Week 37 of 2026: injury

I have the unfortunate news that – despite my efforts to listen to my body – I seem to have injured myself. Of most running injuries I know how they feel, but this one is new again, which is probably why it snug up on me. I still have hopes it's a minor one.

This week also features a bit of a rant about an RPG that went into a direction I did not expect.

Watched

• rewatched Jurassic Park (1993)

Read

• continued The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin (The Broken Earth 3)
• continued Autisms by Darian Leader

Played

On Tuesday, I played the sixteenth episode of my Mausritter campaign, the first one after the summer break. We're back! I wasn't able to prepare all the cool stuff I wanted, but hey, a break is a break. I am very glad I had the preparation I did have, as it did fit the plans of the party, and now I finally shared the story of what happened with the pigeons – a bit.

On Saturday, I played “Thirsty Sword Lesbians” at Main Quest Con in Rijswijk. It was the first time I played any RPG at a convention – I usually just stand there to scared to join a table. But after visiting a few of these conferences I know that the market alone cannot really entertain me for more than an hour anymore, so I signed up to a game I knew.

Unfortunately, we did not really play Thirsty Sword Lesbians. I had forgotten, but I heard a lot of horror stories about con-games on podcasts, and this turned out to be one. Well, the genre, that is: while I was still trying to figure out how to make my character work within the world the GM was describing, more and more clues were dropped that this was in fact a horror mystery. I only realized this fully when the GM made a bold move and swapped my character, stating I was now this specific NPC. That was the moment I felt no longer guilty about not making any of my playbook moves: apparently I was in an interactive story without much agency.

A note to self: the open table policy is there, even if the GM did not say so. It was a valuable learning experience about needing safety tools – I got a bit triggered by a bully-scene but not too badly – but it was certainly not Thirsty Sword Lesbians: there was no lesbian mentioned at all (only one married gay man with plans to adopt an Asian girl, which I should have X-carded), there was also no sword mentioned (we were at a high school reunion after all), there was no thirst (partly that's on us players, as our first action was to get a drink) and we did not read or resolve any move from the game (“oh yea, I can't find it, please just roll +Wit”).

Most of all I'm just feeling a bit betrayed because I signed up for improvised story telling with Thirsty Sword Lesbians, and I got railroaded horror mystery without safety tools. My lesson: communicate the game you want to play, don't just start playing it.

Ran

On Monday I ran 12.5km easy, which was not intended at a long run. After I finished I was a bit surprised at how tired I was, but then it dawned on me that 12.5km is not really a short distance, it only looked short because it was dwarfed by the 30km and 34km long runs on the schedule.

On Wednesday I had some structured workout planned with 5 times a faster kilometer, but after the 2km warming up I decided in the first interval that it was not going to happen: my calf muscle was not just complaining, but actually hurting. Unfortunately there was no public transport that day, so I had to walk-run 2.5km back again, making this a 5km easy.

On Thursday I had an easy 9km on the schedule, but I ran 100 meters and aborted it. Like I said: this is not just soreness, this is pain, and I should not ignore this any more than I already had been.

The 34km long run on Saturday was therefore cancelled. At the time of writing I think we are back to soreness, but I also am experienced enough to know that might be wishful thinking. Let's hope a bit more rest will save it.