Resolution 9 - Clint Eastwood Quest - 20% Complete

The second of ten films on the Clint Eastwood BluRay Collection I watched is the oldest one of Eastwood's featured in this set with 1968's Where Eagles Dare. The first film I blogged about in this collection was Gran Torino, click here for said blog in case you missed it. I was a little trepid going into this film, mostly due to it being 45 years old and thinking it would not hold up with today's standards. Thank goodness that is (mostly)not the case.

Easiest way to explain this film is a tamer, less crazy version of Inglorious Basterds. Eastwood is not the lead in this film, that goes to Richard Burton who is the major of a squad of allied troops infiltrating a Nazi base to rescue a POW. Eastwood is a Lieutenant from America in this rescue squad, and he plays well off Burton. The first 40 to 45 minutes seemed standard fare for WWII films. Rescue squad lands in Germany disguised as Nazi soldiers, and the rest of the film is them trying to keep their cover while pursuing their mission. Things take a major turn when Eastwood and Burton get separated from the rest of the squad early on and sneak into the base where they believe the POW is residing.

This is where the film transforms into all kinds of crazy. In one extraordinarily long, but entertaining scene, Burton's character goes on a crazy long diatribe exposing agents, double agents, maybe even triple agents....I lost track. The scene goes on forever, but it was instantly go down as one of the all time classic scenes in cinematic history. After this awesome expose, the last 45 minutes of the film is another drawn out, but equally entertaining escape the hell out of Nazi Germany before everything goes to hell act. And in the end, to top off an already delicious cake, Burton's character exposes one more traitor for good measure in the closing minutes.

Not until about a half hour to 40 minutes in did Where Eagles Dare have its hooks in me. Only parts of the film that took me out of the moment were some extremely outdated gunfights during the escape scenes where Eastwood and Burton seem to have a little too easy of a time against vastly outnumbered Nazis that make the unbelievable one many army Stallone and Arnold 80s action films seem realistic by comparison. That aside, this was a blast to watch. Eastwood may take a bit of a backseat in this film, but he has a great supporting role and provides a powerful badass presence behind Burton's quick wit. In case you are wondering it is only available on Netflix through disc, and not streaming.

Resolution 6 - Catch Up Printing Photos - Complete!

This has been a little thing I have been putting off forever, so it went on my resolution quest list and after having it stare me in the eye for nearly two months it only took me under two hours to finally accomplish it. I blame digital cameras and picture phones for having me fall behind on storing print photos. Not that I need each and every single photo I take in a tangible form, but having a few hundred stored on my computer and on Facebook from over the years made it easy to pick out 30 or so of my favorites to print off.

I have one photo album at home with a bunch of photos going back from my baby photos until 2005, and then I got lazy and just kept them on my phone and PC. I have neglected how easy it has turned out to be to get my digital photos printed. Last time I did it, I brought the flash card, yes, a flash card from my old camera to a computer at the photo lab and picked which ones to print off. Now, I went through Target's web site and was able to pick from all the photos on my hard drive and my Facebook account that I wanted printed.

I spent maybe no more than a half hour browsing through all my photos deciding which ones to print and had an order placed through target.com. An astonishing nine minutes later I got an automated email response saying my photos were ready to pick up at my local Target. Nine photos I picked to get doubles of for a nice little nine photo collage frame I picked out thinking it would be a cool addition to hang on the wall, but in typical Dale fashion I screwed it up and got a little too aggressive placing one of the glass frames back on and it shattered on me. So in the trash it went, and I will have to make sure to pick up another one next time at the store.

On the bright side, my photo album is now up to date, and this officially makes the first of 13 resolutions off my resolutions quest list I have vanquished. As the legendary Diamond Dallas Page would say, "Self High-Five!"

Resolution 1 - Run the Half Marathon - Progress Update

As promised last blog, I am reporting back from the first race I ran, well the first race I ran since cross country track meets back in elementary school. The 2013 Frozen Feat 10K went about as well as I thought it would. Looking back at previous year's results, and comparing to my average running pace I predicted I would finish in the middle of the pack, which is pretty much what happened.

I was feeling pretty good going into race day and with 22 degrees forecasted as the high. Bad news was it was not suppose to warm up until the afternoon and at 10am race time it was 0 degrees. I threw on a windbreaker on top of what I was wearing for the practice runs, which definitely helped because it was kind of gusty out there with light blowing snow on top of it which led to many people with icicle beards, yours truly included.

I was probably a little too excited at the beginning of the race, especially since I had "Gonna Fly Now" from the Rocky Soundtrack as the first song on my playlist which wound up to me starting at a pace a little faster than I intended. It led to the first two miles going really well and me passing by many fellow runners, but after the two mile mark my speed gradually slowed down for the remainder of the race and I saw many runners passing me for the rest of the race.

At least I ran it nonstop, with no walk breaks and broke my record for the three practice runs I did in the week leading up to it. I finished with a time of 53 minutes, 57 seconds and an overall place of 50th out of 108 runners competing in the 10k. Thank goodness they had hot soup inside right after the race which I immediately grabbed after finishing. I then hunted down my mom and her boyfriend who were watching and saw me finished and complemented me on my icicle beard. They treated me to Perkins afterwards where I lost track of how many cups of coffee I put down. They snapped a photo of me which I included here, I apologize for not getting one right after the race so you all can witness my icicle beard, maybe next year!

First race experience was a thrill, when checking in I picked up a packet of many other upcoming races that I have been pondering over to compete in or not, including an upcoming 10K in Crookston, and a 50K in the middle of the Cheyenne Grasslands in North Dakota which I absolutely should not compete in, but just that type of scenery and journey of a race is mighty tempting not to pass up. We shall see!

Resolution 1 - Run the Half Marathon - Progress Update

This past week I have been training pretty hard for my first ever race this coming Saturday, The Frozen Feat 10k. It will be a great stepping stone in getting ready for the half marathon in Fargo this May. Since my last update last week, the weather has started to get nicer with a few days in the 20s and 30s here so I went out and tracked down the course and did three practice runs this past week. I will give a shout out to my friend Justine who is also going to be running the race and went on one of the practice runs with me!

This winter running gear I mentioned a few blogs back has been working out great so far, and I am now regretting retreating to the gym as early as I did last fall. It feels so refreshing to run outside again and not to be staring at the same old monitors and treadmill numbers over and over. I am getting surprisingly comfortable running on ice and snow. No major close calls so far on the four outdoor runs I have been on this year so far, just a few minor slips which I anticipated and was prepared for and did not come close to tumbling over.

Forecast is looking to be fair for this Saturday with a high forecasted of 20 degrees, so it will probably be around 10-15 out when the race starts at 10am. On my practice runs I have been average a nine and a half minute pace, and my last run clocked in at just over 54 minutes. Looking at last year's results if I maintain that average I should be finishing up in the middle of the pack, which I am fine with but rest assured I am going to be trying my best. I have no idea if headphones are barred or not because I prepped up a pretty high tempo playlist to run the race to. If headphones are not allowed, hopefully being in a crowd of a few hundred fellow racers with many more cheering on will get my adrenaline pumping to new levels to help fuel me on.

Obviously I am psyched for my first race, and cannot wait to go out there and see what I can do. I will return with my next blog detailing how the entire race went down in a few days.

Resolution 7 - End The Podcast - 1 Episode Left!

Earlier today I compiled our fourth collection of outtakes for episode 184 of On Tap. I heard from several friends over the years who said they checked out the website for On Tap, but never had time to listen to full episodes but did manage to listen to some outtakes and got a kick out of them. We have a bad tendency to go off the rails and get carried away while podcasting, so I make a note to edit out when it gets excessive and posted the file as a separate download in a formerly exclusive to the website outtakes section.

Well, over time that page got to be rather long with a plethora of download links. Add to the fact when we made the podcast part time a year ago, I needed to think of some other ideas for fill in shows throughout the course of the year, and editing together several episodes of outtakes seemed like the perfect idea. So if you have not checked out an episode of On Tap yet, maybe these nonsensical Outtakes Collections will be the perfect hopping on point for you. I think they are horrible, but everyone else tells me otherwise. Here are the links to all four installments - Outtakes Vol 1 - Outtakes Vol 2 - Outtakes Vol 3 - Outtakes Vol 4

Show 184 will go down as the penultimate episode of On Tap, as episode 185 will be our last. We will go out in a blaze of glory with our yearly game of the year awards episode, where we go a little overboard with over 30 categories of awards ranging from traditional awards like "Best Graphics" and "Best Achievement/Trophy" to the obscure like "Best LoL Moment" and "Best Collector's Edition." We will be recording it later this month, and I will make sure to post the link here when it is ready for your ears. In the meantime, check out ontappodcast.com for access to our complete archives before our web hosting contract expires in August and they are gone forever!

Resolution 2 - Obligatory Weight Loss Goal - 23 Pounds to Go!

In preparation for the half marathon, I have set a goal for myself to weigh in at 170 come race day on May 18th. I am currently 193. At the beginning of 2012 I was 240, so I have come a long ways, but still want to go a little further so I am in the best shape I can be, come race day. Besides keeping up my current schedule of running three to four days a week, today starts day one of 104 until the half marathon where I will give up all fast food and pizza until then. At the end of 2010 I did a similar ordeal where I gave up pizza and hamburgers for 100 days just to see if I could do it. I somehow pulled it off, but did not lose much weight because I did not start exercising until the end of it. I also found myself going to other fast food joints like KFC and Taco Bell a little more often to make up for my lack of burgers, thus giving up fast food all together this time around.

Last summer, for two weeks I did another crazy little diet I heard of from a coworker called the Naked Juice diet. Naked Juice is a fruit smoothie, and there was studies where a group of people only consumed Naked Juice and did daily exercise for a month and had tremendous results out of it. There is no way I could have done it for a month, and even for the two weeks I did it I cheated and had three meals during my two weeks on that program. Even still, I lost seven pounds in two weeks out of it, and it was quite the experience. This time I am kickstarting my 104 day diet by returning to the Naked Juice diet for the first week of it. Unlike last time though, I am adding in protein bars, protein shakes and bananas because all of the Naked Juice smoothies contain barely any protein, and bananas provide excellent post run recovery.

I am going to try my best to eat better too during this timeframe. I am not going to go all out vegan or anything, but I guarantee it will be far better than what I ate during the last time I gave up pizza. Last week I hit up my three favorite spots for pizza one last time, the local Happy Joes lunch buffet, the ever so delicious frozen pizza from Pizza Corner and local pizza chain sensation Rhombus Guys. It was pizza overload, so I will not expect any major pizza cravings for the first couple of weeks. Last 85 days or so are going to suck. Now if you excuse me, I am going to continue to agonize over the 49ers Super Bowl loss from last night.