenge.

In South Bend, Indiana, around the back of an old brick chocolate factory, past a chain-link gate and barbed-wire fence, and at the other end of a parking lot with cracked concrete, sits an old mattress factory-turned-world-class skatepark. The indoor park known as “The Kitchen” is closed most weekdays, but on an unusually warm Monday afternoon in February, the front door is unlocked. Roberts is home for the first time in more than six months to enjoy her formative skatepark.

That evening, she will ride with three boys between the ages of 11 and 14 who she has mentored for years. Roberts was invited to the park for a private session for them and their parents. She practically had no choice — she happened to be in town, and they were blowing up her phone all day begging to celebrate.

The official Team USA Instagram account posted a photo of Roberts earlier that afternoon announcing she was the first American to ever qualify for the Olympics in freestyle BMX.

View this post on Instagram

WATCH OUT, 18-year-old @hannah_roberts_bmx is the first American to qualify for the Olympics in BMX freestyle ‼️

A post shared by Team USA (@teamusa) on Feb 3, 2020 at 9:33am PST

“They’re supposed to be in school,” Roberts says, “but they were on their phones during the day and took screenshots, sent it to me and asked, ‘Did you see this?’ The first three times I told them ‘no,’ but finally, I just responded, ‘Do you want to ride tonight?’”

For hours, Roberts and her young pupils film each other on their phones while they attempt high-flying tricks into a large yellow foam pit and eat slices of greasy pizza. She’s proud of how they have improved under her tutelage. Their parents comment on how much she has inspired them. Roberts also expects this will be one of her last carefree runs before she transitions to a training regimen suitable for an Olympic athlete. She sits and soaks in nostalgia from her surroundings instead of sending her own tricks into the foam pit.

“The last four years of me living here, I rode with every one of these kids almost every day,” Roberts says. “I’d pick them up from their house if they needed a ride or I’d take them to a skatepark. If I wanted to make a day trip to Ohio just to ride something different, they were always in my car going with me.”

According to her mother, Roberts is at her happiest when she’s working with kids, though she still fits within a broad definition of “adolescent” herself.

“[Hannah] was the first girl I saw do a tailwhip. Once she has a trick, she can just do it. It’s not like it’s luck.” - Nina Buitrago, freestyle BMX pioneer

Roberts grew up in the 4,000-person town of Buchanan, Michigan, a few miles north of the Indiana state border and a 20-minute drive from South Bend. Decades ago, Buchanan’s rolling terrain gave birth to RedBud MX, one of America’s signature motocross tracks and now an annual stop for the Lucas Oil Pro Motocross Championship. In the fall of 2018, the track even hosted Motocross of Nations, which is billed as the “Olympics of motocross,” drawing riders from all over the world.

The fact Buchanan produced a world-renowned extreme sports athlete like Roberts isn’t a surprise. But Roberts is unique because her success never came on a dirt bike. If not for her father’s disapproval, Roberts might have given motocross a real shot, but the closest she ever came was working a taco stand at RedBud MX during her summers.

Her passion for BMX was passed on from her older cousin, Brett “Mad Dog” Banasiewicz, once an up-and-comer on the Dew Tour. In 2012, as a shaggy black-haired 17-year-old, he won his first Dew Tour park event in Ocean City, Maryland. The following week, his professional career came to a devastating end. During a practice session, he landed on his head while attempting a 720° and wearing an uncertified helmet. He temporarily lost the use of his left arm, and his motor and speech skills will never fully recover.

“It was horrible. To me, he was gonna be the next Dave Mirra,” says Daniel Dhers, one of the most decorated BMX riders of all-time. “He just learned how to compete. He had all these tricks that he’d worked on for years. He had the looks, and he could talk, and was funny. If he were riding today? He’d be the guy in the Olympics, for sure. That would be crazy because then it would be him and Hannah.”

Via Hannah Roberts

Roberts herself has suffered numerous broken bones, but fear of suffering an injury like Banasiewicz doesn’t hold her back.

“You can take all the safety precautions in the world, but it still could happen,” Roberts says. “Brett fell on a trick that he’d mastered, that he’d been doing forever. It was five seconds and everything changed.”

Before the injury, a 16-year-old Banasiewicz self-funded and, with the help of his friend Glenn Salyers, designed The Kitchen. They equipped it with enormous ramps, foam pits, and “resi” ramps, which are covered in foam and a thick sheet of black rubber. By the time she was riding at nine years old, Roberts had access to one of the nation’s premier skateparks.

Swiss-American freestyle rider Nikita Ducarroz, five years Roberts’ senior and a likely qualifier for the 2020 Olympics for Switzerland, remembers trekking to The Kitchen from her Southern California home for a competition as a teenager. She almost froze at the magnitude of its jumps.

“The ramps at The Kitchen are huge,” Ducarroz says. “I remember going there, and I couldn’t even cruise the boxes and [Hannah’s] doing tricks over them.”

By middle school, Roberts was already performing tricks that seasoned veterans with sponsorships had never seen.

“She was the first girl I saw do a tailwhip,” Buitrago says. “Once she has a trick, she can just do it. It’s not like it’s luck.”

But as much as The Kitchen spurred Roberts’ BMX education, she eventually realized she had to leave it behind.

For years, Roberts believed members of her inner circle credited The Kitchen for too much of her success, disregarding her work ethic and determination. And she could only spend so much time mentoring other young BMXers without sacrificing her own progress.

“I love riding with the locals,” Roberts says. “I love helping them, but it comes to a point where, in every session, if you’re focusing on other people riding, which I love to do, your riding starts to fall.”

Roberts gave up her passion for mentoring, at least temporarily, to better her career. She had felt the pain of losing the 2018 World Championships and the rainbow jersey. She never wants to let that happen again.

Holly Springs — a pine tree- and strip mall-filled landscape similar to every other suburb in the Raleigh, N.C., metropolitan area — has quickly become the new mecca of freestyle BMX. That’s largely thanks to Dhers, who owns the massive indoor-outdoor skatepark known as the Daniel Dhers Action Sports Complex. Dhers, 35, is a five-time X Games gold medalist originally from Venezuela.

From the front, the DDASC looks like an office building or outlet store, industrial gray brick and dark windows covering the outside. The inside doesn’t look like what a typical sports fan might expect from an Olympic training facility. Plywood and two-by-fours are the predominant decor. But the 37,000-square-foot complex is considered one of the largest and best family-oriented, year-round skating and biking facilities in the world.

After spending her entire life in the Midwest, Roberts moved to Holly Springs to train at the DDASC because, unlike most other Olympic athletes, the best BMX riders like to train side-by-side, pushing each other.

The park officially opens to the public every weekday from 3 to 8 p.m. Dhers and the other pros do most of their riding in the morning to avoid crowds of young kids on scooters, but they often make exceptions on Tuesday evenings.

Recently, Roberts was joined by two other women riders: Ducarroz and Benegas, the winner of the 2018 World Championships. Roberts and Benegas are teammates and rivals. Their tug-of-war relationship only intensified after both became near-locks to qualify for the Olympics.

Getty Images

“It’s very competitive now,” Roberts says. “We call it winning practice, which makes no sense because it’s practice, but everybody wants to win.”

The male riders include Dhers, Marin Ranteš of Croatia, American Justin Dowell and Australian Brand Loupos. All have finished on the podium at major UCI and FISE BMX events over the last two years.

During training sessions at the DDASC, each rider takes turns dropping in from the deck and riding for 30 to 40 seconds at a time, watching each other and offering criticism and encouragement. On one run, Roberts lands a tailwhip onto resi with relative ease. She then rides around the skatepark to pick up speed and hits the same ramp, performing a 360° tuck no-hander in which, while letting go of the bike, she leans her stomach against the handlebars before grabbing them again and landing.

Much of her competition would be thrilled with this short run, but Roberts is just getting started.

“Backflip bar spins over spines is her warm-up trick in sessions,” Ducarroz says.

Unfortunately, the sport of freestyle BMX hasn’t progressed as quickly as its athletes.

Freestyle BMX has been around since the mid-1970s, but didn’t achieve international prominence until the late 90s and early 2000s, after the X Games were started. Yet, to this day, women BMXers aren’t allowed to vie for a medal in the competition.

Instead, the most that X Games organizers have been willing to give them is an unpaid demonstration, the first of which occurred in 2014. For 10 years before that, X Games offered a girls BMX clinic. The riders hope that, one day, women’s freestyle BMX will have its own competition, similar to what women’s skateboarding and snowboarding have enjoyed for years.

It’s a big risk, especially the year before the Olympics, to ride at an event where you won’t make money ... [The X Games] are just a big slap in the face” - Hannah Roberts

“We’ve been working on this relationship with X Games for so long,” Buitrago says. “I feel like we’re so close, but they just were like, ‘Well, we’re just going to offer you another demo again.’ The deal that we made was [that] women are down to do the demo, so long as every year we’re working towards having an actual contest.”

But everyone has their limits. In 2018, when she was16, Roberts became the first prominent female rider to bail on the X Games, deciding her skills were worth more than a free hotel room and limited exposure. Some of the other professional riders protested her decision, saying it wasn’t best for the sport, but her mind was made up.

The following year, the entire women’s class agreed to boycott the event.

“It’s a big risk, especially the year before the Olympics, to ride at an event where you won’t make money,” Roberts says. “We barely get a crowd. They have it at like 9 or 10 a.m., so nobody’s really there. No events are going on. It’s just a big slap in the face.

“People should really open their eyes and realize that the class [of women] is growing. That people are getting better and it will take time for us to be on the same level as the men just because of the support. It’s hard to make [BMX] a career.”

Roberts learned from a young age that practice, more than exposure, would propel her career.

At the DDASC, Dhers is the unofficial coach of the group. He periodically pulls riders aside for extra one-on-one attention while they train. When Roberts first moved to Holly Springs, her day-to-day riding was inconsistent. One day, she might push herself beyond her limits, risking injury and wearing herself out. The next, she’d spend too much time on her phone or drinking an energy drink. Dhers and the other pros helped her change her mentality by pushing her to take a more mindful, calculated approach to practicing new tricks.

Now she’s deliberate about how much time she spends sending a trick to the foam pit, only moving to resi once she feels she’s ready, then moving to a wooden ramp when the trick is nearly perfect.

“I used to just send things [on a wooden ramp] and then go back on resi and then go back in the foam and work on them, which was a terrible idea,” Roberts says.

Her new mentality has paid real dividends. For instance, on a six-week training trip she took to Australia after her victory at the World Championships, Roberts learned more than two dozen new tricks, including what she called five or six “big tricks.” During that time, she traveled throughout the country, staying with Australian rider Natalya Diehm.

Roberts knew she had to evolve. She noticed other women catching up to her, and the number of competitors increasing exponentially. She’s stubborn according to those who know her well. She got to the top of her profession as a teenager, after all, even before she got to Holly Springs.

According to Dhers, Roberts’ persistent ‘send-it mentality’ came from her Kitchen days, riding massive ramps with no one to tell her she shouldn’t. On ramps that size, riders must possess a certain degree of fearlessness to commit to a trick. It was there she learned a fundamental lesson of the sport.

“If you baby it, you die,” Dhers says. “You don’t make it.”

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The Covid-19 pandemic first hit the freestyle BMX world Feb. 22 when FISE and the UCI canceled the World Cup event scheduled for May in Pu Yang, China. A few weeks later, a second World Cup event in Hiroshima was postponed indefinitely. After a period of insisting the games would be held as scheduled, the International Olympic Committee finally announced on March 24 the postponement of the Tokyo Games until 2021.

In the days following the news, Roberts spent more time in her bedroom than at the DDASC, moving back and forth from her bed, to playing video games, to her desk to email Team USA and other sponsors.

Focusing on a few companies at a time, she figured out which of her sponsorships were most impacted. The Milk Processor Education Program, the group behind the “Got Milk?” campaign, adjusted their contract with Roberts, but her contracted sponsorships within the BMX industry — Tioga, Alienation, Hyper Bike and Snafu — were still intact.

“It’s still just a little frustrating going through all the emails and making sure that we’re all on the same page and we all know what’s happening, who’s getting paid when and what is expected of me,” Roberts says.

Perhaps the biggest frustration was the notion that all the hard work she’d been putting in towards the Olympics — the stringent riding schedule, changes to her diet, dedication to the gym — wouldn’t pay off like she had planned.

“I was happy that the committee put in the consideration for athletes’ health,” Roberts says, “but it’s also disappointing and nerve-wracking because you have to keep the Olympic mindset for the next year and deal with all the same stuff over again.”

Thankfully, Roberts will not have to requalify. She will represent Team USA at the Olympics in 2021. And she’s still training.

Because of the pandemic, skateparks all across the country are closed to the public, including the DDASC. But all the pros agreed that if they only saw each other, and had all groceries and food delivered, that they could continue to practice together. Dhers turned the upper deck of the skatepark into a mini gym, equipped with dumbbells, a pull-up bar and two plastic trash cans attached at opposite ends of a workout bar.

Roberts still rides for three to four hours a day with the group, but she works out at home in the afternoons using exercise bands. She also tries to get up at 6 a.m. every morning for cardio and stretching. The UCI rainbow jersey hanging in her bedroom closet helps keep her focused.

“When I don’t feel like riding in the morning or when I don’t feel like getting up and going to the session or the workout, I look at it and it gives me that extra motivation,” Roberts says. “It’s like, ‘I don’t want to lose this again.’”

This should have been the year when Roberts’ profile skyrocketed. Through no fault of her own, 2020 feels like a step back, a disheartening tumble after a redemptive 2019. Still, it’s difficult to know how much an Olympic gold medal would elevate her career.

“CNN could pick it up and then boom, she’s a famous superstar, or no one could pick it up and then nothing ever happens,” Dhers says. “How many Olympic gold medalists are there for the women in other sports and no one knows they exist?”

Roberts doesn’t seem to be banking on superstardom, at least. For now, she’s being frugal, saving almost every dime from her contest winnings.

Certainly, the more visible Roberts is, the more popular she and the sport can become. For years, Roberts has been considered a leader in freestyle BMX because of her strong example. That ‘send-it mentality,’ again.

“One thing I’ve learned is that when you see a woman do something, you’re like, ‘oh, my gosh, it’s possible,’” Buitrago says. “For whatever reason, you see guys do the same trick but when you see a woman do [a trick] that you haven’t ever seen them do before, you’re like, ‘Oh, my God. Yes.’”

But Roberts doesn’t focus much on the stakes, only on how she’s pushing herself at any point in time. Others may see unlimited potential, and an opportunity for fame and possibly fortune, but her goals are intrinsic.

“I don’t necessarily want to be the best woman BMX rider,” Roberts says. “I would rather just be a good or great BMX rider, in general, rather than having the woman or the man label on it.

“I just do whatever I think is possible and if it works out, it works out. And if not, try it again.”

[2cannon20]

Every Day. For 35 Days. I Ran…….. For like 15-60mins. Not like 35 days all day or anything like that. Lets not get carried away.

Even so, this probably raises a few questions like: Why? How? Did you get hurt? How did you feel after all that running? What did you learn? Are you crazy?

The last question is up for debate, and will continue to be as such for the rest of my life I am sure. You will get different answers depending on who you ask.

The others I will do my best to answer.

Lets start with WHAT I did over the 35 days of running. I started on Monday, April 27th and finished on Sunday, May 31st. I ran over 130km and amassed almost 12 hours of running over those 35 days. I ran in the snow, the rain, some decent heat (for Canada considering we had just come out of winter, or so I thought….), and in some pretty nasty winds too. I ran at least 3km every day and never more than 10km in any day. I always did the entire distance in one run, no stops, no walking. While I was doing this running I also mixed in some heavy Squats for some of it, a few days of Weightlifting, and was doing 4-5 CrossFit WODs per week. The CrossFit WODs were dumbbell based and generally were light load (50# dumbbell) or body weight and high reps. On day 27 I also did the Hero WOD Murph (with Ring Rows instead of Pull-ups).

Day 13 of Run Every Day

It was +11 and sunny yesterday

That might be all neat and some fancy numbers but you likely are still asking WHY run EVERY day for 35 days?

There are a few pieces to this. The first is that I needed a challenge. This was about a month and a half into things more or less shutting down from COVID-19 and I needed something to get me going again as I was losing motivation and steam fast. But thats not the only reason.

When I was younger I used to actually enjoy running, and I used to be good at it too. Most of the sports I played growing up (Football, Ultimate Frisbee, Soccer, Baseball, Lacrosse, Track and Field and others) required me to be a good runner. I wasn’t big by any means so what I lacked in size I often had to make up for in intelligence, but also speed and endurance. After finishing University and traveling for 6 months I decided I wanted to give CrossFit a try. I instantly fell in love with it and the type of people it drew. I was the speedy, gymnastics guy at the local Crossfit. But as soon as you threw a barbell in there I was screwed. Once I realized that, I immediately started focusing on the lifting aspect of fitness, and trying to get bigger and stronger. Fast forward 6 years and all my strength and gymnastics numbers have increased (along with my bodyweight), but I felt my running had gotten much worse. I was for sure more fit overall but there was a glaring gap in my fitness and that was partially cardio in general but mostly running. I now had flipped almost entirely and now pretty much any workout with running in it destroyed me. It was getting to the point that I would say any workout with running in it I actually hated. But with the gyms being closed and getting tired of lifting in my windowless basement I decided I would take on something outside that would hopefully make me a better, more well rounded athlete and human. So I guess point two on why I ran for 35 days straight is: I was sick of feeling like I was a terrible runner, was sick of lifting in my windowless basement, and saw an opportunity to improve running as the weather was getting much nicer as spring started to take it’s hold. So, point two is basically a collection of points that resulted in me needing to do something different.

Also at this time, I heard Ben Bergeron say something on a podcast that really made sense to me. It was basically that if you lost a point in one area of fitness and it dropped from an 8 to a 7 but at the same time increased another area of fitness from a 3 to a 6 you actually became more fit overall. So in the interest of becoming more fit and a more well rounded athlete we find my third reason why I ran for 35 days straight.

There are two distinct events that influenced the EVERY DAY part of this though and make up reason four for why I ran every day for 35 days.

60 minutes. Row for Distance. That was it. That was the workout.

When I was living in NZ I was attending a CrossFit that did not have rowers. We either ran or skipped, or did burpees or box jumps as our only “cardio”. One month we went really wild on burpees. Every day. For an entire month. We did burpees. They were either in the warmup or the workout. For an ENTIRE month.

Both of these taught me something similar. That if I do enough of something I potentially no longer hate it. I still DO NOT like Rowing or Burpees but when they come up I know I will survive and be able to get through the workout in a decent time. I have come to terms with them being there and don’t really react or care if they are in the workout.

So taking those thoughts, ideas, and experiences I decided that I was going to run every day for a month. Which then turned into 35 days because I have mild OCD and needed it to end on a nice number. 5 full weeks. Also when I made my spreadsheet to track everything I put in 5 weeks for some reason…….Copy and paste got a little carried away…… The hope was that by the end of the 5 weeks I would not hate running anymore, stay healthy, not lose too much strength, and if I was lucky I would be a better runner and a more well rounded athlete.

Now another big part. HOW did I put it together?

The first thing I did was set a minimum and maximum distance I would run on any given day. The minimum I set as 3km because the only other running I had done that year (both in the month before) were 3km runs and they weren’t too bad. I figured even on a really sore and tired day I could jog, or more likely waddle, 3km. The maximum I set at 10km because it was the farthest I had ever ran in one go in my life. I had only ever done it once in my entire life. The other distances I picked were 5km and 8km. I picked 5km because it seemed to be a pretty standard distance that was ran a lot. I picked 8km because it was long enough I knew it would be challenging… but it wasn’t 10km. Also 5+3=8 so……math.

The next step was to designate what days I would try to run what distances.

PLAN 1 Monday -> 3km – because I was squatting that day Tuesday -> 3 or 5 or 8km – depending on how I felt after my squats Wednesday -> 5 or 8km – there wasn’t really much logic behind this but it was what I wrote down Thursday -> 3km – because I squatted this day as well Friday -> 3 or 5 or 8km – depending on how I felt after squats Saturday -> 10km – it’s the weekend. I got time. Go for a long run. Sunday -> 3km – recovery run

That was the initial plan anyway. It made it to Saturday. The first week went 3/3/5/3/3/3/3=23km. Part way through the week I made the decision I would ease into it. I was feeling much better than I thought I would but wanted to give myself the best chance at actually finishing the 35 days. That is when I made the second version of the plan.

SIDE NOTE: At the end of week 1 I realized my FitBit was not tracking distance properly and left me a bit short on every run. I then used RunKeeper after that. I also used RunKeeper to calculate out roughly how much of each run I was missing. All the 3km runs were closer to 2.7 and my 5km run was more like 4.5. I also recalculated all my paces for each run knowing that I had not ran as far as I thought.

PLAN 2 WK1 -> 3/3/5/3/3/3/3 WK2 -> 3/3/8/3/3/3/3 WK3 -> 3/3/10/3/3/5OR3/3 WK4 -> 3/3/10/3/3/5OR8/3 WK5 -> 3/10/3/5/3/8/3

SIDE NOTE: At this point some of you may now have a new questions. It might be something along the lines of “What the hell kind of plan is this?” Let me explain. I have never actually followed any sort of running program in my life. So the structure of this challenge may look a little different than most running programs. I would say still to this day I have not followed a running program because I did not follow the distances I had set out at the start and I  had at least 3 different versions of this plan by the time I was done. I do however feel that the changes I made were appropriate and still kept the overall intent of the plan intact.

The second version of my plan saw the end of squats in week 3. The volume of the running plus the squats was adding up. Plus I was at a nice spot in the squat program to stop. The second version also saw the addition of a 3km Vest (30#) run on the Friday of week 3. The second version also saw the creation of… the third version.

Version three looked like this:

PLAN 3 WK3 -> 3/3/10/3/3Vest/5/3 WK4 -> 3Vest/3/3/3/3/3.2(Murph)/3 WK5 -> 5/3/10/3/8/3Vest/3

When I came to week 4 I was feeling pretty good considering I had gone from running once a month to every day this month. But I wanted to gear up for a big final week so I decided to chill out a bit on week 4. The idea was I was taking week 4 easy because I wanted to do all the runs in week 5 and be able to give very high effort on all of them. This meant I was going to try to PR my 3km, 5km, 8km, 10km, and 3km Vest (30#) runs all in the span of 7 days.

SIDE NOTE: I counted the runs from Murph as my minimum 3km. Murph starts and ends with a mile run. 1 mile = 1.6km, so 1.6km+1.6km=3.2km. I figured the 100 Ring Rows, 200 Push-ups, and 300 Air Squats was an okay reason to stop running part way through my 3km. This was the first and only time I stopped running during any of my runs. That includes not walking during any of them either.

Results

WEEK 5 Monday -> 5km – Time – 23:36, Pace – 4:42min/km (PR by 1:54) Tuesday -> 3km – Time – 14:33, Pace – 4:49min/km (1 second slower than best) Wednesday -> 10km – Time – 52:31, Pace – 5:14min/km (21 seconds slower than best) Thursday -> 3km – Time – 16:05, Pace – 5:19min/km (Recovery run) Friday -> 8km – Time – 41:18, Pace – 5:09min/km (PR by 4:31) Saturday -> 3km Vest(30#) – Time – 17:12, Pace – 5:42min/km (PR by 19s) Sunday -> 3km – Time – 14:27, Pace – 4:46min/km (PR by 5s)

Week 1: Total Distance = 20.7km, Avg. pace = 6:00min/km Week 2: Total Distance = 26km, Avg. pace = 5:41min/km Week 3: Total Distance = 30km, Avg. pace = 5:36min/km Week 4: Total Distance = 18km, Avg. pace = 5:22min/km (+3.2km from Murph) Week 5: Total Distance = 35km, Avg.  pace = 5:06min/km

I ran my best times in my life in the 3km, 5km, 8km, and 3km with a Vest. I also got within 21s of my best 10km run ever. My resting HR dropped from 66 to 60 and my average pace per km went from 6:00 to 5:06 despite running MUCH further in the final week. On average I slept 7 hours and 20mins each night. I weighed 182-185 lbs throught the 35 days.

Final Thoughts, Findings and, Key Points

The 8km and 10km runs were always done on days I did nothing else. While I was doing this run month I was working 3-4 hours each day, centered around lunch, Monday to Friday. The 3km runs were often just fillers and I generally did not care how fast or slow I ran. I was just doing it to get in the run to meet the EVERY DAY part and used it to focus more on the WAY I ran.

I honestly was not very confident in my ability to actually finish this challenge. I felt there was a very good chance that this much running would leave me injured before Week 1 was done. But I was pleasantly surprised that I did not get injured and had very few runs that felt bad through the whole run. I had many runs where the start did not feel good. I would have aches in my shins, hips, feet, or calves. Or I had a few runs where I started off with pretty rough headaches. For whatever reason though, those things seemed to go away after the first km or so. On the days that I rolled out my legs (most importantly my calves) I always felt better the next day. So if I do something like this again I need to make mobility and foam rolling a staple of the program as well.

Through this I also feel like I found my stride. There is a sweet spot for me that is just back from the balls of my feet. If I can focus my contact point there I found I ran faster and my legs (most noticeably my calves) were not as sore the next day.

The day after I finished my run every day I rested completely. The second day I lifted. I was very interesting to see how lifting heavy-ish a couple times a week while running every day would affect my strength. I think I lost some strength through it but to hit 90% on my Snatch and 94% on my Clean after 35 days of running I was more than happy.

SIDE NOTE: During the 35 days I did Snatches 2 times, Cleans 4 times, Squats 5 times, and Deadlifted 1 time. So that is 12 TOTAL days that I lifted a barbell in the 35 days of running.

I am very interested in creating/trying/testing something similar with more lifting involved. This time was very light weight and body weight based training outside of the running. So now I am quite curious as to how it would work with something like this if I was lifting heavy more often throughout.

If I do try to create another challenge like this with more lifting involved there are some key points I will need to keep in mind: 1. STRETCH and MOBILIZE: Every day I will need to stretch and do some mobility (typically I stretch approximately never….). When I stopped squatting heavy I no longer got lower back pain while I was running. I believe this is due to less tightness in the quads, glutes, and hamstrings. 2. If I run more than 5km it needs to be done on a day that all I have to do is run. 3. Remember to focus the foot strike just back from the balls of my feet and think about long relaxed strides. 4. For me I need to have a plan BUT I also need to have flexibility within the plan. Just the way my brain works.

So all in all the 35 days of running turned out pretty good I would say. I got faster. My resting HR went down. I didn’t get hurt. I learned how to run better and relax into it even when I was tired or sore. I stayed pretty strong relative to where I started. I believe I am more fit because of it. I don’t hate running anymore (still wouldn’t say I like it). I have grown to hate running less enough that I am thinking of doing something similar while lifting weights as well.

Run Every Day Every Day. For 35 Days. I Ran........ For like 15-60mins. Not like 35 days all day or anything like that.