Near the end of the classic British War film “Ice Cold in Alex”, there’s a scene where John Mills and co are really suffering in the desert heat, trying to get their ambulance up a hill.

I know what they feel like; except there was no desert and mine was the only dead weight I had to get up a hill. But hot it most definitely was.

Despite knowing that it was going to be nigh on 30 degrees yesterday, I went over to old Verulamium town (St Alban’s to you) for the 25th annual half marathon: 13.1 miles of road running out of St Alban’s, down to Harpenden and back to the city.

The route itself was not particularly exciting: tedious, straight stretches of running on a narrow footpath, next to a busy road with some particularly long but shallow and so arduous hills. Apart from at mile 11 where there was just a steep hill.

I was hoping to match, if not beat, my time from the Windsor Half last year (about 1h49m) but there was little chance of that in the heat. Reading the ratings and reviews on Runners World will give you some idea of what it was like. In summary, all the opinions read something along the lines of “It was fucking hot.” And it was. Fucking hot. Which meant that after 6 miles, I was knackered and seriously considering giving up.

All the day before, I kept thinking about the four poor bastards who died in the Great North Run last year. A recent coroner’s inquest ruled that they died from over-exertion but at the time it was felt that the “soaring” temperatures were to blame. Soaring temperatures being about 18 degrees (which, let’s face it, is tropical for the North). So I was determined that whatever else, if I wouldn’t feel bad for walking or for taking it easy. So, feeling like I was about to vom everywhere at mile six, I took it easy.

But I finished (which is more than can be said for some of the people I saw collapsd on the side. No fatalities reported yet though.) and completed the course in 2:09:17, about 20 minutes slower than I’d hoped. I came 740th out of 1430 finishers which puts me just the wrong side of half the field. But I don’t particularly care because by half way, it was me versus the course. And I got a medal and t-shirt regardless. Go me!

I should give a special shout out to the organisers. Although the course wasn’t great, there was a water stop about every 1.5 miles which was more than adequate for the race and the marshals were friendly and capable. Kudos goes out to them. Compare this with the Capital FM Bupa 10km held in Hyde Park yesterday: 20000 runners and one drinks stop at 5km which ran out of water! Plus there was no water at the finish either. On a day like yesterday, with extremely hot temperatures, that’s almost criminally negligent.

Below is the readout from my HRM (Heart Rate Monitor). The bottom of the read out shows the lap times for each mile (although I missed pressing the button at mile 7, hence the long gap between them). My average hear rate was only around 150 (my normal race pace is about 170) so I don’t think there was any danger of over-exertion. Where it dips frequently in the latter half of the race was where I walked. (The high spike around the mile 6 was probably interference with someone elses HRM and not because I was having an attack of tachycardia - or it might have been a particularly pleasing lycra clad posterior of the female variety. Who knows?) I averaged about 10 minutes per mile and burned around 1800 calories during the race. I feel light today!

Training this week has been light. Yesterday was my last run before the half marathon on Sunday. The perfect run: a light, 6 mile jog in 45 minutes around Hyde Park, easy running, feeling relaxed and refreshed and back to the gym for a cool down and some stretching.

That’s the perfect run. My last run before Sunday went more like this: didn’t bring the right socks so use crappy anklets covered in vaseline to stop blisters. Start running up the road and nearly get hit by white van driver on his mobile phone. Manage to run for a little over 10 minutes before the battery runs out on my MP3 player and it’s another 10 minutes before I have to stop. Legs feel like lead and I’m sweating buckets in the 25 degree heat. Walk for a minute then carry on for another 10. Have to stop again as can’t possibly run any further and am absolutely knackered. Rest for five minutes to let heart drop to something that doesn’t make all the lights flash on my HRM. Run back to the office and collapse under a cool shower, sobbing in agony.

Okay, it’s a little melodramatic and didn’t quite happen like that. Well, I didn’t sob, let’s put it that way. Everything else was exactly like that! I know why I felt so bad - I was dehydrated. Just before I went out, I looked at my 2 litre bottle of water and realised I’d only had half a glass all morning. Kids - don’t try this at home! Especially in hot weather. I’ve never been very good in hot weather when it comes to distance racing. I just burn up too quickly and get far too hot.

Of course, luckily for me, it’s going to be nice and sunny in St. Albans on Sunday.

The worst part of this is today I had to buy a white singlet vest to run in and won’t be running in my usual black. It’s very upsetting.

Okay. You know that Sony advert? The one filmed in San Francisco. The one with all the bouncing balls going down a hill? Oh come on, you must know it. The “Colour like no other” advert for the Bravia LCD? Oh for God’s sake! THIS advert! Oh yes, that one!

I never realised it was such a big thing. Sure it’s pretty and it’s got a very mellow acoustic soundtrack by someone I have no idea who it is but it’s obviously pervaded the public consciousness quite comprehensibly and already become a significant part of pop culture.

What do you mean “what do you mean?”?

Take a look at this: it’s a machinma video made with Battlefront 2. Recognise the influence?

And then there’s this advert (WMV video before you ask). Not only is this becoming the Next Big Thing ™ but it’s also destroying the lives of the residents of Swansea North.

This advert is the commercial equivalent of Happy Slapping.

Forgot all about seeing this tractor last year.

a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/24179449@N00/161901725/” title=”Photo Sharing”/>

(This only works if you understand/translate 13375p34k)

I went through a brief patch a couple of years ago of playing some WW2 shooters, or at least the Saving Private Ryan/Band of Brothers inspired Medal of Honor (with the fantastic invasion of the beaches at Normandy) and Return to Castle Wolfenstein (nazis, zombies, women in tight leather).

I’ve been informed that Call of Duty and Call of Duty 2 are the canines testicles when it comes to WW2 shooters though and that the multiplayer games are fantastic.

But to be honest, these two (very amusing) videos don’t really do anything to persuade me.

80s nostalgia

Wascally wabbits!

I hate bunnyhoppers!

For all it’s recent bad press and for all the problems with implementing a new set of game mechanics, there are some things which Star Wars: Galaxies does surprisingly well. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that there are elements of SWG which can only be classified as simply outstanding elements of game design. I’ve come to this conclusion because over the last week or so, prior to my City 17 exploits, I’ve been playing Star Wars: Battlefront 2, a tactical, class based FPS.

On the whole, I quite like it. The single player portion of the game (I don’t have the cojones to join an online multiplayer game yet) throws you into the role of a clonetrooper fighting during the last days of the Old Republic and then becoming a stormtrooper after the Emperor takes control. It largely takes place on recognisable planets from the trilogy and has some space battles thrown in for good effect. It’s great being able to play on the side of the Empire again too, something that hasn’t really been offered since the original TIE Fighter game back in 1996 or something. But I have one major gripe about the game so far.

I haven’t been able to kill any Gungans.

There’s a level set on Naboo, in the capital city of Theed no less, but the aim is to quell the resistance and kill all the RSF guards and eventually take out the current Queen herself (almost, but not quite, making up for Natalie Portman’s abysmal performance in the last film). But as of yet I’ve been unable to find a single Gungan I can slaughter mercilessly. I can accept the fact that in this day and age they don’t have an option to torture your enemies and I can live with that. But the fact that you can’t gun down hordes of Gungans with your blaster rifle or stomp on them in a AT-ST is definitely a design deficiency.

It’s something that SWG does get right. I spent a happy afternoon a while back standing next to a lake outside Keren spaceport gunning down Gungans. Every now and then I’d holster my gun and wade in with my fists and give them a damn good pummeling. And the best thing was, the more I killed, the angrier they got and the angrier they got, the more they tried to attack me. More fool them. Admittedly, it would have been nice to be able to get into a hovertank or walker and stomp on them but nevertheless, they were dying by my hands. And after I’d wiped them out, all of them, I headed over to Endor and laid siege to the Ewoks as well.

The only other game to come close to this level satisfaction is Lego Star Wars. In that game, you actually get to play Jar Jar. Now that sounds like a terrible design decision in itself but in fact it’s better than it seems because of the level design. Remember how there always seemed to be a large amount of bottomless pits all over the place? Well that’s a large part of Lego Star Wars. You get to repeatedly switch to Jar Jar and throw yourself into one of those pits and plummet to your doom. If there are two of you playing, one person can take the role of a Jedi and because you can do damage to your partner, you can use your lightsaber to hack Jar Jar to pieces.

Battlefront 2 actually lets you play a Jedi in some levels. You even get to play Yoda for a bit, much like you do in Lego Star Wars. My favourite section so far is playing Anakin Skywalker when he’s just been annointed as Darth Vader and goes to the Jedi temple to slaughter all the Jedi. This is probably making up for the fact that every other bugger in SWG plays a jedi and there are far too many about. However, BF2 lets itself down again by not including a room full of “younglings”, the infant jedi trainees. You know that scene in Revenge of the Sith: the clonetroopers go after all the adult jedi while Anakin “I’m horrible and nasty and can beat anyone with a lightsaber” Skywalker goes after the defenceless children. Still, for all the lack of youngling slayage, there is plenty of use the-big-tank-on-the-jedi action.

Despite this critical flaw in BF2’s design plan, it more or less makes up for it in one key area: you get to play as Boba Fett. To my knowledge (and player made mods aside) you don’t get to play Boba Fett in any game released to date. There was a PS2 and Gamecube title called Star Wars: Bounty Hunter where you got to play Jango Fett and it is possible to unlock a young Boba Fett character in Lego Star Wars but aside from that, you generally only got to fight him (in Dark Forces, Jedi Academy and possibly Shadows of the Empire). In SWG, you get to run missions for him but in Battlefront 2 you actually get to play as the legendary Boba Fett himself, complete with highpowered blaster rifle, flamethrower, wrist rockets and jet pack. That level in itself almost makes up for not being able to kill Jar Jar’s relatives.

Gordon Freeman that is. I downloaded Half-Life2: Episode 1 this weekend (on Steam) I must have preloaded it because it took me about 90 minutes to download.

And so far, so good. The story starts off exactly where Half-Life2 left off. The closing scene of the main game is the opening scene of Episode 1. And then it’s straight into a rollercoaster of action.

The graphics and design are, as ever, phenomenal (the above being an in-game shot). What I have noticed about the first part of the game though is that rather than being the usual FPS “start with a pistol, find bigger guns” affair, the focus is actually on puzzle solving. Nothing too taxing but a way of progressing the still gripping story.

I’m only about half way through at the moment and all I can say is that it might be an alien oppressed, dystopian city on the brink of absolute annihilation, but it’s good to be back in City 17.

UPDATE: If you’re thinking of buying this, I really recommend Steam, especially if you’ve got a quick connection. You’ll get to pay the US price which, with tax and current exchange rate, means it’ll only cost about £12. I splashed out and bought Sin Epsiodes too which comes with Sin 1, a game I gather was great but overshadowed, being originally released at the same time as Half Life.

Because my phone has died, I spent most of last night doing what I’ve been meaning to do for the last 18 months: find the software to let me get the pictures off my phone and onto my PC. Which is why I’m no able to bring to you a picture from the Einstuerzende Neubauten gig I went to in Kentish Town over a year ago.

The second pic isn’t wonderfully clear but you can make out the variety of instruments that the band have created themselves: chiefly everything to the left of where Blixa is standing (he’s the man in black in the middle). That thing that looks like a curved drainpipe? It’s a curved drainpipe.

Marvellous.

I’ve just finished a four week exercise program that I found in Men’s Fitness magazine. It’s not designed to work any of the major muscle groups directly but works some of the smaller muscles that often get avoided in the more common exercises. It’s all meant to be conditioning work to prepare the next four week cycle. I’m someone who likes to keep track of my exercises. Well, not so much “like” to as absolutely need to. You’ll always find me down the gym with my A5 black ‘n red book trying to keep track of what I’m doing. It’s useful because a) it takes all the guess work out of working out what weight I should be using next and b) I can’t just do a weights session without a plan. If I do, then I just end up wasting time not doing any exercises properly. Plus it’s also a very good way of seeing progression. For example, I started on one exercise using an 8kg dumb bell and after four weeks was able to do the same set using a 14kg weight. It’s encouraging (apart from the one exercise where I just couldn’t manage to increase the weight much at all.)

The routine was identical each week and, fortunately, didn’t require any complex gym equipment that the gym didn’t have. It went a little like this:

(more…)

So I was going up the escalator in Euston underground station when an announcement is made over the tannoy. “A red rucksack has been left unattended. Would its owner please come back and claim it.” About ten seconds later, a follow up: “If the unattended rucksack is not claimed, we’ll have to evacuate the station. If the rucksack is yours, please come and get it.” A few seconds later, just after I’d got to the bottom of the next escalator: “Okay, doesn’t look like anyone wants it. Please evacuate the station. Make your way to the nearest exit and evacuate the station.”

All the alarms started going off and the underground staff started turning people back from the ticket barriers. It was quite orderly and no-one seemed to be panicing. Unusually, I didn’t even hear many people complaining. Of course, I was a tad frustrated because the evacuation of the station meant that I was going to miss my train.

Or at least, that’s what I thought. It turns out that the main station wasn’t evacuated, only the underground. On the surface, everyone was blissfully unaware of the the unattended baggage alert going on beneath their feet. There were no announcements, no staff ushering us out of the building, nothing. My train even left on time (an exceptional occurence by any measure).

But as security precautions go, am I the only one who thought it was peculiar that only the underground station was cleared and that the overground functioned as normal?