Hallo Füsters!

Hope you all appreciated easing into Wintefüste during Week 0 but now it’s time to start ramping thing’s up! Here’s a brief summary of what’s coming your way in the AM:

Right out the gate, tomorrow (Jan. 8th) is the first Fastentag of WF24. Yeah, you might have let it slip your mind but it’s here now and yours to suffer through. As a reminder: a Fastentag is a fasting day, no solid food, clear liquids only, starting at dawn and going to sunset (for NorCal that’s 05:35pm, for SoCal that’s 05:18pm and for those not in CA well, GG’s sure you can figure out when the sun goes down in your locale). You might know this concept under its currently fashionable label of “intermittent fasting” and it actually works pretty well. So every Monday for the next 9 weeks will be a Fastentag and you will be grumpy and irritable and hangry. Sounds great, right? Earn a +1p personal bonus for each successful Fastentag and +10p completion bonus if you knock out all 9!
There are new bonuses, both individual Füster and Haus, available here. Pay close attention to assigned dates. Some bonuses are only available for their assigned Week and some are good through the end of that Periode (as a reminder, Week 1 starts tomorrow and is part of Periode I which goes to January 28th).
Hausaufgaben (homework) starts tomorrow as well. For the neo-Füstes, “homework” is body weight conditioning (e.g. pushups, situps, etc.) meant to help you build some strength while you’re waging caloric war on your flank meat. This Füste we’re doing things a little differently and will be putting an end of the game goal out now so you know what you’re working towards. To earn the +10p Drachen Tail’s Bonus during Week 9, you must pass the Final Exam on March 9th by completing at least one of the following regimens:
- 100 Pushups
- 200 Situps
- 300 Squatenfüste (or a comperably ugly Wall Holden; length to be determined later)
The idea here is for you to have this waiting for you at the end of the game and that knowledge should drive you get your homework done each day. More to come here but for now you can go here to review this week’s homework.

Now for some feedback from Week 0 . . .

Why might you be missing on the Bestenliste on any given night? Well, most likely it’s because you either forgot to report that day or GG missed you when he was manually inputting the 100+ Totemfüste names into the Bestenliste that evening. Usually it’s that you forgot to report but don’t worry, you’ll be back the next day no worse for the wear.
While we’re on the topic of daily reporting . . . GG has to ask that if you accidentally put in two or more reports for the same day (or you even suspect this may have happened) that you let GG know so he can check your scoring sheet. For example, if you report off at 9am but then later you realize, krapfenfüste, I forgot to report the Long Winter Wog bonus so you enter a second report . . . well, that screws a lot of things up for GG. But if he knows in advance that you did that, he can go in and easily fix it. So, please be proactive with your communication around reporting issues as GG is always happy to correct any errors.
GG has been seeing a lot of very confusing things on the STRAVA group feed. Please remember that in order to earn your exercise point, you need to complete a workout to the defined parameters on the website. That means if you’re going to do a walk, you need to walk all four miles, unless your weighted. And if you are weighted, please make a note on STRAVA, either in the workout title itself (“Weighted Walk!”) or in the little note section below the title where it says “How’d it go?”. This will be a huge help for GG. Also, if you’re going to do your Long Winter Wog bonus all by itself, please note that in the title as well (otherwise GG sees you doing a very short walk or run, which doesn’t meet the criteria for a point). Also, remember that all home or gym based workouts are required to be one hour and you must provide heart rate data to that effect. A home or gym workout can be a combination of different things (e.g. 10 minutes of jump rope, 30 min HIIT segment, 15 min weight work, 5 min stretching) but it must add up to 60 minutes or it doesn’t earn you the point. Basically, you need to pay strict attention to the daily workout requirements. Go here to review. And if you ever have a question about what you’re doing, just hit up GG to get some guidance. And lastly, a workout CANNOT be broken up over the day. That means that a 5K run is done all at once . . . or a four mile walk . . . or 15 mile bike ride. You cannot do half in the AM and then half later in the day. It’s all or nothing when it comes to Schmerzenpunkte!
Bonus game play has been a bit of an issue too. The biggest mistake being made is around frequency. Each bonus may only be taken ONCE each week or Periode (as defined on the bonus page). Example, the 1 mile Long Winter Wog from Week 0. You were allowed to earn that once last week. If you took it more than once (i.e. you scored yourself that bonus on Tue, Wed, and Thur), then GG has gone back and erased those extra points. The bonus descriptions are very specific about when and how often you might complete a specfic bonus. For instance, this week you can do the 20 flights of stairs one time. You can do the 2 mile Long Winter Wog one time etc. etc.
While we’re on the topic of bonuses, please note that GG has cancelled the “Class Time” bonus for WF24 and replaced it with something else. All details are on the bonus page for your review.
For those very few players not using an iPhone, GG has relaunched his Whatsapp account so that you can send video and pictures through that app. Please use Whatsapp only for video and pics though and communicate everything else through normal text to GG’s phone (GG will just suffer the green text bubbles, it’s fine). GG does not have a good process to check Whatsapp on a regular basis and so if you’re using that as your sole way of communicating with GG, you’re going to be frustrated with delayed responses.

Alright, Füsters. That’s plenty for Week 1. Keep up the good work, get your exercise done each day and leave that mouth hole alone! We’re on this journey together and GG’s very excited to see what you can accomplish this Füste!