As a Rule, Central Virginia Doesn't Get Pizza

As a rule, Central Virginia doesn’t get pizza. That isn’t a value judgment or a mean criticism – just an observation. Pizza isn’t indigenous to Virginia, barbecue is. Pizza is indigenous to New York and by extension, New Jersey. Chicago thinks pizza’s indigenous there, too, but it’s not. That stuff in the pan may be good to eat, but it ain’t pizza.

They have a “pizza” place here in downtown Richmond that everyone raves about. I won’t name it because I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. People use superlatives when they talk about it. They say it’s The Best. Let me tell you, from someone who knows pizza: It sucks.

Doughy, chronically undercooked, overpriced and soggy. They heap too much cheese and too many veggies on it. Then they don’t cook it hot enough or long enough, so all the wet percolates down into the crust. Blech. I can get a 99 cent slice from a window on the corner of 9^th Ave and 41^st Street by the Lincoln Tunnel that puts that stuff to shame.

So why does everyone around here think it’s great pizza? Simple. For the most part, it’s all they know. If you're brought up on Dominos and Papa Johns, I guess it seems ok. It’s like you think that barbecue joint in Manville, NJ is great barbecue, but people around here would probably find it repulsive and inedible.  Barbecue's an art form in Virginia, and that's a story for another day.

Anyway, to all my moaning and griping about no decent pizza, my neighbor, Adair, tells me there’s not one, but two good pizza joints in Goochland Courthouse. Now, you have to picture this town. It’s the county seat of a quaint little rural Virginia county where there are seven horses for each human. They do have a Ford dealership, a supermarket and a feed store. Their claim to fame is Cy Young winner Jason Verlander. Hard to believe they would have good pizza there.

When I started planning my ultra-marathon training, I wanted to get in some point to point runs. You can only run in so many circles before you start to crave something more interesting. Since Adair told me about those pizza joints, I figured Farm to Goochland would make a good long run with a pizza reward at the end. I laid it out on MapMyRun.com and turns out it’s exactly fifteen miles. Perfect.

The first five miles were along Miller’s Lane which you know is one of my favorite running roads. But once I hit River Road, it was virgin foot territory. Oh, I have driven it plenty of times, but seeing the terrain from behind the wheel of a Teutonic tarmac hound and from the shoe-leather express are two very different perspectives. There are a lot more hills along that stretch of road than I remembered. I admit I walked on some of them.

Kim met me around mile seven to reload the fluids. I had come around a bend and looked up at a sudden and steep hill that was preceded by a narrowing of the road with guardrails on either side. I looked back to see if I was going to get squeezed by traffic and there she was in the dually. A perfect excuse to stop and rest before taking on the climb. She agreed she’d come back out in an hour and meet me in town. I don’t think she saw me walk on that hill, but I did.

By the time I reached the Route 522 intersection, my quads and glutes were twitching and my legs really did not want to work. I never got winded, not once. Cardio has always been a strength. Six weeks from now my resting heart rate will be about 48 and blood pressure 90/55. I’m sure we’re not much above that now. Anyway this was the farthest I have run since 2004, and I was not ready for it. But then again, you never are ready for the first time – you just make it happen.

I got up the hill past the bridge that cuts across the James River to Powhatan County and was excited to see the speed limit drop to 35. The end was near. There’s two parts to Goochland Courthouse. The old part and the new part. The old part comes first, and one of those pizza joints is in the old part. As I ran past, it looked deserted. I was really disappointed and worried that I shouldn’t have done this on a Sunday.

Much of running is mental, and I was in the mental stage. The stage where your body says, “I wanna quit,” and your mind has to refuse. So I really wasn’t worrying too much about pizza I was just trying to keep going. I saw a sidewalk on the other side, so I crossed the road by Wells Fargo. The County Administration Building was straight ahead. Fifteen miles was just past it on the right, and I could see my stopping point so I just kept going.

I beared (bore?) to the right at the fork in the road past the Admin building, went a few yards and quit. It really felt wonderful to stop. My legs were very weak and did not want to hold me up. I thought about sitting down, but when I looked over my left shoulder, there was Kim. Perfect timing as usual. We’re good like that. I actually had to pull myself into the truck.  

I have news for you: Adair's right. Rocco’s Pizza in Goochland is not just the best pizza I’ve had in nine years of Virginia, It’s damn good pizza for anywhere. Remember those bar pies we used to get at Bucky’s in Finderne or Chitch’s in Bound Brook? It’s like that. Thin crispy crust. About 14 inches across. Cooked in a really hot oven, so you can put a lot of cheese or veggies on it and it stays crunchy on the bottom.

We had really cold draft Buds, too. Kim had a cheese steak she said was fine. She said the real test for her is the eggplant parmesan. Maybe I’ll go out there Wednesday night and get her an eggplant parmesan and me another Hand Tossed Rocco’s Special for take out. I’ll drive this time, though.  

OK, I’m Back

After laying off with this bum ankle for 10 days, I’m back.

We had a little snow on Monday, so I tried out the cross country skis. I have a long standing rule: I don’t buy cheap sh*t. But about 20 years ago – I was still in Jersey -- we had a good snowstorm and I wanted to try cross country skis. There was no place to rent them, so I put my rule on hold and bought a cheap set-up from Kenny Hollingsworth at Pelican Ski Shop in Whitehouse. Hagan skis and Salomon boots. Some no name poles. Got the whole outfit for $119. I still have them and they still work fine. Go figure.

So I dug the skis and stuff out of the boiler room in the basement, laced ‘em up and headed down the lane and up towards the Deep Run show grounds. There was only about four inches of snow, and that was just perfect. Making a track in deep snow is a pain in the butt and I just wanted to have little fun.

Drivers on Manakin Road did plenty of rubber-necking as I glided up along the fence in front of Bantry Hill’s cow pastures. They aren’t too used to seeing cross country skiers around here. I was being cool and just ignored them. Figured let ‘em gape. I did ok, too. Got the step-glide step-glide knack back pretty quickly. And boy it sure was exciting to be back on skis (any skis) again.

I was only out there for about forty minutes. Once around the show grounds, past the schooling rings, slid through the barn areas and down to Virginia Equine and the Clubhouse. Then I kicked off the skis, jumped a fence and came back through the woods. Skiing through the woods is fun because as long as the snow is fresh, you can go right up over logs and brush piles. And I did. When I got back to the house the ankle was fine. Still felt fine Tuesday, so I ran four miles with no problem.

I went out this morning to try the seven mile loop that I wrecked my ankle on a week and a half ago. It was a bright shiny morning with temps in the forties and no breeze. One of those perfect joyful mornings that make you glad to be on the sunny side of the sod.

Here's my rocky ditch

It was a delightful seven miles. No one came near to running me off the road. Maybe the neon orange vest had something to do with it. Nice rolling terrain had me grunting a bit on the up-hills and got to stretch the legs out good on the downs and flats. Got a good close-up of the rocks I was rolling around in the other night, too.

Saw Dave Hudnell in his truck when I got to the Hermitage/Manakin intersection. He once told me he almost hit me one night when I was running on Manakin Road in the dark. In the broad daylight, he just waved and cruised by.

I’m going to jump right back into the training schedule at the point I should be if I had no lay-off. That means I’ll do fifteen miles Sunday. I have been looking forward to this run since I first set up the schedule. I laid out a few point to point routes in the program, and this will be the first. I’m going to run from the farm out west to the town of Goochland. I keep hearing about a really good pizza joint out there that I'm dying to try and Kim’s going to meet me for lunch.

Don’t forget to click on this link and make a donation to support our injured heroes. The Semper Fi Fund assists injured and critically ill Marines. These unbelievably brave people have put their lives on the line for our country, and we have an obligation to make sure they get all the care they need. Every little bit helps - $10 $20 or more. If you’re in the 99%, give what you like. If you’re in the 1%, give what you can. Thanks.   

I'm Going To Pay For This Tomorrow

I woke up this morning and my entire body felt oddly…. weak. Not painful, just weak. I did a bunch of sets of man-makers last night cause I still can’t run on the bad ankle and I wanted a tough workout. I think my muscles are insulted because I treated them with such contempt. 

They’re sad, depressed and pouty so they didn’t want to move as I laid there in the bed. My mind is stronger than my body, so I got up, ate a few Advils and got to work. With twenty-four hours to think about it, tomorrow they’re going to be pissed.  They’re going to inflict pain back on me, and I am not looking forward to it.

I found this man-makers exercise on the internet. Supposedly Navy Seals do it. I don’t know if that's true because I don’t know any Navy Seals and I have discovered that not everything on the internet is true.

Start out with a pair of dumbells. The metal kind, not like the slowpoke in front of you at the supermarket writing a check for $4.38. I used 25 pounders.

So you have one in each hand, and you do a squat-thrust. Then do the push-up. Then while still in the plank position, lift the right hand up to the chest and back. Repeat with left hand. Hop back to the squat position still holding the dumbbells on the floor. Rolling your weight forward, lift the dumbells and reach back between your legs as far as you can. Bring your hands forward and stand while curling the dumbells up to your clavicles. Finish it by pushing the dumbells straight up over your head. Repeat.

There's a bunch of variations on this exercise. Here's a video of one using kettlebells...

This is really a full body workout. I did reps of four with a one minute recovery and I was really huffing and puffing. I did maybe six sets and then a half hour later did another six. It was far tougher than I thought it would be. I could have used lighter weights, but the next lighter ones I have are ten pounders, and the bar was not high enough off the floor so it crushed my knuckles. If you’re a Navy Seal or a Marine, you probably think I’m a wuss. I’ll get over it.

If I was being chased by a pack of wild dogs, I could probably run on this ankle. It feels structurally sound but it’s still pretty sore. I’ll try to do three miles Saturday. Can’t afford to lose too much time because there’s a marathon May6th and I have only one week of fat in the training schedule.

Don't pay too much attention to my whining. I really do have some perspective. This bum ankle is just a minor annoyance compared to what our injured service members have to deal with every day. Jump on my bandwagon and help support these injured heroes through the Semper Fi Fund.

Some Say I'm an Idiot

Some people said I’m an idiot and deserved what I got. Others said, “It was inevitable, you should have known that was going to happen.”

Well, I don’t think it was inevitable and I certainly don’t consider myself an idiot. The jerk who almost killed me the other night is definitely an idiot, though. Here’s what happened:

I was scheduled to run seven miles and the Manakin - Hermitage loop was an easy choice. In order to keep things interesting, I decided to run it by starting out south instead of the usual northbound direction -- see, we play these silly games to keep from getting in a rut.

It was after 6:30 but I probably should have gone out a little bit later. It was still rush hour-ish. There were more cars on the road than I like, and they were acting odder than usual.

I am hard to miss when running in the night. There is reflecting material on my waist pack, my vest and my shoes. I think some of those drivers thought all that reflective stuff was a target to aim for because they came awfully close. Several found me interesting enough that they blasted me with high beams to get a closer look. More than once I got so totally high-beam blinded that I had to step off the road and wait for them to go by.   

Plenty of those drivers weren’t paying any attention at all. I don’t know if they were racing to get home in time for Entertainment Tonight, or just arguing with their wives over what to have for dinner. I do know they were not looking for runners on the road. You can see me fifty yards away with all that reflective stuff, but a lot of those cars would come right at me then suddenly see me and swerve in a panic.

You can run the same route a dozen times, but if you go the opposite direction it’s like being on a completely different road. The up-hills and the down-hills are all in unexpected places. On the opposite side of the street the footing isn't the same, and the terrain off the side of the road is unfamiliar too. It probably would have been prudent to have run that opposite direction once in the light.

Well over five miles into the run, I had passed the golf courses, passed the gas pipeline and was coming up on the little house with the doggie obstacle course in the side yard. The road was straight out in front of me with a slight hill crest. I could tell a vehicle was coming when its lights lit up the treetops. As it topped the hill it looked like a big SUV and didn’t seem to have high beams on.

In spite of all the traffic I felt really good. I was moving at a decent pace. In the zone, I didn't want to stop. As the SUV approached, I put my head down so the visor of my cap could block the glare from its headlights.

After running a few times in the dark facing traffic, you get so that you can read the headlight shadows. You can tell where a vehicle is without having to actually look directly at it. This monster was coming right at me. He had plenty of time to see me. There was no traffic from the opposite direction so nothing prevented him from sliding over into the other lane. But he just kept coming.

In a few seconds, It became clear the truck was not going to give me any room. I was right up on the edge of the pavement and the headlights were now so bright that I couldn’t see anything. All along that road, there’s about an eight inch shoulder of granite dust and crushed gravel between the edge of the blacktop and the ditch.

I stepped off the pavement and brought my left foot down onto the shoulder, but it wasn’t there. Instead, my foot landed on a jagged softball sized rock. The ankle immediately rolled to the outside. I tried to recover and hop off it, but my center of gravity was already over the ditch. I went down on hands and knees. I had gloves on, and much of my weight went onto my hands which was fine. My right knee and shin hit those rocks though and got all banged up.

Bear in mind this ridiculous ballet unrolled right there in the dazzling brilliance of that SUV’s headlights. As I bounced around in the rocks, its brake lights flashed red; then the driver hit the gas and was gone. I know the shithead saw me go down.

If I’d stepped off the road five feet sooner, I’d probably be fine. But the spot I picked was right near a driveway. In order to keep weeds down, the homeowner lined the ditch with grapefruit-sized rip rap as it approached the culvert that passes under the drive. Lucky me.

I popped back up right away. My left ankle and right knee were both barking pretty loudly. I couldn’t put any weight on the left leg, so there I was hopping around on my right foot at the end of these people’s driveway cursing, “Son-of-a-bitch, son-of-a-bitch, son-of-a-bitch.” Someone looked out the front door then switched off the porch light. Southern hospitality, I guess.

It wasn’t the first time I rolled that ankle, so I knew what to expect, but the immediate instantaneous pain is so bad when it first happens that it always feels like someone cut your leg off. I bent over with hands on knees, caught my breath and tried to walk on it. That was not going to work. I also happened to notice the bloody wetness on my right knee. “Shit,” I said. This is going to screw up the training, I thought.

I really did not feel like trying to hop and gimp home under my own power, so I pried my mobile phone out of the arm holster and called Kim. Hoped she’d answer. Girl’s notorious for not answering her phone. I got lucky; she answered right away. I told her some dope ran me into a ditch and I couldn’t walk. Could she come and get me? Told her where I was. She said she’d come right away.

Kim really is the best person on Earth. She showed up in about ten minutes – I was that close to home. As I climbed into the truck, she hands me a fistful of Advil and a Diet Coke. How can you beat that? She dropped me at the back door and went down to the indoor riding ring to finish her lesson.

Nice Foot, Eh?

I hopped in the backdoor on one leg and found Stephen in the kitchen, crushing ice cubes on the counter in a zip-lock bag. What a great team I have. I stumbled down to the family room, piled some pillows on the ottoman, tied the ice bag to my foot with a dish towel and swallowed an old pain pill left over from the last time Kim got beat up by a horse. Stephen poured me a glass of wine.

I know, I know, you’re not supposed to mix alcohol and pain killers but I believe in moderation. One pain pill, one glass of wine. Definition of moderation.  

This vignette played out on Thursday night. Today’s Saturday. The ankle is still petty swollen and discolored, but I’ve been icing it and elevating it. When I wrap it in an ace bandage and wear a good shoe, I can walk pain-free, as long as I concentrate on going only straight forward and don’t pivot or twist.

I figure I’ll have to quit running for a week. I found a cross-train exercise I can do though. It’s called Man-makers. Google it; it’s a lot tougher than it looks. 

Please Support our injured heroes through the Semper Fi Fund. 

They deserve our help. 

It's All Dad's Fault

I went trail running Sunday and while I was out there I got to thinking about my father. He introduced me to hiking when I was a little kid back in about 1965. Our family vacationed in Vermont for two weeks every summer. We'd rent a cabin with a dock on Lake Bomoseen or Lake Dunmore and spend two weeks eating off paper plates, fishing and reading all the books we took out of the library before we left New Jersey.

Lake Dunmore From Rattlesnake Point

Before 1965, my sister and I were really too little to do much else. That summer, Dad wanted to try something different, so he decided we would tackle The Moose. Mt Moosalamoo juts a full 2,600 feet into the rarified atmosphere over central Vermont. 

The whole family went on that first expedition. We packed hot dogs and potatoes wrapped in foil into an old Army rucksack. I carried my Army surplus canteen on my kid-sized web belt. We hiked up to Rattlesnake Point, collected sticks for a campfire, burnt our lunch, laid around in the grass and then walked back down.

It wasn’t more than 3.5 miles round trip and less than 1,000 ft of elevation change, but for a seven year old kid, it was grand adventure into the high country. We ate food we cooked over a fire! That was the first time I remember being on a (real) trail in the woods.

My father also introduced me to running – jogging was his preferred term. He invented jogging, you know. In 1964. I’m not kidding. It was on his resume.

Dad got into an exercise routine when he was in the Army during the Korean War and never got out of the habit. Each morning he’d do calisthenics in the bedroom before going to the office. Sit-ups, push-ups, jumping jacks. Like that. Usually he’d finish by running in place for five minutes.

We moved from Staten Island, NY to Morris County, NJ on Norm’s thirty-seventh birthday. November 22, 1963 - it was quite a day. After we moved to Jersey, the running in place morphed into running around the house. Out the bedroom, down the stairs, through the living room, and a couple laps of the dining room table.

One day in that spring of ’64, the morning trot through the house dodging furniture and small children became prosaic, and Norm ran out the front door. He ran down the driveway and up the street. This is how jogging was invented.

Exercise couture was not important to Norm in the infancy of jogging. He usually ran in a pair of old gray dress slacks, a polo shirt and sneakers from Woolworths or A&P. When it was cold he added a sweater and a beret. Sometimes we kids went with him, but he was serious and it was hard for our little legs to keep up so we typically turned back pretty quickly.

He got picked up by the cops, too. They wanted to know what he was running from. He said it was for exercise. They asked for ID. He didn’t have any. They asked him where he lived, put him in the back of the cop car, took him home and turned him over to my mother. It happened twice with the cops. After that he became known as Crazy Norm, the nut who runs through the neighborhood each morning. They laughed at Columbus, too.

So Dad got me started hiking and running, but not trail running. That started in the early 80’s on the Appalachian Trail with Gary Borysewicz and it’s a story for another day.

Sunday I did about seven miles on muddy horse trails out to the west of our place. I was supposed to do nine, but trail running is a lot tougher than road running, and all that freaking mud made it even tougher. Kicked my butt. I have to do a lot more work on the quads. JFK 50 Mile has almost 14 miles of Appalachian Trail and you climb the ridge twice.

All this running and blogging is fun and games for me, but it’s really about reminding everyone to support our Injured Service Members through the Semper-Fi Fund.

The Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are winding down, and many of these great Americans who’ve lost limbs or become critically injured or ill in other ways will need our help for a long time – possibly the rest of their lives. I’m dedicating my running this year to help these service members and their families because we owe it to them and they deserve it. Come on and jump on my bandwagon!

I’m really getting to like running in the night.

Ran in the dark for the first time a couple of weeks ago.

I went south a little after sunset on our semi-rural country road. It’s got a yellow line down the middle (That’s it up there on top of the blog). It’s mostly horse farms and golf courses down that way so there’s some commuter traffic, but not much. If you see three cars together, it’s a lot. Manakin road is a good running road.

The only thing I worried about was getting hit by a car. I put on a reflective vest and hoped for the best. It was cold. I wore a fleece cap and learned new respect for the term “deer in the headlights.”

That reflective vest is a good way to keep visible. But when the first fifty mile an hour BMW with xenon high beams blasted the eyeballs out the back of my head, I found a whole different set of issues that a baseball cap could help solve.

Blindness is not always dark. Blindness can be very, very bright. It also confuses and disorients. You don’t know where the road is, you don’t know where the ditch is, and you don’t know where your feet are. The deep instinctive part of my brain knew that a misstep and a millisecond in one direction could mean death and in the other broken bones and torn ligaments.

After the xenon explosion passes, your eyes are still trying to adjust to the sudden brightness and the result is the darkest dark you will ever know. It’s like Milton’s description of hell: “Darkness, visible.”

I can be a resolute runner. When in the zone, I prefer not to stop. The first few xenon blasts, I pushed through the blindness and trusted to luck and reflexes. Cursed myself for not wearing a baseball cap. But soon rationality triumphed over doggedness and I just gave up. Saw it coming, stepped into the ditch, closed my eyes and let it pass.

This all sounds pretty terrible and you’re likely wondering how in hell I can say I’m getting to really like running in the night. The second time was a lot better.

It’s about 35°. I wear a ball cap, shorts, long-sleeve t-shirt and vest. It’s after 7pm. The commuters are home and the sky’s clear and starry. There’s less than half a moon, but it’s bright. This time I go north.

Just north of our place is an enclave of black families. They’ve likely lived here for a hundred fifty years. The “old negro schoolhouse” is in the woods right next to our place and it’s now a little rental bungalow with a bright red working hand pump in the side yard. Sanitized reminder of a near distant time whose spasmodic and reluctant death is still remembered clearly by the older ones among us.

I run in the darkness through the neighborhood of organically grown homes. White church and graveyard on the left. A small home of painted concrete block. A wide an expansive one, bricked and wrought ironed. Here’s one with a new Mercedes in the driveway and another with a rusting tractor trailer hunkered in the weeds. It’s that kind of neighborhood. Old families with long roots.  

The houses are near the road and lighted windows confirm a life daylight just implies. There’s a late-season Christmas tree in one window, otherwise the colors have all gone gray and the smell of wood smoke is in the air. The road looks like a flat charcoal river, but it’s not flat at all. It’s ribby and pimpled, pitted, boiled and roily. Headlights coming up behind throw shadows on the imperfections and blow the secret. All the while, a womb-like darkness presses in close and intimate.

I follow the white line on the pavement’s edge. Nature is silent. It’s wintertime. The insects are dormant and noisy birds gone. I hear my feet on the pavement and nylon swishing of my shorts. Water sloshes quietly in my CamelBak. My breath ties all the sounds together in a rhythmic opus. I’m huffing pretty good by now as I turn left and slightly uphill past the new Hindu temple.

I don’t know if it’s a coincidence that the Hindu temple is on the edge of the black neighborhood. I heard the Hindus fought the county for a while before they got their permits. There’s a big white fence around the property so you can’t easily see its pastel pinkness. Rumor is they have a cow in there.

Further west there’s more cows. Lots of them. Beef cattle on the right and more organic homes on the left. The beeves startle but curious and unafraid run with me along the wire fence, ear tags bobbing. It gets darker as clouds slide in and cover the moon. The temperature is perfect. I leave the beef behind and trees arc over the road while the sour stink of dairy farm creeps down a lane. Tall pines on either side of the lane focus the smell so it lasts only a minute or so and is gone.

My body is warm and the rhythm of everything just sweeps me along. Legs move on their own without any conscious effort. I feel coolness only on the front of my knees, back of my arms and newly de-bearded chin.  Darkness masks the world’s details and I float along the road towards the turnback point.

As I head for home it begins to sleet. I don’t see it or feel it. I hear it crackle on the dead leaves in the ditch and the hedgerow. My mind has disassociated from my body and each exists in its own separate moment. The sleet doesn’t matter either; it’s simply another fact of the night and I’m really getting to love running in the night.

Please support Injured Marines through the
Semper-Fi Fund. These heroes deserve our help.