LUNA-TICS TEAM ROOM: Year-round "Looney" fun.

[jay]

Thanks for the opportunity to be a part of your team and this challenge. I was hoping to contribute more than I have to the team but in my role as a human barometer I have been dealing with constant headaches for the past week and that's derailed my goal somewhat. Although this morning I was able to row a pb at the 10,000 mtr distance so I am happy with that accomplishment and my small contribution to the teams numbers.

Anyway, it's fun to be a part of your team. You guys seem like a nice group of people and I enjoy reading the posts and encouragement that you give your fellow teammates and friends. Go LUNA-TICS!

I think you are doing great Jodi, keep up the awesome rowing! To keep rowing and trying when you have headaches is very inspiring. Everyone is part of this team and every meter counts.
Jay

[Dave_H]

good to hear from you danno....btw, no need to worry about my sox...they're doing a really good job keeping themselves out....

You know I was just trying to rile you up a bit. What kind of playoff would it be with the Yanks and the Sox going at it.

danno

Good to hear from you again Dan... glad to hear things are progressing "to plan" (even if it is your doctor's plan and not your own!). Look forward to your serious return to erging - I could imagine the action of rowing would not be very comfortable as you are physically mending!

Jodi - you are doing a great job... all meters are gold! Hope you find a way out of those headaches soon!

Still in charge of P2 - great work being done by all! Go Brett at the top of the team!
Cheers,
Dave

[BigBrett58]

So many posts during the day... After such a long stressful day of work, I enjoy coming home to row and be a part of something much bigger than just exercising. I'm inspired by those overcoming physical and emotional adversity to eek out some meters and encourage others who are doing the same. I was involved in team sports and the military most of my life. It was rarely the desire to be good at a given sport that inspired me to work hard or become better. What always inspires me is being in the trenches with my brothers (and sisters). When I look to the left and to the right, I see others pushing through the pain when they have nothing left to give. How can I do less than my best when those around me are giving it all they can? I feel the camaraderie here in the emotions behind the words no differently than if you were sweating it out beside me. It's not the number of meters you row that makes you part of this team. Being inspired by your teammates enough to push harder than you would otherwise proves that you're part of a team. Offering a comforting word to someone who is struggling or a word of praise to someone who is pushing themsself is being part of a team. Thank you all for inspiring me to push myself harder than I knew I could. Each day, I wonder if I can keep it up. Each day, I come to this forum and am inspired to go hard one more day.

[BAZzy]

Just checkin' in.

Recovery is going according to plans or so the Docs tell me. It's 5 weeks Plus a little Post-Op and I would say I'm about 75% back. That's still almost 100% better than before surgery.

Gotta say you folks are doing a bang-up job in the FRC. Hated seing my name down there with a big 0 after it, so very carefully I sneaked in 105 meters while the Princess was away. Did any of you ever think I be happy with 105th place out of 134. My tentative release date is Oct 14th. That would leave 2 days to do some damage. Rehab has progressed to walking 1 mile in 23 minutes and 30 minutes of water aerobics.

My biggest concern is how do we keep the Red Sox out of the playoffs?

danno

Good to hear from you Danno, take care....

[Kristine Strasburger]

Woo Hoo, Loonies! You are all doing great! Keep it going!

[enrage]

So many posts during the day... After such a long stressful day of work, I enjoy coming home to row and be a part of something much bigger than just exercising. I'm inspired by those overcoming physical and emotional adversity to eek out some meters and encourage others who are doing the same. I was involved in team sports and the military most of my life. It was rarely the desire to be good at a given sport that inspired me to work hard or become better. What always inspires me is being in the trenches with my brothers (and sisters). When I look to the left and to the right, I see others pushing through the pain when they have nothing left to give. How can I do less than my best when those around me are giving it all they can? I feel the camaraderie here in the emotions behind the words no differently than if you were sweating it out beside me. It's not the number of meters you row that makes you part of this team. Being inspired by your teammates enough to push harder than you would otherwise proves that you're part of a team. Offering a comforting word to someone who is struggling or a word of praise to someone who is pushing themsself is being part of a team. Thank you all for inspiring me to push myself harder than I knew I could. Each day, I wonder if I can keep it up. Each day, I come to this forum and am inspired to go hard one more day.

"like"

[BAZzy]

So many posts during the day... After such a long stressful day of work, I enjoy coming home to row and be a part of something much bigger than just exercising. I'm inspired by those overcoming physical and emotional adversity to eek out some meters and encourage others who are doing the same. I was involved in team sports and the military most of my life. It was rarely the desire to be good at a given sport that inspired me to work hard or become better. What always inspires me is being in the trenches with my brothers (and sisters). When I look to the left and to the right, I see others pushing through the pain when they have nothing left to give. How can I do less than my best when those around me are giving it all they can? I feel the camaraderie here in the emotions behind the words no differently than if you were sweating it out beside me. It's not the number of meters you row that makes you part of this team. Being inspired by your teammates enough to push harder than you would otherwise proves that you're part of a team. Offering a comforting word to someone who is struggling or a word of praise to someone who is pushing themsself is being part of a team. Thank you all for inspiring me to push myself harder than I knew I could. Each day, I wonder if I can keep it up. Each day, I come to this forum and am inspired to go hard one more day.

"like"

And get's my vote also!

Good weekend to all the lunies, enjoy, and hopefully I'll be back in the saddle tomorrow...

Cheers, BBB

[j1415]

My wife is off on her yearly Sisters' Weekend. The 9 of them (yes, you read that right) rent a cottage every September and spend 4 or 5 days together. She is fortunate to be part of a very close family.
Apart from having to eat my own cooking, it's going to be a good weekend. Granddaughters sleeping over. New grandson may be arriving (11 days overdue now).
And right now... it's off to the basement to row. 5k and another 5k later this afternoon.
Here's to good health and blessing for fellow loonies. Cheers.

[brotherjim]

My wife is off on her yearly Sisters' Weekend. The 9 of them (yes, you read that right) rent a cottage every September and spend 4 or 5 days together. She is fortunate to be part of a very close family.
Apart from having to eat my own cooking, it's going to be a good weekend. Granddaughters sleeping over. New grandson may be arriving (11 days overdue now).
And right now... it's off to the basement to row. 5k and another 5k later this afternoon.
Here's to good health and blessing for fellow loonies. Cheers.

Sounds like a perfect weekend, have fun.

Also, great post Big Brett, totally agree with you. So very well said.

[rsdavr]

Just checkin' in.

Recovery is going according to plans or so the Docs tell me. It's 5 weeks Plus a little Post-Op and I would say I'm about 75% back. That's still almost 100% better than before surgery.

Gotta say you folks are doing a bang-up job in the FRC. Hated seing my name down there with a big 0 after it, so very carefully I sneaked in 105 meters while the Princess was away. Did any of you ever think I be happy with 105th place out of 134. My tentative release date is Oct 14th. That would leave 2 days to do some damage. Rehab has progressed to walking 1 mile in 23 minutes and 30 minutes of water aerobics.

My biggest concern is how do we keep the Red Sox out of the playoffs?

danno

Danno - really great to hear from you. What a marvelous recovery! I can already sense that you are beginning to feel turbo-charged. If you experience what I did, that sense of well-being and energy will continue to increase until you begin to feel that you cannot contain it without going out somewhere and tackling the world. You may even want to row!
Ross

[rsdavr]

[quote="Kona2"] Hooyah! What a fine team !

Top Ten Percent Goal.... if this is one that you have....you need to be at > 55,000 m at the moment

Every team challenge is a little bit different, and yet there are some elements that are the same about them. A rower who was looking for a team earlier this year asked "how do you ever win when there are teams with so many more people?" My answer is and was that it all depends upon how you define winning. Free Spirits and Age Without Limits are huge teams...with three and four times the human database to recruit from for any given challenge. We had 68 rowers on our Fall Challenge Team last year. We currently have 122 rowers. We ended the 2011 Fall Challenge with 12 MM meters and some change. Today, with five challenge days completed, we are almost at four million meters. We could potentially end up with double the amount of meters that we had for last year's challenge. What a huge win that would be for our team!

I'm working on a couple of "how cool is this" graphs to show our progress year to date on a weekly total meter basis...and to compare it to some previous Luna-Tic years. I know that some of you like data as much as I do - and I tend to rely on very colorful graphs to shout out to all of us "woohoo! look at us go!" We have individuals on the list below who are stratospheric in the amount of meters they have contributed. They thrive on the competition! And when I think about how many are balancing family, work, caring for young children...and just the general everyday things we "have" to do...it's all the more amazing to see what we're capable of doing as a team.

Individual goals are going to vary...and sometimes you end up having a goal that you had NO CLUE you were going to have at the beginning of the Challenge. Somewhere in one of your rowing sessions, though, you DECIDED that you were going for it. At least that's how I think it happens. During the last Fall Challenge, AJ rowed one million meters. I'm not sure he had that goal at the start of the challenge. Cathie and Jay have also had million meter challenges, as have a few others on the team.

Definitely "listen" to what your body is telling you during these events. Sore elbows, backs, shoulders can plague us for literally months when we ramp up to hours and hours of rowing, start to feel sore, and then keep going anyway. What happens to me might happen to some of you...when I get tired, my form gets crappy. We want each of you to be here for the long haul... it's a long journey and this is always better with friends.

We might stay in third...I think the numbers will go back and forth for awhile. Once the window of joining a team closes, we'll get really serious about meters. And there will always always always be a team out there who hoards meters...in that "just in case" eventuality that the rankings are really close. We don't do that. We do compare how we do year to year...even if the players are different, our theme of going for it with gusto is still the same! We're adventurers on an interstellar voyage....racing against others, and really racing against ourselves and time.

Thanks for rowing with us!! You are awesome!!

Meters rowed in the last 30 hours or so.... 906,887 m ! That's amazing !!!



Last year was my first FTC - and I remember this well: it's not so much how well you start ('tho that's certainly important), but how well you finish. I remember that a few mediocre-looking teams in the beginning started to "sneak" toward the top in the last week and were fierce competitors during the final days. It's like they pulled a bunch of meters out nowhere all of a sudden. Were they sandbagging the numbers? I don't know - but let's be prepared.

What a great team of Lunies this year!!
Ross

[Rumping]

This is where I talk about myself again for a bit:

The elbow appears to be golf elbow, and I'll ask for some additional things to try during my PT appointment this afternoon. Rest only made the rest of my body achy, so I went back onto the erg last night. Following the advise of "thumbs on the handle" and "no chicken wing", my elbow barely bothered me while rowing (I did flip over a few times for a couple of minutes of undersided rowing though).

With thumbs on top I'm concentrating so hard on how I'm holding the handle that the rest of my form starts to suck, resulting in a sore back near the end of the row. Not sure where I was screwing up and why it was so much harder to get a decent split time than it was before though. Part of it was not fully straightening my arms (which I only did whenever I remembered to fully straighten them) as I was still on automatic "don't straighten your arms completely" mode. Part of it was the angle of my back at the catch. I watched the "common errors" video on the C2 website yesterday afternoon and now find myself trying to use better form even though my form got worse because of being self-conscious about trying to avoid the common errors. Just a matter of practice and time I guess.

Underhanded I pulled my regular split times (around 2:04/500 on average) but since my lower arms aren't quite used to it I can't do underhanded for too long before I feel like having to flip the handle back over to normal. Net result was a 7k/30 minutes which took everything out of me.Oh well. Hopefully I'll do better tonight. *grumbles*. I was hoping to row early tonight, but since my wife decided to skip her Yoga class tonight, it bumps my rowing from 6:30pm to 10pm again. Oh well.

I did run into Christine (our Nemesis from Free Spirits ), and set up a row for 10pm, which was to be my first online row ever. Then proceeded to miss it since my wife had to harvest her crops in FarmVille before watching Dr. Who. Oops. That'll teach me to try and schedule a row again (I figured 10pm was going to be a safe bet, but it wasn't until 10:15 that I finally was able to get back to the basement).

Since I got my exercise bike early this year, and the rower more recently, I've dropped almost 25 lbs as of this morning (scale said 196.0 lbs) compared to the beginning of the year (15 lbs since July 25th). I needed a photo for Google+ the other day and the only pics I had available at the time were from last year. I ended up not putting a photo up as I just look horrible last year in comparison to now. I attribute quite a bit of that weight loss, as well as actually getting some muscle tone, to the rower and you guys & gals.

Oh well... Enough about me .

The numbers I've been seeing on the Team Standings (and in this thread) have been very impressive to a newbie like me, and it's a pleasure to read this thread every day. I'm very glad to be part of this great team and hope to continue to get to know you all better as time goes on.

[bg]

This is where I talk about myself again for a bit:

The elbow appears to be golf elbow, and I'll ask for some additional things to try during my PT appointment this afternoon. Rest only made the rest of my body achy, so I went back onto the erg last night. Following the advise of "thumbs on the handle" and "no chicken wing", my elbow barely bothered me while rowing (I did flip over a few times for a couple of minutes of undersided rowing though).

With thumbs on top I'm concentrating so hard on how I'm holding the handle that the rest of my form starts to suck, resulting in a sore back near the end of the row. Not sure where I was screwing up and why it was so much harder to get a decent split time than it was before though. Part of it was not fully straightening my arms (which I only did whenever I remembered to fully straighten them) as I was still on automatic "don't straighten your arms completely" mode. Part of it was the angle of my back at the catch. I watched the "common errors" video on the C2 website yesterday afternoon and now find myself trying to use better form even though my form got worse because of being self-conscious about trying to avoid the common errors. Just a matter of practice and time I guess.

Underhanded I pulled my regular split times (around 2:04/500 on average) but since my lower arms aren't quite used to it I can't do underhanded for too long before I feel like having to flip the handle back over to normal. Net result was a 7k/30 minutes which took everything out of me.Oh well. Hopefully I'll do better tonight. *grumbles*. I was hoping to row early tonight, but since my wife decided to skip her Yoga class tonight, it bumps my rowing from 6:30pm to 10pm again. Oh well.

I did run into Christine (our Nemesis from Free Spirits ), and set up a row for 10pm, which was to be my first online row ever. Then proceeded to miss it since my wife had to harvest her crops in FarmVille before watching Dr. Who. Oops. That'll teach me to try and schedule a row again (I figured 10pm was going to be a safe bet, but it wasn't until 10:15 that I finally was able to get back to the basement).

Since I got my exercise bike early this year, and the rower more recently, I've dropped almost 25 lbs as of this morning (scale said 196.0 lbs) compared to the beginning of the year (15 lbs since July 25th). I needed a photo for Google+ the other day and the only pics I had available at the time were from last year. I ended up not putting a photo up as I just look horrible last year in comparison to now. I attribute quite a bit of that weight loss, as well as actually getting some muscle tone, to the rower and you guys & gals.

Oh well... Enough about me .

The numbers I've been seeing on the Team Standings (and in this thread) have been very impressive to a newbie like me, and it's a pleasure to read this thread every day. I'm very glad to be part of this great team and hope to continue to get to know you all better as time goes on.

hope you get answers at pt....and congrats on the weight lose......

ron...do you remember the old quote from martin nolan about our sox....they killed my father and now they're coming after me....

k2, on your other events we're doing you can add me...i'm running boston again.......my 10th boston, 16th marathon...and for all you new folks ..i'm slow...i'm a charity runner....

oh and well said brett.....

[Kona2]

At THIS moment, Lunies are in second place with a 500K lead over third. Ross's description of last year's Fall Challenge (and a few other challenges) is spot on. All teams can continue to add to their respective roster until 30 September, a week from today. Teams that seemed out of the spotlight will surge to the front as they begin the final run for the goal. You can bet that all the teams are tapping out the "sign on...sign on...sign on" message to their teammates - and anyone else they can snag.



Brett McCrory 301,234
Ron MacBruce 260,677
Jim (Jay) Kielma Jr. 234,176
Cathie Johnson 232,888
Michelle Donavon 217,888
Will Salach 197,400
Sarah Hallbeck 181,331
Anita Holub 166,776
Katerina Mack 163,964
Robyn Lee 163,963
Rivka Levitt 161,104
Christa Krause 160,359
Barry O'Malley 150,250
Rosita Delacruz 138,889
Gabriela Martinez 138,888
Charles Dykstra 125,750
Chris Tudury 123,233
James Garcia 119,980
Kenny Hollomon 108,888
Ronnie Mills 107,776
Jim Kielma 104,888
David A. Alden 103,546
Zander Fraser 102,776
Terri Hollomon 98,388
barbara grandberg 92,872
David Hunter 91,985
Bernie Svendsen 88,195
Tammy Gwinn 79,888
Roger Gwinn 79,888
Harold Janusek 78,008
Ross Drown 76,401
Samuel Johnson 68,708
Steven Larky 68,388
Bryan Eck 63,500
Jeffrey Grous 62,074
A J Tudury 61,454
Dennis Dishong 60,888
TERRY BELCHIKOFF 60,005
Wim Rumping 59,884 - golf elbow?! Say it isn't so...!
Debra Barelli 58,098
David Ballard 58,000
Kim Woodman 55,316
John Mills 51,527
Doug Miner 50,000
Mitch Johnson 49,692
Tim Porter 48,508
David Tangerini 48,000
Mike Gilger 48,000
Marc Habert 42,601
Jeffrey Pixler 42,262
Kevin Nolan 42,000
Jodi Nelson 41,382
Benny Delacruz 41,186
Charles Bare 40,572
Chris Czech 39,065
Mike Mulvihill 39,000
Rick Carveth 36,264
Kenneth Guenther 35,842
Martin Hayes 35,588
Jeff Collins 35,000
George Wyner 34,000
Richard Miller 33,904
Tracy Clark 33,065
Bruce Takenaka 32,670
Dani (Sunny) Shiner 32,000
Greg Childs 31,223
Carlo Cerioni 31,097
Gene Hulsey 31,000
Peter Huurman 30,000
Andrea Cosmin 28,782
beverly dellinger 27,675
Nicole Cauchon 27,370
Steve Johnson 26,310
Paul Warhola 26,000
Bobbie Kielma 24,264
karyn Murphy 23,831
Jane Newall 23,169
Jan Stevenson 20,954
Timothea Tway 20,223
Pat Schlueter 19,600
Jackson P 18,019
John Marsh 14,637
Jacki Viles 14,386
Ted Cowley-Gilbert 14,000
Tristan B 12,989
Noelle Boyle 12,849
Greg Halac 12,501
Laura Thorson 12,326
martha wiles 11,000
Gloria Miller 10,554
Robert Hess 10,000
Chris Huning 10,000
Dawn Howe 10,000
Jeff Morris 8,017
Kaylee S 7,788
Tom McGuire 7,066
Ashlee S 6,575
Mary Onorati 6,011
Steven Drews 5,039
Jennifer Browning 5,017
Jon Tollerup 5,000
Debbie Vuillemot 4,374
Carolyn McCrory 4,166
Ethan S 3,276
Brandy Cowley-Gilbert 3,019
Orion Newall-Vuillemot 2,715
Anais N 1,623
Allie B 1,370
Akira N 105
Daniel Cox 105

Total Challenge Meters as of 0840 MDT, September 23rd = 6,686,717 m

Top Ten Percent Goalers: Need to be at > 75,500 m (for now)

[Kona2]

Woohoo and hooyah! Congratulations, Ron, on achieving a TWO million meter rowing season! We wish you many, MANY more!! Way to row !!