Andy Gapin

14 miles. This is the furthest I’ve ever run by .9 miles. It’s also the longest I’ve run by about 10ish minutes. I set out to do 12, but decided early on that I wanted to do a little more.

The fiancée and I went down to the park to run along the Delaware and Raritan Canal towpath for the first time in a quite a while. Okay, we’ve only done it once or twice before anyway, but we figured it’d be a nice change of pace for a long run. Other than a roughly mile long stretch that was very gravely and thus not very friendly to minimalist running, the path was great. I ran 7 miles out and then turned around and it was pretty glorious. There was tree cover and nice scenery. I liked it.

The first five miles were a nice reasonable pace for what the run was–which was a run that was much longer than I should have been doing. I picked it up a little bit after that to average an 8:23/mile which is a full minute slower than I was four months ago at roughly the same effort level. I was not at all pain-free. There was minimal pain in my ankle right from the start, but it stayed steady pretty much the entire run. However, by the end, my right leg was really stiffening up and my left knee was starting to hurt a little. When I was walking back to the car, I was actually in quite a bit of pain. It subsided a bit when I got home and iced it, but it’s definitely an indication that I’m going to have to make another attempt and taking time off to get healthy before training for the marathon.

Clearly, my updates here aren’t what they once were. Without having the radio show anymore, I no longer have that minimum one post per week guarantee that I once had. It doesn’t mean that I’ve forgotten about this site, that couldn’t be more wrong. I have a few photos to post later this week and I’ve been updating the running log (that doesn’t show up on the main page). I’ve drafted a few posts, but none have made it all the way to getting posted. Mostly, it’s just because they haven’t been very good and were kind of just started for the sake of trying to get a post out and that’s something I really don’t like to do (does this post count as that?).

For the most part, I’ve been busy with various wedding related things and random other little time consumers. Most of the things I usually post about here haven’t really been in my life much recently. I haven’t been buying any new t-shirts, mostly on account of the fact that my rotation is already more than three months long and we’ve been trying to save as much money as possible for the wedding and honeymoon. I haven’t been going to the movies as much recently and I’ve had little time to listen to new music. I’ve been getting new stuff to listen to, but it’s been hard to find time to really listen to it as anything more than background noise and that doesn’t make for a good basis for blogging about it.

I would say that I’m going to try to get some stuff posted, but that’s probably a lie. Still, when there are things I want to blog about, I promise to get them up.

Tonight was the first run in something like six months at the park near work. The weather is warm enough so that we don’t need to pack multiple layers in our gym bags and, more importantly, there’s enough light now. That weather thing kind of sucks though, I prefer running in the cold and the humidity and 80° degree temperature tonight was not a friend. The run was very slow and lethargic. I felt completely energyless. It was awful. I really just wasn’t feeling tonight’s run at all. I guess it’s just going to take some time to get used to the warmer weather.

My ankle felt fine through the first 3 miles, but then it tarted to hurt a bit in the last mile. It wasn’t anything too bad, but it was there. An ice bath after getting home made it feel good though.

Today’s goal was an easy-paced 8-10 mile run. Nothing too hard on myself. Luckily, I somewhat accomplished that goal. I ended up going 10.5, but even though the overall average pace was only 8:32, I didn’t have much left at the end. I’ll put some partial blame on the sun and the fact that I was dehydrating at a pretty rapid rate, but I’m also still trying to build up my stamina again.

I wasn’t in too much pain anywhere while running. My ankle was pretty good through most of the run and only hurt just the tiniest bit towards the end. However, it’s been a bit sore since stopping. My foot and arches didn’t hurt as much as the past few runs though, so that was good.

I spent my last couple miles trying to do some breathing exercises since it seems like that’s what I lost the most when you take my ankle out of the equation.

Today was the second half of the first back-to-back running attempt since my time off. I set out for a nice easy four mile run so as not to push myself too much. The pace was kept slow, but I did have some pain my the arches of my feet. This pain isn’t new, but it hasn’t seemed like anything to worry about. I think my feet are just a bit weak still. My ankle felt alright through the run though. There was some barely noticeable pain towards the end, but it was very, very light.

8-10 miles this weekend. Hopefully, that goes well.

Tonight was the fastest run that I’ve done since the half marathon in Disney. I started out to do 4 miles and my legs wanted to go like they haven’t since Disney. I started out at a nice brisk 7 minute/mile pace and only slowed slightly in the second mile. Unfortunately, my lungs just couldn’t keep up at all. I couldn’t get enough oxygen into my lungs fast enough and really lost steam in the third mile, slowing down to 7:40/mile. That was a bit disappointing considering that that was also a downhill mile. By the time I finished mile three, I was pretty spent, my lungs failed me. I decided that rather than torturing myself and risking injury, I would stop early. I’m pretty happy that I was able to at least squeeze out two fast miles.

The important thing about tonight was that the run was entirely pain-free. My walk back to the house wasn’t pain-free as well, but it was still pretty good. As I sit here typing this, I’m feeling okay. Not great, but okay. I’ll take it. It definitely feels like a step in the right direction.

Yesterday, I set out for what was to be my third half marathon over the course of 364 days. I wish I could say that I actually ran 13.1 miles though. Unfortunately, due to some pretty torrential downpours on Saturday, one of the parks that the race runs through was flooded. Thanks to this flooding, the course had to be adjusted to just 9.55 miles.

While I only had a month to train for this race after two months off from tendinitis that I’m still not fully recovered from, I really wanted to run the full half marathon. I wasn’t really sure what to expect from my body given the circumstances, but I was hoping to at least repeat my 1:47:11 from the same race last year. The RU Unite Half Marathon last year was first half marathon ever and even though I said I didn’t think I’d do it again after that, I’m now addicted. Three months ago, I ran my second half marathon, the Disney Half Marathon, and pulled off an incredible time of 1:33:05 that I’m still extremely proud of…especially considering that I ran in pain. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to touch that time yesterday, but I did feel good enough to at least know that my time from last year was doable again.

Like everyone else that ran yesterday, I prepared for and woke up for a 13.1 mile race. I think just about everyone was disappointed when they heard the announcement that a large portion of the course was flooded and the race would have to be scaled back. We paid for 13.1 miles. We trained for 13.1 miles. Some of us ate (or were planning to eat) for 13.1 miles. A lot of things were done expecting 13.1 miles. Obviously, no one can control the weather, but it is no secret Johnson Park in Piscataway floods often. It really doesn’t take much, a little drizzle can make that park flood. My unscientific estimate based solely on anecdotal evidence would be that Johnson Park floods at least 3-5 times each year. It’s just something that’s expected by anyone that lives here. It is a wonderful park and I really enjoy running through it, but if you’re going to plan a race that runs through it, you have to have a plan B. You just have to. You’d be silly not to. Unfortunately, CGI Racing did not have a plan B for yesterday. Again, I know they can’t control the weather, but this was something that should have been planned for. I know putting together an event this size and getting road closures and such are not easy, but when you’re putting that much work into something, you need to plan for things like this.

What made the length of the race even worse was that at the start, runners were told over and over that the course was shortened to 10 miles. 10 miles, not 9.55 miles. That’s not a huge difference, but it’s enough to make a difference. I think most people felt lied to about this. I know I did and I know my fiancée and our co-worker also did.

Not cool.

Alright, enough complaining, right?

The weather was sunny for most of the race and the temperature was nice, if not a little on the warm side, but the wind was strong. The wind was so strong that it was a definite factor for everyone. Parts of the course were with the wind at our backs, but it felt like the majority of the time was spent with a strong crosswind that noticeably moved runners around. At two different points, gusts were so strong that they blew my left leg sideways into the back of my right leg mid-stride as I was pulling it forward almost causing me to face plant. It also seemed that every uphill portion was straight into the wind.

With a significantly shorter course, I adjusted my expectations and my plan. I ran faster than I would have for a full 13.1 miles, but still, I didn’t feel as strong as I would have liked. In fact, I felt downright weak early on. It took me a while to get my stride on and settle into the run, but it never really felt quite right. I averaged a 7:32 mile which is pretty respectable, but that’s still 10 seconds slower than the 13-mile training runs I was doing four months ago and almost 30 seconds slower than my pace for the half marathon three months ago. But with an injury, you’ve got to be happy with anything and I am…ish.

I finished up with a semi-sprint and crossed the finish line at 1:11:53 (chip time) to place at 290 out of 2881 participants. My knees felt like they were going to give out during that last little push. It was awful. I ran 12 miles last weekend and felt stronger at the end of that than I did yesterday. What gives? At mile 8, I had a nice little second wind boost, but that didn’t last long, only about a mile. I came home and felt dead, the rest of my day was shot. Even taking into account how much harder we all had to work because of the wind, I shouldn’t have been beaten up like that for a sub-10 mile run. I really shouldn’t have. I hadn’t felt like that since the half marathon last year. I could make excuses for it like my injury and the wind and whatever else, but I was just off and that’s that.

Despite not feeling strong at the end, I still wanted a 13.1-mile race. I wanted to get a third half marathon under my belt. I really did.

So the fiancée and I have decided that we’re going to sign up for another half marathon next month that we were on the fence about. I want it, but I do want to be careful about my ankle. It’s still healing and, while it does feel better than it did a month ago, it has a little ways to go still.

More importantly, we signed up for the Philly Marathon in November. It’ll be our first and we’re super excited, yet insanely nervous about it. A year ago, after my first half, I said I would never run a full marathon, but here I am, already signed up for one.

Ah, the second Grindhouse faux-trailer-turned-full-feature. To put it bluntly, Hobo with a Shotgun is absolutely brutal. I’m not sure that I want to say this in any definitive way, but it may have been the most brutal movie I’ve ever seen…and that’s saying a lot.

Hobo with a Shotgun is exactly what it’s supposed to be, a hobo…with a shotgun. While Rutger Hauer does in fact “deliver justice one shell at a time” just as the tagline says, the brutality comes much less from him and more from the bad guys. I won’t spoil things too much, but one scene actually caused my fiancée to tell me she couldn’t watch it anymore. It was less a blood, guts, and gore thing, and entirely just a principle thing. Hobo with a Shotgun is not for the faint of heart.

Where the movie lacks a little is with the actual hobo-delivered-shotgun-shell-goodness, there could have been more of that as it mostly took up only a small portion of the film. Thankfully, this is made up for with violence like the scene mentioned above. Hobo with a Shotgun is light on the story, but there’s enough to get you by and more than enough great one liners like “I’m going to wash this blood off with your blood” and “because sometimes on the streets, a broom ain’t gonna cut it! That’s when ya gotta get a shotgun!” to make up for it.

Out of the two Grindhouse flicks and Machete, Hobo with a Shotgun is probably at the bottom of the list, but it is the smuttiest, the most sadistically violent, the campiest,  the brutalist, and the most nutso. That’s a a lot of superlatives, but these are all of the things that Hobo with a Shutgun was supposed to be and that’s why it works. Highly entertaining.

If this kind of quality can be kept while turning the Grindhouse trailers into actual films, I say keep ‘em coming.

Rating: A

Today was the last long run before the RU Unite half marathon and it was also the longest run since the Disney half. Unfortunately, that also means that there’s not much time for a nice taper before the race.

The run went pretty well, I started off pretty slowly and evened off with an overall pace of 8:14/mile which is just barely slower than the overall pace for last year’s RU Unite half. I think I can be happy with that considering the circumstances, but it was a bit sad to get the 11 mile notification at just 1 minute before my official time for the Disney half. That’s still something I’m struggling to come to terms with, but I need to just get over it.

Pain-wise, I was in better shape than last week’s 10 mile run. The ankle pain was very minimal, but my legs were nice and sore afterwards. The good kind of soreness that you get from working them, nothing injury like. I think this is a good indication that I can get through next weekend’s race without being in too much pain. However, I do need to get back to 100% and I don’t really know how to. Two months of with physical therapy and a cortisone shot wasn’t enough. Ugh.

Tonight’s run was a quick little two-miler. Pain free and wonderful, but not exceptionally fast paced or anything. Not really much else to say about it.