Katie 7 - Storytime My Dad’s Medical Emergency At The Sphere

This past weekend, I embarked on a generational trip to Las Vegas with Lucas and my parents, with plans for an epic double header: Kenny Chesney in the Sphere on Friday night, Coldplay at Allegiant Stadium on Saturday. This was a well-planned trip, tickets bought months in advance, all of us stalking set lists in the weeks leading up, eager to see what these artists had to offer. 

Our red-eye flight on Wednesday night landed at 1am Thursday in Las Vegas, all smooth sailing, surprising for a flight leaving Orlando late afternoon. Thursday we spent the day rolling around town, spending some time at the Kenny Chesney experience store at the Venetian, where we took a cute, photo booth picture. We enjoyed a lovely dinner at Catch in the Aria with my Uncle Moose, who recently moved to Vegas, and spent the whole time convincing him to quit his new, terrible job. 

His name is Chance :)

Friday morning we all woke up, buzzing with excitement. Tonight was Kenny Chesney. The four of us caught a lovely breakfast and spent the morning playing our new favorite slot machine, Journey to Planet Moolah. 

At 2pm, my Uncle met up with us at Beerhaus Las Vegas to have some beer and hang out before it was time for dinner and then the big show. My parents were pretty excited, as there is a local beer here they enjoy! My mother even made a Facebook post of her enjoying it. 

Lovelady Love Juice

I enjoyed a lovely sour my uncle kept calling “woke beer”

My mother enjoyed one of these special Vegas beers and then decided to stick to high-noons for the rest of the day. My father enjoyed two of these beers (this will be important information later). 

At 5:15, we headed over to Best Friend for our dinner, where both Lucas and I overate a ridiculous amount. Then, it was time for the trek from our hotel to the Sphere. We wanted to walk off the meal, and the rest of the crew was game (this will be important information later). Although it was about 180 degrees in Vegas this day, there was very typically only a short amount of the walk that required you to be outside, the rest of the route to the Sphere can be done completely inside. 

Only, due to a convention, we were blocked from part of this route leading up to the Sphere, which added about an extra half mile of outside-walking to the route. You may be thinking this isn’t that bad, but it was brutally hot. (This will be important information later). 

When we got to the Sphere after our final outside stretch, as a final kick in the ass, we had to walk up a flight of stairs outside to get into the venue. (You guessed it, it’s getting important). 

We get up into the venue and approach where we scan our tickets and, whoa - my dad looks terrible. Like, scary, terrible. He is chugging the Dasani my mom brought with her like a man deprived. He pulls himself together, pulls out his phone for us to scan our tickets and get inside, and he immediately finds a pole to lean on and says “I need a minute.” 

Lucas and I run to get a few $7 bottle of Sphere water for him, and by the time we return, he’s looking worst than ever and fiddling with his watch to check his heart rate. 

7 dollar sphere water btw

Uh oh. We all share glances, we know what this is. 

A few years ago, my Dad went into AFib after a surgery, and he’s been managing the condition ever since. It is a condition where your heart goes out of rhythm, and though it isn’t inherently dangerous by itself, it increases risk of serious issues due to lack of oxygen, low blood pressure, etc. He’s had a few episodes since the initial one, the most prominent of which was also in Vegas, where he spent the night in the ER the night of the Vegas Golden Knights’ Stanley Cup parade. Good times. 

To help manage his condition, he takes medication, but also avoids triggers like…. drinking (check), heat (double check), … stairs (gulp). 

At this point, he’s so crazy in AFib that he’s struggling to stand, so my uncle and Lucas help the man to a bench we find. We have 30 minutes until Kenny goes on (we’ve all resigned ourselves to the fact that we’re not seeing this show), and he wants to sit here for a minute. You see, the goal here is that things calm down enough that he can walk himself out and catch a cab to get medical attention. The second he gets medical attention at the Sphere, he’s leaving in an ambulance for a one-way ticket to Hospital town. 

Meanwhile, Lucas and I are sitting on a bench. I’m hella disassociating its crazy. 

My Kenny fit was so cute too

With 5 minutes until show time, my dad makes the call: he needs medical attention. There’s no way he can leave by himself with the way his heart rate is jumping around. The lovely medical personnel arrive quickly and take him and my mother away. We jump in the elevator after them and attempt to follow them. We fail and end up wandering around a bunch until we find medical. It is in a hallway that appeared to also be where VIPs go. 

Shoutout EMTs

This EMT was telling my mom war stories of treating people on drugs during the Grateful Dead residency.

Through the walls, we hear “Beer in Mexico” blasting while they’re giving my Dad an EKG and checking out his very, very low blood pressure. Eventually, they say they’re going to take him away and he says something like, “Go to the show, there’s nothing you can do”, which just makes me feel great. They load him up into the ambulance and away, and Lucas, Uncle Moose, and I are just left there chilling. 

Bye bye papa

….So, we go to the show, escorted by a lovely security guard up from the VIP/Medical tunnel to the 100s. We grab some free bottles of water from medical before we go, highly encouraged by the staff.

At this point, we’ve missed like five songs. “Welcome to the Fishbowl” is playing as we all go to the bathroom. I last one song before I have my first mental breakdown to “I Go Back”. By my estimate, I started crashing out about six times during this show, including when Grace Potter came out and they sang Elvis, when Uncle Kracker came out and they sang a whole damn show, and when my mom’s favorite song played as the second encore. 

Unrelated, this part of the show was triggering as hell

We have a long, sad walk back to the hotel. The news comes through, my dad is definitely in AFib and staying in the hospital. Las Vegas never disappoints. 

Walking back past the stairs that sent my dad into AFib <3 

But wait, that ain’t the end of this story. My Dad did miss Din Tai Fung dinner into Coldplay due to being in the hospital (my mom still came with us and she loved it). He was released shortly afterwards when we came out of AFib and had his blood pressure back to normal. 

Coldplay was so good sorry dad :(

….but my parents decided to stay in Las Vegas until today so they could see Kenny at his next show (Wednesday night). This time, they did not drink, they took a Lyft, and used elevators, which ensured they made the show. Phew.

When they got in, my Dad asked for a picture on the bench, which is just so insane. Love that man. 

Trauma bench with a 7 dollar sphere water

They did not get any special guests, but had a great time at the show and are on their way home now, safe and sound! And good news, Uncle Moose quit his terrible job!! Hope next trip to Vegas is less eventful, amen.

\

Lucas: 11 - High Stakes TCG Double-Header

    A couple weeks ago, Nate came over to Melbourne to play in a League Cup and get one last chance at an N's Zoroark Champion Playmat. This was the last weekend to play a Cup before this quarter ends and a new playmat is made. 

    The only thing getting in the way of going to this cup was a "Win-A-Box" 2 hours later, which offers a ~$200 Booster Box as a prize to the winner. On the one hand, the cup *should* bring in harder competition (it's people's last chance to get Pokemon official points towards World's or a special 2024 season promo card). But.. that means the good competition will be at the cup and the PRIZING will be up for grabs! In the end, I let the guest decide and Nate chose to go for the playmat; he was also pretty close to earning his 2024 season promo card, a nice cherry on top if he could win.

    In my last blogpost, I said I was going to play a familiar deck.. well, Saturday morning I changed my mind and let Nathan know why. A very strong local, probably my main competition in the Melbourne area, was recently testing a deck that Hard Counters Dragapult. I'm talking 70% win rate AND this guy would be well versed in the matchup. He was most likely coming to the cup, so I'd have to pivot.. and I pivoted to a post-rotation version of the deck Nathan used to play. For those who forgot, it's based on using Roaring Moon and a bunch of Ancient cards to boost its Vengeance Fletching attack.

    This deck relies a lot on sequencing cards right to maximize your odds to draw what you need, but that kind of stuff comes pretty easy to me and the rest of the plays are super straight forward. Also, if you miss the cards you need, you can just say "unlucky" and not think about how your play affected your chances to win. I had practiced this deck a bit, but wasn't as familiar with it as Dragapult.

The Cup

    A pretty measly 8 Masters (oldest division) players showed up to this cup, along with 5 people in the Juniors or Seniors divisions (12u and 12-16). The 8 Masters means that we won't have a top-cut (playoff), and the 5 kids means there will very likely be two undefeated Masters players after 3 rounds of Swiss. In short-- this sucks.

Round 1 - ??

    My first round of the tournament my opponent flips over ---- Marnie's Impidimp! Cool! Except, that card isn't legal to play until weeks after the tournament, and still isn't legal at the time of writing. In most self-respecting cups, the player would get a DQ for illegal cards and it'd be lame, but it happens. The only problem here is that the JUDGE HIMSELF told this dude he could play this deck. Sheesh. We were able to get things straightened out and someone lent my opp a Dragapult deck to play. He clearly had never played it before and I won after a pretty dragged out game. 1-0.

Round 2 - Gardevoir

    In this matchup, I should be able to take the first KO on my opponent and try to gust up a Gardevoir at some point for 2-prizes to win. The matchup isn't that crazy in my favor, maybe 60-40 or 55-45 if the opponent is good, but it's favored. Welllll this game I was KOd first and wasn't able to make up the ground. I had a chance on the last turn to find one of my 3 Boss's Orders in my 20-something card deck, but missed them all. With a loss here, I'm no longer able to win the cup. 1-1.

Round 3 - N8's Bolt

    Nate is here to try to get some points, and his tie-breakers are better than mine, so I concede. I beat Nate in our "fun game" and he places 3rd (or 4th?) and gets some packs that we split. 1-2.

Cup Wrap-up

    Well, that was pretty anti climactic. Nate drove 3 hours to go 2-1 with one fake game. Hold on. How long does it take to play 3 games? Chat, I'll tell ya; a little less than 2 hours. We've got time for the Win-A-Box Tournament.

Win-A-Box Tournament

    Now this was the tournament that was promised. We hit 18 players, meaning the winner will get a full Booster Box and the top-8 players would get prizing. This is different than what's in the poster, but don't worry about it. We're looking at 4 rounds of Swiss and an 8-player top cut playoff.

    To top it all off, the local I was scared of (who did play that hard-counter deck) decided not to show up to this tourney. Dragapult time.

The actual list I played is a few cards off, but nobody cares

Round 1 - Gholdengo

    Buckle up, fuckle heads. I played a bunch of Gholdengo decks at this tourney. It has pretty linear paths to victory in most matchups (use Make It Rain to KO your opponent over and over), so my locals spam the hell out of this deck. I've always had a pretty hard time into it, but my opponent doesn't really make it hard for me in round 1. 1-0.

Round 2 - N8's Bolt (Reprise)

    Nate thought I would be playing the Roaring Moon deck again, which beats his Raging Bolt deck up, so he was pretty distraught to see we matched up. When I flipped over my first Dreepy, he was pretty excited! His Raging Bolt was specifically built to throw off his opposing Dragapults and steal away wins. Then, his excitement turned back to sadness when he realized that I, the person who helped him make those changes, was his opponent. So I wouldn't be caught off-guard. The game was tight, but he wasn't able to be aggressive enough to win. 2-0.

Round 3 - Gholdengo #2

    For the record, you can't repeat opponents until the top cut, so this is a different Gholdengo. And unfortunately, it's piloted by the one other local that scares me. This kid had beaten Nate once already at the cup earlier, so I've gotta get payback. For the Mir family!!

I lost. 2-1.

Round 4 - Mirror?

    I said 4 rounds of Swiss earlier, right? Alright, good. That's what I heard too. Asked the Tournament Organizer (TO) about that before this round. Locked in. 4 rounds of Swiss and an 8-player top cut. I look at the sheet and there are 8 total players with 2 or more wins though 3 rounds of Swiss. That means I can safely Intentionally Draw (ID) and still have enough soccer-style points, win=3 tie=1 loss=0, to be top-8 no matter what. Cool. I ID and beat the guy pretty easily in the game we play for fun. 2-1-1.

Round 5 - Hydreigon Zoroark

    HUH? We're doing 5 ROUNDS OF SWISS? And I just ID'd against an opponent I was confident I could beat anyways? What the hell happened. Well, the TO messed up the bracket format and I guess it's hard to switch off of the official Pokemon-sponsored TO software, so we are playing 5 rounds of swiss followed by a 4-player top cut. My ID is a huge problem, because I functionally just intentionally put myself in the top-4 bubble, and only if I win. I'm trying to not sit down and start these games until I get a concrete answer from the TO about what the hell is happening, but he just says "Don't worry about it, it'll work out." He always does good by his players, so sure. I'll just play. And tilt. Looking back, I think he was just hoping I would win.

    Thank god this guy's deck was wack. I drew pretty shit and still got it. 3-1-1. I had better tie breakers than other two 3-1-1 players and got into the top-cut as the lone 3-1-1 player.

Semi Finals - Gholdengo #3

    I play against the scary Gholdengo player from Round 3 who handed me my only loss again. In the meantime, he beat Nate again. His Mir Boy record on the day is up to 3-0. He's literally farming the shit out of us, and Nate and I should both have a good matchup into his deck. The top cut is Best-of-3 with a 50-minute timer. Let's get into it.

    Game 1 is a long and grinding game. It goes back and forth, but I'm able to enter the final turns with only a slight disadvantage. My opponent makes an overly passive play and the tide swings back into my favor. I am able to take the first game with just 15 minutes left on the 50-minute clock. 1-0.

    Game 2, I just take it slow. I didn't slow play my actual actions (illegal), but with just 15 minutes left, I took a calculated risk that my opponent wouldn't be able to take prizes fast enough to actually win. I used Budew to prevent my opponent from taking prize cards, and never benched a Pokemon worth 2-prizes. He would have to take 6 KOs to win the game. My opponent wasn't playing any faster than normal, which surprised me. When time was called, he had only taken 2 prizes. No chance to win. We play out the extra turns and Game 2 ended in a tie, giving me the match win.

Finals - Gholdengo #4

    Yup, 6 actual rounds played (we don't count the ID) and FOUR Gholdengos. This was another rematch, but this was against my round 1 opponent. I'm one series away from winning this booster box. Second place gets 22 packs, but first gets 36!! I offer my opponent to split the 1st and 2nd prizing, because it was 9pm. Mine and Nate's TCG day started at 1pm. We are in the damn thick of it and all I had to eat since 1pm was one of Nate's Little Ceaser's Crazy Puffs-- I don't eat when I'm grinding. 

    The TO says we can't, so we play. Game 1 was another long one, taking about 35-minutes again. This game wasn't very close, but a prize-checking mistake on my part gave my opponent an opening that I was not anticipating. I had two prizes remaining, and two cards I had written down from my early-game prize check were never drawn from them. Okay, cool. I should have my Bloodmoon Ursaluna in the deck to win, right? Wrong. I wrote down a card that wasn't actually in my prize cards, while Bloodmoon was. Shit. I was still able to close it out, but sheesh. 1-0.

    Like last round.. my opponent isn't playing any faster than normal. He may even be slower. I look back to the clock after we each finished out first turns, and I see we only have about 10-minutes remaining. The judge is clocking our actions to make sure we don't take too long (illegal-- can result in prize-card penalties). He says we're both doing fine. Tick-tock.. My opponent takes his first prize card with ~7 minutes remaining and I already know it's over. I don't bench any 2-prizers, use Budew exclusively, and he time is called while he still has 4 prize cards remaining. Another timing based dub makes me the CHAMP.

Win-A-Box Wrap-up

    I won a box! Right now they're going for ~$250 on TCGPlayer. For a $30 entry, that's not too shabby. I also get to take home a bunch of Prize Packs, and a little Hoothoot!

The champ feat. CwojoStrike

The day's spoils

The booster box

The pulls! Zoom in for some heat!

Hoot

Nathan:10 Rocket's Blog

 Hello, friends. Welcome back to the blog. Today I’ll be yappin about the Rocket’s Mewtwo deck from the brand new Pokémon TCG expansion, Destined Rivals. This deck is based around Rocket’s Mewto EX and Rocket’s Spidops. With some of the most broken supporters in the game, this deck has some serious potential. 

Pokemon

Rocket’s Mewtwo EX- This huge basic Pokémon with 280 HP comes with some limitations. First of all, its ability, Powersaver, states that unless you have 4 or more Rockets Pokémon in play, Mewtwo cannot attack. There are ways to circumvent this limitation that I’ll cover later. Another limitation that Mewtwo has is the fact that its attack, Erasure Ball, costs 3 energy and states You may discard up to 2 Energy from your Benched Pokémon. This attack does 60 more damage for each card you discarded in this way. This attack tops out at 280, which is enough to OHKO most of the format, but not the most popular Stage 2 EX decks. My way to get around this is the ACE SPEC, Maximum Belt. This tool allows my Mewtwo to deal an extra 50 damage to my opponents' EX Pokémon. Choosing this as my ACE SPEC means that I cannot pick Prime Catcher or Secret Box, but it does allow me to maintain the prize trade against those Stage 2 decks.

Rocket’s Spidops- This non-rulebox stage 1 Pokémon is the perfect pair for Mewtwo. Spidops' ability, Charging Up, states that once during your turn, you may attach a Basic Energy card from your discard pile to this Pokémon. This means that once you get your basic energy in the discard pile, your double Spidops can help Mewtwo deal 280 damage. With its grass typing, and the rising popularity of Marnie’s Grimsnarl (everyones gonna play that fuckin deck) Spidops’ attack with a full bench will easily KO that dark type goblin, and Charizard EX.

Rocket’s Mimikyu- This little depressed Pikachu wannabe is one of my favorite little guys. I love a free retreat, little guy. Mimikyu also has an incredibly useful attack. Gemstone Play lets you choose 1 of your opponent's Active Tera Pokémon's attacks and use it as this attack. The double energy cost may seem hard to set up in one turn, but this deck has many tricks. Team Rocket’s Energy states: This card can only be attached to a Team Rocket Pokémon. If this card is attached to anything other than a Team Rocket Pokémon, discard this card.

As long as this card is attached to a Pokémon, it provides 2 in any combination of [Psychic] Energy and [Dark] Energy. This means that in one attachment, you can set up your Mimikyu and use it to copy Dragapult EX’s Phantom Dive, which is one of the best attacks in the game. You may also set up your Mewtwo for one Rocket energy and one basic energy.

Items

There is one item in this deck that is disgustingly broken.

Team Rocket’s Tranceiver- Search your deck for a Supporter card that has "Team Rocket" in its name, reveal it, and put it into your hand. Then, shuffle your deck. THIS IS DISGUSTING!!! This item is so good it just lets me pick which broken ass supporter I want (going over the supporters soon)

Team Rocket’s Great Ball- Flip a coin. If heads, search your deck for an Evolution Team Rocket's Pokémon, reveal it, and put it into your hand. If tails, search your deck for a Basic Team Rocket's Pokémon, reveal it, and put it into your hand. Then, shuffle your deck. This card is fine. It’s nothing very special, and I’m thinking of how many I want to cut out of my list right now because I never really flip what I want, and I already play 4 Ultra Ball.

Supporters

This is where the deck shines. These supporters are INSANE.

Team Rocket’s Proton- If you go first, you may use this card during your first turn.

Search your deck for up to 3 Basic Team Rocket's Pokémon, reveal them, and put them into your hand. Then, shuffle your deck. Many of you should know that supporter cards are typically not allowed on your first turn, unless you’re chad as fuck and play tranceiver for proton to fill your bench with spiders. This deck wants to go first and find this card to be able to swing with Mewtwo on turn 2. 

Team Rocket’s Ariana- Draw cards until you have 5 cards in your hand. If all of your Pokémon in play are Team Rocket's Pokémon, draw cards until you have 8 cards in your hand instead. Best draw supporter in the fuckin gaaaaaame. So good. Drawing until 8 is insane, and if you find one of the Team Rocket’s Factory Stadiums, you can draw 2 more because you played that Rocket Supporter. DRAW TIL 10!??!!??!?!?!?!?!

Team Rocket’s Archer- You can use this card only if any of your Team Rocket's Pokémon were Knocked Out during your opponent's last turn. Each player shuffles their hand into their deck. Then, you draw 5 cards, and your opponent draws 3 cards. Insanely good hand disruption. Pretty much just Unfair Stamp, but Opp gets +1 card. If my opponents take ANY early KOs, they are getting their hand bucked. 

Team Rocket’s Giovanni- Switch your Active Team Rocket's Pokémon with 1 of your Benched Team Rocket's Pokémon. If you do, switch in 1 of your opponent's Benched Pokémon to the Active Spot. Yet another supporter, ACE SPEC. This card is just Prime Catcher. This card is also why I bench Mimikyu even when I’m not against any Tera Pokemon, Pivot is very, very good. 

General Gameplan

Always go first. We must go first & find either Proton or Tranceiver for Proton. Once we fill our bench (Preferably 2 Spiders and Mimikyu), we must find energy to attach to Mewtwo, and we must get basic energy in our discard pile to combo with Spidops. Once we have some energy discarded and spiders on our bench, we have a bit of flexibility. Depending on the matchup, we can either use Spidops to attack, or just go straight in with the Mewtwo (provided we have the necessary energy and basics benched). 

Tourney

Typically, when new sets come out, you have to wait 2 weeks until the new cards are legal. Thankfully, my local game store, M&M Games Clearwater, decided to make Destined Rivals legal for their Tuesday night locals tournament. I will now be sharing how the 3 round tournament went. 

Round 1- Joltik Box

Joltik box pretty much just wants to either set up Iron Hands, or Pikachu to get their 2 prize KOs. I went first and hit the full combo, filling my bench, and attaching Rocket energy to my Mewtwo EX. My opponent used Joltik’s attack Jolting Charge to set up 4 energy on their Iron Hands EX. I proceeded to play Rocket’s Giovanni to push my Mewtwo into the active, and bring their fully set-up Iron Hands to the active. I then nuked the thing for 280 and the first 2 prize cards. My opponent then conceded after not being able to muster up a return KO. (My Mewtwo had 330 hp from a Bravery Charm, so Pikachu couldn't KO LOL)

Round 2- Rocket’s Wheezing

Super easy matchup. Even though opponent hits for weakness, they could never get their board setup enough to get a KO. I just attacked with spiders the whole game, and they never really had a chance (Once again hit the turn 1 combo but didn’t set up a Mewtwo this time)

Round 3- Ethan’s Typhlosion

This matchup can get kinda outta hand for me. Since they can hit 280 without very much difficulty, I want to lean into the spiders. To KO their Typhlosion with a spider, I need a full bench, which isn’t the easiest to chain for 6 KOs. Luckily for me, my opponent had a slow start, and I had all the Giovannis I needed to kill their Quilavas whenever they were out. Once they got a Typhlosion up, I had already taken 3 prize cards, and I wouldn’t ever bench enough 2 prize Pokémon for them to win. Easy 3-0.

Overall, I was very happy with how the deck performed during this 3-round practice tournament. I won 4 prize packs for my performance, and sadly didn’t pull anything good. Hope you all have enjoyed my blog, and let me know what your favorite Rocket’s card is in the chat. 

Quentin: 10

 The Q Workout Plan

(Suggested Accompaniment Track)

    BREAKING: SLICE OF LIFE FOUND DEAD, KILLER AT LARGE

    Moments on the Cruise, Missing Puzzle Pieces, New Friends, The Rehearsal Season 2, My Book Obsession, all have fallen by the wayside. In their stead? An in depth look at my psyche during race training cycles. 

    As the ranking athletic authority in this blog (Gysa Cup Champion w/ Puj, Ironman 70.3 tiebreaker) I feel qualified to share my routine during periods of my life while I'm training. 

(me running Ironman 70.3 Chattanooga yay)

    First, it's important to highlight that for about 23 and a half years of my life, I've done almost no training of any kind, in any way. I generally have a difficult time finding my way in life, and tend to meander from point h to point z without any rhyme or reason. This is where the presence of friends plays a great deal in my life. If I am not driven to complete something for my own sake, I will at least be driven to complete it for the sake of others. I began my running career because August and Ethan wanted to do a 5k, this was when he was initially infatuated with the idea of Sprint Triathlons. I ran a few miles at a time to train, and ran my first 5k in August of 2023 with a time of about 35 minutes. If you're listening to the above track you can place yourself where I was, 8 am on Bayshore, ready to attack a 5k with this blaring in my left ear. I remember the feeling of August and Ethan jetting past me, and me  having to stop to walk at the 2.5 mile mark. The wave of shame that washed over me was immense. I worked hard for the next month to get a sub 30 minute 5k, and in November laced up my shoes and ran a half marathon to prove that I could. After taking the majority of December off (no race to train for, a common theme), August approached me about running an Ironman 70.3 with him in Chattanooga Tennessee in May of the next year. He didn't want to train for something so arduous alone. I looked at my schedule, saw I had a 5 night cruise the week of the race, haggled for another date, was rejected, and signed up for the race. 

    The training block started on January 1st. I copied the majority of the Super Simple 20 Week Ironman 70.3 Training Plan into a calendar for the year. I craved the feeling of marking off each day with a red marker, signifying my completion of all of the small trials that led to the opus. I dedicated myself to training, shared incredible runs and bike rides with August, and honestly had the time of my life. This period of my life was the best far and away for many reasons, but honestly it was really just amazing to go to my Grandma's and brag about how far I ran or biked that week. Six months of training, however, is a roller coaster. Incredible runs that leave you feeling elated can give way to rainy bike rides that cause you to hibernate for 6 hours once you get home. Managing your nutrition, sleep, and body is a tightrope walk (I basically just crawl across the tightrope with alcohol and fast food fueling my vessel). 

    Race day comes and goes, leaves you with the greatest sense of self in the world, but then what. There's nothing to train for, you run for fun, hurt your knee, and now there's nowhere to go. In contrast to my disciplined first half of the year, the latter half was a hodge podge of gunk. I burnt out, didn't want to hurt my knee that throbbed every day, and ultimately ran a marathon alongside Ryan with zero training. I was very proud of Ryan that day, setting out to complete his time goal, and was glad I got to escort him for his first 18 miles, yet the marathon felt like a failure. The real race is run in the months leading up to the actual date.

    Fast forward to the current day, 6 months into a new year, no training to show for it, just suspended in air waiting for an outside force to give me a push in any direction. 

-Enter Lizzie Stage Left-

    I have been reborn, a phoenix from the ashes of my former self. A new goal set: Sub 2 Hour Half Marathon in November. What better way to welcome the new-ish sister in law to the family than pacing her to her big time goal, in Chattanooga of all places. Poetic. 

The Real Song of the Blog

    This post has been a lot of rambling so allow me to reveal the true point, constructing a training plan. As seen above I kind of just copied and pasted a training plan for the 70.3, not for this. For this race I'm just going to copy the Ironman training plan and add some flares I enjoyed from training. Here's the process.

1. Pick 0ut a Motivational Quote: On my calendar from 2024 I have a fortune (from a fortune cookie of course) taped to the first day in January, it reads: Discipline is the Refining Fire by which Talent Becomes Ability. That goes insanely hard in my humble opinion, so that was good. For this race I have picked out a cheesy ass paragraph from an unnamed motivational book that I saw on twitter. "Unless you're playing at the absolute highest levels, every game in life is just you vs. you." I mean that goes pretty damn hard I don't even care. 

2. Pick a Rest Day: I liked doing Long Runs on Sunday, so Monday it is, this is subject to change. 

3. Add Base Workouts: These will be the building blocks of your training plan, the volume and reps that you need to actually progress and grow during training, you can take these days slow and treat them as recovery. Maybe throw some Zone 2 work in there (workouts that focus on keeping your heart rate low). I'll make these my Tuesday and Friday workouts.

4. Add Cross Training: For me, this is biking, and will transition to dumbbell and swimming work when I'm in Minnesota. It's important to consistently give your body breaks while working out other muscles or something like that, also from my experience biking really helps so that's cool. I don't actually know shit, this is my Thursday and Saturday workout.

5. INTERVALS: You don't actually get any faster unless you're consistently implementing speed work, that's science. I will do interval training on Wednesday, legs fresh from a rest day and one day of recovery running. These are my favorite workouts because you want to die almost the whole time but you can feel the progression. 

6. The Long Run: Your Sunday Best. The long run is the biggest part of training, it's important to relegate it to the weekend so you can truly focus on it, also I think these are actually my favorite workouts, sue me.

7. Recovery Weeks: It's important to implement recovery weeks to give your body a small reprieve from the torture, this will include shorter workouts, less intense intervals, and shorter long runs.

8. Put it All Together: Give me 5 minutes I'm gonna go put that in a google sheet. 

9. Use All This to Farm Kudos on Strava.

    I hope you guys learned something. Thanks for reading as always. Oh damn On the Nature of Daylight just came on while I'm writing this. Love you all.