Day Off, Part 2

My Day Off is going well, if you're wondering.  It's been really nice.  I got up a little later this morning, had a Cliff Bar and a thing of yogurt, read the news, and (eventually) headed out for my workout.  I pretty much did exactly what I'd planned: a touch more than 30-miles on the bike, including riding up and back over Long Mountain Road, and then a 3.3-mile run.  I felt a little sluggish on the bike, but after the climbing I felt better, and I ran well.  After that, I came back, made a recovery shake, took a shower, and watched Thor Hushovd win today's stage.  Awesome riding by Thor, by the way.  Really, really impressive.


Friday Hair Metal


Today's Friday Hair Metal is Chickenfoot's "Learning to Fall".

If you're wondering, Chickenfoot is a relatively new creation.  It's basically the Sammy Hagar Van Halen with Joe Satriani in place of Eddie Van Halen (and a different drummer, but I've no idea who's on drums here).  Enjoy!

Friday Mad Science: Crash-tastic Tour Edition

It’s Friday, and you know what that means.  It’s time for Friday Hair Metal!  I suppose I should really put together some kind of graphic for that.  Anyway, today’s selection isn’t technically hair metal, it’s merely the next best thing.  It’s Slash (featuring Kid Rock) with my favorite song off of his new solo album, “I Hold On.”

For whatever reason, my iPod always drops that song into my playlist right as I’m reaching Mile 5 of my typical weekend 10K training runs.  And it works for me.  Helps me hold on, so to speak. 

Anyway, I bring it up because not only is Slash a seminal member of a late-80’s hair metal band, he’s also a guy who’s still making the same basic kind of music he was back in the heyday.  And he’s still selling records.  But look, this record and Axle’s Chinese Democracy are really more tragedy than triumph, you know what I’m saying?  I mean, Slash’s record is okay—most of it’s pretty good, really—but imagine what it could have been with Axle doing the vocals.  It could have been legendary.  For example, imagine “Beautiful Dangerous” with Axle nailing those high notes instead of Fergie-warbling-on-audiotone.  Now that would have been a great song.  Straight out of the “Appetite for Destruction” playbook and probably just as popular. 

What a shame.

If you’re wondering, the other song I really like on that album is “Back from Cali” (featuring Myles Kennedy).  I guess I’ve become a sucker for the power ballads in my old age.

***

Today’s stage of the Tour was another crash-fest.  Which is weird because it was the flattest stage of the Tour.  Nothing whatsoever happened for the first maybe 125 km and then suddenly crashes all over the place.  Britain’s Bradley Wiggins (Sky) crashed out with a broken collarbone, and American Chris Horner (Radio Shack) went down in a ditch and lost something like 12 minutes—apparently because he was unconscious!  Anyway, they’re taking Horner to some French Emergency Room for tests, and according to sources on his team, it doesn’t look like he’ll start tomorrow.  And that’s a Hell of a shame because Horner finished 10^th at last year’s Tour and won this year’s Tour of California, the biggest cycling race in America.  Anyway, it sucks that he crashed.  He was a domestiqué for Lance Armstrong for years and years, but after Armstrong finally burned out last year, Horner placed in the top ten.  This year it was finally his chance to try to shine on his own.  I was really looking forward to seeing what he could do.

Still talking Radio Shack, fucking Levi Leipheimer crashed again, too.  He crashed yesterday in the rain and lost something like two minutes, and then he crashed again today and lost another three minutes on top of that.  Ugh!  I mean, I don’t know that Leipheimer was necessarily gonna rock the Tour this year, but he had a decent chance of at least getting into the top ten finishers, but that shit is out the window now. 

Eh.  With Lance gone, I don’t really care all that much about Radio Shack as a team anymore, but I was following some of their riders, especially Horner.  He’s 39, this was probably his last chance at glory, and he was riding well.  I didn’t particularly think he could win, but I did think that he had a decent chance to get onto the podium, and I thought that Radio Shack had a chance to repeat winning the Team Award (for fastest overall team, in total time, on the entire course).  Right now, that’s not looking too good.  They’ve still got Andreas Kloden in the top ten, and it’s possible that he’ll be able to finish the race in the top ten, but it’s not like he’s a real contender.  We saw Alberto Contador drop Kloden like a sack two years ago in the mountains, and since then Contador’s only gotten better while Kloden’s gotten older.  That’s just kind of the way life is.

At any rate, Mark Cavendish won today’s stage—no surprise there—but the really great thing about that was that the stage finished just as it was lunch time for me, so I was able to walk to the bike shop across the street and actually watch the finish first hand.  I also bought three inner tubes.  Anywho, it’s amazing to watch those guys as they approach the finish, and in particular, I find it amazing to watch the way that Cavendish’s team, HTC-Highroad, controls the peloton on the approach to the final sprint.  The video is below, but if you don’t ride, it’s probably hard to appreciate just how fast these guys are going and how much skill it takes to do what they’re doing at the speeds they’re doing it while surrounded by a hundred other riders and a half-million screaming French biking maniacs.  Anyway, I love it.

Breaking sports news video. MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL highlights and more.

***

The new issue of Competitor Magazine (July 2011) came out a few days ago, and I picked it up when I was at the bike shop.  I continue to like the magazine—especially because it’s free—but mostly because those guys aren’t afraid of a little high-end, athletic cheesecake.  God bless America.  The world could use some more athletic cheesecake in my humble opinion.  There are plenty of voluptuous and/or surgically-enhanced girls out there shakin’ it; give me a girl who can spell “beautiful” without having to look it up and who can run a 5k in under 24 minutes.  I mean, come on.  A guy’s got to have his standards, no?

So.  Anybody doing anything good this weekend?  Tell me what you have going on!

Friday Mad Science: 4th of July Weekend Edition

I hope you guys are psyched up for the long weekend.  I know I am.  Not only does the Tour de France start tomorrow, but this is also one of the key training weekends of my triathlon season, and we have the big Town of Stratford fireworks display Sunday night.  I might even get a chance to see the new Transformers movie this weekend, although talking to Sally last night made that seem rather less likely than I’d thought it was earlier in the week.  That said, there’s still the Transformers Marathon on Hub on Monday, I’ll be firing up the grill on Saturday night, and both my girls want to play Wrath of Ashardalon this weekend, so no matter what, it looks like I’ll be doing most of my favorite things all three days.  And really, that’s all I can ask for.

On the Tour de France front, the best pre-race read I can recommend right now is the Podium Café’s Five Storylines article.  Of the five storylines, by far the most interesting to me is whether or not Alberto Contadorcan successfully defend his title barely more than a month removed from having raced and won the Giro d’Italia.  I remember rooting hard for Bradley Wiggins last year, but then he pretty much looked like crap after having raced the Giro, and after I thought about it, it kind of made sense.  So if Contador can now defend his Tour crown once again, this time after having just taken the Giro, then that’ll really be something.

With triathlon…  Long weekends can be tricky.  There’s no telling how the body’s gonna feel after that second day of long workouts, and on top of that, there are always family pressures that get in the way.  Those can easily minimize time spent out on the road or otherwise out of the house.  So let me tell you what I’m planning, and then we can circle back around on Tuesday and see how I did.

·         Saturday: Long Ride/Short Run (Brick).  I’m gonna ride for about two hours tomorrow morning and then run for maybe a half an hour.  Distance-wise, I’d like to go about 30-miles and 3-miles respectively, but the time is really more important to me than the distance.  I want to prepare my body for the duration of an Olympic triathlon-type effort.  Plus, I want to get in some long interval training on the bike to continue preparing for the climb at the end of the Litchfield Hills Triathlon.  I know I can finish the race because I’ve done it twice.  The question now is: how well can I do?

·         Sunday: Long Run & (Very) Short Swim.  I need to put in at least one long run this weekend, and I’m thinking that the best time for that is gonna be Sunday morning, either before or after church.  I’d also like to swim this weekend, but I’ve no idea when that might occur.  We’ll probably head to the beach early on Sunday before the fireworks, and in that case, I’ll do a little rough water training then.  Distance-wise, I’ve already put in two pool workouts this week, so all I really need to do this weekend is to hold my form and remember what it feels like to sight buoys in rough water.  That won’t take more than ten or fifteen minutes.  On a side note, Sally’s entered in her first rough water triathlon in September, and I’d like to see her swim some in the Sound before then.  If she swims well, I might encourage her to enter the Ocean Beach triathlon with me later this month.  But before I do that, I want to satisfy myself that she can actually do the swimming she’d need to do safely.

·         Monday:  This is where it gets tricky.  Ideally, I’d like to get back on my bike and do at least 25-miles or so of simple aerobic riding.  No intervals, nothing fancy.  I just want to put some more miles on my legs.  That said, a lot can happen between now and Monday.  Minor injuries, exhaustion, and familial demands all might derail my plans for Monday.

·         Nutrition: As if all of that wasn’t enough, I’m also testing out some new nutrition and recovery science this weekend.  For Father’s Day, Sally gave me Bredan Brazier’s book Thrive, The Vegan Nutrition Guide to Optimal Performance in Sports and Life.  I don’t have any plans to convert to veganism, but I am trying to change my diet to get a little leaner and a little healthier.  Because, bottom line, I’m too fat to climb well.  And I know I have climbing in my near future.  This weekend specifically, I’m going to be experimenting with Mr. Brazier’s homemade energy drink and gu recipes as well as with his recovery shake recipe.  We’ll see how that goes.  In-race nutrition and post-race recovery are two of the biggest challenges that triathletes face, so if this works out, it’ll help a lot.

***

This week’s Friday Hair Metal selection is Tesla’s “Love Song”.  I heard it on Hair Nation last week, and I’ve been itching to stick it on here ever since.  Enjoy!

So that’s my weekend.  What’re you guys up to?

Friday Mad Science: Rest Week Edition

Now that it’s Friday of Rest Week, I can begin to see just how necessary that rest really was. 

I typically train on a four week schedule: three weeks hard, one week easy.  It’s a little different than the way I trained as a swimmer—when we used to train eight or ten weeks hard and then three or four weeks easy—but at age 38, I find the four week schedule to be much more sustainable over time than a more hardcore approach would be.  It’s a lot easier on my body and a lot more conducive to the demands of real life.  Among other things, overtraining the way that young competitive swimmers do tends to make me grouchy, and nobody like a grouchy daddy.  Last week was actually Week 4 for me without a Rest Week, so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that I started to notice decided grouchy tendencies in myself late in the week.

Still, it can be tough to diagnose overtraining by degrees of grouchiness especially because I think most athletes will want to treat emotional issues and general irritability with more training rather than less.  I dealt with my father’s death by taking up triathlon, I’ve been dealing with my mother’s death by riding my bike more and basically doubling down on the triathlon lifestyle, and along with all of that, my usual self-prescription for any issue of stress or emotional difficulty is pretty much always the same thing— swim, bike, or run.  Exercise gives a mental and emotional break from stress, and it gives an endorphin rush that helps, too.  And over time, you feel better when you exercise, which in turns makes you more resilient to stress.  So exercise is all good.  It’s even a little addicting, and it can therefore be quite difficult to realize when you need to back down.  The dedicated athlete does not typically respond to a sub-par workout by saying, “Obviously I need to start taking it easy.”  No, a more typical response by far is, “Man, what is wrong with me?  I need to start kicking it in the ass!  Come on, let’s go!”

This is why it’s good to have a plan.  This is why it’s important to stick to that plan. 

I wasn’t feeling particularly tired last week.  I had maybe two sub-par workouts.  Truth be told, had I simply gotten some sleep, eaten right, and planned my next set of workouts a little more carefully, I might’ve worked through it.  Probably would have.  But I would have kept getting grouchier and grouchier, and eventually, I’d have put myself at risk for an overuse injury.  This is part of the challenge of training for an endurance sport. 

Was I overtrained?  Probably not, at least from a technical standpoint.  For example, my resting heart rate wasn’t elevated.  But I was getting tired, I was getting grouchy, and as I’ve said before, it’s not like I’m on scholarship here.  And I was tired.  We can see that just by the fact that here it is Friday, and I’m only now starting to feel better.  I’ve got to be Daddy, Engineer, and Triathlete.  Bottom line, that takes balance.

Anyway, I’m feeling better now.  I’m gonna swim a little tonight, and then Sally, the kids, and I are all heading up to Six Flags: New England tomorrow for a day of rollercoasters, Batman, and Johnny Rockets.  Frankly, I can’t wait.

***

Alright, so you might’ve noticed that I’ve been putting up a bunch of YouTube videos recently.  I’ve been doing that basically because I’ve been trying really hard to have some kind of new content on the site every day, but I don’t necessarily have time to write a full blog post every single day.  So on the days when I’m basically swamped, I tend to just go to YouTube, grab something cool, and throw it up there.  You can feel free to watch or not, I don’t care, but I want you to have a reason to check the site every day, and if the possibility of an interesting YouTube video is enough to make that happen, then, well, I’m not too proud to use the tools that are available to me.

With that in mind, I’ll also mention that our new Honda Pilot came with satellite radio installed, and as you might imagine, I’ve been listening to nothing by Hair Nation ever since.

So.  Like “two great things that taste great together,” I’ve decided that what we really need around here is a new feature called Hair Metal Friday. 

Today’s installment is Great White’s “Once Bitten, Twice Shy.”

Friday Mad Science, D&D Style

Over at The Sellswords of Luskan, we’re running a little side-quest for our primary characters’ apprentices.  I set the side-quest up to give my Players a chance to step outside their regular roles, providing the following basic guidelines for the Apprentices’ creation:

1.       Each Player had to create an Apprentice.

2.       Each new Apprentice had to be in training with a different PC from the Player’s primary Character.

3.       Apprentices had to be of a different race and role than their primary character, and each had to have a different power source.

4.       Apprentices started at 2^nd Level.  Our primary characters are 12^th Level.

With that, we got some different stuff than I’d been anticipating.  For one thing, we came out with three girl PCs for a group that only includes one actual female Player.  And then, too, I’d been figuring we’d get at least one divine character, especially since we don’t have any in our primary group.

Instead we got:

-          HFLep, our primary physicist, normally plays Jaeron, an axe-wielding human fighter.  For his Apprentice, he chose to play Jarl, a half-orc monk in the training of Amata, the primary group’s psionicist.

-          TheHumanDynamo, our resident MMA fighter and all-around gaming badass, normally plays Ginagel, an undead dwarven barbarian who was cast out of his clan and raised by orcs.  He decided to playShai’uri, a sexy tiefling warlock (fey pact) who’s apprenticed to… geez, I can’t remember who Shai’uri’s apprenticed to.  Amata again?  I’m honestly not sure.

-           Foucault, our secondary physicist (i.e. physics post-graduate student), normally plays Vurkle, a goblin shaman.  His apprentice is Mikail the Wavemaster, a human wizard who again I can’t seem to place in terms of master-student relationship.  And I gotta say that I was surprised when we came up with a wizard in this group.

-          Relekorlagunis, our international mystery man, normally plays Amata the shardmind psionist.  For his Apprentice, he’s playing Doreen, a human druid with a pet black bear named Blackie.  The interesting thing about Doreen, at least to me, is that Relekorlagunis used the new Essentials ruleset to build Doreen as a Leader rather than a Controller, and most of his attacks actually go through Blackie.

-          Tila, our resident girl librarian, normally plays Miri, a human wizard/assassin hybrid.  Quite an interesting build, that.  For her Apprentice, Tila made up a character sheet for one of our longstanding NPCs, the heretofore homeless shifter waif Dewa.  Tila set Dewa up as a fighter/rogue hybrid and then broke my rules by apprenticing Dewa to her own Miri.  Eh.  What are you gonna do?  Still, it’s nice to have someone actually running Dewa now.  I’ve struggled for years to make her voice consistent.

I bring all of this up because our apprentice heroes are chasing a rogue goblin back to his hideout in the shallows of the Underdark, but the trail led them to a polluted and foul-smelling river teaming with dead bodies and human waste.  So they used a ritual to send Jarl across the water with a rope, built a rope-bridge, and now they’re trying to cross.  But then a giant tentacled river monster appeared beneath their bridge.

Can I just tell you how much I hope somebody falls into the water?

Emma Christmas Mash-Up!

vs.

Ready.... FIGHT!

Friday Mad Science: Sex & Danger Edition

I mentioned yesterday that my first story was a spy-piece that featured a seduction at gun-point.  Well, after I finished drafting yesterday’s Storyteller’s Playbook, I went searching back through my archives and managed to find a version of that story that I’d re-written as a 3-page comic teaser.  A friend of mine then drew the pages and inked them, leaving me with a cool little comic short that’s perhaps a bit confusing without its dialogue.  Still, it’s an example of a couple of principles that are often at work in gaming, and so I’d like to share it with you. 

First, as we discussed yesterday, this piece works as an opening even though we as readers have only hints of what’s going on in the larger plot.  The hints are enough, and the fact that they leave us wondering is actually a good thing. 

Second, my favorite thing about writing comics is that it’s a collaborative process.  As a novelist or short story-teller, you work in a vacuum.  But comic writers, screenwriters, playwrights, and yes, even game masters all tell stories collaboratively.  In all of these media, the story can’t come alive until someone else experiences your vision and adds to it, often in ways that are completely unpredictable.  And sure, you can cut down on the amount of unpredictability in the final product by writing very detailed, proscriptive scripts—or by railroading your players with a very narrow set of choices in order to keep them strictly on track—but any experienced comic writer, screenwriter, or even game master will tell you that this is not the way to get your best, most valuable input from your creative collaborators.  You create a more predictable product at the cost of lessening the others’ creativity.  That is rarely a wise trade-off.

Folks wonder why I’m not writing comics anymore and why I switched to writing for gaming.  One of the main reasons is that the storytelling process is very similar but writing for gaming requires a lot less overhead to see your vision turn into some kind of storytelling reality.

Writing Exercise: 3-Pages of Sex and Danger

Set-Up: Below you’ll find the link to an original 3-page comic script that was adapted from that first short story, the one I described yesterday, along with links for the actual sequential art pages based on that script.   

Exercise: Read the script and then look at the pages.  Notice how the artist changed the storytelling.  Then decide for yourself what you would have done differently, either as an artist or as a writer adapting dialogue to the finished art.  How would you have used your creativity to add to the story without changing the total intent?

Script, Page 1, Page 2, Page 3

If you get a chance, I’d appreciate some comments below.  We haven’t had any comments yet, and I’d like to change that, especially since I removed the login requirement that the Comments Section previously required.