Congratulations to the Runners and Those Surviving Their Promotion Series

Rocking San Diego

Sunday, June 1 was the San Diego Rock 'n' Roll marathon.

Always a big event in the city, there were over 30,000 runners who participated in either the full or half marathon, including 91 year old Harriette Thompson who finished in 7:07:42. Needless to say, I was not one of the runners. I am just getting back into my fitness routine, but I did run the RnR San Diego 4 times from 2007 to 2010. I never did reach my goal of getting finished in under 5 hours, but that was only a stretch goal – finishing was always my primary focus.

Training for and running a marathon really gave me a sense that I could do anything that I set my mind to. It is a difficult thing to work towards and once completed, is definitely something to feel good about. I hope to someday get back into running form and to give the 5 hour barrier another try, but that will be another day.

For now, congratulations to all the runners who attained their goal and finished their race.

Continuing my Core Challenge

Today, I cranked out the following:

Week 1, Day 5:

• 14 push-ups
• 15 second plank
• 16 plank reaches

I feel pretty good about the exercise, probably because I am not pushing too hard, but I have not encountered any issues so far. I think I will go through the core challenge on it's own and then start adding other items to my fitness routine – let's just get through the challenge first.

Deciding match of my Silver promotion series

This was it – win or lose, this game would determine if I advanced to Silver tier or stayed in Bronze. Up to this point, I have alway been stuck in Bronze, but I was on the verge of success. Since I started ranked play, I've spent a significant time in Bronze V – the lowest division in the game. I even ended season 3 stuck in Bronze V, even though I briefly saw Bronze IV. And then season 4 started and I had to qualify all over again and ended up in Bronze V.

I almost gave up.

But slowly, I got better. I attribute most of my improvement to watching my game replays. I use a program called BaronReplays to record and then playback my games, and it has helped me greatly. I am able to see places where I was out of position or opportunities that I could have taken but missed. I also get to see what the other players around me are doing. How does the ADC get so much cs or how the jungler routes through the jungle. I think it has helped quite a bit in improving my abilities in LoL. But I am still in Bronze.

This game is all or nothing – win and I get to Silver, lose and I go back to Bronze. Of course, I can always get back to another promotion series, but this is my first, and hopefully last time I will have to be promoted from Bronze to Silver.

Sadly, in the most important game I've played to date, I had last pick and was assigned to play ADC. Now I've played plenty of games as ADC before, it just is not my best position. The role requires skill because as an AD carry, you are expected to kill a lot of creeps to get lots of gold. Your damage potential is completely based on items, so you need gold to buy things that will help you get more gold and cause more damage.

I chose Quinn.

I like Quinn because she is pretty mobile and she has a blind that can protect her from damage for a time. She also has an escape when she gets her ultimate and a vision ability that helps keep her from getting caught in a gank. The problem I have though, is that I do not always use these abilities to their highest capabilities.

So in my penultimate game, I played Quinn against Ashe, with Annie on my side and Taric on the opposing team. I think I did pretty well in the early game and I ended up getting 3 more cs than Ashe over the course of the game, but I died too many times. 9 times to be precise. To be fair, not all of my deaths were at the hands of Ashe, but enough of them were that she was able to dominate the bottom lane while I struggled to get enough gold to buy the items I needed to do damage. I never got my Blood Thirster, I never got my Infinity Edge, I even struggled to get a Last Whisper and Statikk Shiv.

Ashe did not to too well either to be honest, but she did get 9 kills over the course of the game and with Twitsted Fate carrying from mid lane and Darius from top, we lost pretty soundly.

I failed my promotion series. 2 games to 3.

I was reduced back to Bronze I.

I suppose there will be another time, but it will not be my first.

#LeagueOfLegends #LOL