15 Club, Troy Aikman, Sophomore Slump

Troy Aikman, sent via text from Mom, threw down a 1:49:47 in the Dallas Rock n Roll Half. Whether you love him or hate him (or don't watch sports/ are not American), my ultimate goal is to break 1:45 so for all intents and purposes. I will give you a breakdown:

Aaron Tang versus Troy Aikman :

Super Bowl losses: (0-0) Draw

Concussions: (0-10) I win, 1-0

described as a "mobile qb": (0-0), still 1-0

Pharmacy Degrees: (1-0) I win, 2-0

So yes, by these non-running metrics, you can see there's an ... OK chance of me beating him.

Fifteen miles:

As I sit with frozen vegetables on my knees for old times sake, I am proudly in the ultra half marathon distance club as I threw down an easy 15, joining Henderson and Knapp (sounds like a sweet law firm). Covering this distance and trying to keep some semblance of training, I am in awe of those that can run the marathon.

Slumping:

It seems as though the whole team has suffered a bit of a setback or a sophomore slump if you will in terms of mileage and verbiage. I wish I could dig us out of it but I am suffering a bit with trying to balance work and life. If someone has any suggestions, feel free to share.

Aaron's Day Off or TCOB Day

Skate Park in NP:

On Gentian:

Can't see it clearly, but there's a port-a-potty at the top of that construction site

Providence College:

Mature Brown Kids + URI alum photographer =

Since I had to take my high school car in to de-pot hole it (thanks, Providence "streets"), I thought "let's kill two birds with one stone" and run along Mineral Spring, the Bald Hill Rd of North Providence.

random thoughts:

It was A day so I decided to visit the neighborhood pharmacist/resident tights enthusiast, Kevin O'Brien at work.

Mineral Spring is a hill. Both ways.

There's a skate park in North Prov fyi.

I ran down a random street and out pops Providence College. Across the street was a bag piped protest with signs exclaiming "honk if you believe marriage is 1 man and 1 woman". My thought is, what are you doing Tuesday at 12:00 PM? Shouldn't you be at work?

I'm not here to talk politics or sway people one way or another but does this convert people's viewpoints? I wouldn't become a Spurs fan if I saw a sign about honking for them; in fact I would be more adamantly against the San Antonio Spurs.

Buying some food at Shaw's down a recently discovered back road thanks to the run, I bought some coconut water. Skeptically, I drank it since I heard it rehydrates better than water. What caught me off guard was the bits of coconut (that's how you know it's good). This could be my new fad along with the falafels and baba ghanouj.

On my 37th pair of convenience store headphones and the question has to be asked: music or no music for the half?

To run or not to run

Last week I pretty much withdrew myself from the marathon. It had been just about 3 weeks of quad pain that hurt pretty bad even when I was walking. I had 2 days off and I decided I would try to do 2 short runs each day. First day... 4-ish miles with tolerable pain. I was really trying to hold back on my pace as much as I could. I really felt after that run that maybe there was some hope after all. But the next day, when I foolishly had planned a 14 miler, I made it a quarter mile before I couldn't go any further. I had intense pain and was running with a limp, when my opposite knee and hip started to hurt, I didn't want to risk doing more damage...I was completely demoralized. Then I went to the mailbox and I got the new Runner's World...awesome.

This Wednesday I woke up and for the first time in what seems like a month with no pain in my quad while walking around. I did a little jogging in the apartment to test it out and again no pain. So obvii I had to go for a run. I had planned for another 4 miler, and goddamn it felt good. No pain whatsoever in the quad... my feet ached a little but I think it was just from inactivity. I ended up doing 6 easy, and I felt so good at the end I had to stop myself from going further or running out of my shoes.

This morning I woke up with 15-16 miles in mind. Since it had been so long since a long run (I think I did 12.5 like a month ago) I knew this was foolish. My plan was to quit if I had any intense pain. If I didn't do a distance like this now the marathon was completely off the table. It started off well. After 4.5 miles or so, I decided to stop, stretch and walk for a minute or 2. I figured walking before I needed to was the easiest way to get the distance in.

After mile 9, I stopped and tried a GU (or as Pat says GUUUUUUU) and some water. I tried the pineapple GU, that stuff is the weirdest consistency for a food, and I'm pretty sure it didn't do anything. Next time, I think I'll try it earlier at mile 5 or 6 so it has a little more time to work.

After mile 9, I felt OK. I was pretty hesitant about running 7 more miles though. Miles 10 and 11 still OK, I walked for a couple more minutes somewhere in there, this time more out of need. Once I hit mile 12 I really started to hurt, mostly just the bottom of my feet. Tang, I think I got that meta--whatever thing you got, because it felt like there was about 100 pebbles in my shoes. Between miles 12-14 I had to walk like 4 times, each for a couple minutes. After mile 14, I decided screw it, and walked the last mile.

So I did "15" kind of. All the experts claim to just get the distance in on the long runs, even if you have to walk, but I don't think they had walking an entire mile in mind. After this run I don't know if I have enough time to get prepped. I'm still pretty pleased because I really haven't ran in a month. Next week I'll try for 16-17, while finishing strong. The week after 18-19 with more of the same. If i can nail both those, I am still going to run. What the hell, if I have to walk the last 5 miles of the thing, I'm still going to do it. If those runs end up like this one, I'll just delegate myself a cheerleader for Pat. Either way I don't have to work that day, so win-win... kind of.

March 12, 2011

It's official: there are actually sidewalks in Providence now. Bye bye, treadmill.

Countdown:

Boston Marathon

37 days

Providence Half Marathon

49 days

South County Bike Path

It seems as though I am on a mission to review a Rhode Island running path every weekend.

I wouldn't normally make the cross country road trip of 45 minutes down to South County but I had a pow wow with members Nikki and Erica at Brewed.

Nikki and I, with running gear in tow (that's how you know you are a runner), decided that the weather called for breaking in the South County Bike Path. Today's run featured a warm up with Nikki for a little less than 3 miles since she has been on hiatus. She's definitely faster than the first square one trial run.

The immature part of me (99% of my make up) laughed at the horn blowing alarm for the south that I haven't heard in 2 years.

Thanks to her, I made my way through mostly continuous trail, save for the 5-10 crossings. I hit a bit of a wall at mile 8 but wanted to keep going in part to catching wind of Knapp tackling a 15 miler. It also helped to get in to racing mentality by basically running down all ahead of me.

As I passed my car at the 10 mile mark, I decided to tack on an extra 5k with only my new thin gloves and beanie on for warmth which made me feel like a legit runner for some reason (delusions of grandeur must've hit me at this point). I saved enough energy to pass some runners and even finished with two 400s on the Curtis Middle School track for good measure.

Not pictured:

Unicyclist. Yup.

Mario going down a green tube.

honeycomb statue?

peace dale sign

train station

about a mile from the train station: