1. Starting to run after taking several months off. You feel like you’ve just started running (see #2 below), except you can still remember how good you were only a few months ago. This makes the fact that you suck now all the more apparent and misery-inducing.
2. First starting to run. It is hard to start running. It takes weeks, sometimes months, to see any positive effects. Often, you will gain weight as your appetite increases faster than your metabolism. It really is no wonder than so many people don’t stick with it. It sucks for a long time before it gets good.
3. Hill reps. If you like doing hill reps, you are a masochist. From the moment you start up that damn hill, everything hurts and you know you’ve got to run up it at least another five or six times. You constantly feel like you’re going to vomit and muscles that you rarely work out are sore for days after.
4. You hit a running plateau.

It is this last point that I’m in now. Running plateaus generally occur at about the midpoint of most training programs. During the first few weeks of training, you steadily get better, with each run feeling better than the last. You’re getting faster and every run starts to feel easy. After a few weeks of this euphoria, you hit a plateau. Instead of getting better, each run feels the same, but compared to how great you were just feeling, it feels like you’re slogging through each run. You’re working harder than ever and not getting any faster or better.

I rank this fourth in my last of crappy running periods because the challenge is mostly mental. Physically, I feel fine and am still improving, albeit imperceptibly. Running just isn’t as much fun as it was during the first few weeks of my training. Experience is on my side, however. I’ve been in this situation before and know that plateaus eventually end. Once they do, training becomes fun again as my body ramps up for more speed and distance gains. For now, though, it’s a matter of waiting it out and slogging through a few bad runs to get back to the good.

This was one of the most disturbing events I have ever personally witnessed in my life (yes, I’ve led an easy life and yes, I’m very sensitive about animals); though it happened days ago, I still cannot get the image of the dog and his distraught owners out of my head and I doubt that I will be able to for a considerable time. The experience has made me think a lot about pets and I want to share some of my thoughts in the hope that it will make me feel a little better.

1) Take care of your pets! Our animals may, at times, seem independent (cat owners can especially relate to this), but I assure you they are not. Our pets are 100% dependent on us for their care and protection, an enormous burden that lasts for years. It is not something to be entered into lightly nor is it a task which we can ever waiver in our devotion to. The sad results of any such lapse are flashing through my mind as I write this.

2) I felt unable to help this poor animal in any meaningful way. I and other bystanders covered him to keep him warm and helped him into a car, but that was all we could do. In talking to my sister about this incident, I joked that I have decided to become a veterinarian just so that I can do something more if any event like last night’s ever occurs near me again. This is obviously preposterous, but I cannot shake this awful feeling that I failed this poor dog.

3) For every dog like the one I met last night, there are hundreds without an owner to rush them to the expensive suburban emergency clinic when they are sick or hurt, who die cold on the street, forgotten or unknown. The idea of the events of last night, multiplied by hundreds, is very difficult for me to live with. I could not help the dog from last night, but I can help others who can help by donating money or time to rescue and shelter organizations. I encourage other animal-lovers out there to do the same. Donate to the ASPCA and the Humane Society. Find a local shelter and donate money or your time to them.

“We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.”  Immanuel Kant.

I believe that this quote can and should be applied universally to mankind. These animals are our responsibility. How we treat them is a reflection of who we are. I hugged my dog for hours after coming home from my run that night. I also brushed his teeth, looked at his eyes and ears, checked his tags, and practiced “stay” commands with him. But mostly I loved him, and I hope you all do the same with your pets.

However, I’m not terribly disappointed with myself. Yes, I would have liked to read more and run faster, but I did read some and run faster now than I did at the beginning of the summer. In particular regarding running, I am glad that I set a high goal for myself. I did miss that goal, but because of the many time constraints on my summer weekends (weddings, vacations, more weddings, etc.) it was inevitable. I didn’t run many long and fast runs because I was away so many weekends when I had planned to do these runs. I could have set a more reasonable goal for myself, like 25:00. If that had been the case, I would have barely met my low goal, which to me would have been much more disappointing than totally missing my ridiculous goal.

I could have done better on my reading list, and I have no good excuse for this. Traveling is no excuse; in fact, in most cases it gave me more time to get reading done. Instead, I played a lot of video games. As both are leisure activities, I don’t feel all that bad about the substitution. I still must make a better habit of reading, both because I do enjoy it and even I, a video game activist and aficionado, understand that reading is often more intellectually stimulating than grinding a warlock to level 80 in World of Warcraft (one of my many unspoken achievements for the summer).

Twenty-five percent of respondents to a survey in the British magazine Engineering & Technology said they do not believe humans landed on the moon. A handful of Web sites and blogs circulate suspicions about NASA’s “hoax.”

And a Google search this week for “Apollo moon landing hoax” yielded more than 1.5 billion results.

I have seen high numbers of Google results used before as evidence of something’s popularity, when in fact they are evidence of nothing. Google’s spiders crawl the deepest corners of the ever-expanding Internet, thus Google returns billions of results for almost any combination of search terms. It is awful that CNN would use the number of results returned in Google as proof of anything.

I have also bought into the barefoot running craze. If you don’t know what this is, I’ll summarize. I take most of my information from these articles from Wired and The Daily Mail.

There is a growing body of research that says running barefoot is better for the human body than running in trainers. The theory behind this is that humans have evolved into good distance/endurance runners. Our feet all by themselves reduce shock to joints when running barefoot. The key problem is that many people (myself included) heel strike when running in trainers. This is not how your body is built to run; you should instead be striking at the midfoot to best reduce the impact of your foot striking the ground. Heel striking increases the impact of the strike on your feet, ankles, knees, and hips, and is the reason behind many running injuries. Running barefoot, you will instead naturally midfoot strike. Try it sometime, you will find that you will always strike on the ball of your foot when running barefoot. The articles mention several other ways by which your feet reduce impact. Thus, running barefoot is the best way to have a natural running stride and reduce impact on your joints. This is the theory at any rate.

I decided to test the theory for three main reasons.

1. The articles I linked above mention several common running maladies, such as plantar fasciitis, that researchers blame on improper running technique caused by running in trainers. I have had nearly every injury specified and have always run in trainers.
2. My training goal this summer is to run faster. In addition to the benefits I mention above, running barefoot builds muscle in your feet and calves, which should help make me faster.
3. The Wired article turned me on to Vibram Five Fingers, which is a crazy shoe with toes. Here’s a picture of them on me. They are super crazy, geeky, and awesome. Barefoot running gives me a reason to flaunt these about my neighborhood.

To date, I have only run barefoot once, yesterday in the Vibrams for half a mile of a three mile run. As far as the shoes go, wearing them was just like running barefoot with heavily calloused feet. As far as barefoot running goes, my ankles hurt. It is supposed to take some time to get used to barefoot running, so I will continue to slowly ease myself into it. I will post updates as I discover if barefoot running is really better for me or just some hippy, anti-Nike crap.

Old habits die hard, which is why I have my summer reading list (I haven’t started yet, unless you count the preface to The Historian) and is why I am making a new summer goal of running a sub-20 minute 5K. I resolved this last night during one of my typical runs, when I realized that I like to run fast. I don’t often run fast, but I like it when I do. I also realized that I’m getting sick of the runs I go on all the time, and so is my body, which is very bad. I’m too used to doing the same old thing, which means that I’m not really getting any better at running or even getting in much better shape.

I’ve run several 5K races, and they are a great deal of fun: quick and intense. Back when I was younger, I even ran one at close to a sub-20:00 pace. I chose this particular time for my summer goal because it’s what I consider fast, but is not so brutal as to be impossible to attain for a casual runner. For reference, expert runners have around 15:00 or 16:00 5K times. A 20:00 5K is a 6:26 mile pace, which is fast, don’t get me wrong. But it’s not super-fast, and I need only maintain it for just over 3 miles.

This will be very hard, but I need some different training and a new goal to shake me out of my running doldrums. I’m going to find an Internet log to use to keep track of training times and distances, which I’ll link to shortly and which I hope to feed into Twitter (follow me at http://www.twitter.com/khren). The plan I’m using is Hal Higdon’s 5K Intermediate training plan. Anyone who feels like joining in, drop a comment and we’ll kill ourselves together.

EDIT: I found a good running log called Log Your Run that should do everything I want.  I’ll be setting it up with my plan this week.

Here are some highlights from old D&D games I ran:

• One character was thrown into the middle of a war of succession between several brothers. One of them was a vampire. The only magic item this character had was a box that could turn into a tower upon command. He had a NPC that helped him, but I killed her off.
• I charged a level one kobold fighter with rounding up all the local kobolds tribes under his banner to fight oppressive human overlords. He had some magical javelins, but I never told him they were magical or how they worked. I also don’t believe I ever let him get higher than level three.
• One of my brother’s characters died. There was no one around to raise him, so he was resurrected instead. In the old days, the latter spell brought the character back to life, but potentially as a different creature. He got returned as a deer. He played as a deer (no battle powers, no spells, etc.) for the next few months before the party found somebody to revert him to human form.

These are just a few examples from the top of my head. My traumatized players (my brother and best friend from childhood) could most likely give you many more. Needless to say, my PCs were always frustrated, low-level, fighting impossible odds, and never in possession of the magical item necessary to hit the monsters I sent against them. I figured this made their adventures epic, because who ever had an easy epic struggle? They figured I hated them. In truth, it was probably both.

1. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. I am slowly re-reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula (publishing the journal entries and letters on the date they were written in the story is simply creative and brilliant), and from what I have heard The Historian is similarly-themed. I believe the books will complement each other nicely. I’ve also gathered that, as alluded to by the title, it reads like a history. Considering how much I enjoyed the last piece of heavily-footnoted fictional history I read (Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell), I am excited about this book.
2. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. This is my favorite book. It has been years since I last read it, a shame only redeemed by the fact that I have read it five times already. I have been avoiding re-reading it because I get very wrapped up in the story. While this is certainly not bad (it is a compliment to the author and is evidence of how much I enjoy the story), it does cut deeply into my time. This results in a dramatic reduction in how much I sleep, and I already do not sleep enough. However, it has been too long since I last saw Middle-Earth, so I plan on taking the plunge this summer and break in my faux-leather-bound collectors’ edition.
3. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. This is yet another great novel that has been collecting dust on my bookshelf for far too long. I’ve heard that reading it will make my own family seem less crazy, which alone is a good reason to read it.
4. The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon. This received a good review from my father-in-law, and I loved The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. I have a quick story regarding the latter. I tried to convince my wife to read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, and the pitch went like this: “It’s a really good book. It’s about a Jewish boy and his Czech cousin living in New York City during World War II (wife appears interested) writing comic books (wife rolls eyes and returns book to shelf).
5. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. I have not read this book and I have no excuse why not. It is a classic of science fiction literature (come on, it won both the Hugo and Nebula awards) so I should ^[1] read it, and the themes seem like things I will really enjoy.
6. Watchmen by Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, and John Higgins. I am not and have never been a huge fan of comic books. However, this is another influential classic that I should read, and will most likely enjoy reading. As I said, I am not a huge fan of comic books, but I do like them.

That’s it. It is not groundbreaking and serves no one’s purpose but my own. However, I like it. It contains a good combination of heavier reads (I do not expect to fly through The Historian and I like to savor The Lord of the Rings) and lighter, covering multiple genres but focusing on the ones I like. There are a lot of books that I want to read, so I will add to this list if I manage to get through a couple of these.

[1] I hate hearing about books I “should” read in some sort of global, literary sense. In my mind, there is no such thing. I use the phrase here on a personal level. I am telling myself I should read it because I think that it will be beneficial to me.

So, that’s the only segue you’re going to get from my last post of well over a year ago to the next. Enjoy!

I was 100% correct in my purchase. Crisis Core is awesome. The gameplay takes some getting used to, and it sometimes bugs me a little that you don’t earn experience points to level up, but the well-crafted story (again, this is from the perspective of someone who loved FF7), beautiful graphics, and customizable character development (yay for materia!) make it a great game overall. I also really like the mission system that lets you play a short game if you don’t have much time and gives you an additional chance to get phat loot.

GTA4 was another birthday present. I toyed with GTA3 but never got that far into it; I played enough to be know the basics of the series. GTA4 plays a lot like the previous installments to me; I’m sure people better acquainted with the old can, and have (there are too many reviews to link and they’re almost all 10/10 anyway, so there isn’t much reason to read), give a better idea of the differences. Here’s what I like about the game:

1. Depth: There are a lot of missions, side missions, friends to make, and girlfriends to bang. You can play this game forever and uncover new angles to your character and to the world in whch he lives.
2. Rewards: For someone who likes being rewarded, GTA4 is great. The rewards range from small (some guy likes you more) to huge (an ass-ton of money or guns), but they are always there. Some people complain about the chore of making and keeping friends, but I find the little thumbs up worth the effort.
3. Quick play: If you don’t feel like playing for long or don’t have much time, you can turn on GTA4 and do any number of things for 10-15 minutes. You can do something to help your character like the aforementioned making and keeping of friendships, or you can grab a shotgun, shoot a cop, and run like hell. I haven’t used any cheat codes yet, but the use of these is bound to make the latter quick activity all the more fun.
4. Story: The story is more than a little played out (handsome immigrant, dark past), but it’s still compelling enough to make you want to figure out what is going to happen next to poor Niko Bellic. Sure, sometimes he does things that are a little weird or seem out of character and sometimes his motivation isn’t entirely clear. It’s no FF7, but it’s still pretty good.
5. Graphics: GTA4 looks really nice. I’m no graphics whore, but admit that graphics can add to a game in many ways. In GTA4, it makes the environment (so important to the style and play of the entire GTA series) seem big and real.

I’m only at the second safe house, so I have a long way to go in the story and the game. I’ll be playing for a long while yet, so I’ll keep everyone posted on what else I enjoy/hate about it.

The best part about these two games is play them at the same time. Crisis Core is for the Metro and late at night, while GTA4 is for other times.