home for an island

Last week I started training for the Bay State Marathon which runs on October 19th. Lisa and I will be training together again but this time we're looking to take the next step in our program. We're going to be doing the Intermediate II schedule from halhigdon.com (last time we did the Intermediate I) and also incorporating tempo runs, pace work, and possibly some core work as well.

This first week of training was pretty rough. I jumped right back into 5 days of running per week after not running for almost 4 weeks. My body is pretty tired and sore but I worked through it and after my 10 miles yesterday I am feeling pretty good about the whole thing. I think the hardest run I did was the 6 miler on Saturday because I pushed the pace pretty hard on the way home and paid for it. I toned it down for the 10 miles on Sunday and managed to run pretty evenly (somewhere between 8 and 9 minutes per mile) and strongly the whole time.

Runs: 5
Miles: 28.4
Time: 3:51:50

The other weekend Laura, Jason, and I took a trip out to Quincy for some climbing. I set the anchors and did a pretty good job. I was nervous about the whole thing but I think I was pretty successful. The climbs weren't very hard but there were some interesting ones.

Today is Laura and my two year anniversary. To celebrate, we went to the ICA on Saturday, had sushi for dinner, and saw Get Smart. Tonight we're going to a place called Shabu Zen in Allston. Neither one of us has been to a restaurant like this before but it looks pretty exciting. It's been a wonderful two years thus far, and I anticipate more of the same.

I haven't made a whole lot of progress on my Wood Elves in the past few weeks. I managed to paint up the last four Dryads in the army, which leaves 5 Wild Riders, 6 Waywatchers, and 1 Wild Rider Noble left for the army. Of that, I've made a start on one Wild Rider horse.

Branchwraith, Branchnymph, and two two Dryads

I've also made a discovery that is a bit disconcerting. Apparently, Games Workshop has stopped production of half of their Waywatcher models. Currently I have six models for the unit, but only three unique sculpts. I don't like having duplicate models in a single unit but I am not sure where I am going to get an additional three models with different sculpts. Games Workshop does make a Waywatcher Noble model, but that still leaves me two models short. The idea of hacking up and converting metal models is not appealing so hopefully ebay or the interwebs will provide a solution.

I have all the models I need for about 1000 points of Crimson Fists sitting on my desk. I'd like to get them assembled and play a game or two with Spoony. Once 5th edition and the new codex comes out I will buy some more models and take it up to 1500 or 2000 points. I've started a second test model to try a few different things out and I think I'm closing in on what the final scheme will be.