Miniatures Wargaming

Miniatures

I saw my first battle using painted miniatures at the impressionable age of 13.  Soon, the bookstore that I frequented, started carrying miniature tanks and ships.  They were probably GHQ models.  I bought several tanks and ships, played with them quite a bit, but never painted them.  With the discovery of role playing games a year later, I stopped buying them.  One of my friends collected tanks and ships,  and even painted them.  He would occasionally put on gaming events at his house, and they were great fun.

Miniatures went out of my life with college, marriage, kids and a job, until the age of 32.  I walked into a comic bookstore to demonstrate a collectible card game (no, not Magic the Gathering), and there was a miniatures battle being conducted, complete with chariots!  I became enamored and began looking into collecting my own chariot army.  These I had to paint.

Since then I've managed to put together a pair of chariot armies, Punic war armies, and three World War II armies.  They are all in 15mm because at first it was all I could afford, and later it was consistent with what I had learned to paint.  I've tried a few different rule sets to use in games with the miniatures, but have mostly settled on series of rules put out by Piquet Wargames.  I've been particularly impressed with the most recent rendition based on the core ideas expressed in Field of Battle and Pulse of Battle.

Recently we had a bash with the new Pulse of Battle using Republican Romans and Carthaginians.  The battle is based loosely on Trebbia.  Here is the initial set-up:

Romans are on the left, and Carthaginians on the right.

The Numidians close with the Roman left flank cavalry:

Carthaginian Elephants flank Roman Triarii!

Hannibal trying to work the Roman right flank:

Spanish cavalry (Carthaginians) being mauled by Roman Velites (Light infantry):

Romans being urged on by their commander:

Gaulish Cavalry coming up behind the Romans!

One of the main Roman Commands breaking through Carthaginian center, nothing but skirmishers between them and open ground:

Can one ever have enough Elephant pictures?

In the end the Romans edged out the Carthaginians for victory.  The Carthaginians gave up too many morale chips on their right flank and center.  If they had refused their center more and worked the flanks, but it is difficult in multiplayer games where everyone just wants to fight.  It seemed like good fun was had by all, and that is what is most important.

I had recently rebased my armies, and was very pleased with the results.

Culinary

Me transferring my Baltic Porter, going to be soooo very tasty:

Santa Cruz Half Marathon

Running

The Wednesday before the race my wife gets hit by a virus.  I make cioppino:

The next day I start to feel like one of the infected.  Friday I'm running a fever.  I won't run with a fever.  Running with a cold, or a little congestion is fine, but a fever is a no go for me. 

On Saturday we feel well enough to at least take advantage of our reservation at the Dream Inn in Santa Cruz.  

I'm no longer running a fever and begin to think I can run the race and get my surf board medal.

That night we go out to eat with my brother, and my sister-in-law at Laili's:

I go with some lamb:

Other dishes included kabobs, fish, and salad:

Normally I am able to line up some sort of pre-race caffeine and breakfast at a local business.  This time I just had the tea in my room plus a couple of granola bars.  

Running I definitely felt the effects of my infection.  The deep lung congestion, and coughing kept me from coming anywhere close to sub 9 minute miles.

Coming into the finish line:

2 hours, 4 minutes and 29 seconds, better than Monterey, but 10 minutes off my Modesto run.

Culinary

I decided to try making a pork terrine with a pork tenderloin center.  I started with some pork shoulder that I had preground the previous day, and then ground 10 ounces of back fat I had from our Berkshire pig.  All of this got pulsed through the food processor until relatively smooth.  I say relatively because, not having made this before, I wasn't sure what smooth was.  It was also a very thick mixture.  The recipe called for slices of white bread, I just have my wild dough bread these days, so I used that instead, but how big to make the slices?  The recipe also called for a ham garnish, but there was too much mousseline for it all to fit in the pan, so I passed on this option.  Here is the processed mousseline:

 The tenderloin was seared and then cooled in the fridge before being placed in the middle of the mixture:

 All wrapped up and ready for the hot water bath.

 The quenelle test:

 Out of the mold the next day.

 And slices of the final product:

It was very tasty!

Run for Your Mother

Running

Last year I ran my first race in a 5k in my home town.  At the time I hadn't been running for even a year.  After trying to run longer distances, I had backed off to just running 3.2 miles 5-6 times a week in order to have a cardiovascular aspect to my gym workout.  I choose to run the 5k because my son was willing to run it with me, I wanted to support local running events, and I had never been in a race before.  Since it was on Mother's day I checked with the wife and she gave the thumbs up.

That was a very windy run, and no matter that a study reported that wind isn't a factor unless you run faster than 7 minute miles.  I can tell you wind was a factor that day.  I was exhausted, and had no speed for most of that run.  I was so disgusted with my time and lack of endurance that I went to the gym and ran another 3 miles on the treadmill.  That was the day I decided to pursue increasing my miles again.

This year the event organizers had added a 10k race and I, with the permission of the mother of my children, signed up for it.  Now that I am running 60+ mile weeks, I figured I didn't have to worry about not having enough endurance.  However, since the back injury, I hadn't been running many sub-9 minute miles.  I wasn't sure if I could even break an hour run time.

Last year I drove to the start of the event.   This year I did a warm up walk/run.  It was all of 2 miles, perfect.  I signed in, got my bib number, and did the occasional jog around the track (it starts at a stadium) as I waited for the race to start.  I wanted to stay warmed up because my back issue appeared to have migrated to my right iliotibial tract.

The 5k and 10k started together, with the people running the 10k expected to run two laps.  During the first mile, I felt I was running too fast, and looking down at my Garmin I saw 7 minute, 40 seconds, so I slowed down a little.  That first mile ended being a 8:16.  The next two miles dropped to 8:42, and 8:36.  At the end of the first lap I was catching up to a teenager who was dragging, but picked up when they heard me coming.  I sprinted for the 5k finished line, but youth won out.  It probably wasn't the smartest thing for me to do since I had another 5k to run.

The next 3 miles I ran 8:40, 8:53, and 8:36.  The last mile demonstrating my pick up as I headed into home stretch.  The last 0.29 miles was at 8:22.  My first 10k and thus an automatic PR of 54:11.  A small race, no chip timer, and still no official results.  Nevertheless, a much better pace than my 30:40 5k a year ago, and certainly faster than 1 hour.  I thought at the end of the race that this was a sure sign of my recovery, and I should have no problem keeping my half-marathon time at Capitola/Santa Cruz scheduled for the following week under 2 hours...

Culinary

Mother's day shopping revealed a lot of Rib Eye pairs put together and trimmed into the shape of a heart?  There were also a surfeit of lobster tails.  I grilled up some surf and turf for my wife.

2 Steps forward, 1 Step back

The semester has come to an end, and I'm going to try and catch up on my blogging.

Running

The Modesto Half was a big deal to me.  It was a PR, I had beaten my first half marathon time by 13 whole minutes, a minute faster per mile.  It seemed logical that I just needed to keep training and I would keep improving.  

And at first this seem to be the case.

I took it easy the week following the half by running only easy paces all week long.  The following week I ran an 8'4" mile while running intervals, beating my previous fastest mile by 15 seconds, definitely the right direction.

Outside of running; my wife and I had quit our gym and bought a weight machine, and a treadmill.  With our large home and paucity of children, we thought it would be best to start leveraging our space to reduce our monthly income expenditures.  We didn't want to pay the gym to store our exercise equipment, and (gulp) repair it.  I just hope I don't regret the letting go of the latter service.  However, a new weight machine meant learning new exercises to work out the same muscle groups.  This is how I hurt my lower back.

My lower back had been good since I had started running, in fact it had improved.  When it started acting up, I would run, and that seemed to put it back into alignment.  It also served as an anti-inflammatory, or at least redirected the inflammation from my back and to my legs.

This wasn't just my back acting up.  I had really done some damage this time.  It didn't seem like it at first.  I tried running the next day to make it better.  I barely was able to run 5 miles, and couldn't run faster than 11'36", 13 minute average.  I also didn't feel much better after the run.  I took two days off after this.  My long run which had been averaging 16.5 miles in less then 2 hours and 30 minutes became 13.3 miles in over 2 hours and 35 minutes.  I thought I could pretty much kissed goodbye any hope of improving my pace in time for the Capitola half-marathon.

I started taking NSAIDs and applying a methyl salicylate rub.  I began running only every other day.  The pains seemed to move around, and my calves got sore for the first time in months.  I think I must have been running differently, putting more stress on my calves to take it off my back.  "No run Monday" became "No run Monday & Tuesday."  I began to get slowly better and thought that maybe I could put in a good show for the Mother's day 10k.

Culinary

I bought a thermal gun:

To get more accurate temperature readings on my pizza stone:

To avoid burning the bottom of my pizza:

And bread: