This Saturday I was supposed to do a 19 mile run but around mile 15 on the way home I did something to my left foot. I don't know what happened but I had to stop running and ended up taking the train home. I skipped the 9 miles on Sunday and had Monday off, so the tempo run today will be my first test of the foot since injuring it.

It certainly feels better over the past few days but it is still tender. I'm hoping that this was just caused by my old shoes being worn out and can be fixed by just wearing my new shoes, but I honestly have no idea.

I've been plugging away at my assault squad for my Crimson Fists, but I've also started planning out what I'd like to be painting after the two armies I'm working on are complete. I've made a lot of improvements to my painting over the past year and a half just through sheer volume of work but I'd like to slow down a bit and try to refine my technique.

To that end, I'm going to spend some time painting one off miniatures and units as a way to practice and refine what I know and try out some new techniques. This may involved units from any of my three armies (Wood Elves, Crimson Fists, Khador) but will also include some character minis from a variety of places, some fantasy and 40k chaos units, and whatever else strikes my fancy. This first think I'm going to do is paint up this guy:

I was inspired to do him as a Storm Lord after seeing some really striking marines in this log over at Warseer by FearFrost. I'm excited to refine my red and get a chance to practice painting white and yellow. This will also be the first time I'll be painting over a white basecoat. After I had built his base I went ahead and painted it. I won't be painting the marine for a while though so I can keep my focus on finishing the Khador and Crimson Fists.

Yesterday was Laura's first day at her new job in the astronomy department here at BU. After work I took her out for a drink and from what she told me it sounds like a really great environment to be in. The people seem to be very friendly and the work will be challenging but not overly so. I'm really glad she has a job because being unemployed was really starting to wear her down.

A month or two ago I won a contest on librarium online for a tutorial that I wrote on how to paint faces. My prize was 25 bucks and yesterday I used it to buy some new records.

Distractions by The Loved Ones - This is a 6 song EP that has three new songs and three covers. I've heard one of the original songs and really enjoyed it and I'm a big fan of their previous two albums and one EP so I figured this would be a good purchase.

We Are Still Alive by Latterman - This is the last album by the band and while it isn't my favorite one - their sophomore album No Matter Where We Go..! is phenomenal - it is still a great record.

S/T by Chris Wollard and The Ship Thieves - I hadn't heard of Chris Wollard until yesterday when I listened to his album online. I had it on for most of the day at work and when I saw that it was available to buy I decided to go for it.

Yesterday I had one of the best runs since I kick started my running last December. My plan was to do a four mile tempo run at 6:56 per mile and all of that went off without a hitch. About half way into the 4th mile I realized that I was feeling fantastic, and after thinking through a conversation I'd had with Culla about working up to 5 mile tempo runs I decided to add a 5th mile. I was still feeling great after the 5th mile but decided to call it a day and not over do it.

I'm really pleased with how I felt and I'm taking it as an indicator that my training is going well. I was planning on doing another 5 mile tempo run in two weeks (next week is 6 miles of cruise intervals) and then, based on this performance, I may bump up the last three weeks to 6 or even 7 miles of tempo.

I'm also currently exploring how I can incorporate some race pace (7:32) miles into my long runs. I'm not sure how to do this since I'm usually pretty exhausted after maintaining the 8:30 pace but Culla thinks it is important and he probably knows a lot better than I do.

My Hold Steady record finally arrived in the mail yesterday. After I ate and showered from my run I put it on before bed and it was an incredible experience. Right from the opening guitar and keyboard chords of 'Stuck Between Stations' I was totally hooked on this record. I'll probably give it another listen tonight with Laura after dinner.

I had Monday off and Laura, Kev, and I went to Metro for a little climbing. I had two good climbs on a 10d and an 11a, and based on those two I decided to go for an 11c. That turned into a pretty big disaster and so did the 11d I tried after that, but it was fun to get on them and I'm happy with the past two climbing performances I've had. We're going to go back on Friday but I'll probably take it easy since I have my long run this weekend on Saturday.

I've finished off my Crimson Fist Captain and I'm pretty happy with how he turned out. I tried out some washing techniques on his cloak, a new method for doing power swords, and some free hand on one of his shoulder pads. All of it turned out well for a first attempt and I think I can do better with practice.

Crimson Fists Captain


right side showing the freehand 5



back showing the shading on the cloak



power sword



a top down view of the sword

I also finished off the sergeant for my assault squad. I did a little freehand on him as well and got to see how the pouches and grenade bits look.

shoulder pad pouches



freehand 5 and some more pouches and grenades

Thus far in 2009 I've painted 7 Warmachine models and 2 Crimson Fist models, which gives me a score of 9 thus far (one point for each infantry model). I've got another 9 infantry models and 2 tanks to complete for the Tale of Painters projects I'm doing and then I'll move on to the pile of single mini's on my shelf.

Finally, I read this OpEd piece this morning in the New York times about how the Muslim community in India is refusing to allow the nine bodies of the Pakistani terrorists involved in the Mumbai shootings to be burried in a Muslim cemetary in Inida.

At the beginning of January I had 75 dollars in my new model fund. I spent 51.13 on some models (Greylords, Koldun Lord, and Kodiak), 9.00 on three Games Workshop washes, and 24.69 on some paintbrushes and a pallet for a total of 84.82. That left my fund at -9.82 for January which is clearly over my limit.

I'm going to add another 25 bucks in (since I couldn't stick to budget I'm going to cut the monthly allocation in half) for February, which puts the fund at 15.18.

New Model Fund (February): $15.18

Since I have enough models to get both my Marines and Khador forces through the Tale of Painters I'm not sure what my next step will be. I also have a bunch of models sitting around my shelves that I need to paint so I may put a hold on purchasing any more models for a while.

I've seen a few articles recently about priming with gesso that have been of interst to me due to the difficulties of using spray primer in the Boston winter. Essentially it is a brush on primer that doesn't obscure details on models and can be used indoors (unlike spray cans). It might be a moot point for this winter but it is something to look in to.

The 17 miles this weekend didn't go as well as the 16 last weekend. Lisa and I ended up averaging about 8:55 per mile. I didn't feel sluggish or bad - in fact, I felt almost the same as last Sunday. This week is a down week so hopefully the break will be good for my legs before I ramp up into the 19 and 20 mile runs coming up.

On Friday Laura, Kevin, and I trekked out to Metro for an evening of climbing. I surprised myself and got up three 11b's. None of them were clean but most of the time I felt that the reasons I came off had a lot more to do with my strength and less to do with my skills. I am encouraged by that because it means that if I can get my strength back I should be a solid 11 climber. We're probably going to head back this coming Monday since we all have off from work.

I received my birthday present from Spoony the other day and it was The 59 Sound by the Gaslight Anthem on vinyl. My copy of Something to Write Home About by The Get Up Kids also arrived in the mail last week. Both records sound very good on my stereo and I had an excellent time playing them, dancing around, and playing air guitar.

I decided to major in computer science based on my experiences programming in high school. At the time I was writing pretty simple, low level programs designed to do small tasks to illustrate whatever we were learning about. When I got to college and started looking at the theory and math behind the code, or was faced with gigantic programs (or my peers) I quickly became uninterested. I still really enjoyed writing little code snippets but since that isn't actually what being a computer scientist is I wasn't very into it.

Recently though, I stumbled across this blog post by the guy who writes xkcd about how he learned Python by doing a series of math problems from Project Euler. These problems are exactly what I enjoyed about coding in the first place, and they're math problems. I enlisted the help of my friend Kevin and we've been working through the first few. Right now I'm attempting to calculate the sum of all prime numbers less than 2,000,000 - the fact that my program has been working for almost 25 minutes tells me that I've done something poorly.

These things have thus far been very entertaining and getting more difficult so with 230 or so problems for me to do (I've done nine so far) I imagine I'll have plenty to keep me amused.

Since I inherited my father's record player I've decided to start a record collection. Laura got me started on my birthday with Tom Waits' album Blood Money and I ordered Something to Write Home About by The Get Up Kids, Boys & Girls in America by The Hold Steady, and Reconstruction Site by The Weakerthans.

I've thus far only received the Weakerthans record but I've had a lot of fun playing it and Blood Money. Something about the physical aspect of playing the record makes listening to the music a lot more pleasureable. The Hold Steady is in the mail from England and The Get Up Kids isn't relased until the 17th. I've also heard from Spoony that he bought me a record for my birthday that is in the mail but I have no idea what it is.

Friday night I went to the Pour House with 10 ish friends to celebrate my birthday. I like the Pour House because the music is loud and enjoyable (i.e. cheesy 80's and 90's hits) and the beer is big and cheap. Even though we ended the night early I had a really good time and was happy to see everyone.

Sunday morning Lisa and I did a 16 mile run to the bottom of Heartbreak and back to my house. Neither one of us felt very good for the first 8 miles but once we turned around and started back up the hill we both began to feel a lot stronger. By the time we were at the top of Heartbreak I was feeling great and we ended up running the last four miles faster than the previous 12. This run gave me a lot of confidence that my training has thus far been going very well.

I've spent most of the past week battling a pretty severe cold. I stayed home from work on Wednesday and Friday and didn't do my Wednesday and Thursday runs in an effort to get well as quickly as possible.

This is week 7 of my marathon training and it is the first week of phase two. This is where I start adding tempo runs and track work to my schedule in place of the Tuesday and Thursday shorter runs. I'm starting off with a 20 minute tempo run tomorrow at 6:51 pace and 5 x 1000m at 3:55 on Thursday. There is also a 16 mile run on Sunday that will hopefully go well.

I turned 25 today. Laura took me to see Slumdog Millionaire (awesome!) and then for Ethipoian at Addis Red Sea (delicious!). She gave me a lovely cowboy shirt and a Tom Waits record as well so my quarter century celebrations have thus far been very good. I'm going out to a bar for some drinks on Friday night with several people which will conclude the festivities.

I haven't been painting much of anything lately since I ran out of primed models and it's been too cold to spray outside. I did finish the Widowmakers last week.

I wasn't happy with their faces and I rushed some details as the end to get them done and off my painting table but overall I was happy with how they came out.

John Smoltz is on the Red Sox! Super exciting.

I decided to go back to my Man-O-War DC and make the ice mauls a bit icier looking. I can't tell if I'm happy with the effect or not but I think the models look better overall.

I've also started working on my Widowmakers. I'm mostly done with the easy, flat parts but their faces are starting to worry me. I've had a lot of success lately painting faces but the most recent attempt didn't go very well and I'm nervous about the four of these.

Widowmakers WIP

My Khador reinforcements arrived from ebay the other day. The Greylord Ternion and Koldun Lord will find themselves painted in the next month or two but the Kodiak will probably sit on my shelf for a while longer.

I also recently discovered that all of my old, horribly painted Ultramarines can be easily given a new life as Crimson Fists. When I was painting them I would paint each piece individually and then glue them together. Since the glue was paint on paint it is really weak and I can separate the pieces really easily. Right now I have an assault squad broken up and I'm going to buy some Simple Green to try stripping the paint.

My new (old) stereo arrived in the mail yesterday.

Everything seems to be in good working order and I'm totally enamored over everything being analog instead of digital. Initially I thought the record player or the receiver weren't working but my dad helped me to figure out the problem. I ended up ordering a preamp to help boost the output from the record player - not a huge problem at all and even now I can use everything.

Laura has been knitting like a machine. She recently finished two toys, one for me and one for her brother's friends' little kids. The beige, fat, dog is mine and the blue one is for the kids. She's currently working on some owls and I hear they're adorable.

Lisa and I had a pretty good 13 mile run this past weekend. Our overall pace was a little slow (8:45 per mile) but that's because we had a horrible first half due to ice being on all of the sidewalks. The second half we both felt great and kept up a very good clip. The weather is supposed to take a huge dip in temperature over the next few days and I'm worried about how our 14 miler this weekend will go.

It's been a while since I updated this thing. Between Christmas, New Years, vacation, and general craziness I wasn't able to find much time to keep this thing up to date over the past few weeks.

Christmas was a very good time for me. I was pretty unhappy with my job and the time in New Jersey was good for me. I enjoy my family more and more every time I see them and this was no exception. Laura came up for a night and despite her not feeling well I think everyone had a good time. My parents were also up in Boston this past weekend to drop Britta off at the airport (she's spending three weeks in Spain) so we got to hang out some more which I really enjoyed.

My father gave me his old turntable. I don't have any stereo equipment to power it so I bought this gorgeous, retro receiver and speakers from ebay:

The whole thing cost me under 40 bucks (13 for the system, 25 to ship, 38 total) and I should have it by the end of next week. Once I have everything working I am going to start collecting vinyl.

After Christmas I came back up to Boston to see my many friends who were visiting from across the country. Jen Han and her fiance Grant were in town for a few nights for wedding planning and we got dinner at the Alchemist and then drinks at the Behan. I haven't seen Jen since right when Laura and I started dating and I was really excited to catch up with her after so long. Mike D'Emic was at Harvard doing some research for his thesis and a bunch of us got to go to Our House for some Brubakers and good times that hearkened back to when we were all in college. He's doing well and will probably be around again for reserach. Spoony was also in town for the whole week and we had several chances to play little men, grab dinner, and hang out on New Year's.

My New Year's resolution for this year was to try to be more invested in my job. Recently I've been pretty unhappy with my work situation and that negative attitude made it hard for me to be there. I'd like to try to be more positive at work and really try to find ways to occupy myself with job related tasks instead of moping around the internet all day. Two days in and thus far I've been pretty successful. I'm not 100% about any of this but I've managed to keep myself happily busy and productive since returning to the office and I will say that I've been happier here as a result.

Speaking of jobs, Laura has had two interviews this far (one at Tufts and one at Suffolk) that have gone well. She hasn't heard from either one yet but I know she's expecting to get word from Suffolk in the next several days. I e-mailed a woman from MassBay Community College this afternoon about sitting down and talking about teaching math at the community college level. I still do want to teach and I think this might be a better alternative than high school.

Today marks the first run of my 4th week training for Boston. The first three weeks were a rollercoaster of snow storms, missed runs, and reshuffling. Despite all that I managed to get in every run except one 4 miler which I think I will just let slide. I'm glad to be back on schedule though and hope to be able to keep a more even keel for the rest of training. I am still working on nailing down how 8:30 pace feels but I've been doing a lot better than when I started.

My first run for Boston '09 went really well. It was only four miles but I was happy with the consistent pace I kept and how I felt at the end. I was supposed to run 6 miles yesterday but that got scrapped due to A Very Die Hard Christmas, and today's 4 miler is going to get missed because Laura and I are going to the ballet. I'll make up the 6 miles tomorrow and the 4 miles on Monday. Not the best way to start off a training program but it can't be helped.

I finished off the first three Terminators the other day. It took me about two weeks to work my way through them which is a lot longer than I would have liked. For some reason I just wasn't very excited about painting and I couldn't do more than little bits on them before I'd get bored.

They're a little sloppy but I'm glad that they're finally done. I might have my first game with this army (and first 5th edition game ever) on Sunday afternoon. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to try to get the rest of this squad painted by then or not.

Last night was the annual Christmas party at my house. We started a tradition last year where a bunch of us get together for dinner, beer, and Die Hard. I'm a big fan of the movie and since I organized the party, I cooked. Laura helped me make two lasagnas and a big salad and she brought cookies. I think overall it was a rousing success - at least I know I had a good time.

Marathon training starts up in eight days. I've been working on nailing down 8:30 mile pace the past few days (it is the pace I'll be running my long and recovery runs at so I'd better know it) and I'm cautiously optimistic that I'll have it before next week. I've been doing 4 mile runs that include the big hill that my house is on to get practice on downhills, uphills, and flats.

Right now I think I have the first six weeks of training tentatively planned out, as well as the final three weeks. Those middle nine are giving me trouble. Every time I read something new it seems to contradict what I have previously learned so I think I'm going to hold off scheduling those middle weeks until I know more about what I should be doing. Lisa and I are going to run and get sushi on Wednesday to talk about it and I'll go from there.

I finished Sorscha last week so I have a legal army. I think she turned out really well and I was really happy with her face. I should have painted her eyes first because once the skin was done I was scared that I would ruin it if I tried to paint the eyes.

the face that I'm so proud of

the whole battle box done

I've started work on a squad of Terminators for my Crimson Fists and they should be done before I leave for Christmas.

Laura, Britta, and I went to a cool artisan fair yesterday downtown. Britta and I bought some stuff for our parents and Laura and Britta both bought a lot of jewelry for themselves and friends. There was a lot of cool stuff there and we met up with Lauren for a fun time all around.

Thanksgiving was a good time and I find myself enjoying being home more and more every time I go. Britta, Dad, and I ran a 5k in the morning and it was gorgeous. I ran something around 18:45 and felt pretty good doing it. Dad and I then spend the day (and night) tearing up carpet on the first floor to allow a man to come in and assess our house for wood floors.

Mom's dinner was delicious as always. We had a big turkey, really good stuffing, mashed potatoes, green beans, and yams of some sort. There was also cheese cake and pecan pie to help send us off to bed happy.

Britta and I saw Grandma briefly on Saturday afternoon before continuing on to Penn Station and our train. She doesn't remember either of us and the whole time we were in her house I was very uncomfortable and upset with the whole situation.

I've been doing a ton of research lately into marathon training. I've set a goal for myself of a 3:20:00 marathon at Boston this year. I read a good article from Culla and I bought a book he recommended. The more I read and learn the less clear the picture becomes for me; there is so much that goes into a good training plan. It is becoming very clear to me why coaches exist.

Before the holiday I finished the last three models for my second tactical squad. I'm having problems with my Blood Red being terrible so the red parts on the model are not very good. I like the melta gunners though.

multi melta, sergeant with a power fist, melta gun

second squad completed

That now makes two full tactical squads painted, which represents a big share of my 1000 point list taken care of. I think the next squad I'll do for this army will be five terminators, but right now I'm working on Sorcsha for my Khador army.

I didn't purchase anything little men related last month, which means my fund loses half of that unspent money (50 dollars) and picks up another 50 dollars for the month of December.

New Model Fund - $75

Model List -
Khador Greylord Ternion (to finish off 500 points)
Khador Koldun Lord (to finish off 500 points)
Khador Kodiak (to finish off 500 points better)
Space Marine Assault Squad (because it is cheaper than just buying the bits I need)
Space Marine Sternguard Squad (because the models are gorgeous)
paints and brushes (Baal Red, Devlan Mud, Badab Black, Thraka Green, Orkhide Shade, a 00, 0, and large tank brush, Testors Dull Coat)

There are also several more Space Marine purchases I'd like to make, including a Drop Pod and Vindicator, but I'm going to hold them off the list. Everything currently on the list (except the Sternguard) are for my Tale of Painters projects.

Laura's birthday is today. We're going to see Quantum of Solace tonight and last night we went to Zon's for a delicious birthday dinner. Saturday is her party thing at the Pour House. Thus far she's enjoyed the dinner and the present I gave her and I anticipate her having a good weekend as well.

The weather has taken a rather intense drop in temperature. This morning I rode to work in 27 degree weather and had to spend time at work thawing out. My run yesterday wasn't as fast as I had hoped because my legs couldn't warm up. I know it was colder last year when Lisa and I would run in December and January but I'm just not used to it yet.

Last night I finished the Destroyer for my Khador army. I got some really good feedback on Librarium Online regarding battle damage, highlighting, and shading that I feel really helped me improve this model over the Juggernaut.

After some experiments with the blue to white gradient as a background I've decided to stop using it. It was creating a lot of glare on the models and washing out their colors to the point that they all looked like flat, neon messes. The pictures above were taken without and background at all and I think they really show what the model looks like so I may just stick with that.

For reference, this is what he looks like with the gradient.

This isn't a terrible picture but if you compare it to the ones above you can clearly see how washed out the model is; the highlights disappear and the colors are a lot brighter than they are in reality.

Oh, and if you haven't seen the puppies you need to take a look.

The other day Laura asked me some question about how much my little men hobby costs. A while ago I started tracking my expenditures in a speadsheet so I looked up how much I've spent this year on little men and I was surprised to see that I had spent almost 1000 dollars this year on models, paint, and related supplies. Even though this hobby is expensive I think that's a bit too much money for me to be spending right now on things like that. I know that a lot of those purchases were not essential (not that any of this is essential, but within the context of the hobby for me) and that I could probably cut down without too much difficulty.

With that in mind I've decided to start making prioritized lists of the models I want to purchase and limit my spending. My plan is to budget no more than 50 dollars a month to spend on all aspects of the hobby. Every month 50 dollars will be put into my New Model Fund (I stole this name and most of this idea from lone pilgrim). At the end of each month I will bank half of the unused 50 dollars in the fund and lose the rest. This sets a maximum expenditure of 600 dollars for the year and leaves the door open for me to spend less.

The second part of this plan is to maintain a list of models that I want to purchase and try to rank them in order of importance to me. I think this will help me stop compulsively buying cool looking models and just keeping them in boxes on my shelf.

I'm going to start this retroactively to the first of the month, so the standings are:

New Model Fund - $50

Model List -
Khador Greylord Ternion (needed to round out my 350 point list)
a few Space Marine bits (jump packs, running legs)
Space Marine Sternguard Squad (because they're awesome)
Khador Kodiak (needed to round out my 500 point list)
Khador Koldun Lord (needed to round out my 500 point list)
paints and brushes (Baal Red, Devlan Mud, a 00, 0, and large tank brush, Testors Dull Coat)

Obviously things like shipping costs will probably dictate that I buy things out of order here (i.e. if I buy the Greylords I'll probably get the rest of the Warmachine models to save money on shipping) but I think this is going to help keep me on track.

I ran a 5k yesterday and did pretty well. The course was pretty bad (there were no mile markers, there were a lot of sharp turns on slick, uneven pavement) but I managed to finish 8th out of 250ish and get an 18:19. Given that I've only run five times since the marathon I'm pretty happy with my performance. I think that with a little effort I can hit my goal of a sub 18 on Thanksgiving.

After the race Laura and I went to a diner with the rest of the team and had huge heart-attack breakfasts.

Last night was the Drive-By Truckers and The Hold Steady show. Overall the show was fantastic. DBT were engaging and their three guitar assault was loud and rocking. There were some issues with the vocals that made the singer hard to hear and their fans were kind of obnoxious but none of that detracted much from their performance.

I went to the show to see The Hold Steady and they didn't dissapoint. They came out and played most of their usual live show fare with a few new songs (new to their live show) that really made the show for me - Chill Out Tent, First Night, Two Handed Handshake, and Killer Parties. The lead singer from DBT came out to sing the male part of Chill Out Tent and did alright, but when their female bassist took on the female part she sounded more like a cat than the Dolly Parton she was doing earlier. It was a shame that the vocals really let that song down but it was a real treat to hear the band play it. Other than a few songs from the new album that they tried to force their setlist was tight and very entertaining.

I voted this morning! After waiting for about 45 minutes I was given a scantron (not nearly as exciting as I wanted it to be) and a marker. I marked my Obama circle, had my name checked off a list, and fed my sheet into a machine. This was way more exciting than voting absentee (which I did four years ago) and I've been pretty amped about the whole thing since last night. Laura and I are planning to stay up to watch the election coverage because I doubt I could go to sleep without knowing the outcome.

My Crimson Fists did their civic duty and voted last night as well.

third man from the right is getting his vote on

Thankfully these guys are the last bolter marines I have planned for the foreeable future in this army. That's a good thing because I'm already getting tired of painting power armour. Once these two tactical squads are done I'll start painting some Terminators or Scouts for some diversity.

I've been running a little bit since the marathon but not too much. I am signed up for a 5k this weekend in Allston somewhere and that should be a good time.

Gobama!

Lisa and I survived our marathon this past weekend but just barely. We were cruising though the first 20 or 21 miles and we were on pace to finish about 4.5 minutes under my previous marathon PR of 3:35:12 when Lisa rolled her ankle pretty badly. I wasn't about to let her miss qualifying for Boston so we started alternating running and walking. I kept a close watch on the time and we finished officially at 3:39:03 to get Lisa her sub 3:40:00.

Prior to that incident her and I were flying along. We got a slow start trying to navigate all the people but we settled into something between an 8:05 and 8:10 pace all the way until mile 20. We had a few miles under 8:00 and a few over 8:20 but mostly we were feeling really good and steady. The course was very flat and scenic which helped to offset the lack of hundreds of thousands of fans and other runners. The biggest challenge for me was mental. Towards the end (even before Lisa rolled her ankle) the miles seemed to stretch out and it felt like ages between each mile marker sign. My cardio held up fine just like in Boston and I had some stiffening of my quads again but this was significantly less since there was no three mile hill to climb.

Overall the course was a lot of fun and I would have absolutely set a PR if I hadn't hung back to get Lisa across the line. However, I'm really happy with how the race ended and I'm really proud of Lisa for qualifying despite her injury.

mile	split	total
1	miss
2	17:51	17:51
3	8:18	26:09
4	8:13	34:23
5	8:08	42:31
6	8:10	50:42
7	8:22	59:05
8	8:08	1:07:13
9	8:11	1:15:24
10	8:20	1:23:45
11	7:46	1:31:32
12	8:06	1:39:38
13	8:19	1:47:57
14	7:52	1:55:50
15	7:56	2:03:46
16	8:04	2:11:51
17	8:09	2:20:01
18	8:05	2:28:06
19	8:06	2:36:13
20	8:11	2:44:24
21	8:21	2:52:45
22	8:27	3:01:12
23	9:21	3:10:34
24	9:45	3:20:20
25	8:27	3:28:48
26	8:35	3:37:23
finish	1:42	3:39:05

I started training for this during the second week in June and ended up covering 549.3 miles over the course of 18 weeks in training and the race itself. At one point during the training I missed out on a 50 mile week entirely and I spent a few weeks battling stomach problems that caused me to cut some runs short. Given all that, and the fact that I trained about 575 miles for the first marathon I am really happy with my performance here. I'm going to be running Boston in April again and I have some ideas to radically change up my training.

I took Monday off to relax and recover from the race and used to it finish off my next 5 Space Marines.

newest 5

all 10 that I've finished

I'm happy with how these guys are turning out. They're currently missing decals on their shoulder pads because I haven't figured out a good way to apply them. There is a good tutorial that I found online that I need to try out before I go wasting the decals that I need.

After rallying to tie the series 3-3, the Red Sox lost to the Rays on Sunday. It was a bummer but I'm glad they fought back and didn't roll over and give it to the Rays.

mile 13


finish!

I spent several hours this weekend painting a Khador Juggernaut and this is the result (photographed poorly - they don't show the highlights that do exist however faint):

I had a lot of trouble conceptually highlighting the huge red armour plates. My typical strategy of line highlighting was pretty useless on the vast, flat expanses that needed to be highlighted. I went for what I thought would be natural highlights but I'm not satisfied. I don't think I executed my plan correctly and I don't think I have enough contrast for the highlights to be visible. The Warmachine rulebook has some good reference pictures and I'm going to try to use them to touch up this guy. I'm also thinking of trying to paint on some battle damage, but I'd like to get the highlights correct first.

I decided to enter a second army into the Tale of Painters on Librarium Online. In addition to my 1000 points of Crimson Fists I will be working on 500 points of Khador. The Juggernaut represents 100 points done already so my first month's submission is already take care of. Once I get those next 5 tacitcal marines done I'll have my Fists sumbission done for the month also so I think I'm in pretty good shape to take care of both.

Once these two projects are done I am thinking of doing some Cygnar models. The two that have really caught my eye are Coleman Stryker and the Journeyman Warcaster.

Coleman Stryker (image from Privateer Press)

Journeyman Warcaster (image from Privateer Press)

Khador has a feeling of steampunk Russion, and Cygnar has a knightly feel to them. I also really like the vibrant blue color of their armour.

My next marathon is coming up on Sunday. I think if I can run a 3:40 and help Lisa to qualify that I'll be happy. Somehow I managed to get a blood blister on one of my big toes; hopefully that won't be too much of a pain in the ass.

Spoony was in town this weekend for regionals. It was really good to see him. Since I had Monday off (hooray Chris Columbus!) Laura and I got brunch at the Center Street Cafe. It was really good and a lot of fun. Even though we've been dating for over two years now I still like going on dates with Laura.

The Red Sox have dropped two straight to fall behind 1-2 against the Rays. Hopefully they can pick it up tonight and bring it back to even.

I managed to assemble the next 5 marines while watching the Red Sox beat the Angles but I've been pretty busy lately and haven't had time to clean or prime them. I tried some more dynamic poses with these 5 - some of them worked and others not so much.

My taper jitters have come back. The runs that I'm doing as part of the taper have not been enough to eat up all the energy I have so I've been a little jumpy the past few days. My two runs this week have thus far been pretty good and I'm anticipating another good one this evening.

I watched the most recent debate and was generally unimpressed with both candidates. Neither one would answer a question directly and they just rehashed the same points from the previous debate. I think Obama won, but only because McCain lost worse.

While we're on the subject, I've been reading some more interesting articles about McCain and Palin. I'll be the first to admit my liberal bias, but I think it's worth giving these articles a read anyway.

A few weeks ago I sumbitted my Massachusetts voter registration paperwork and as the deadline approaches, I've been checking cityofboston.gov to see if they have processed my paperwork. They hadn't as of a few days ago so I e-mailed them but got no response. Since it is important to me that I be able to vote I called City Hall and asked about it. They told me I am registered to vote (hooray!) and that the online database isn't updated as regularly as their databases are.

Some photos from the 5k this past weekend:

My first Crimson Fist squad is done!

The three in front are the product of last week's work, and the two in back are a few months old. Those two I'm not really excited about and if I were to strip some models one day, those would be the first two I'd try.

I'm going to be building another 5 bolter marines tonight (hopefully) in an effort to knock off the boring guys first. Those 10 guys will be my first Tale of Painters II submission from the painting event going on at Librarium Online. This first ToP was the reason I finished up my Wood Elves and in six months I'm hoping it nets me 1000 points of marines.

Lisa and I ran a 5k this weekend in Somerville with some friends. I was hoping to go sub 18 and get a PR but apparently all this marathon training has blunted my speed a bit and I finished in 18:49. I'm still really happy with how I performed and I know that with a little speed work I could crush the 18 minute mark, seeing as I wasn't breathing hard at the end of this race at all.

We also did a 12 mile run this Sunday at 8:47 pace. This is also not as fast as I would have liked it to be but again I'm happy with it. After some rather poor showings on the previous weeks' long runs I was happy to get a quality run in before the marathon.

Friday after work Laura and I saw Burn After Reading. It was very well acted and the dialouge was clever and funny, but I wasn't totally sold on the movie. The plot was pretty complex and I had to focus on what was going on. This would have been fine if they had built it up to some huge climax at the end, but when the movie ended I felt let down.

I cooked burgers last night for Laura and I. Laura wasn't confident in her ability to eat a whole burger (a justifiable concern) so I made her two sliders. Early reports were positive and I haven't heard any terror stories about her body rejecting them, so I think she probably liked them.

I've finally gotten started on my Crimson Fists. I have the two test models I did a few months ago and last night I painted up a third bolter marine. From a technical standpoint I am very very happy with how he turned out. I gave him a really smooth base coat of Regal Blue and then two highlights. The first one was a 60/40 or even 70/30 mix of Regal Blue / Ultramarines Blue that was pretty watered down. I used this in pretty broad strokes as a bridge between the basecoat and the second highlight, which very thin lines of straight Ultramarines Blue.

Looking at the model up close I was really proud how how I had executed the highlighting, but from arms length almost all of them dissapeared. Obviously that's the opposite of how I wanted the highlights to work and I'm not sure what went wrong. I went ahead and finished the model with the hope that addine the reds, metallics, and whites would help the overall effect pop. To a small extent they did but not as much as I wanted.

I'm not really sure how to fix this but I'll keep experimenting.

Last week was the last up week of my marathon training and it was capped off with the last 20 miler in the schedule. Sunday was a very rainy, cool day and I think that contributed to the pretty poor showing both Lisa and I had during the run. Neither one of us had much pop in our legs from the get-go and come mile 10ish we were both feeling pretty bad. Around Kenmore Square we both decided to slog through to the bottom of my hill and then walk up.

I'm sure the rain played a role in our poor showing but I'm not willing to give it all the credit. Neither one of the 20 milers I've done this training cycle have gone particularly well, and both times (and other times through this training) I've felt that my legs just didn't have and life in them. I don't know if this is because they're reacting poorly to the increase in mileage or if they're not recovering adequately or if the problem is something else. I hope that the three weeks of tapering gives them enough time to rest and be fresh for the race.

Other people however, don't seem to be having my problems. Haile Gebrselassie, the world record holder in the marathon, shaved 27 seconds off his previous record time to finish the Berlin marathon in 2:03:59 and become the first person to ever run a marathon under two hours and four minutes. And he's 35 years old! I think it's only a matter of a few years before someone knocks off those last few minutes and we're looking at a marathon run in under two hours.

Steve and I had a long conversation yesterday about the financial crisis currently going on. I was pretty uninformed about it and when I tried to get informed, most of the articles I was reading were assuming that I already knew what was going on. I think I have a handle on the general ideas now and I'll admit to being a little nervous about what's going to happen. My dad sent me an article a few days ago that talked about the bailout plan that was ultimately shot down.

This Thursday is the Vice-Presidential debate. I am planning on racing home after teaching on Thursday to watch it and see how Sarah Palin holds up. I am pretty scared of the prospect of her becoming the VP after watching her handle herself in this interviw with Katie Couric. Thus far she's been almost completely hidden from the national media and most every time she has spoken it's been pretty scripted. She tried standing on her feet for that interview and failed miserably, so I wonder how she's going to make up for that during the debate. The evidence against her keeps growing and I think Thursday will be a very telling moment.

A few weeks ago my parents came up to visit and brought my old Play Station. Yesterday my copy of Final Fantasy VII arrived in the mail and I'm really excited to play it. I remember the huge hype and excitement when I was in 7th or 8th grade and it came out and how even now it is hailed as one of the greatest RPGs ever made. Unfortunatley I never got a chance to play much of the game (or Final Fantasy IIX or IX) so I'm excited, as a fan of the RPG genre, to finally get to play it through.

After teaching last Thursday I finally got on the wall and climbed for the first time in what feels like months. It didn't go very well. I still remember how to make all the motions but I don't have any of my arm, core, or hand strength. I've certianly done this before with climbing but it doesn't get any less frustrating.

Last Monday Laura was doored by a woman in Brookline Village. She ended up getting away with just a broken elbow but the whole experience was terrifying. The two of us spend some painful hours in an ER where we got jerked around by the doctors. The next day I called Jenn because I had no idea what to do, and she reccomeneded a doctor at Boston Medical. We went and he was great, and since then Laura has been doing a lot better. Her elbow still hurts a lot, but the swelling has gone down a lot and her range of motion has improved as well.

She has another appointment next week where hopefully we'll learn that everything is healing well and that there are no more problems.

This past weekend I crushed my 12 mile run. I know that the middle six miles I was cruising really hard both down and up Heartbreak, and I know that the last three miles were a bit slower because I was pretty tired. I ended up averaging 7:49 per mile, which means that I was going faster than that for the middle six. This week is the last up week before the taper and Lisa and Ia re hoping to have a more successful 20 miler than we did two weeks ago.

I've been doing my best to crank out my last Wood Elves before October 1st. Last week I had a lot of painting time while I was taking care of Laura and I managed to finish my last Waywatcher.

Waywatcher Noble

This is the noble model, but since I couldn't find 6 distinct Waywatcher sculpts I brought this guy in to finish out the squad. I'm not as happy with this guy as I was with the blonde or gray haired Waywatchers, but I think he looks good and I'm one model closer to being done.

This weekend I made a really good start on the Wildrider Noble who is the last model I need to paint. I have him broken down into three sections, main body, arms, and horse. I finished the body (the largest part) and I hope to finish the arms tonight. Once that's done it will be a single night's work to finish off the horse and then I'll be done with the elves!

I put up a few ebay auctions for some models that I won't be using, specifically a OOP Space Marine Land Speeder and some Knights of Chaos. Both auctions have watchers and one already has a bid.

I also bought some tiny rare earth magnets after reading this post over at All Thinkgs 40k to play around with magnetizing my Space Marines.

I finished up the Waywatchers this weekend.

All five



A close up that shows the hair and details.

I'm really happy with how the hair came out on these models (the two who have it anyway) as well as their dark green cloaks. The details really help bring these models to life and they look great lined up with the rest of the army. I have two more models left for this army, and about two weeks to get them done it. The end is nigh!

I made use of some of the new Games Workshop washes on these guys, which was something I hadn't done before. I really wanted to bring some definition the their faces, so I tried the Gryphonne Sepia in several different scenarios. Overall I wasn't terribly impressed, although I will probably try once more with Devlan Mud. I had a little more luck with the bone colored armour on their chests. I started with Bleached Bone and gave a pretty liberal coating of Gryphonne Sepia over it. Again, not really a rousing success but better this time. The washes really shined on the two models with hair though. The Gryphonne Sepia helped bring a lot of contrast to the blonde hair, and Asurmen Blue was a hero on the gray hair.

While I had been hoping for more success with these new washes, I had enough to warrent me going out to purchase the Devlan Mud (brown) and Badab Black (black) ones to see what they can do. I wanted to make use of them for shading on the power armour of my Crimson Fists, so we'll see what happens. I may also try some more flesh experiments with Ogryn Flesh.

I am really itching to start my Crimson Fists army. I've been pouring over pictures online of well painted marines and I keep coming back to two painters who are very inspiring to me. The first is Cyric the Mad because of the bold and bright highlights he uses. His models have a very clean look that I like and I think his style would be easy to replicate.

The other is spikyjames. His style looks a lot less bold from far away but has a very bold effect from up close. The painting techniques he uses look quite a bit more complex but the results are incredible.

My goal with the Crimson Fists is to find a good balance between these two styles.

This past week was my first 50 mile week ever; Lisa and I ran 20 miles yesterday to cap it off. The 20 miler didn't go as well as I had hoped but after skipping a week of training for the road trip and having a rough few weeks due to stomach problems I was happy to finish at all. Lisa looks to be in phenomenal shape and I'm sure she won't have any problems qualifying for Boston.