11 miles in the rain for chocolate!

Well it's really just a way of making running 11 miles more interesting, I am using the term running rather loosely here, Although I did do some running, I walked most of it.....especially the second half of it. On the other hand 11 miles is 11 miles, right? Anyway....I did this hike last year....with chocolate. I really enjoyed it last year, so I figured why not do it again this year? Perhaps I will make a tradition out of it. There are probably a lot of different chocolates to try! Last year I had Chocolate with Walnuts and this year I had chocolate with peacans. One other pleasant surprise this place had in store for me was that somehow it was still Christmas season on January 27th.

Oh....of course I also had a pleasant time out on the trails.

Well this is Chess a chess blog, so I probably should write something about chess. On the one hand my trail running activities isn't something totally unrelated to chess training. Stamina matters especially in the longer events that would be most meaningful for me to do well in: World Open(9 rounds), US Open (9 rounds), North American Open(7 rounds), Eastern Open(8 rounds), Chicago Open (7 rounds).

            But of course it takes more than stamina to win a chess tournament. Early in the year is a good time to think what else it takes and take steps to improve in those areas. An important part of this process is to set goals. Probably the most common goal chess players set is to attain a certain rating by a certain date. Well last year I made it a goal not to worry about ratings so much, so I'm not going to make a ratings based goal. The problem then becomes what to focus on. Well I happened to come across this interesting blog post that answers this question: https://lichess.org/@/CheckRaiseMate/blog/how-do-you-stop-caring-about-rating/lUgSSgdw

           One thing that the author talks about that appeals a lot to me is focusing more on process goals over outcome goals. An outcome goal could be becoming a chess master or winning a tournament. A process goal could be studying a certain book to completion or simply playing more. Here are my process goals.

1. Study "Fundamental Chess endings" by Karsten Muller and Frank Lamprecht. This is something that could help me a lot since many of my games go into endgames. My goal is to study the book from beginning to end by the end of the year. I have already started to work on this. I am about 45 pages deep already.

2. Study tactics more seriously. Two books come to mind here: the woodpecker method by Axel Smith and Hans Tikkanen and Forcing Chess Moves by Charles Hertan

3. Resume chess lessons with my chess coach.

4. Prepare better for the Big Events I play in. One idea I have to prepare better is to play multiple tournaments in a single weekend. The big events typically have 7 or more rounds. The idea is to simulate the 7+round experience by playing in multiple local tournaments in a single weekend. There is a lot of chess activity in my area, so this should be possible from time to time.

5. Read Chess Life- something I did pretty consistently in 2023 was reading this magazine from cover to cover. Well I typically don't play through every game they publish.....I concentrate more on games with the openings I might play, but I do at least look at some of the games for each tournament report they have.....plus I do their tactical exercises,  solitaire chess, and read most of the articles. My goal here is simply to continue to do this.

I could probably add more to this list but it is probably best not to. It is important that achieving every goal on the list is realistic. If I manage to achieve more then perhaps a second run for Chocolate would be in order