C25K: W3D3 Done

Although I am scheduled to run on Tue/Thu/Sat, I was unable to squeeze in my 3rd run of week three in on Saturday. This was due to the 6.8 mile hike I referenced in my previous blog post that I lead on Saturday morning in the Shenandoah mountains. I wasn’t in the mood to get up at 6am and run before the hike since I’d stayed up past mdt on Friday at Literary Elly May's birthday party and I was too tired to complete the run after returning from the 5 hour hike in the afternoon. I promised myself I’d tackle the run Sunday.

Was that the dumbest idea ever? (Answer: YES). I was SO SORE from the hike due to the constant inclines/declines that I could barely move on Sunday morning or afternoon, much less run. Late in the evening I realized that a derailment in my running program based on my “feelings” (no matter how legitimate) could snowball into giving myself permission to skip running for whatever lame reason I managed to come up with in the future. I struggle a lot with self-discipline and do not want to lose any momentum that my regimented schedule of running has going so far. Therefore, I forced myself to do some stretching and laced up my shoes for my run.

Hubby decided to accompany me and promised to go at my pace (he normally runs at 7mph) and encourage me. We ran on my new favorite course – the trail at Jennie Dean park (it has a few hills which I think are important for training) and it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. In fact, during the middle of the run I realized my achy-from-hiking legs were less so and I felt calm and free.

During the second 3 minute run segment my calves seemed to lock up right after the small hill and I had to slow to a walk. I was very disappointed and started chanting “failure” under my breath and crying during the next 20 seconds while continuing to walk. Hubby wasn’t having any of this failure nonsense- he said I was doing great and gently encouraged me to do one final push and start running again and I was able to. Had to reach down deep to make it happen, but I did it. I’m a perfectionist so my first instinct after the run was to write the entire session off as failure and plan to repeat w3d3 again on Tue, but husband has me convinced that one 20 second deviation from the run is ok given the circumstances and I should proceed to W4D1 on Tues.

Overall it was really nice to have him coaching me during the run, especially as I needed an extra push of encouragement last night. It won’t be a permanent arrangement as he runs much faster than my 5.5-6mph pace and also because I find I like to get lost in the music during cool down and that’s difficult with someone making noise walking/talking next to me. He disrupted my zen moment. :)

I realized after we returned home that hubby had not cleared my GarminFR60 watch after his last run, so his run Sunday morning merges right into mine Sunday evening in the log. My stats begin (and his end) around the 40 minute mark on the charts: Garmin Connect. It’s clearly easy to discern his run from mine in the charts due to the dramatic speed differences and also because he’s not doing any intervals, but just a straight shot of running for 30+ minutes.

While I am proud of myself for exhibiting such self-discipline last night, I am paying for it physically today. I am sore again this morning, probably even more so that I was yesterday morning. It is going to be a day of taking it easy.

Board Game Review > Middara: Unintentional Malum Act 1

I don't keep my finger on the pulse of all the independent Kickstarter campaigns running at any given time. There's just too much unique content being produced month after month for me to sift through everything. I leave that to those who write previews and reviews for a living (I am an IT Consultant for a living; I write reviews as a hobby because I'm passionate about board gaming). The only way an independent Kickstarter campaign is going to be on my radar is if the designer/publisher reaches out to me to let me know the campaign is running or if it's created a bit of buzz already in the key circles that I frequent. I definitely wasn't closely monitoring Kickstarter campaigns four years ago when the original edition of Middara was initially funded. It was an adventurous dungeon crawl that promised to be so much more than an ordinary dungeon crawl. With options to run in campaign mode for an ongoing narrative or crawl mode for one off gameplay, it could work as a...

Board Game Review: Anno 1800

Whenever Martin Wallace designs a new game, I am all over it. This is because I absolutely love Brass Birmingham (another MW designed game); in fact Brass Birmingham is my #1 board game of all time. Over the years, his other games I've tried have been pretty good, but not necessarily amazing must-buys. Still, I keep trying each new release of his, searching for that next star performer. That's why I'm excited to report that Anno 1800 is, in fact, a star performer, and an amazing must-buy board game. Anno 1800 was adapted by the publisher (Kosmos) from a Ubisoft video game of the same name. In the board game, players take on the role of industrialists, charged with developing their island economies and exploring other islands. Each player begins the game with a personal industry board with trade & exploration ships, a shipyard, and industrial goods tiles printed on the board. A starting collection of workers (wooden cubes) of various types to produce the goods is a...

Board Game Review: Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated (spoiler free)

We’ve had our eye on Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated since its debut in 2019 from Renegade Game Studios. In our house, we love legacy games and we own most of the other Clank! editions, so it seemed like a good fit. Boy, was it ever! We finally got the game a couple of weeks ago, and immediately fell for it so hard during the first few minutes of the game that we played it nearly every day with our 11 year old twin sons, Max and Locke. In Clank! Legacy: AI , designed by Andy Clautice and Paul Dennen, players take on the role of employees at a small organization. At the beginning of the legacy campaign, the organization is in the process of applying to become a franchise of Acquisitions Incorporated, a megacorp famed for its for-profit adventuring services. We loved the narrative and appreciated the touches of authenticity, like the franchise charter agreement. We’ve played through other legacy campaign games over the past year where the narrative fell flat at tim...