The First Five Miles

I must say that doing five miles in a laser tag arena is WAY more fun than doing five miles on a treadmill and my Fitbit can’t tell the difference!

Last night I went out to play some laser tag for the first time in 2021. Since my current options for traveling are extremely limited as restrictions continue to tighten up in many states (including some that border my own) I’m going to have to find ways to challenge myself closer to home. I’ve decided that to tide me over until I can get back to tag travels again I will pursue distance goals while playing at my home site instead. So, I am kicking off the year by tagging my way towards 25 miles in the arena, starting with my first five miles last night.

It was still a bit quiet when I got there, so Jackal unwittingly got roped into this challenge too as my sparring partner for the first few games. However, I don’t mind doing 1v1 games, especially since he doesn’t hold back. And more players arrived within the hour, so I had plenty of opportunities to reach my goal, determining from the get go that I was going to tackle the first five miles during this visit. Reaching 25 total miles of tag will be cumulative over several visits. But to get to five miles this night I figured I’d just keep playing for however long it took until I hit that mark. As it happens, that only took 12 games to accomplish. Here is how I accumulated five miles…

The first three games were all 1v1 against Jackal:

Game 1 – Supercharge (a good way to warm up) - .35 miles

Game 2 – Redline (mixing it up…this format was not designed for 1v1, but I actually really like it because it shifts your focus off tagging the other player and onto being strategic with ALMOST deactivating the bases) - .30 miles

Game 3 – Dead Aim (Jackal had never played this format before) - .35 miles

Three games and one mile down!

Game 4 – Team Standard (more players arrived, so we switched back to the regular games) - .50 miles

Game 5 – Color ranked solo - .50 miles

Two more games got me to two miles.

Game 6 – Team Standard - .40 miles

Game 7 – Color ranked solo - .44 miles

Game 8 – color ranked solo .41 miles

Those games got me to a little over three miles.

Game 9 – Color ranked Supercharge - .50 miles

Game 10 Team Standard - .35 miles

That brought me to just over four miles.

Game 11 – Color Ranked Supercharge - .50 miles

Game 12 – Team Standard - .42 miles

And that’s how I got to five miles of laser tag in 12 games.

I remember reading on the LQ website that one of their average games was equivalent to about 400-500 steps or approximately .25 miles per mission, so I was playing a bit more intensely than that. While I’m sure this estimate will vary by system, format and length of game there is no denying you can get a good workout playing laser tag and log some miles at the same time. That's good, since I’m not currently able to log miles anywhere else!

Fox asked me what my next tag adventure was going to be. At this point I really don’t have any better answer than to say “THIS is my next adventure” because I have no idea when I’ll be able to get back on the road for travels to other laser tag centers. Even locally the laser tag options are getting a bit more limited once more as two of my other go-to spots are temporarily closed again. I do want to stress that I believe it is important to wear a mask and keep your social distance in the arena, but fortunately I have found this to be very manageable when I do get to play. I also make a point of playing with the same pack every game, which gives me some personal comfort that when I play continuously this ensures I am the only person touching that particular pack (other than for sanitization).

So, for the time being my tag goals will just be about logging my distance inside a 5000 sq. ft. arena rather than logging distance across the country like I did previously. When I was traveling I used to love bringing back souvenirs from my adventures, but I guess that won’t happen again for awhile…or will it?

I noticed as I was leaving that there were a couple of light up souvenir glasses left in the case where tag merch is kept. I also noticed that one was a little different from the others that I already had. How could I have missed this?