California International Marathon

 Last post of the year.  Missed the last few months because a lot has been happening.

I moved!

But before I moved, I ran a marathon.























3 hours 48 minutes and 44 seconds.

I finished running feeling pretty strong, a little cramping, but not enough to stop me from walking to my car afterwards.

It was raining, hence the hat, but not that much. So my goal of running a marathon was met, running under 4 hours also accomplished, but not Boston Qualifying.  I've already signed up for the next marathon.  Since speed training doesn't seem to do much for me (I'm not getting any faster), I'm going to focus on bulking up on miles for this go.  During this attempt, I held a lot of 8:30s, but crashed for the last 3 miles to low 9's.  I want to focus on trying to hold the 8:30s or better.  I just finished day 6 of 11 mile runs for a total of 66 miles.  I haven't ran that many miles in a week for years.  If I can stick to the plan, I should break 80 miles a week during training.  I'm blending my own training plan based on McMillan, Hansen, with a little Ed Whitlock thrown in.

I moved to Washington state. My sourdough starter survived the journey.

Sadly, one of my boxes containing miniature supplies did not!  I'm grateful that it wasn't a box with any of my figures, but I lost a good amount of my trees, all of my entrenchment/barbwire markers, a BF109, a P47, my minefield markers, my hit markers, and all of my unit markers - several weeks (if not months) worth of work.

Alcohol, Meditation and Marathon Training

I recently gave up drinking alcohol.  I had a little help from this book:



I enjoyed the book so much that I read a few others, including "The sober diaries" and "The unexpected joy of being sober."  Then suddenly on my Kindle this appeared:



I read it, definitely not my "thing," but it had me looking at things like mindfulness and cognitive behavioral therapy.  All of these books had me thinking about the power of the subconscious and our potential to nudge it in new directions.  Anyways, the next book I tried was:



I enjoyed this read quite a bit.  Then I got "The four agreements" for my kindle.



I liked the cover, but not too many new ideas.  It was nice to have some affirmation and it was sort of part of my effort to reprogram my mind for less stress and anxiety.  I'm currently wading through the tome, "Full Catastrophe Living."



This book along with Dan Harris's book got me thinking: "Is it possible to meditate while running?"

It seems like a good match.  You are definitely practicing mindfulness.  You can focus on your belly breathing, your feet, your glutes, the wind in your hair, your environment, and so many body awareness places.  Your mind wanders, and you can practice gently bringing it back to your breathing.

A quick internet search shows that I'm not the first to think of doing this. Here is an article in Runner's World.  Heck, there is even an app for it here. Others have blogged about it.

So, no caffeine, no alcohol, and now I'm in to meditation, while running, which means it must be time for a...

Full marathon

I've run 11 half-marathons.  I'm in a new age bracket.  I needed to tackle a new challenge.  I don't think I'm going to get much faster, so it was time to improve on the one parameter remaining - distance.

I thought I would use Hanson's for my training:



But the training plan just didn't fit my work schedule for this semester.  So I'm going with McMillan:



His plan worked well enough for the Silicon Valley half, and it's flexible enough for my schedule.  I also wanted a training plan that would have me run the TIME that it should take me to run a full marathon.  I'm thinking I can do it in 3 hours and 40 minutes.  McMillan's plan maxes out at a 22-24 mile long run, which will definitely have me running for that amount of time at my "long run" pace.

The Marathon is in December.  The training is going well.  No nagging injuries, but I have yet to crack 16 miles, or my previous distance record of 19 miles.  Tomorrow I run 17-18 miles.

The Soviets are here!

I finally finished enough Soviet forces to put on a game of Rommel.  I used the "Second Targu Frumos" scenario found here.  I might have gotten a little carried away with the videos.

The start of the video is showing the Soviet 3rd Guards Tank Corp.  The Soviet infantry divisions on the board included only one Guards infantry division.  The other two divisions had units that weren't very good on the offense.

First Soviet attack.

In this attack the ISU-122 has the infantry support feature that allows them to negate the down shift for the defenders being in the town, which allowed the pioneer to use its ability to remove a defensive position.

And the result of the attack on the town...

The Soviet 3rd Guards tank corp took the option to come in on the flank.  Ultimately this may be what doomed the Soviet effort.  The massed artillery in this attack was used to double the strength of a Soviet rocket barrage!

And the follow up to the attack...

The 24th Panzer Division, not 26th, and a Recon Puma, not Hetzer.  The Hetzer provided the flank bonus in this attack.

The Soviet attack on the 24th Panzer Division did not turn out well.

The 24th Panzer Division counter attacks and wipes out both of these T34s.

 The 24th didn't do as well here, despite having "Tank Shock."

The Soviets trying to set up a flank attack on an objective, get caught in a spoiling flank attack by the Germans.  This was a direct result of the break through by the Germans taking out those two T34s earlier.

This attempt to hurt the part of the 24th that was doing so much damage did not go well.  The tank advantage enjoyed by the German really caused havoc on the Soviet forces.  I should point out the SU76 was playing the role of a "light tank" and not a tank destroyer.  I don't have any T70s...yet.

A final effort to capture this town and objective resulted in the elite Panzergrenadiers withdrawing to avoid further casualties, but the two other German units held on.

And my video wrap up of the battle.

This was a tough scenario for the Soviets.  The anti-tank ability of the Germans was decisive in letting them inflict significant damage on Soviet armored forces in their flank attack.  The tank advantage enjoyed by the German in most of the armored battles was also important.  The minefields also played a more significant role than anticipated.  In retrospect, I should have committed the Soviet reinforcements to help secure the other 3 objectives.

Still it was fun to finally get my Soviet toys out.  Back to painting.

Spain

This summer, my wife and I decided to spend our summer vacation in Spain, well, at least part of our summer.

We didn't plan it, but we ended up visiting the 4 most populated cities in Spain; Madrid, Malaga, Valencia, and Barcelona.  What I mean to say, is that we didn't pick these cities because they were the most populated.  We flew into Madrid, so it was a no brainer to stay and visit a few days.  We wanted to see Seville, Granada, and perhaps Gibraltar, so we picked Malaga as a base camp  for those places.  Ironically we didn't go to any of those other places because we kept plenty busy in Malaga, and Seville and Granada just got too damn hot!  We chose Valencia because we thought public transport would get us there - we ended up taking a plane.  Barcelona was on our must visit list.

We stayed a couple of nights in Madrid overlooking the plaza mayor.

They were having a big event celebrating the UEFA Champions League Final.  A lot of English folk were in Madrid, even more than usual, due to the two teams being from Liverpool and Tottenham (London).

I really enjoyed the Jamon, and there was a lot of it.

We tried a "Spanish" omelette, and it was quite tasty.  The omelette was like a frittata with potato and onion. We had this in the morning in a local market - its like a big warehouse with lots of little shops facing internal walkways.  Sitting nearby was a fellow having a beer, and another with hard coffee.  Never too early in Madrid I suppose.

Of course I ran in Madrid.

The other three cities were on the southern coast.  In Malaga we had Paella.

We visited the Alcazaba and Castillo Gibralfaro, where we found a little museum and these miniatures!

Every Spanish city has churches.

We enjoyed some fried seafood.

 The Spanish are very into having tuna on their ensalada.

And I ran...

We went to a couple of cave complexes in Malaga, and took a hike in the nearby hills.  We got to visit a pueblo blanco.

We then went to Valencia.  We had to take an early taxi to the airport to catch a plane that flew us from Malaga to Lisbon, to Valencia.  They made me check my bag on the second plane.  In Valencia we rented bikes and saw this impressive edifice (Opera House).

Valencia diverted its river after a 1957 flood, and transformed the old riverbed into this awesome park where we road our bikes and I ran.

We only stayed two nights in Valencia, and I think in hindsight I would have subtracted a couple of nights from Malaga to add to this wonderful city.  In addition to some more Paella, and the best Italian dinner in Spain, we had a snack of "Fartons" and "Tiger Nuts" drink.

Our final destination of note was Barcelona. Here I ran, ate, and saw some cool scenery.

These last 3 items we saw while on our E-bike tour.  

We spent our last night back in Madrid, puttering about a hotel near to the airport.  

Other than this last night we rented places through Airbnb.  My favorites were the first place over the Plaza Mayor, and a top floor flat in Barcelona with  a wonderful, very large roof-top terrace.  In Malaga we had a private roof-top terrace, but its view was no good, and access was via a stair-well.  The wifi didn't extend that far.  Not so Barcelona, the terrace was basically a porch out the glass doors of the living space.  We had easy access, an expansive view of the city including La Sagrada Familia, and wifi!

We didn't rent a car.  In addition to the aforementioned plane trip through Lisbon, we took trains: Madrid to Malaga, Valencia to Barcelona, and Barcelona back to Madrid.  We used the bus, a couple of taxis, bikes, and our own two legs to get around.  We may return to Spain in the near future and spend a couple of months enjoying the Spanish lifestyle to it fullest.

A little bit

I'm in Malaga, Spain.  It's  the last month of May, and I  feel like I  haven't completed much.

I finished rebasing  the Romans and Carthaginians. I started a game of "To The Strongest."

I assembled and painted some Soviet T34s.

 I'm also basing up some Russian  infantry.

I invited some friends  over for a game of Rommel. Ten player games just take too long.

I really need to get something  done.