As I was filtering through the inordinate amount of spam and crap I get in my inbox this morning, I spotted an email offering a reduced entry into the Windsor half-marathon in September. Before I realised it I was starting to complete the info and dig out my card. I managed to stop just in time...after all, I have New Year Resolutions to keep...
The Windsor run in 2007 was cancelled at the last minute due to the well publicised outbreak of Foot and Mouth disease, and while entry fees were not refunded (a typical part of the T's and C's of all races) they were offering a discount for runners next year...however one of my resolutions this year is to shorten my distances. After the Reading Half marathon in March I won't be doing any more "long runs", and my sights are firmly set on the 10K distance. This isn't a reduction in training, but it is a change in focus. I'm quite obviously fairly obsessed with beating people, and going as fast as I can, and for that reason I'm mentally not suited to traditional long distance running (any attempt by me to do a marathon would terminate at about 15 miles with my heart leaping straight out of my ribcage). The 10K distance you can throw yourself at without overly worrying about burning out...even if I do the race distance means I can still haul myself over the line in an un-embarrasing time.
After having spoken to some of the people I train with they all seem to harbour similar sentiments...a combination of winter long-run training fatigue and interests in other flavours of race (cycling, swimming etc.) is leaning a lot of us to the shorter, middle distance races. I'm personally looking forward to cutting out the longest distance training sessions, and maxxing out at about 7 miles (11 kilometres). It won't mean I'm training any less, but it will be shorter, more intense sessions on the road... The shorter runs I've done I've always finished in the top 2-3%, compared with 5-7% for longer runs, so the distance obviously suits me far better as well...
On a completely different front, I was going to do a post on griefing. I recently came across some videos of some awesome examples of the art in TF2 ( low quality videos at YouTube here and here and here ). My personal favourite is when he jams the spawn door shut, then over voice chat forces the team to answer questions before letting them out. Its a work of genius, and the joy in the voice of the lad who answers a question correctly should be bottled... There are many other examples of what I find to be awesome griefing moments (on SomethingAwful they have a feature called MMO Roulette where a bunch of them go into some of the worse MMORGS out there, and then make peoples lives hell (again, a favourite being the time they went into a driving MMO, found a mission where players had to drive an oil tanker from A to B in a set time, then dedicated themselves to crashing into each and every tanker going along the road)...
...Its funny to watch, but I wonder if my sense of humour would hold out on the other side of the fence? I'm not completely guilt-free on the griefing front I suppose (NFS:Underground...driving the wrong way I suspect come sunder the grief-banner, as could aircraft carrier ramming...after all, its not exactly helping my side, is it?). My own opinion is that griefing is indicative of poor game design, either technically (getting under the floor and setting up turrets) or game play (its more fun to fuck around than play the game properly). In a way modern game design may be encouraging griefing...when you look at the "sandbox" style of game, such as GTA, Crackdown, Oblivion etc etc, quite often the player is encouraged to deviate from the plot, and make their own fun. Its hardly shocking that this carries over to online gaming as well...or perhaps there are simply a lot of arseholes out there?