Lisa and I went on a nice 12 mile run yesterday. I felt like I was gliding along at a really nice pace for the first 10.5 miles, and then I felt like I ground out a good finish up South Huntington, but my watch told me that I was just under 9 minute miles for the whole thing. That's a lot slower that I thought I was going (and hoped I was going) but I'm still pretty happy with the run overall.

This week tops out at 50 miles, 20 of which will be run on Sunday. I've never run that much in a week, and 20 mile runs are always a daunting prospect. This week will be a good indicator of where my training is now and how I'll be for the marathon.

Laura and I were at Cambridgeside Galleria this weekend getting some clothes and I decided to stop into the Petsmart there to see if they had any neons. They did and I ended up bringing home a dozen of them (although I only asked for 10). The attrition rate was pretty awful and I ended up losing five of them at an alarming rate, but the remaining seven seem to be doing alright. They are still pretty skittish and like to hide in the back corner behind some plants, but they were moving around pretty well when I woke up this morning. Their eating has been pretty sparse thus far but I'm sure they'll get hungry eventually.

I finally sat down last week and started painting some Waywatchers.

I have most of the major color blocks done (skin, tabards, cloaks, and cloak details) with just the leather left before the massive detailing begins. These models have tons and tons of little things all over them; my goal is to finish the leather in the next few days and then do the detailing on one or two a night. Even though these photos don't show it, the highlighting on their cloaks looks really good. I took my time and paid attention to where the highlights should go and at the end I was really happy with how it came out.

After a good evening drinking with Jason (his last night in Boston - sad!) Laura and I woke up early on Saturday morning to build bookshelves.

Lumber arrives by night.

Framed.

Assembling the shelves.

Done!

Action shot!

This was a ton of fun and a great way to spend most of a Saturday. I learned a lot about making things like this (measure everything, don't assume anything) and when I get the lumber for for the smaller shelf I'm pretty sure I won't have any of the problems we had with the first two.

The top shelf there are miscellaneous unpainted models, including some Vostroyans, Chaos Marines, and a fair amount of Khador minis from Warmachine. Below that is 1000 - 1500 points of Space Marines that will be my project after the Wood Elves get done. Under them, barely visible, is about 1700 points of Wood Elves.

My running took a pretty big down-turn this weekend. Lisa and I embarked on what was supposed to be a 17 mile run down and back up Heartbreak Hill, but we both ended up walking the final three miles to our respective houses. My legs felt terrible the whole 8.5 miles out and while they felt a little better on the trek up Heartbreak (weird) by the time we got to the top I was totally spent.

I don't really know what's been going on with my running. I'm going to try to start paying more attention to my diet and being more rigorous sticking to my schedule but I'm not really convinced that either of those things are the culprit.

Spoony and I are going out to Framingham tonight to get some fish for my tank. If all goes well I'll come home tonight with a small school of Neons and possibly some Corys.

I've been doing some research into Space Marine painting as I get closer to being done with my elves. After looking at a bunch of forums and blogs, I think I've identified the style of marine I'm looking for - bold and clean highlights on top of a clean basecoat. I have a few examples below, none of which were painted by me. You can get a better sense of the paint job if you click on the images to see larger versions.

painted by static grass

painted by rev

painted by lemfresh

painted by Cyric the Mad

painted by From the Warp



painted by kkoene


painted by spikyjames


painted by lone pilgrim

The last guy is the final step in a really great highlighting tutorial from From the Warp. The colors aren't the same, but the principles apply and I'm going to use this to paint up my third Crimson Fist test model. I've done a few tests already (here), and while they are in the spirit of my vision, they are also messy and unrefined. I think this tutorial will help me get them more in line with what I'm looking for. I've also found this article from Tau Online that gives a very detailed description of how to highlight marines.

Laura and I went climbing last night and it was a pretty big disaster for me. My technique is still around by all of my forearm and hand strength is out the window. Laura got to the top of an 11b, which is a pretty big deal considering she'd never gone up anything harder than a 10c before. She looked really good doing it to, probably a lot better than I did.

My running has been a huge roller coaster lately. Some days (like Wendesday) I can't finish a run because I have horrible stomach problems. Other days (like yesterday) I can crush a four mile run with 6:30 miles. I'm planning to skip another 4 miler I had planned for today and to start being more conscious of what I eat and when on days with runs scheduled. I hope this will get me back on track to healthy, stomach problem free runs. I am also planning on shifting my training away from the schedule I've been on since December (rest, short, medium, short, rest, medium, long) to a new plan that Culla reccomends. The new plan calls for three key workouts a week (tempo, long, and track) plus two other days of easier miles. This is really new stuff for me, and really intimidating, but he thinks it will help push me to the 3:10 time I need to qualify for Boston.

I am pretty sure that my fish tank is fully cycled, so hopefully I can get it stocked with some Neon Tetras soon. I found out recently that I had bought a 10 gallon tank (and not a 5 gallon like I had assumed), which means that I can put a few other fish in there. Currently I'm thinking about a school of Pygmy Corydoras, but I'm not sure how available they around here. Hopefuly when I get to the store I can take a look at what they have and make some decisions based on that.

Wow, lots of links!

Laura is all better.

Total number of runs: 53
Total number of miles: 322.05
Total time: 44 hours, 18 minutes, 02 seconds

The 17 miles last Sunday were tough. I felt pretty good for the first 75% or so, but eventually the lack of sleep and poor eating from the week before caught up to me and I struggled on the way home. However, I slept well over the weekend and have been eating much better, so the three runs during this week all went very well. Lisa and I are tackling 18 miles this weekend and I'm feeling a lot better about it than I was about the 17 last weekend.

I finished painting my Dryads last week. One of the units I painted to look like birch trees, and I think they came out really well. I have a unit of 10 Glade Guard, a unit of 7 Wardancers, and a Spellsinger assembled and based, but the weather has been brutally cold this past week so they haven't received primer yet.

Brown - I really like the skeleton in this unit.

Birch Trees.

About 850 points of Wood Elves.

I finally got around to working on my fish tank this past week. Through the wonders of the internet I ordered a bunch of silk plants, some driftwood pieces, and black gravel. The results of a few hours of moving plants and stacking gravel to get the wood to sink res

Everything looks a lot more yellow than it really is.

When I get back from California I am going to have Spoony drive me to a fish store so I can buy some neon tetras. My hope is that the black and bright green of the tank will help set off the reds and blues of the fish.

I've been playing a lot of e-mail chess with Joel this week (he's currently 3-0, with a likely 4th victory on the horizon). He's pretty good, although I'm bad enough to not know the difference. However, I'm very interested in learning how to play better. I ordered a book on Joel's recommendation that should arrive next week sometime.

I took my new jacket out for a test run (ha!) yesterday. It kept my torso phenomenally warm, but I forgot my gloves and my hands suffered. The ventilation zippers on the sides worked really well and I would fiddle with them to help regulate the temperature. I wasn't thrilled with how the Ipod pocket worked out; the Ipod bounced around and caused the left side of the jacket to rise and fall as I ran. It wasn't terrible but I was hoping for something a bit more stable. I might look into an arm holder for it, but I'm also not sold on the idea of running with an Ipod at all, so who knows.

I am not going to meet my 200 point target for this month. I've been distracted with video games and other things and couldn't get my Glade Riders and Noble painted. Not a huge deal, but I am a bit surprised that I couldn't get six models and six horses painted in a month when I managed to paint 18 models last month.

My two landspeeders arrived, and I have two Dreadnoughts in the mail which means that I legitimately have a 1500 point army in various stages of completion. I haven't played anything larger than 500 points with it (and nothing larger than 1000 points with any army) but I am excited to have the options. Once this gets itself assembled and painted I would like to expand it further with some terminators and an assault squad.

I think Spoony is going to drive me to the pet store tonight and hopefully they'll have a tank that I like.

Thanksgiving was a bunch of fun. I really enjoyed going home and relaxing (although I didn't sleep late on any of the days I was there) and it was nice to see some people I haven't seen in a while.

The morning of Thanksgiving I woke up early to run a 5k. Several weeks ago I had big plans for this race, but I have only been training twice a week so my expectations were lowered. I was pretty surprised to run an 18:43 (results posted here) and finish 31 out of over 1100 people. My calves were on fire for the rest of the weekend, but I was very happy with how I ran.

On Saturday night I hung out with some friends from high school and several people I would rather have never seen again. Across the street, my parents were attending a party of their own. When I discovered that my old cross country coach was there, my sister and I headed over. I had been drinking for several hours at this point and it was very weird to be surrounded by a bunch of semi-intoxicated adults in my semi-intoxicated state. Everything turned out fine and I had a lot of fun but it was a very odd experience.

While home I came across my old fish tank and I decided to get back into keeping fish. Currently I am planning to have a 10 gallon tank in my room and putting in a group of 6 Neon Tetras. I might add a single larger fish but the jury is still out on that one. I want to have a large rock or piece of wood in the center of the tank a put several plants in the corners and along the back.