Operation Luttich with Rommel

A little less than a year ago I put on Operation Luttich using a modified Field of Battles: WW2.
It was huge, and it bogged down badly.  I blame me partly for putting too much terrain on the table, but I also wanted to try and streamline the rules to allow for a faster play game.  Then Rommel by Sam Mustafa came out.  I gave them a test drive with a couple of generic scenarios and then put them away.  Over the last couple of weeks I've been working my way solo through one interpretation of operation Luttich based on that game last year.  Here are some photos and after action report.

The German side with three elements representing the 1st SS, 2nd SS, and 2nd Panzer divisions.  I should have made the Panzergrenadier battalions elite - boo boo number one.  One of the German elements didn't have artillery, but the parent unit had two Nebelwerfers.  Sadly they started out too far away to help with the assault in the beginning.




The American side

Combat Command B of the 3rd Armor plus the 119th regiment of the 30th infantry in reserve.

The scenario was set for 16 turns.  No American air power was allowed for the first 4 turns to simulate the fog that started this battle.  The Americans rolled a d6 until they rolled less than the turn number for their reinforcements.  They joined the battle in the nick of time.

Initial assault of hill 314.  I gave hill 314 and hill 285 three prepared position markers to make them tougher to take.  The Germans never made it to hill 285, focusing their assault on 314.

The abbey got their attention also.

 Flanking around St. Barthelemy

 Unoccupied Romagny is occupied by the Germans.

 Another attempt at hill 314.

Americans counterattack to protect their vulnerable artillery.  I'm using my usual "unloaded" markers to indicate "tipped" units, or as I like to call them - "spent."  For road movement I used my truck stands to indicate units were spent.  The spent units had to be touching the truck stand.

Overall German position.  They have Mortain and Romagny.  I set the victory conditions to whoever held 3 of the 5 urban areas.  The Germans could hope for little more.  In the upper right you can see them trying to flank the American positions and again get at those vulnerable artillery plus the undefended Juvighny.  It almost worked.

Then American reinforcements arrived.

Hill 314 fell!

Saint Barthelemy also fell, but was quickly retaken.

The Abbey fell.

American artillery made the Germans pay a heavy price for this.  I made all American artillery "Parent," meaning they could support any unit without penalty.

 The Americans counter attack with just 2 tank companies into a town.  They need a 3 or better to inflict the two hits necessary to eliminate the badly battered German companies.  With the help of two airstrikes and artillery they succeed.

 The Germans desperate to retake the one town they need for victory.  We were in overtime, and the game could end at the end of any of these turns.

 They don't succeed.  Some end game pictures showing final positions.  The German flanking force coming back over the bridge.  All rivers were treated as "soft ground." The bridge space could be left without being spent if you left into either of the squares the bridge was facing.  Reading about the terrain around Mortain, this was an issue for armor in particular.  Hmmm, that could be another special rule.  Only have soft ground effect armor.

 You can see on the left that the Screaming Mimis moved up.  They really made a difference for the Germans.

My second big error was allowing the american armor and armored infantry to move two spaces to retake Barthelemy.  Since the second square was urban, this shouldn't have been allowed.  I might have done this earlier in the game for the Germans too.  It might have significantly effected the outcome.  Oh well, I'll do better next time for my multiplayer mash up featuring an American armored division and infantry division versus some German Panzer and Panzergrenadier divisions.  It could have up to 10 players on a 5 by 9 foot table - oh my!

What to have with this bread?

I made a loaf with my wild dough starter.

What should I make to go with it?  How about a terrine.

Pork liver and trimmings cut up.

Time to grind it up.

 Need some veggies to fold in.

After grinding, time for blending the meat into one mass using the food processor.

 Fold in above veggies and then put into pan.

How about some brussel sprouts to go with that?

 Look at the crumb on that bread!

Progress on projects

Time for a PoP report!

I posted a little something on Magic Wash.  Here is the final product.

With the Egyptians and Hittites finally finished, I turn my attention to the Romans and Carthaginians.

I finally got my M7 priest painted to complete my U.S. 1944 armored division.

Almost done with the Hellcats, coming up soon...

Reckless Abandon

It's a song, it's a book, it's the title of a blog post on the Hellyer Half Marathon.

Hell yes.

I very badly want to break the 1 hour 45 minute time mark for a half.  It's a milestone.  Not only is it an even 5 minute marker, like 2 hour, 1 hour 55, 1 hour 50, etcetera.  But it is a quarter of an hour faster than I ever thought I could be.  And, perhaps more importantly, it would mean I could run faster than an 8 minute mile for 13 miles.  It also represents a pace that I might be able to turn into a Boston Qualifying time.

Of course that means running 26.2 miles - hmmmm.

I picked Hellyer because my wife wanted to go to a family reunion for spring break.  I looked at the two weeks I would need for recovery after Monterey, and the time I would need to adequately train, and the time for the reunion.  Hellyer was close to my location, the perfect date, I could eat at Maurizio's the night before, and I found two blogs from runners who had PR'd on this course.

Training started out fairly typical.  I'm still struggling to find a place for hill sprints in the weekly routine.  Mostly I tend to fit them in on Monday during my weight lifting.  Treating them like they are type of resistance training and not a variation on running seems to help.  I even got a few hill sprints in on Wednesday after doing intervals.  That ended once the longer "Strength" runs began.  But I continued to work them in on Monday.

Following the training paces strictly for the Monterey half did not net me a PR or the pace I was supposedly training for. Thinking upon this, I realized that I typically hold a "Strength" pace on race day whatever that may be.  So if I'm running 8:05s for my strength runs, then it is an 8:05 I can expect to hold for my race.  With this in mind, I was determined to keep strength training under 8 minute miles.

This wasn't easy.  In the past I create little mantras or mentalities to get me to a knew pace.  Most recently this has been "Breathe hard and don't stop running."  The idea being if I am breathing hard then I'm running as hard as I can.  Unfortunately that wasn't netting me better than an 8:10.  So one day while feeling frustrated that I couldn't hold a sub-8, I had the phrase "Reckless Abandon" pop into my brain.  My eyes half close, my right hand goes limp like Deadpool's after he struck Colossus with his bare fist, and as I peek down through my squinty eyes I see I am running a 7:40 pace.

For interval training I was determined to hold a 7:30 or better and managed this:

I also set new records in my 5k and 10k times, finally breaking the 50 minute barrier in the 10k.
  
Strength training came along and I was mostly successful at holding a sub-8 pace.  It was the "mostly" part that was most worrisome.  

When I ran Merced, I knew I was going to PR.  It was just a matter of by how much.  For this run I was much less sure.  There is some sort of psychological block in my mind to anything faster than an 8 minute per mile pace.

As I began my taper, my doubt grew.  The day before I started carb loading, never done that consciously before.  I had potatoes and eggs for breakfast.  Normally I'm on an intermittent fasting routine, and breakfast is a no-no.  I had ramen for lunch, and pasta for dinner.  Maurizio's had spaghetti and meatballs as a specialty - Ragu de Bologna no less.  I had two glasses of Pinot Grigio.

I also took a nap on Saturday, and went to bed early the night before the race.  We stayed at the Wyndham Garden in south San Jose.  I told my wife I was pretty sure that it wasn't going to happen, but I would run the race at a comfortable pace and get their cool race medal. 



The first few mile weren't bad at all - as usual.  I ran without my running watch.  Perhaps this is a mistake and I would run smarter if I had it with me to keep me from starting too fast.

I broke through the crowd and found myself pacing and being paced by an elderly gentleman.  I'm pretty sure he was older than me.  He got tired of my too leisurely pace and went to hang with the group I was following and would follow for most of the race.

Hellyer is an interesting course.  You start outside of the park.  Run down a relatively short driveway to the park trail and then turn left, proceed for several miles to a loop, turn around, run back past the point you entered the trail down to another more complex loop.  Here you turn around again and go back to the driveway and up to the finish line.  They started their 5k and 10k runners after us.  I thought this was a mistake.

Turning back on the first loop we encountered the 5k runners and things got crowded.  I had to pick up pace past the comfort point to go around a runner with a double stroller.  This was a public park and there were pedestrians and bicyclists to work around.  On the second loop we contended with 10k runners.  There were fewer of them and it wasn't much of a problem.

I stopped at all the drink stops, except the last one, and alternated between water and electrolytes.  Somebody pacing me passed me at these points, but I always caught up with them.  Around the 5k runners I passed this pacer while going past the stroller and never saw this runner again until coming back from the second loop.  They never caught me.  The group I was pacing became smaller, until only two remained, including the elderly fellow who had paced me at the beginning.

Things are starting to hurt, and I start thinking, "Reckless Abandon."  I turn to my forefeet for extra speed and goose past some more people.

There were hills, and frankly, too many of them.  I thought, once again, I would never be able to PR this.  I was pretty certain my stride broke down the last 3 or so miles.  I lost the two I had been pacing.  I thought, "Why am I doing this to myself?" And, "This is so not worth it." And, "Never again!"

I'm getting close to the end, past the last loop, and hear from a guy going out to the loop tell his running partner it had been 1 hour 39 minutes.  I think, "Oh crap, maybe I do have a shot!"  So I turn to, "Breathe hard, and never stop running."


As I come in I see 1:43:"seconds ticking away," and I dig deep for whatever I have left, but knowing I'm going to PR. I came in with a smile on my face.

1 hour 43 minutes and 37 seconds.  The top 25% for gender, but strangely only 6th out of 11 in my age group.  There were a lot of fast 50-54 year olds in this race.