Week 28 of 2026: finales

This week was a week of stomach issues. I will not describe too much detail, but it started Tuesday and I thought it was finished Thursday, only to return with a huge punch on Saturday when I thought I could eat anything I liked again on Friday.

Saturday I went to The Hague for some volleyball matches: I saw the women’s U22 semifinals match between Serbia and The Netherlands, and I saw the finals of the male European League between The Netherlands and Finland. It was interesting to see the matches and nice to do something else for a change, but whelp, watching a sports match is really overwhelming.

Read

• finished In Deeper Waters by F.T. Lukens
• read The Only Safe Place Left is the Dark by Warren Wagner
• started The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

Lots of reading last week. I finally finished In Deeper Waters, which was a nice easy read but also not a masterpiece. I guess it took me so long because I was not really that invested in this gay romantasy story, but it was nice to read something of the genre.

The Only Safe Place Left is the Dark was a much more interesting read. I don’t want to spoil too much, but let’s say it combines the themes of HIV with a zombie apocalypse. It was an interesting combination, which makes this one certainly a recommendation if you’re into it, but also a warning: if you’re into the genre, you will probably not encounter anything new. Most of the story was pretty predictable, but it had some nice twists. It was also only 80 pages, so I finished it fairly quickly.

The Fifth Season was mentioned in an ages old RPG review of Quintin Smith / Quinns – from before Quinns Quest even. I decided to give it a try and so far it’s world is much more interesting than the previous two mentioned books.

Played

On Tuesday I ran the fifteenth episode of our ongoing Mausritter campaign, and I have dubbed this one the season finale: we will see our mice again in September. It was a very full episode. Last time, I had prepared where I though the story would go, but my players had other plans. Since this campaign had always been very open, I allowed this and just threw my plans away, but this also meant that this week I had prepared nothing: I only knew what was going on in the world. Interestingly enough now they followed the thread that I would’ve prepared, and I felt underprepared again. It was still fun though, I’ll write a longer post about it soon.

On Wednesday I played the first episode in a new multi-table Pirate Borg campaign in Utrecht. I was planning on running a third table myself, but we didn’t have enough players, and in hindsight (with the stomach) I was very happy I could just join one of the two other tables. It was fun swashbuckling and the GM managed to kill 3 out of 5 players (but I must say we helped him a great deal by just jumping into every dangerous situation he presented us with).

On Friday we played the finale of our Pasión de las Pasiones campaign. I probably should also make a writeup about this whole campaign now that it’s finished, but the gist of it is that my character unfolded himself as a bit of an anti-hero, despite me trying not to. I guess this is a bit of “bleed”: I am not always the fastest in decision making in pressured situations, and romance always comes with pressure for me. But in this finale, somehow, my character got hold of a gun a few times, and in the last one he finally did something with it. I guess it was still the other player’s decision to push him this way, but he ended up being the new El Jefe, the boss of the gang that ran around the hotel he was previously working in. I loved this game and this campaign.

Ran

On Monday I did an 6.5km easy run in the heat. It wasn’t actually in the plan at first, but I changed the plan from 3 days per week to 4 days per week because I just wanted to run that day, and because I figured it was easier to run more shorter runs (I kept the weekly distance equal).

On Tuesday the new plan included a 7km tempo run with 5 sets of 400 meters at 4:25/km plus 400 meters at 5:05/km. I did hit all pace targets, despite the heat.

On Thursday it was an 5.9km easy run again, when the stomach aches finally decreased a bit.

I moved this weeks long run from Saturday (renewed pain!) to Sunday (which was fine). I went to the Ede-Wageningen railway station by train and ran to the train station of Amersfoort, through the forests of the Utrechtse Heuvelrug. It was a 19.1km run and really, this is why I do this. Running through the forest is so great, I want to do this more often now that the weather allows it.