My First Marathon - Part 1 - Injuries

This is the first of a series of blogs I intend to write about my journey to my first marathon. 

In this first one, I talk about injuries.

Training for a marathon is not easy. It involves making detailed plans on how long you intend to run each week. It involves keeping to those plans and going out for runs when you don't feel like them. It involves going for long, hard runs that seem like they are taking forever. 

I can do all those easily. I look forward to my long runs. The thing I struggle the most with is injuries.

Running 30-50km a week is rough on your body, especially when you are not used to it. You get hungry more. You feel sore often. I rarely felt 'fresh' coming into a run and always had some minor niggle. But running is very high impact on your entire body, especially everything below the waist. 

Here is a list of injuries I've had since starting to run, just this year alone:

1) Sore calves

This was near the start of my running journey, when I was ramping up zero to 3 times a week of running, and eventually 4 times a week. I developed sore calves pretty often which really bothered me... until I picked up compression socks which seemed to alleviate the issue.

2) Feet arch pain

The arches of my feet would get really tight or sore during/after a run, which affected my ability to run in the subsequent session. This went away almost entirely when I got my Asics GT-2000, a shoe for moderate overpronators. I also massage my arches with a lacrosse ball often now.

3) Feet (tendon?) issues

The best way to describe this is pain or discomfort in the upper side of my foot, somewhere midfoot. This often set in somewhere between 8-11km of my long runs, and usually went away after a while or perhaps I just get numb to it.

I did have one episode where it got so bad that I had to stop at 8km of a 12km run, and bailed on the run (first time ever) , as I could barely walk without a sharp pain shooting through my foot. It got better after some rest, but I had to take a full week off running to recover.

Nowadays it bothers me on and off, but doesn't really flare up mid run.

4) Sciatic nerve / psaos issue?

There are two variations of this - one deep discomfort/twinge in my right glute, the other where my lower right back gets tight. I've no idea what they are till this day, and no amount of pigeon / figure 4 stretches will make them fully go away. They usually don't bother me on a run though, though I can feel a bit stiff because of it.

5) Achilles tendonitis / calf issue?

After my 24km run, which was the longest I had ever covered in my life, my calves were sore the next few days. Even when I resumed the following week's run, they continually felt tight and occasionally sore, and all runs my legs felt heavy and tired. In the next long run, which was planned for 25km, I only made it about 6+km when my Achilles tendon / ankle / calf area started to feel really sore and unnatural (not the usual discomfort I get) and did not go away even after slowing down for 1km. I decided to bail on the run at 8km and Grab home.

Tried to resume running 2 days later in a short 6km run, but only made it to 3km and decided to bail as the calf got very sore. The location is best described as the lowest end of the fleshy part of my calf, seems to be where it meets my tendon. I took that whole week off, and as I'm writing this I'm entering a 50% load week where I halved the distance of the week I missed. I'm not sure if I've recovered, but I've cleared 2 runs this week, 3km and 6.4km. Hoping to do a 4km tomorrow and then a 9.6km on the weekend. Pray my calf doesn't flare up.

Gotta do those eccentric heel drops which seem to help a little? No idea what's the science behind them.

6) ???

Will I have any further injuries? Who knows? 

I'm working consciously to reduce the risk of injury - many core and glute exercises on a regular basis, regular foam roll / stretching. If I successfully complete this marathon and decide on a future marathon, I'll definitely take the off season to do some weights training to strengthen my body more to be able to bear the load of marathon training. It is a tough sport, but there is something euphoric about being on the road for 2-4hours with nothing but your legs, a podcast, and you debating with yourself whether to stop.

Dice Throne Difficulty List

I love this game so much! I created a Difficulty List so it's easy to show friends whom I'm trying to teach the game and recommend them heroes.

Just to explain, these rankings were created with 2 main factors in mind:

• Core mechanics - how complex is it to understand all the mechanics the hero can utilise?
• Key decisions - how complex are the decisions to be made (if any), and how critical are they to your success? (e.g. Heroes with 4-typed dice naturally are ranked higher, as it is easier to whiff their dice rolls)

Do read the caveats at the top of the image to see what this Tier List is NOT. For a full-res PDF copy of this cheat sheet, you can get it here:

Difficulty: 1

Barbarian
Barbarian is a vanilla hero that cannot get any simpler. I wouldn't recommend him for a full length game with a new player, so that they don't get bored with not being able to do anything else besides attack and heal and they see you do all the fun stuff. I usually use him for a 25HP intro game.

Difficulty: 2 

Pyromancer, Moon Elf, Gunslinger, Samurai

All their mechanics are straightforward to learn and understand. Note that I'm not saying they are equally easy to MASTER. Just that at a fundamental level, it's easier to grasp what they do.

I rank Monk higher solely because out of all these heroes, you actually have to make a decision whether to use a Status offensively or defensively. This is opposed to all the other statuses here where it's either a 'inflict/gain this now' based on dice roll or Evasion.

Difficulty: 3

Monk

Read above.

Seraph

The mechanics are quite straightforward, though infused with a stronger element of luck than the other lower difficulty heroes. In my few games with Seraph I rarely got to see Holy Presence being activated so there's really only one main status that features the most, which is Flight. Ranked higher than the Difficulty : 2 heroes simply because it is easier to whiff dice rolls.

Difficulty: 4

Cursed Pirate

I initially thought the Cursed mechanic added some strategic depth in knowing when to 'push the button' and go for the kill, hence adding to the complexity in decision-making. However, with more games, I'm starting to feel that both sides of the board actually play perfectly fine, and Cursed just accelerates the game in 1v1 and creates some fun chaos with more players.

Thus, the complexity in the character comes from the numerous unique Pirate cards (since there are no upgrades) and knowing how to use them. The mechanics are pretty simple to understand and I am tempted to rank him lower at 3, but I suppose new players may get tied up with trying to manage their Cursed Doubloons and hence I'm placing him here.

Vampire Lord

She's different enough to be a tier above Difficulty 3, but I don't think I will rank her any higher.

New players may not know the best way to utilise Blood Power, but otherwise she is not too difficult to understand and use. I initially ranked her higher, but I feel that Blood Power doesn't really have the same decision complexity as Tactical Advantage, so it is easier to learn the hero. 

Her Ultimate is probably the least newbie friendly (how will they know what card to fish for?), but it's a rare occurrence anyway. 

Huntress

The Huntress has a simple mechanic that is difficult to know what to do - you either direct damage to  yourself or to Nyra - but when do you do it? A new player will not have a good sense of power curves and know how best to utilise Nyra, and perhaps struggle with this decision that they have to make every turn.

Paladin
Pretty easy to whiff on his dice rolls before you get upgrades . He has numerous statuses and new players may struggle to remember everything and know when is the opportune time to use them. I am tempted to rank him at 5, but I feel the decision complexity isn't quite the same as the Difficulties 5 and 6 heroes.

Difficulty: 5

Shadow Thief

There are so many things you can do as a ST that it will definitely be overwhelming for a new player. Do you ramp CP, cantrip, go for damage, or hide in the Shadows?? Very fun, but not very newbie friendly.

Artificer
Bots are of course really unique in the game of Dice Throne, but I wouldn't rank him higher than 5 as a unique mechanic doesn't make it a complex mechanic. The decisions to activate are usually straightforward (most of the time Yes if you have Synth), I suppose the tricky part is how quickly to rush the Advanced bot, though in my opinion it should be 'ASAP'.

I know many would rank him a 6, but given that bots play is actually fairly linear without any complicated or tricky decision-making, I think a newbie can pick it up just fine, he just might not know how best to play it.

Difficulty: 6
Tactician
His core mechanic, Tactical Advantage, is a layered status that needs you to understand the pros/cons of the various actions (and possible statuses to inflict) you can perform with it, which makes it quite daunting for a newbie.

Pandemic Legacy Season 1 - September Game One

This post contains spoilers for the September playthrough of Pandemic Legacy Season One.

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Oh wow. I am still reeling in shock.

I have won 100% of the games so far, and this was the first game I lost. And it was all because I found the damn Paranoid Soldier.

It was the worst case scenario - the Paramilitary Escort upgrade was on my most powerful character, the Quarantine Specialist. I had 4 Yellow cards on her, with the 5th one to be passed next turn for the insta-cure. Instead... well. Without going into details, she had to die.

With my QS dead, I had no way of containing the Faded outbreaks, and died to a chain outbreak shortly after in about 2-3 turn cycles.

I'm going to have to revisit my strategy now, given I've permanently lost the QS. Probably need to use some of the military characters to deal with Faded.

Well done Matt Leacock. I hate you. And respect you somewhat.