And now for something completely different

Last night, I went to the gym. And......


I went swimming.

I wound up doing laps like this:

• A lap of crawl swimming, which literally crawled along
  
• A lap of breaststroke
  
• A lap of elementary backstroke
  
• A lap of sidestroke, half lap on each side.
  

And repeat.

All in all, 16 laps. I got a terrible cramp in my calf on lap 13, so I stretched it out, finished up my course of 4 and got out. It's still slightly cramped this morning. My recently broken elbow was starting to feel it too, so it was good to call it quits.

Looking at the length of the pool, it's 25yards, so that's just short of a half mile @ 800 yards.

Not terrible for not having swam in a couple of years.

Doctor Who?

Sigh. Just read an article that the Doctor is leaving. No more David Tennant.

It took me a bit to get used to him, but I really like him. I always tell my wife that you shouldn't get attached to the characters, because they come and go, but it always throws me when The Doctor goes.

Argh!

Trophies

So, I got a PS3 a few months back.. One of the big reasons why was to play GTA IV. One thing led to another, and I didn't get fully immersed into that game until recently.

So, I'm playing GTA, and I've got about ~40% completion. (I'm shooting for the full hundred. For those that aren't familiar with this sort of thing, you have to do all sorts of silly mundane things, as well as some harder things, in order to get to 100%. You can finish the game around 60%).

The PS3 also has new support for "trophies", which are tied to your account. If you do more challenging things within certain games, you get trophies. The harder it is, the more valuable the trophy (bronze/silver/gold/platinum).

Where's this going, you may ask? On Monday, a patch was released to add trophy support to GTA. Awesome. I can finally get some trophies.

Yeah. As soon as I fired up the game and loaded my saved game, I get a message to the effect of: You're going to have to start over to get any trophies.

Are you freakin' kidding me?

Apparently, this is to combat people exchanging saved games with each other and gaining trophies they didn't rightfully earn. Really? People are that lame?

Sigh. I don't particularly care about the trophies, but I do like do get all of the little things that can be obtained when going for a 100% completion.

I guess I'm just not the target demographic anymore. My few hours a week doesn't compare to the folks that put in 50+ a week. In my defense, I do have to work to buy crap like this, Sony.


In other PS3 news, I downloaded the BioShock demo, and it seemed pretty sweet. Pretty much identical to the XBox version, from the 30 minutes I spent playing/watching it on the XBox.. I may have to get that as my next game, after I figure out what I'm going to do about GTA. (Finish it without trophies, or start over? Grrrrr)

Winter weather

So, last night, it was flurries in the air and dark. That was the tipping point.

I went and did it. I signed up to go to the gym. The gym is about a mile away from me, so the distance thing can't be an excuse. It's pretty nice, really. Lots of cardio machines, weight rooms, a pool (albeit, a bit small), etc. I only bought in for a month, due to not wanting to part with 700 clams right up front.

So, day 1 of the gym experiment (version 2008) was a success. I did 3 miles on the treadmill, followed by 1 mile on the indoor track.

The indoor track is something. It's pretty small, in that 15 laps on the running lane is a mile (or 16 on the walking lane). I had trouble keeping count. You wouldn't think it would be hard, but yeah, I had trouble. Pretty nice though, compared to the sidewalk. Nice and cushiony.

The treadmill miles were awkward for me. I never have run on a treadmill, and I kept worrying I was going to go flying off the back and wind up as a youtube video. There are TVs in front of the treadmills.. I'm not a big TV person, and didn't want to lose my concentration, so I didn't worry too much about that yesterday.

The track mile was untimed.. I did a couple of fast laps, mixed in with my regular pace. The treadmill miles were 10 min, 9:20, and 9 min.

All in all, it was 4 miles, and I felt pretty good today. The running surface really does play into your leg health, I suspect.

I wrapped up the night with 5 minutes on the stair stepper. Good workout, but while doing it, it's like trying to step your way out of hell. You keep going, but never get out. And, it sucks while doing it.

My running buddy re-upped at the gym, and she was there too, owning the stair stepper. 35 minutes! Props to her.


Keep on rockin'.. I guess I'm rockin' indoors for a while..

First 5K

So, there's a local 5K that my running buddy and I have talked about running in the past.

This weekend, we actually did it.


It's my first official 5K. Whoo hoo! Finally got around to just doing it.

So, to set the scene, my running buddy hadn't run for 2 weeks. She's been having trouble with all that's happened lately. I've been battling some various physical issues.

So, yeah, we're not at our prime. Not that our prime is all that prime, either.

We drive up to the area the race is being held, and see some real pros. Guys and gals running faster than I can on a sprint, just to warm up. I casually mentioned that unless we start throwing a few elbows, we sure aren't going to win this thing.

We did the registration, got our shirts, and proceeded to do our warmups. Our warmups consist of absolutely nothing. They certainly pale in comparison to what was going on there.

The race eventually was getting underway, and we lined up. In the street. I don't know what I was expecting.. a crowd of 150 to run down the sidewalk? I dunno. I thought that was pretty cool, though. A decent police presence to prevent bozos from driving near us. If they'd do that every time I want to run, I'd really appreciate it.

Anyway, the starter pistol fired (barely.. really wimpy pistol, if you ask me), and we were off. It took about 6-7 seconds to get up to the starting line, and that's when I started my Garmin. We kept it at an easy pace, and ran the race just to run it.

(The nice thing about it being your first is that it's an instant PR).

The course was mostly flat, with a small downhill and a small uphill. It was 2 loops around some city streets, and there were crossing guards at each intersection.

A few locals came out to watch.. some were even cheering a bit.

The first quarter mile was really congested. There were 141 runners and a whole bunch of walkers. We slowly picked people off and moved past them. After about a half mile, it had spread apart pretty decently, and we could move at our desired pace.

I think our first mile was about 9:14.. (Don't have the splits in front of me. I know.. what kind of race report is this?)

After the first mile was the uphill, which was pretty taxing on a lot of folks. We kept up our pace, more or less, and kept on trucking. At the 2 mile mark (my Garmin said 2.03.. either it was measured wrong, or I turned a bit wide, or both. Probably me, though), we were doing pretty well. We wound up passing one of the walkers we knew, and said "hi". She proceeded to mention that she knew we could run faster.

probably, but not today.

The second loop's hill was pretty taxing on my buddy, so we slowed it down a bit. All through the race, she said I could go ahead, but I'd have nothing of that. I wouldn't be running at all without her, and I was going to run my first race with her, no matter what speed we were going.

We finished up the final push and arrived with a clock time of 29:24. So, actual time was ~29:17. Of course, nimrod here didn't actually hit the stop button until a minute later when he realized that the Garmin was still going.. Smooth move, ex-lax!

We grabbed some water and headed out.. Figured, there was no need to stay for the post-race ceremonies.

Turns out in this field, we both wound up second for our age groups. I was quite fortunate in that there were many many age groups, and my group only had two people in it. I'll still take it, though. Our friend we passed walking picked up our winner's hats, and I'll have to pick that up from her at some point this week.

The whole racing thing was a lot of fun. At some point, I'll try really racing it, rather than just running it, just to see how it goes.

Cleaning out my phone pix

I've had a bunch of pictures on my phone that I didn't post directly here, mainly due to wanting to add weblinks and such. I think this is the last of them.

While out and about, we stopped at Moe's to eat. While there, I saw this:



It's a Negra Modelo dark beer. Never had one. Hmm.. Why not? For the research, of course!

It's OK. Something different, but not terribly exciting. It started out OK, and midway through my nachos (pictured), the taste sort of soured. The taste came back near the end of the meal, but.. eh. Reminded me of a Michelob Dark I had 14-15 years ago at Busch Gardens. Alas, that was quite a while ago, so I'm going on vague recollections there. Very vague.

It's a darker beer, not a lot of carbonation. But, not very potent/strong like dark beers often are. Had a bit of a sweet taste to it, even.

Something different, probably won't bother with it again, though.

Speaking of beer, I'm hoping to head up to Cooperstown and hit one or two breweries up there, in addition to the baseball Hall Of Fame. A similar trip to what Viper just went on, I believe.

I was giving some thought to cutting back on the whole alcohol consumption thing. Not quitting, because that just wouldn't work. Not at all. But, come December, I've got a good long sabbatical amount of time off of work. I figure, with that stress out of life for a bit, it may be a good opportunity to ease up. Factor in the extra time that I'll have to be exercising, maybe I can wean down some.

Honestly, if I stopped drinking, I'd lose mad weight. Not that I need to lose a lot, but it's my thing which puts it on.. Not the dessert. Not the fried foods. I keep all of that in balance. Just the booze. Sigh.

Jury is out. We'll see.

Ooo.. It's a lady!

Anyone like The Ladies Man? Funny flick. My brother in law mentioned I should watch it. Hilarious, in a not-very-advanced-comedy sense. I recently watched it, and truly enjoyed it. It's so stupid, it's funny.

The drink of choice for Leon Phelps is Courvoisier. I had some once after a serious set of 18 holes of golf, so I was well on the way to not really caring what was going down.. Even then, I enjoyed it.

So, I decided after watching the movie.. why not. Went down and picked up a bottle.



I'm not a cognac expert. Not by a long shot. But this stuff is pretty darn good. It's Courvoisier VS, the entry level. Very smooth, and has an excellent underlying fruit/grapey smell.

Besides, if you drink it, you'll be as refined as Leon is!