Andy Gapin

I set out on a 12 mile run today, but decided to keep going a bit and do a mock half marathon. The result was pretty friggin’ awesome. I kept a 7:22/mile pace overall. If I can do that in three weeks in Disney, I’ll be insanely happy. It felt great to crush my race time from earlier this year.

The run started out a little rough, I felt fatigued early on, but that subsided quite a bit as I continued. The last couple of miles were a bit more difficult, I was starting to get sore and my legs didn’t really want much more, but it didn’t take much pushing to get through it. When I was done, I was pretty sore, not like after the half marathon in April, but maybe about how I felt by mile ten or eleven. Definitely an improvement from where I was eight months ago, but after a shower, I felt much better, almost 100% recovered. Seriously not bad.

The temperature was nice out, but it kept fluctuating by street. I was constantly taking my gloves off and putting them back on.

Anyway, I’m really happy with today’s run. I’ve got a 14-15 mile one planned next week and that’s it for long runs. Everything else will be 3-6 miles until the race. Oh boy!

20 degrees and windy? Yeah, no running outside. Just a bit too much. Instead, it was treadmill time. It sucked. I really hate the treadmill, but I pushed out 5 miles in an acceptable 37:20 and it was painful. Running on the treadmill is just so much harder.

So instead of running before work when it was about 42 and calm out, I ran after work when it was 30 with 20-25 mph winds. That sucked. The wind was terrible in the last mile, I could barely breathe. Still, I started out quick with the intent of keeping close to a race pace since I was just planning on running 4 miles. I started at 6:50/mile, but I quickly got a bad side cramp and slowed down a ton–my last mile was slower than 8 minutes. It kind of sucked.

Overall, it was a rather weak run and I’d like to forget it even happened.

I’ve been sitting on these photos for over a week. I don’t know why I was so lazy about getting them processed, but they’re done now. We put up the very few Christmas decorations that we have last week. We really don’t have much–we actually have less than I thought we did. I guess at some point, we need to get more.

As for the posting skimpiness, sorry? I’m sure I’ll find more stuff to post about soon. Sit tight.

I went out for a nice little 10-miler this morning. The weather was great–about 41 degrees when I left the house. I started off slow with some intentions of keeping it that way, but I kept slowly picking up the pace throughout the run. Almost every mile was faster than the one before it.

Today’s run was as good as last Saturday’s 10-miles though. I had some knee pain that was bad enough to cause worry for miles 5-8 and some ankle pain coming on for miles 6-9. I really can’t wait until I can take off and let my ankle heal a bit, but the knee will never get better without surgery, I’m sure–it’s been messed up since my mid-teens. Interestingly, for most of my run, my left hand was ice cold, almost numb, but my right hand was sweating. I’m thinking that my iPhone armband is reducing the circulation to my left arm a little.

Even though the early part of the run wasn’t feeling stupendous, I was still able to keep picking it up throughout. I was getting a bit fatigued in the later miles until the start of mile ten. I don’t know where it came from, but I got a huge second wind and really kicked the pace up. That second wind was great and I really wanted to keep going, but I didn’t want to push it. Next week is 12 miles and I don’t want to spend the majority of the time between now and then being in pain and recovering from today like I did for the last week.

Unlike yesterday, I was able to get myself out of bed this morning and run. The motivation was probably that I have no time to run tonight. However, it was colder this morning than yesterday (when I chose to stay in bed) and having run less than 12 hours prior, this was probably not a smart idea. Unfortunately, my schedule this week got changed up a bit because of a death in the family so I need to make due with what I can.

I kept a decent pace this morning, but I was in a bit of pain in my ankle. The pain came on at around the 2.5 mile mark and never went away. I might have stopped, but when it’s 27 degrees and windy out, you don’t really want to be walking 2.5 miles home in just running gear. Having already broken a solid sweat, I was also a little wet. I just ran through it, but I swear I’m not running for a month after the halfie in Disney. I need this thing to get better. I may even go to a doctor.

Running in the cold is always weird. You start off freezing and just as you finally start to warm up, you break a sweat and then you’re cold again. For me, it takes until about 2 miles before my body temperature evens out and I’m somewhat comfortable, but even then, turning down the windy street can through you completely off again.

Today’s run was supposed to be before work this morning, but I just couldn’t get myself out of bed. I was awake, but just couldn’t move myself and hearing the wind outside wasn’t helping any. So I ran after work instead. It may have been slightly warmer than it would have been in the morning…maybe. It was still cold and windy though.

I started off slowly, but then kicked it into gear at the start of the second mile. The run was okay, but I was having trouble with the temperature. Most of my runs are down two roads, the one that starts and ends the run is brutally windy and always in the shade (not that that matters for night runs anyway). The other is calm and gets some sun. Down the calm road, I got really hot so I put my hood down and eventually took my gloves off even. But when I turned down the windy road for the 4th mile, it was freezing. I was a mess.

Other than that, the run was alright and I kept a decent pace.

I had the day off from work last Friday without much to do, so rather than sitting around and doing nothing, I decided I’d put together a fun little adventure for myself. I created my own scavenger hunt to do! But this was unlike most scavenger hunts, instead of having a pre-made list, I took submissions via Twitter/Facebook/comments on this blog while I was actually out doing the scavenger hunt. Since the main goal of this was the spend the day with my camera taking photos, everything submitted had to be something that could be photographed. You can read about how it all worked here.

In short, this turned out to be a lot of fun. I really enjoyed wandering about the city while trying to be on the lookout for certain things. Most of my trips into NYC are very focused, but this was much different. Having the list being generated throughout the day was pretty cool too, it kind of keeps you on your toes.

Overall, I got a couple of decent photos, but nothing really amazing. Most of the shots ended up being just okay. I’m fine with that though. The idea worked out just as I had hoped it would, I learned a bit and got put outside my element. I got some real world practice taking candid photos of people and doing street photography. I’m the kind of person that gets a bit timid in public and around strangers, I tend to just keep to myself. This adventure forced me to not worry about what people are thinking of me as I’m walking around taking photos of all kinds of stuff–much of which didn’t look like the kind of things people would normally photograph. It was kind of neat and I feel like it helped me a grow a little behind the camera.

Having other people choose what you’re photographing is definitely a bit of a different experience. You spend more time thinking about how you’re going to photograph things rather than what you’re going to photograph. You’re forced to take photos of things that you might not otherwise have even noticed.

As for the list, I think I got a pretty decent response. I was a little worried heading into the city because only a handful of people had committed to sending in ideas, but a few others popped up throughout the day and I got more than enough submissions to keep me busy. I was able to get almost half the items on the list and would have been able to get more with a little extra time. The items that were submitted varied a lot so it never felt like I was looking for the same things over and over again.

I definitely want to do this again, probably once Spring hits. However, a few tweaks need to be made to the idea. The one big issue was that I got a lot of submissions too late in the day. There just wasn’t enough time to find them. Next time I’m going to shift the time-frame for taking submissions. I think something like an hour and half before I start up until two hours before I plan to finish will work out better. That way even the late submissions have a chance of being found.

While I liked the wide range of items on the list, I think the next time needs to be a little more focused. Whether it be to a smaller area of the city or to a theme of some sort, I need to narrow it down a little more. I was a little all over the place.

Anyway, the full list that was submitted is below and the photos are below that. I included a few photos of things that weren’t on the list, but for the most part, almost every shot I took during the day was of something on the list. I tried to stay on task.

Today was one of those days where actually getting dressed and out the door to run was a minor miracle. Hell, even getting out of bed took me hours. I just felt lazy. And the 20mph winds outside weren’t making a run sound very enticing. But eventually, I got myself out the door…only to head back inside before even running for a wardrobe change. I decided I wanted a hoodie as my second layer instead of a long-sleeve t-shirt.

My plan was to run 10 miles at an 8 minute/mile pace. Instead, I ran 10.51 at 7:27/mile. Whoops. I felt good and even as I tried to slow down early on, my legs wanted to go. Between miles 5 and 9, I was debating continuing past 10 miles. I felt great and kind of wanted to do a full half-marathon length run.

Before heading out the door, I had serious concerns about my ankle. It was feeling iffy just walking around the house and I half expected to have to cut the run short. But once I got out there and started running, it felt fine. There were a couple points where there was some light pain, but it went away after a few minutes.

I was feeling great overall through 9 miles. By the 10th mile, my legs were starting to fatigue, but were still good to go for a while. I decided I wanted to continue and see how far I made it before things started to hurt. Then at about 10.25 miles, my ankle started to hurt. It wasn’t bad, but I knew it would only get worse if I continued. I called it a day at 10.5, but I still could have gone a little longer, I think. It just wasn’t worth risking injury…or rather, worsening this injury.

I’ve got to be pretty happy about doing 10.5 miles at 7:27/mile without even feeling like I was pushing myself at all. That’s 44 seconds faster than my half-marathon pace less than eight months ago. And I still felt pretty good at 10.5 miles whereas I was feeling like my legs were going to fall off in April before then. This is the longest run that I’ve done since then (and the longest I’ve done in my Vibrams) and I think it’s a pretty good indication of what I’ll be able to do next month.

Thanks to having some extra use-it-or-lose-it vacation time left at work, I ended up having tomorrow (Friday 12/3) off with nothing really planned. Since I’m incapable of doing nothing and just relaxing for an entire day, I wanted to come up with something fun, but relatively cheap to do. I also wanted to take some photos, so I came up with the idea to participate in my own live user-generated photo scavenger hunt in NYC.

The idea is simple, I’m going to head into the city with my camera and spend the day doing a scavenger hunt. All items on the list will be things that can be photographed rather than collected. Where the fun part comes in is that the list will not be pre-made. Starting at the time that I get into the city, I will be taking live submissions from people via Facebook, Twitter, SMS, or comments right here on this blog post. The submissions can be just about anything and I’ll find a way to photograph it. Any object, place, landmark, GPS coordinates, idea, or action will work. For actions, I’ll have to find someone performing that action and for landmarks, I’ll have to head over to where ever it is. Submissions can even be some abstract concept or idea that you’d want my take on. The only limitations are that it can’t involve anything illegal or that may result in my injury. That would seriously take the fun out of it for me. The submissions also must be things that actually make sense within NYC (a little more on this part below) so locations/landmarks/GPS coordinates can’t be anything more than walking distance from where I am at any given time.

The point of this, if you’re wondering, is to see what happens when the internet controls a kid with a camera for a day. I want to see what I end up with photos of. This could turn out to be much more interesting than me just photographing anything I want. Or it could be a complete disaster.

My plan is to try to get into Manhattan by about 10:30am. Starting at 10am, I welcome everyone to start making submissions. If you have my phone number, text me, otherwise, use any online method mentioned above, I’ll get it right away. When making a submission, keep in mind that I’ll be in Manhattan and if something is too far away from me, I’m not going to bother with it. So, I’m not going to trek all the way up to Harlem or all the way down to the Financial District and definitely not to any other borough. However, anything in/around Central Park, Midtown, or the Village should be doable.

You can make as many submissions as you like and I will try to do as many as I can, but I plan to be out of the city by 3pm so don’t wait too long. Throughout the day, I will update my location via Twitter and Facebook so check those to see where I’m at and make location-based submissions.

Now, there are two caveats to this…

First, no one sees any results until I’m all finished with processing all the photos. When I’m done, I plan to post them as a gallery here and on Flickr. I expect this to be by Monday at the latest.

Second, before I commit to being in the city in the cold tomorrow, I need at least ten people to say they plan on taking part in this. You don’t need to let me know ahead of time in order to make submissions tomorrow, but I do need to know that there’s enough of a reason for me to actually head up there. So please let me know, again via any of the methods mentioned above, that you will be taking part.

And again, you can make as many submissions as you like anytime between 10am and 3pm.

This should be exciting!