“This is unusable!” I thought. I was making no sense at all! Christine and I had gone to Maui, a last vacation before the baby comes (I don’t count this trip to the UK as any sort of real “vacation”, not to mention Christine will not be along with me for that trip), so I thought I would try to accomplish what I had not been able to do in the previous month: Run eight miles.

And what do you know, I finished! I did end up walking for nearly a mile, broken into two separate walk-chunks towards the end. My body essentially shut down the running against my will, the sun was too strong in the middle of the day for those last four miles, and my belly was full of that morning’s ham and pancake breakfast, served to us by our gracious bed and breakfast hosts. The run, as I say in the video, wiped me out good for a day or two, but I did not know until I sat down to edit this how truly cooked my brain had become. I hope I didn’t do permanent damage…

Click here if you are unable to view the video.

The kicker in this whole thing is that I had been using “eight miles” as a baseline bar for where I ought to be from a fitness standpoint. I now read on the Toughguy website that the bar is actually “ten miles in under two hours”.

Well… crap. Guess what I am doing this weekend?

I wanted to create some sort of mix tape/playlist to post here to share what music got me through that run. Because I haven’t figured out how to do that, I will just share the tracks and artists below. The embarassing list in no particular order is as follows:

Bad Religion – Let Them Eat War
Coheed and Cambria – Welcome Home
Dethklok – Go Into The Water
Dethklok – Go Forth & Die
Europe – Cherokee (Don’t even play like this wouldn’t help you run, liars)
Journey – Separate Ways
Kanye West – Stronger
Linkin Park – Given Up
Linkin Park – Bleed It Out
Linkin Park – No More Sorrow (Yes, I know there’s a lot of Linkin Park. Yes it is embarrassing)
MGMT – Kids
Muse – Assassin
Muse – Exo-Politics
Muse – Sunburn (fitting?)
Paramore – For a Pessimist, I’m Pretty Optimistic
Paramore – Let The Flames Begin
Paramore – Hallelujah (Yeah yeah, Paramore. Also embarrassing.)
Queen – Don’t Stop Me Now
Radiohead – Reckoner (Not an obvious choice, but surprisingly effective.)
Savage – Swing
Shinedown – Second Chance (Cheezy as hell, but I dig it.)
The Ting Tings – That’s Not My Name

Now I feel more exposed than even those videos make me.

I am still taking donations, and I am still doing portraits for anyone who contributes more than $35. Anything will really help though, and you guys would absolutely be my heroes at the end of the day with virtually any donation you make. The formal pitch I make for getting a portrait reads as it has in the past:

$35 will get you a head and shoulders portrait, $50 will get you a full body shot, or two head and shoulders pieces. All come with a simple background included.

Because I make these in vector format, they can be resized to any size you could possibly need. I recently sent one person a 22×33 inch piece they can now have printed as a poster.

I can also work in other styles, and have worked with people who have requests for things that fall outside the standard head and shoulders to find a price that is fair – If you have any questions at all about anything at all regarding my work and how I might help you, please feel free to drop me a line at drew.gilbert@gmail.com.

- 35$ or more gets you one head and shoulders portrait, with a simple background.

- 50$ or more gets you two head and shoulder portraits, OR one full body portrait, again, with a simple background.

This is how tough I need to be in (gulp) 16 days!

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