no race for me

April 14th, 2010 Troy

I’ve suffered an ill-timed set back on my journey to running the half-marathon. It started a few weeks ago, at the 7 mile mark of an 8 mile run. My left knee started to ache, then throb a little. It wasn’t too bad, and you get used to pain coming and going as you run longer distances, so I finished my run. When I got home, I iced it, but it still stiffened up and got really painful. This was the same knee and the same symptoms that derailed my training last year when I got to 10 miles. I attributed the injury last year to cheap shoes, so I thought I was past this.

So I skipped a run to give it time to rest, and it seemed to be fine. So I tried a 5 mile run, but 2.5 miles in, the pain returned and was more severe. I was still able to finish the 5 miles, but it was pretty uncomfortable. At this point I knew it wasn’t just going to go away, but I told myself that if I had to run in pain on race day, it would be worth it.

As a last ditch effort, I took 10 days off (right in the middle of a key training time, as mileage increased each week) to make sure it was completely rested. I started taking omega 3 fish oil, as I read that could help with joint lubrication. So after the long rest, I headed out for a 5 mile run on Saturday.

Half a mile in, the pain was worse than ever, and extended down my leg to my ankle. I was able to run 1.5 miles, then had to walk back. Even after just that short jog, my knee was worthless the rest of the weekend, and walking up or down stairs was really painful.

So, I guess that’s it. My knee seems to just hit a wall around 9 miles, that’s 2 years in a row. I suspect it’s a cumulative effect, and 3-4 months of training just adds up and eventually breaks my knee down. I shouldn’t be surprised, my knees took a pounding all through high school, since I was in sports year round every year.

The most frustrating part is that I’ve already paid the price, but I don’t get the prize at the end. I got up in 25 degree weather and ran, spent time away from my family for almost 4 months, with the motivation being the race at the end, crossing the finish line and being able to say I had run 13.1 with my friends and coworkers. I paid the price of training, and now with 2 weeks before the race, I have to sit on the sidelines and watch everyone else claim their reward. *sigh*

The good thing is that I lost almost 30 pounds while running. In a few months, I’m sure I’ll appreciate that more, but it still hurts to miss out on the Country Music Marathon this year.

Posted in Running | 3 Comments »

Story Time!

April 5th, 2010 Troy

The release of the iPad and the must-have iCade accessory from ThinkGeek got a couple of my coworkers talking about the old days of feeding quarters into arcade machines. This reminded me of a story that I’ll tell here.

I was in fourth grade, and Reebok Pumps were THE thing. I remember the commercials, where some NBA player would reach down, squeeze a few pumps of gravity-defying juice into his shoes, then sky over the competition and rip off some crazy windmill dunk or something. Clearly there was a coorelation between having a rubber bladder full of air in the tongue of your shoe and possessing the freakish natural ability necessary to put 45 inches between yourself and the ground.

Generally speaking, I didn’t usually get the latest fads when it came to shoes, but I think my parents must have taken turns going around with us boys and occassionally dropping the extra money to get the coolest thing, because somehow in 4th grade, I ended up with a pair of black, green, and purple Reebok Pumps. Once I realized that I was still incapable of separating myself from the court vertically enough to dunk, the cool factor wore off a bit.

Soon after, at a class skating party at the local Roller Rink (yep, it was definitely 1989), I was introduced to the brand new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game. We hit it off, and really had alot in common. For example: I loved video games, it was a video game. I had a few dollars in quarters, it had a convenient slot to put them in. It was really a bit uncanny. I found it to be somewhat needy, but I really enjoyed spending time with it so I put up with it.

But as with all relationships, we ran into a bit of a snag shortly after our courtship began: I ran out of money. I quickly assessed my options, which, for a 10 year old looking for money, are few. The only thing I had of any value were my shoes, which I conveniently didn’t need at the moment being that I was at a skating rink wearing skates. A friend of mine (who always seemed to have money) had been wanting a pair of Pumps, so I sold them to him for $60. I’ve never been very good at planning for the future, so I’m not sure that I had thought much beyond the skating party, when the rink would be requiring the rented skates back.

I spent the next several hours blissfully transferring every dime (or quarter, as it were) of my shoe money into that wonderful machine. I remember beating it at least once, and paying for my friend who was now the proud owner of my footwear to play too (some parts of that game were just to hard to solo). And as far as I know, my parents never found out that I sold those shoes for arcade money. I have no recollection of how I was able to get home without having my shoelessness noticed, but after that I just went back to wearing my old shoes.

And it was worth every penny.

Posted in Random, Sports | 1 Comment »

Off Road

April 1st, 2010 Troy

I set out for a run the other morning, and decided that I needed a change of scenery. See, the longest loop I can make in my tiny neighborhood is 2 miles, and I hate running laps. I’d much rather do an out-and-back.

Usually, to make this happen, I have to drive somewhere, because our neighborhood is on the corner of two country-ish roads that have no berms let alone sidewalks. The edge of the road basically dumps into a ditch, so you have to run on the white line to get any footing, thus exposing yourself to extreme bodily harm from speeding vehicles passing by. Whenever I’ve mentioned the possibility of running on these roads, my wife has voiced her dismay, and even asked me not to on occasion.

But it was early: 6:30, and there was no traffic to be seen on either of the country-ish roads. Since it was only about 200 yards or so down the road that it widened, then eventually grew a sidewalk, I decided to go for it, justifying to myself that my wife’s concern was with the traffic so I was in the clear.

And my trip out was successful. I ran down the side of the road, but no cars came before the road widened and I was able to run on the pavement OUTSIDE the lines.

However, it was about an hour later when I was making my return trip, and approaching the berm-less stretch of road. By then, the nearby high school was beginning to buzz, and so there was a line of speeding cars occupying the pavement between my neighborhood and myself. Just as I had decided that hitchhiking was my only option, I noticed that I could see the back corner of my neighborhood to my right, just past a docile-looking field and some railroad tracks.

I figured that the grass field was considerably less dangerous, so I started my hike. When I got to the railroad tracks, I realized that there was a considerable ditch on the other side, but I carefully made my way down (for the record, running shoes should never be confused with hiking shoes).

At the bottom, I discovered that the last 20 yards between myself and my neighborhood was occupied by large, relentless thorn bushes. You know, the kind that are all entangled vines covered with nasty looking needles and spikes. But I figured I was already committed, plus I thought that if I moved slowly enough, I could step on all the vines and keep them under my feet.

That plan worked. For about 10 seconds. Again, these were RELENTLESS thorn bushes. They fought me, and made their way out from under my shoes where they began snagging clothes and cutting skin. About halfway through the thicket, I saw a break in the bushes ahead. In fact, it looked like a path that I could follow all the way out. As I arrived at the clearing, I discovered why there were no bushes there: it was a small stream running through, about a foot and a half deep. So my choices were to continue through thorn bush hell, or walk through a muddy, freezing, foot and a half deep stream. Having let enough blood for one day, I chose the stream.

So eventually, I arrived back at my house, legs bleeding, shirt torn, shoes soaked and muddy. My wife had the “I told you so” look, no surprise there. I thought running was supposed to be GOOD for your health.

Posted in Running | 1 Comment »

World of Warcraft - Keyboard Only Config

March 16th, 2010 Troy

I have a Gateway P-6860fx laptop that I use for darn near everything. It’s less of a laptop and more of a giant hulking chunk of computer that the manufacturer claims is portable. I use it for watching movies (by hooking it up to our TV via HDMI), web development, and gaming. One of the cool features is that since it has a giant 17.1″ screen, it has enough width to include a 10-key to the right of the standard keyboard.

This brings me to my point. I play World of Warcraft on this laptop, and I found it inconvenient to have to drag out a mouse and mousing surface to be able to play WoW, especially if I was just lounging on the couch. So with a little patience and some trial and error, I was able to come up with a keyboard only control scheme for both my rogue and my pally so that I can play WoW on my laptop without the need for a mouse.

Searching the web for such a configuration was futile, so I thought I’d do my part to make the interwebs a better place by posting it here in case some poor mouse-less soul comes googling.

Obviously, your left hand sits on WASD for movement with Q and E close by for strafing. It’s on the right hand that all the magic happens. Ô_ó

First, you’ll need to activate a few of the extra menu bars to be able to house all of the abilities that will need keys mapped to them. I have nearly all of them enabled. Once that’s done, you’ll want to use the Key Bindings settings page to map some keystrokes to a bunch of them. I use the 10-key for all of my combat spells/actions, including the math buttons, zero, and the period. That will give you 15 actions, which should be enough for everything you would need during combat.

For my pally, I have blessings mapped to / * -, judgements mapped to 1 2 3, then all other combat spells get 4 5 6 7 8 9. I put all my seals on the standard number keys, since I’m only casting them once every 30 mins. My pally is spec’d retribution, so I keep a few heal spells close to my left hand on 1-5, and keep my divine shield on my panic key combo, ctrl+1. For convenience, I keep + on the 10-key mapped to my mount.

Now here’s the tricky part: looting without using a mouse. This took a little while to figure out. If you scroll about halfway down the Key Bindings page, you’ll see an “Interact with Mouse Over” option. I have assigned that to V. Now, if you enable auto-loot in the Interface->Controls screen, you can loot a corpse by mousing over it and hitting V. If you keep your cursor positioned just out in front of your toon, it’s always in position to loot the enemy you just killed. I can XP grind for hours, looting the whole way without touching a mouse!

Posted in Gaming | No Comments »

getting old

August 28th, 2009 Troy

I can’t wait to get old. There is a long list of advantages that those in their golden years enjoy that we can only dream of.

For example, quietly muttering to yourself. I’ve tried this when I’m alone, and it’s awesome. Imagine being able to talk quietly to yourself about the people directly around you without being committed to an institution.

And suspenders. The few times I’ve had the pleasure of wearing suspenders (weddings) have been really enjoyable, but there’s no way I could get away with that now.

Senior citizen’s discounts, AARP benefits, the list goes on and on. I turn 30 next month, I might be able to pull off wearing suspenders then. We’ll see how bad life is on the other side before making that call though.

Tags: aarp, old, suspenders
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