Resolutions 10 & 11 - Go to MGC & DC - Preparing for Departure

From 2007 to 2011, every year sometime in March I traversed to the Milwaukee area to attend the Midwest Gaming Classic (MGC). It is a retro video game convention filled with many vendors, community events, speakers and also has a ton of fellow gaming friends I get to meet up with once a year with as we all indulge in our favorite hobby. 2012 was the first year I missed attending because I went to Miami last year for Wrestlemania, which coincidentally was within a week of MGC, and there was no way I was going to be able to make both of those happen.

So one of my resolutions for this year was to return to MGC. Usually it is a cheaper trip because the last few times I went there I drove down with my brother and two other friends. It was a straight 11 hour shot down I94, and with gas split four ways it was usually pretty travel efficient. It was not meant to be this year however as my brother and friends cannot make it this year. I would have made the drive myself, but I decided to make this a two part vacation and will end up flying down instead.

After spending the weekend in Milwaukee I will be flying down to Washington DC to take in its renowned sights and attractions and visit my dad and uncle. History was always my favorite class in school, so Washington DC has always been a dream destination of mine to check out the memorials and museums. My dad is currently on a vacation in Georgia visiting my two sisters, he drove down there a month and a half back and was planning on visiting a few other family and friends in Florida, Michigan and DC on the way back. When I told him I was thinking of checking out DC right after Milwaukee this year a few months back, he offered to tweak his schedule a little bit so he can meet up with me in DC for a few days, and offered to ride back home with him.

So this is quite the ambitious vacation, and I got quite a bit planned. Hopefully everything will go down without incident. Though I am almost counting on some kind of vehicle malfunction on the way back home with Dad. That was almost always a given on our yearly family trips growing up. I will be out of town for a bit, but look forward to my next blog which will probably be a lengthy recap of my travels.

Before I go, since it will be a little longer than usual for my next update here is something to tide you by. Some of my favorite On Tap episodes have been our yearly MGC recap episodes where we dissect the craziness that transpired over the weekend, have many fun tales and go over all the gaming loot we picked up. The 2010 and 2011 recap episodes were fun to record because we taped them live at MGC itself, so you can hear all the ambient noises of the event as it is taking place, and hear a few spontaneous guest host cameos to in the midst of the madness. Just right click on each year to download the corresponding podcast:
2007 | 2008 |
2009 | 2010 |
2011

Resolution 1 - Run the Half Marathon - Progress Update

I swear I must have jinxed myself. Shortly after posting the last blog, I went and checked the forecast for Lisbon, ND (a small town near where the race was taking place). My how different the forecast changed. It went from a high in the mid 30s to a high of 20. And over the next couple of days the forecast kept getting worse and worse to the point of a race time starting temperature of 2 above, and only a 13 degree high that day.

To make it worse, the night before the race we got several inches of snow which led to horrible highway driving conditions. I kept checking in on the event's Facebook page for updates from other racers coming from Grand Forks and Winnipeg saying they were stuck at rest stops or decided to turn around and go back. My little 'ol Ford Ranger does not have four wheel drive and loves to fishtail in the slightest amounts of snow, so I knew there was no way I was going to be able to make that drive down there.

I hated to do it, but I sent an email out to one of the race coordinators notifying them of my withdrawal from the race. I still wanted to go out and do some kind of big run that day, because I bought way too much gear and spent a ton of time prepping up for it. So I went out to the Greenway bike path in town and convinced myself I was going to run an 8 mile loop four times over. Well, it sounded like a good idea until I realized none of the Greenway was plowed, which I was prepared for until I ran into some nasty drifts I had to run around. Also add in the fact it was barely above zero, with some nasty wind gusts to boot. After six miles, I came to the realization this was a stupid idea with no big race day vibe and fellow racer camaraderie and was not how I wanted my first big run to go down and so I despondently went back to my vehicle and drove home.

I was pretty upset about how the whole day went down, and tried to make it better by grabbing a bite with my brother and a few friends, but that did not really do the trick. They went out for drinks and some early St. Patty's celebrating while I went and slept the night away...literally. Sorry no happy ending to this blog, and the weather looks to be getting worse this next week so it looks like it will be back to running on the treadmill again for the foreseeable future. Will just have to train hard until the Fargo Marathon in two months.

If there is some upside to this, it is probably for the best I did not compete in that race. Out of the original 53 racer field, only 32 made it out there to race day. And out of the 32, only 19 finished. Some racers got frostbite and early stages of hypothermia. I imagined I would not have fared that well out there other. Blessing in disguise, I guess.

Resolution 1 - Run the Half Marathon - Progress Update

For reasons that will be impossible for me to explain, and presumably for anyone to understand. I signed up to run an Ultra Marathon. 31.1 miles. This Saturday. On a nature trail mostly covered in snow in the middle of nowhere. I am out of my mind, I know. I have been signed up for this for a few weeks now, and am eagerly anticipating it, and petrified of it at the same time. I have been training rigorously since, but we shall see what I am made of come race day. All I can say is I went with my gut, and even though the farthest I have ever run was a half marathon before, somehow, someway my body was telling me I can do this.

There are only two checkpoint stations during the race. From what I understand, each station will have a medical staff there examining each racer as they pass by, and even if the racer persists on continuing it will be up to the staff to decide if they will continue or not. In all likelihood, I will probably only make it to the first station, maybe the second before walking away. These are incredibly extreme conditions I will be running in. From what I hear on the event's Facebook page, a lot of the race will be a slog, through a trail made primarily from snowshoes. The second half of the race has numerous sets of rolling hills making for a more challenging race. To top it all off, on my safety waiver I had to sign, I was forewarned of possible cougars in the areas. A coworker also familiar with the area of the race told me to be on the watch for packs of coyotes too.

I have been primarily running outside in the cold the past month to prep up for this. My friend Adam went on a couple training runs with me this week with some nice elevation changes over the course of 9 miles. For some real preparation for the hills though, I found a part of our mammoth city dike system along the bike path and ran up and down it for a half hour. My legs felt like spaghetti, but I think those were some extreme training scenarios to go through so whatever the slog is like come Saturday will hopefully be a lesser experience.

I have bought a ton of gear to make sure I have all my bases covered. We were required to get Gaiters and Headlamps. Gaiters make sense and I am glad I got some for however deep some of that snow is to trudge through. I will be wearing two sets of socks, with my outer layer being a heavy duty set of calf high socks. The trail is marked by flags, but in a worst case scenario in the event we get lost for several hours is what the headlamps are for. I also picked up a glow in the dark vest just in case. Also purchased a waist belt holder for a water bottle, a ski mask, and a outer glove liner for my running gloves. Finally, I picked up 8 gels to help replenish calories and energy throughout the run.

The weather looks like it will be fair in the area, with highs in the mid 30s, and come race time the temp will be in the mid 20s. It will actually probably be the warmest weather I will be running in this year thankfully since it has been a much colder March than last year. Last year we had temps in the 40s and 50s this time, and right now the warmest I have been able to run in recently was only 33 degrees a couple weeks ago. At least it will be a hell of a lot better than running in zero degree weather last month. I will still be wearing two tech tees and a windbreaker, so I will be plenty warm.

Look, I know my odds of finishing this are not promising, but something deep down is telling me to go for it. Call it whatever you want, but I am sick and tired of running away from challenges most of my life, so even if I do fail, at least I know I had the heart to try. Keeping up with my glass half full outlook on life, finish or not, at the very least this will be considerably effective training for the half marathon.

Resolution 7 - End the Podcast - Complete!

Last weekend I met up with Chris and Lyzz over Skype and we knocked out the final episode of On Tap. After 185 episodes and seven years, it felt incredibly relieving to finally pull the plug on it. We went all out on our final show and made it a 4 hour, 18 minute epic, our longest show yet. If you have that much time on your hands, click here to download and spend an afternoon listening to it.

Our last episode was our yearly games of the year special where we go a little crazy with awards. For a couple of years we had nearly 50 awards we handed out ranging from traditional awards like 'Best Graphics' and 'Best Value' to dubious honors like 'Best/Worst Cover Art' and 'Best Achievement/Trophy.' With so many awards, these shows grew to be pretty long. Last year and this year we trimmed it down to about 30 awards, but we still ran rather long. I hope you guys love Lord of the Rings Online, because about 3/4s of Chris and Lyzz's awards went to that game.

I was lucky to be able to reach a few past recurring guest hosts and have them come on for special guest segments, which I inserted sporadically throughout our crazy long awards segment to help break it up a bit. Matt and my brother Joe came on and shared their top picks of 2012, and host of the PSNation Podcast, Glenn Percival came on so we could both rave about how far videogame pinball has come since we last talked about it on the 100th episode of On Tap. Joey was a blast to record with, he was in the middle of raving about Battlefield 3 when I asked him how he likes it compared to other military shooters he played to death online like SOCOM and Rainbow Six. He then spontaneously went on a ten minute rave/rant on the entire SOCOM franchise on PS2 and PS3. We were going pretty long already and I did not want to lose this amazing material so I cut it out of our game of the year talk and inserted it into the very end of the show, so On Tap's final seconds will be Joe talking about the highs and lows of the SOCOM series. A fitting end if I must say!

On Tap's archives will remain up until this August and they will then be gone forever. Here is an appendix of some of our favorite episodes, make sure to download them before they're gone or if you want even more, then check out all the archives over at ontappodcast.com. I feel relieved to finally be done with On Tap, I had many great moments over the years, but I ended it about a year and a half later than I would have wanted. No idea where my podcasting future will take me, might end up starting a new show down the line, but it would be ideal to do some guest hosting on other shows if they care to have me as a nice breather from having to do all that back end work like updating web pages, RSS feeds and post production editing.