Andy Gapin

Tonight’s run was alright. It was my first run ever in the dark. I could barely see where I was putting my feet while I’ll was in the park, but it was almost kind of nice too. I kind of liked the darkness in the cool air.

The run itself was about average. I started off slower, but picked it up a lot towards the end. My right calf was a little sore about midway through, but the real problem was my left hip. Every now and again, it gives me problems, but tonight was some of the worst pain it’s given me. I might take tomorrow off, but since today was first run since Friday (because of soreness in my right calf), I feel like I shouldn’t take another day off. We’ll see.

I took a bunch of photos over this past weekend while we were dog-sitting. We were actually supposed to be in Rochester, but the dog-sitter was MIA so we got left behind to take care of the dog instead.

I snapped about 50 rapid-fire pictures of the lady with my iPhone while we were at Vicky’s Diner in Westfield. We saw on Yelp that they have pumpkin pancakes so we had to go check them out. I also took a few photos of a blowup ghost decoration on a random front lawn. We drove by and my camera wasn’t in the car so I made my fiancée take me back over there after getting my camera. And lastly, I tried to capture some of the Fall colors on the trees. I only took about ten shots total in that bunch.

If you read this blog or know me personally, you know that I don’t talk about sports much. Well, professional sports anyway. I do talk about running, snowboarding, and occasionally mountain biking. The reason I don’t talk about professional sports is because I rarely care about them. I used be a huge football, hockey, and baseball fan when I was a kid, but that kind of went away around age 16. Since then, I haven’t cared too much. I don’t really follow anything, but if and when it does come up, I’m still a Philly fan. That will probably never change.

All that being said, every now and again, I get sucked in around the end of the season. I did for the Eagles a few years ago and now I am for the Phillies this year. Yeah yeah, I know, I’m just following for the playoffs and not the regular season or through the bad times. Whatever, call me a fair-weather fan if you want, but I’m not getting sucked in just because they’re doing well. The Phillies have been great for a few years now, but this is the first that I got sucked in with them in a much longer period of time. I don’t know what does it, but every now and again, it just happens.

Now, what I want to bitch about is Cablevision and Fox/News Corp. News Corp wants more money from Cablevision and Cablevision doesn’t want to pay it. So what happens? They pull Fox from Cablevision. Awesome. They also pull their Hulu channels for Cablevision customers. Thanks, dudes.

What does this have to do with baseball and the Phillies? Well, Fox is the channel broadcasting the games. So, I can’t watch them. I watched game one of the NLCS at my fiancée’s parents’ house since we were there anyway and, last night, I had to follow mlb.com’s play-by-play online. Their play-by-play Flash application on their site is pretty decent, but you’re not actually watching the game which sucks. I tried listening online to the radio coverage from Philly, but they didn’t broadcast the game on their stream. And mlb.com charges to watch/listen online. Awesome.

Figures, one of the rare times that I actually care about sports and I can’t even watch. It’s not even that big of a deal, I’ll survive. What is ridiculous though is that News Corp and Cablevision have no problem screwing their customers. We are the ones that pay Cablevision directly, without us, they don’t make any money. Letting this happen is a slap in the face. News Corp makes most of their money from advertising, but without people watching, no one is going to pay to advertise. Now, Cablevision’s 3 million or whatever subscribers barely makes a dent for Fox so they’re advertising revenues will be 100% unaffected, but that’s not the point, it’s another slap in our faces.

While Fox and Cablevision are duking it out, it’s the rest of us that get screwed. In the end, they’ll reach some agreement and that’ll be that, they’ll both be fine, but those of us that just want to watch the TV we’re paying for are the ones losing out and there isn’t really anything we can do about it. It’s just greed.

So thanks, guys. You both suck and you’re both at fault. Quit blaming each other and quit screwing the innocent customers.

I just want to watch some baseball for the next two weeks while I still actually care about it.

Today’s run was a bit longer than it probably should have been, but I want start adding an 8 mile run to each week for the next few weeks so I figured tonight was the night to do it. Next month, I want to up that to 10.

We were dog-sitting the fiancée’s parents’ dog while they were away for the weekend so I went for a run around her hometown and definitely got a bit lost. She told me where to go, but I didn’t really listen to her. I ended up getting a little lost, almost finding my way back, and then making a wrong turn and sending myself further away. At one point around mile 6.5, I could have made a right that would have brought me back the right way and had me finishing right in front of the house. Instead, I made a left and ended up finishing a mile and a half away. When I looked at the map on my phone after stopping, I couldn’t believe how far away I was. The temperature was a nice 55 degrees which was great while running, but after I stopped and had to walk back for a mile and a half, it was chilly. I was pretty wet from sweat, while not as bad as in the Summer, I was still pretty sweaty. I cooled down quickly and was a bit cold for most of the walk.

The run itself was okay, I definitely kept a faster pace, about 7:16/mile overall, than I should have. I started out at that pace and didn’t really slow down. I could feel my calves telling me to slow down, but I didn’t listen. By mile 6, I was pushing myself a bit to keep the pace, but since I was more focused on trying to figure out where I was, I barely noticed.

At this point, I know I still have a lot more training to do to be able to keep this pace for another 5 miles, but I think it will be possible. I’ve got until January.

The weather was nice outside tonight, but my fiancée still isn’t back to running yet after her injury so we decided that we should go to the gym so she could at least do the bike and get back to being active. I really can’t say enough just how much I hate the treadmill. It’s awful. Running 8 minute miles feels like death and bumping up to, my somewhat normal for outside, 7:30/mile is practically impossible to keep up with. I squeezed out 6 miles in 47 minutes today which isn’t bad, but it was not fun at all.

Just like my last trip to the gym, I wore sneakers instead of my Vibrams since I still don’t know about them on a treadmill. Running in sneakers really feels weird now. While it feels weird to not really be able to feel what I’m stepping on now, I can definitely feel my feet not landing the way they should be. I never noticed it before, but my left foot doesn’t land flat, it lands outside first and I think that’s what caused my ankle pain.

If you’re going to have go to work, it’s difficult to start the day off better than a plate full of waffles. That’s what I got treated to today. The waffles were homemade by the owners and there were all kinds of toppings to choose from. It was pretty awesome.

I snapped a few pictures…

As I’ve mentioned, I’m moving at the end of this month so we’ve been spending a lot of time packing stuff up. I wanted to get an early start so that I can sort through the massive amount of crap I own and get rid of a lot of it. I’ve been selling things and doing a pretty good job, actually. We’ve made enough money selling old crap so far to buy a bunch of new furniture, decorations, and other things for the new place.

Anyway, during this process of really sorting through everything, I found an old accordion folder from back when I used to run shows at the ZEN House. In this folder was a bunch of stuff, but the most interesting was the stack of old flyers. I guess at the time I thought it would be a good idea to save a copy or two of each flyer. I don’t think they’re ALL there, but it seems like most of them are and I’m glad to have them. I ended up getting sidetracked from sorting and packing and spent some time looking at them and remembering each of the shows. It was a lot of fun, there are a ton of great memories from these shows.

I decided to take a few minutes and photograph all the flyers so I could post them here for you. I wish I had a decent scanner to make the process easier, but our scanner would have taken forever and, apparently, doesn’t have Mac drivers so it would have been a serious pain in the ass. I didn’t have a lot of time either so these are just some very quick photos, as you’ll be able to tell.

Most of the flyers, I created, but there are a handful that were made by other people. There are a few shows that have multiple flyers and one show that has two very slightly different versions of the same flyer. Anyway, enjoy!

Last year, the Sean Hanna Foundation 5k was where I set what was my personal best 5k time which took until last Saturday’s race at Rutgers for me to beat. This year, I didn’t set out to PR again. I mean, it would have been awesome, but after last Saturday’s race, I was still so happy that I wasn’t about to hurt myself pushing harder.

I love this race for a few reasons. First, it’s in the name of a friend of mine who unfortunately passed three years ago from cancer. So unlike any other race, this one has a little more personal meaning to me. Second, the first year they did this race was my first ever 5k (let’s just say my time was more than seven minutes slower then than this year). Third, the race is run in Duke Island Park in Bridgewater. I really love this park. It’s where my fiancée and I run after work and it has a nice mix of forest, open park, and riverside paths. Forth, it’s a small race with a great vibe. Now, it’s not always the best organized race, but it was better than last week’s Rutgers race. This year, the race started really late, about 20 minutes, which was awkward and kind of rough after spending a little bit of time moving around and loosening up.

Like last week, I started off right in the front so I wouldn’t have to run around anyone. At this point, I know what kind of a runner I am and where I should be starting. I didn’t take off quite like I did last week when the race started, but I still started off quickly to separate myself from most of the pack a little. From there, there was very little position change, I think I passed one or two people through the rest of the race and that was it. My first mile was about the same speed as last week’s, but somehow I lost a lot in my second mile. I thought I was picking it up, but I guess not. I did pick it up for real in my third mile, but my legs started to feel like rubber a bit. I was pushing, but not quite 100%. As much as I would have loved to beat last week’s time, for the first time ever, I didn’t feel like I had to beat my best time so I didn’t push as much as I could have. And to be honest, I really didn’t have much more to give.

I finished just a little slower than last week, only 12 seconds off, but I didn’t feel like I was going to puke which was nice. I’m really happy with my time. Even though the weather was a little nicer for this race than it was last week, I was just glad to know that it wasn’t a fluke and that this is really where I’m at right now. 20:41 was good enough to get me in at 7th overall and 2nd for my age group. Even though it was a small race with just 179 runners, you can’t be unhappy with numbers like that.

I got to get another pre-work run in today thanks to working 10-7 again. Today’s run wasn’t as great as Tuesday’s overall. I didn’t hydrate as much in the morning and didn’t eat anything at all before heading out the door. I wanted to grab something, but there wasn’t really anything good to eat in the house. I also made the mistake of wearing Spandex under my shorts. It was only about 50 degrees and I was freezing while walking beforehand and through the first mile. But after that, I was a bit too warm and ended up sweating a ton. I guess I need to remember that unlike running in the evening, I’m not the only thing getting warmer, the outside temperature is also going up.

My lungs and legs both felt like they were still in bed for the first half of the run and it just didn’t feel as good overall as Tuesday. I kept a slightly faster pace for the run as a whole, but each mile’s pace was somewhat inconsistent with the miles before and after it.

This morning’s run was my frist ever pre-work run. My hours for today and Thursday got shifted to 10-7 to provide some extra developer coverage later in the evening for the week following a system release. Since running after leaving work at 7 wouldn’t be too awesome, I decided to do the smart thing and wake up at my normal time and go for a run in the morning.

Normally, running right after waking up doesn’t work well for me because I don’t hydrate enough. On race days, I wake up around two hours before the race so I have time, but on any other day, I don’t. I made sure to drink plenty of water as soon as I got up this morning and gave myself about 20 minutes before heading out the door. It was a little chilly this morning, in the low 50s, but extremely humid, 93%. I debated wearing Spandex under my shorts, but decided against it. I’m glad I didn’t wear it, after just a couple minutes, I was plenty warm. I finished soaked in sweat.

The run was pretty nice since there weren’t too many people to run around in the park, but because of all the rain lately, parts of the park were flooded so I couldn’t do my regular loop. Instead, I did a few semi-circles and turned around at the flooded parts. The cooler weather is so much nicer to run in and even though the humidity was high, breathing was easy.

I ran 6 miles with an increasing pace for each mile. I started at 7:59/mile and working down to 7:15/mile. It felt very comfortable and I didn’t feel like I was pushing myself at all. Overall, it was a very good run.