I ran my fifth Capitol 10K this morning. Right after I crossed the finish line someone asked me: “How did you do?”. “I don’t know, haven’t checked” I replied. “But how did you feel?”…
“I felt like crap”
Which is not a bad thing, in my opinion. If I didn’t feel like crap, wouldn’t that mean that I didn’t push myself hard enough?
They had a good amount of mostly unfinished games for the HTC Vive. Best of all: no lines. Bonus: free food and drinks.
I was pulled into a demo by Groove Jones in which you play a Tron-like disc game in a Tron-like environment against your opponent. I won several matches in a row. Unfortunately, my old body didn’t handle the intense activity well and I ended up with a torn hamstring.
Marcos and Jaime battle it out in Virtual Reality.
Regardless of my injury, they found us graceful enough to get me on their Twitter:
Since I was already downtown, I decided to walk around a little bit to see the sights and get some free toys. This in spite of my leg pain.
As I strolled down Sixth Street, I saw a large crowd of barely clothed good looking people walk towards me. I had to double check: it wasn’t Halloween nor Mardi Gras. What could it be?
This is SXSW, so of course it was an advertisement for something. However, just to make sure, I decided to stick around and pay close attention to all details in order to make sure.
It became obvious that I wasn’t going to get a free t-shirt from this crowd (maybe a free trash bag), but luckily Panasonic gutted out Parkside and turned it into a giant booze and t-shirt dispensing advertisement.
I knew it existed, but in 15+ years of living here I never went. I had heard too many times that “it’s just some rescued animals, like goats and stuff”.
It’s true, but the place is a lot nicer than I had pictured. And while there were some goats, they also had some pretty good animals: bears, lions, a senile tiger, wolves, alpacas… and by far the most enourmous, impressive, mutant pig I’ve ever seen. That alone was worth the 45 minute drive (yeah, it’s far from my house).
And for those of you who have two year old kids obsessed with trains: there’s a little train you can ride!
Two thumbs up.
Selfie from the train. The ride is pretty long, as far as little train rides go. About 10-15 minutes.It’s hard to tell by the photo, but that pig is basically the size of a smallish rhinoceros.Ilán and Lucas looking for the missing tarantula.A bear.Lion (left), myself (middle), Ilán (right).
Also, it’s my movie acting debut, playing the part of Christopher Wayne Thomas: a rugged bar goer who mostly sits and cheers for the almost 10 seconds of on-screen time and has no talking lines. You may have briefly read about him here. Yes, I look amazing with that mustache. I used Stanislavsky’s system of acting and I think it shows. If only I were a member of the Academy, I might have a chance of an award. Most (all) of my scenes (the one) were shot last November.
In any case, I have no idea how you may watch it yet, so you will have to sit tight. I will update this post when I get more info.
Congratulations to the director and all the crew, and thank you for the opportunity.
This is kind of cool: the My Pace page for the race. You can see a map and then “replay” the race to see how I advance. You can add others for comparison, so you can virtually see them eat my dust.
You can also see some tiny watermarked photos of me in lots of pain:
This is kind of cool as well: A “dronie” (their term, not mine) of the National Instruments Corporate Team.
Not too shabby for someone pushing a jogging stroller with a 17 month old kid around downtown Austin. But considering I wasn’t doing that, then it’s not that impressive. At least compared to my previous efforts:
Am I past my peak? Or was this but a small bleep in an ever improving race time? Who knows. Right now I’m in too much pain to consider ever running again.
As with Playboy, most of you are here for the article. But a few came for the pictures:
Pre-race carpool photo on Congress Avenue. In the back you can see the Texas Capitol.Pre-race selfie at the starting line. TODO: Use Photoshop to remove grey hairs before posting.After the race. Those aren’t smiles, they are grimaces. Ilan didn’t run, he just came to the Finish Line Festival for some race swag.Getting ready for the corporate team photo.Corporate team photo. I just saw that NI got second place after HEB. Which sucks because NI had won the last 10+ years in a row. I knew I should have trained more.Turns out I beat Spiderman at the race. But it also turns out I wasn’t wearing a face mask throughout.This cheerful and buoyant ray of sunshine of a man is not really bleeding from his groin. Turns out it’s fake blood, not chafing. My nipples, on the other hand…
Also, the group photo/video was taken from a drone but I haven’t received it. I will post it when I do.
