Ep #163: Catching up with Andy Aupperle

Welcome to The Not Your Average Runner Podcast. If you’re a woman who has never felt athletic but you still dream about becoming a runner, you are in the right place. I’m Jill Angie, a certified running and life coach and I teach women how to start running, feel confident, and change their lives, and now I want to help you.

Jill: Hey, rebels. So, I have a pretty big treat for you this week. I’ve got the one and only Andy Aupperle back on the show. I realize it’s been over a year since he’s been here and I thought you guys might want to hear about what he’s been up to for the past year or so. So, hey.

Andy: Hey, rebels. How are we doing?

Jill: He’s a little nervous right now.

Andy: You said it was a treat. I don’t know how much of a treat it is to listen to me talk. But we’ll find out, won’t we?

Jill: Okay, so in the past year – it’s been a year and two months since you were on the show last. So, in that time, we got married. That’s been super-fun.

Andy: COVID wedding…

Jill: Yes. But you ran your first marathon and you were training for that all last year. And actually, I think the last time you were on the show, we both had some differing opinions about marathon training, and that’s why I brought you on the show.

Andy: Oh yeah. I forgot about that.

Jill: But we’re not going to talk about that today. I want you to give an update – let’s start there actually, an update on how your marathon went.

Andy: Alright, when we last left off, let’s see, I did the marathon last November. And it went okay. I did not get the time I thought I could get. But I completed it, and that’s what really I was aiming for. That was my big goal, just to finish. And then my smaller goal was to finish within a certain timeframe. But I was getting all kinds of cramps and it started snowing. It was crazy.

Jill: The weather was crazy. I quit halfway through. I was like, “Fuck this. I’m done. I’m out.”

Andy: And everyone I’ve talked to said, “Oh yeah, if you’re doing a big race in Philly, it’s going to be the worst race you ever had.” And yeah, when I did Broad Street Run, that was also horrible weather.

Jill: It rained the whole time.

Andy: Yeah, I got, like, cyanosis in my fingers. It was awful.

Jill: What’s that?

Andy: It’s where your fingers turn blue. You’re not getting enough blood to your fingertips. Yeah. I was freezing. It was raining. It was cold. That was awful. It was wet. Yeah, invest in a good running raincoat of you plan on doing a Philly race.

Jill: See, my experience with Philly races is totally different. I’ve done a bunch of them at that time of year that the weather’s been absolutely perfect. So, I’ve never been in a fall Philly race where it rained like it did this time. The spring races are usually shitty weather.

Andy: Yeah, road Street was a spring race. This was a fluke. We didn’t get any snow whatsoever this winter except for when I was running a marathon.

Jill: Snow, sleet, a little ice.

Andy: At least with the snow and the sleet, you couldn’t see the tears streaming down my face from how much pain I was in.

Jill: I mean, you kind of killed it when you think about the weather conditions and you still finished the entire marathon and it was your first marathon. I think that’s pretty awesome.

Andy: I think I’ve got another marathon in me. But that’s going to have to wait until I’m done with school.

Jill: Yeah, when do you think your next marathon’s going to be? 2022?

Andy: Oh, I have no idea. Probably. Probably fall 2022.

Jill: Because then we can walk there after we move.

Andy: Oh, I’m doing the Philly one again?

Jill: Yes, I think you have to.

Andy: Okay, I think I’ll do that. I’m a glutton for punishment, I guess.

Jill: You’ll do two marathons that year. You’ll do your marathon of choice, and then you’ll do Philly.

Andy: See, I’m thinking I want to do the New Jersey marathon because it’s all flat.

Jill: Yeah, well you can do that one too. If you’re trained, you might as well just…

Andy: And you get to look at the ocean, I think. I’m not sure how much you look at the ocean, but you’re down on Asbury Park…

Jill: That’s true. Alright, I’ll allow it.

Andy: I’m glad you approve of what I’m going to do.

Jill: You should see his face right now. There’s a lot of eye-rolling happening. So, let’s talk a little bit about what’s going on in your life as far as nursing school and running and so forth. Because you don’t have the easiest schedule.

Andy: No, I’m pretty much like a three-wick candle at this point that you’ve taken out of the jar and lit at all six ends. If there is an end to light, I’m lighting it right now. So, I’m doing nursing school. I’m working fulltime. Nursing school is at night and weekends and working fulltime and then I’m trying to run and do the Peloton whenever I can. Running is more of a therapeutic device at this point. I’m just stressed out, like, “Fuck it, I’m going for a run.” And then I go for a run.

Jill: And you go out and you run 13 miles and you come back and you’re like, “Wow, I’m really tired.”

Andy: I come back and I eat a big meal and just zonk out for the rest of the day. That sounds like a perfect Saturday for me. But I don’t do that anymore. I go to the hospital and I take clinicals on Saturdays.

Jill: So, talk a little bit about your schedule and how you have – I mean, I live with you. I see what happens. You’re still exercising regularly. So, I’d love to know how you prioritize it and what thoughts you have on days when you’re like, “I really don’t want to do this.”

Andy: Well, let’s see. Monday, I have lab at night. So, I come home, I eat, I go to school, basically. I see Jill maybe an hour that day. And the same on Tuesday except this time I go upstairs. I see Jill for maybe two hours because I don’t have to go anywhere because it’s all Zoom classes at this point, for a lecture. And then I sit on the computer and I study. Well, not study. I take notes and learn about nursing stuff.

And then Wednesday, I have study group. So, I come home, change, go to study group. I eat dinner with them as we study. Then, this is a Thursday. And so, today I came home and we’re doing this podcast and we’re going to go out to dinner. So, this is…

Jill: Our date night, because I don’t see you the rest of the time. And then on Saturdays you have clinicals…

Andy: Yeah, Friday, I’m off tomorrow, but my days off change every week. But I’m always off Saturdays and it’s clinicals and I have to get up at my regular work time and drive to a different hospital and have somebody look over my shoulder the whole time while I’m doing a job. And that’s very nerve-wracking, to have somebody critiquing you while you do what you’ve been doing for a while. But I’m still learning new things, like giving meds. We haven’t done follies yet…

Jill: What are follies?

Andy: You’d have to look that up. We’re not going to talk about – I mean, we do have an R rating on this podcast, but I don’t need to go into details on follies…

Jill: The nurses are all laughing right now, I’m sure. So, basically, you’re working fulltime and you’re going to nursing school fulltime. And nursing school, I’ve seen the books, it’s no joke. This is not a fluff program. This is the – the shit that he needs to learn is blowing my mind. And so, you’re doing those things both fulltime basically. And how are you fitting in your exercise? Because I think a lot of my listeners, maybe they’re not going to school fulltime, but they’re raising children fulltime or they have a lot going on…

Andy: We all have busy lives. And so, my goal is usually on my day off, when I’m not going to clinical, I’m going to do a longer run on that day. And so, an hour or more. And that’s my decompression time. That’s me just out listening to music. I like to run around and just check out things. That’s what I do on my runs.

I go on new streets I haven’t been on and places that are under construction and see how that’s going. One of my favorite ones is running onto Princeton campus. And I always find new stuff there. There’s something new around every corner. So, I use that to explore, basically, while I run, and take pictures.

But during the week, if I’m super-stressed out, like I was Monday, I came home and I just jumped on the Peloton and I was like, I’m doing 20 minutes. That’s what I can do. That’s the amount of time I have. 20 minutes, and it was a good ride and I was done. And then, you know, I shoved dinner in my mouth and went to school.

Jill: So, it’s almost like your expectations of your workouts has changed a bit, or at least the purpose of your workouts. Because you’re not necessarily training for anything. But you’re definitely using your workouts as a tool to help you be better at school and work and so forth.

Andy: Yeah, instead of vegging out on the couch like I used to do, now I go out and run and get some endorphins going and I always feel better after a run. I might hate myself while I’m running or not want to run before I go. But I always, always am pleased that I went running.

Jill: What’s the thought that you use before you go for a run? Like, when your brain is like – because I know, I mean, if your brain was my brain and I was in your situation, I’d be like, “I don’t have time for this shit. I’m busy and it’s more important for me to do other things than it is to make time for running.” That’s the excuse I would use in my brain. Do you have that excuse in your brain, or no?

Andy: Yeah, I mean, I deal with that every time. But I know that if I do this for myself, I make this time for myself, I will feel better and I’ll be more productive and I’ll be more focused. And because I did this, I can encourage myself to do other things too, like sit and read my textbooks for eight hours…

Jill: Those freaking giant textbooks. Oh my god.

Andy: Mostly I’m just doing questions over and over and over again.

Jill: So, for those of you who don’t know, I mean, Andy works at a hospital now and for the first several months of the pandemic, you were face to face with COVID patients. Those were the people that you were caring for.

Andy: Yeah, my unit got converted to the COVID unit, yeah.

Jill: And so, when you go out and take care of yourself physically, by exercising and running and doing the Peloton, it means you show up better for the people who really need you.

Andy: Yeah, when I’m at work – I don’t know if we’re getting off topic here. But when I’m at work and I might be in the shittiest mood at work, didn’t have my coffee yet…

Jill: When he doesn’t have his coffee, it’s not pretty.

Andy: Night shift left a bunch of work for me to do. I’m sure a lot of you listeners have, like, dealt with this too. I’m just in a cranky mood. But that goes away as soon as I go into a patients’ room an di have the pleasure of taking care of them and getting them better and getting them home or back to wherever they’re going.

Jill: I love that. And I think people – and we’re totally getting off topic. But I think people kind of forget that if you’re in the hospital or something and you’re not getting the attention you think you should be from your nurse or doctor or whatever, like, remembering that actually their whole goal is to make sure that you go home safe and healthy and so forth and that, like, that caretaker has a lot going on in their lives. I don’t know, we’re kind of getting off topic there.

But I think it’s important to remember that all of our heroes – because I see the signs everywhere, the heroes that we’ve experienced through the past six months, like, are going through their own…

Andy: I don’t’ consider myself a hero.

Jill: You’re my hero.

Andy: I might be your hero, but I’m just doing my job. And it’s not exactly what I signed up for, but we just roll with the punches. We take those turns as they come.

Jill: So, do you think maintaining your fitness routine has helped your – I mean, this is a theory I have, that it helps the immune system. Because you’ve been exposed to COVID on a daily basis.

Andy: Yeah, but I had my PPE throughout this whole pandemic. I was afraid to bring it home. I was afraid to bring it out to the community. So I’ve been really good with making sure I was following my precautions and wearing everything that I could and doing a lot of research on it. My grades suffered a little bit because of how much research I was doing on it…

Jill: Last semester, yeah. But that was right after everything just came to a screeching halt and went virtual all of a sudden and nobody really knew what was going on.

Andy: Yeah, so I forget what we were talking about. I lost it.

Jill: This is Andy’s 10^th day in a row of working without a day off, so his brain’s…

Andy: My brain’s a little shot and Jill texted me this afternoon like, “Hey do you want to do a podcast?” And I was like, “Okay, that sounds like a great idea.”

Jill: So, we talked about your goals as far as doing another marathon. But another thing that you’ve been doing – and I love when you post on Instagram about it. It’s so cute – is pullups. Like, so, you’re doing – how many pullups can you do now?

Andy: I did five the other day.

Jill: That’s amazing. So, how have you been doing that. That’s one of my goals, so I’d love to know how you trained yourself to do five pullups. And you’ve got video proof too. They’re actual pullups.

Andy: It’s just doing it every time I’m out there. Like, after I go for a run, I stop at this little playground with monkey bars. And I just do as many pullups as I can. And I used to just be able to do one or maybe half of one. And I just kept doing it and kept doing it and now I’m up to five. The next goal is seven. And then it will be 10.

Jill: That’s impressive. And I think this is what I love so much about you, is that you’re very good at taking consistent action. So, instead of, if I can’t do 10 pullups, I don’t want to do any. You’re like, “Okay, I’m just going to keep trying this over and over again until I can do one pullup.” And then from there you’re like, “Now I’m going to do two pullups.” You’re so good at just continuing to take action.

Andy: Nothing changes overnight. It’s just going out every day and doing it. Just like with running. It sucks the first couple months that you start. It’s awful and you can’t breathe and you’re sweating so much and you’re like, “Why am I so slow?” And then you’re like, “I’m going to keep trying. I’m going to see what happens if I don’t quit.”

Jill: I love that, “I want to see what happens if I don’t quit.” Because I think we quit on ourselves so often that we don’t really get the chance to accumulate days and weeks and months of repetitive action. But really, that’s what gets results. I mean, that’s how you lost 100 pounds, just one day at a time.

Andy: Yeah, and I have my good days and my bad days. And you don’t get dissuaded by the bad days. It’s like, “I really fucked up today. But I’m going to go back out there tomorrow and try again.”

Jill: Yeah, you don’t slash the other three tires just because you got a flat.

Andy: I remember you talking about that on the podcast before.

Jill: And you’ve kept your weight off too, which I think is unusual.

Andy: Well, that’s a goal for me as well. It’s like driving a car. You get to the speed that you want and you can’t take your foot completely off the gas. You’ve got to keep lightly touching it and you need to maintain. You can’t just give up once you get to your goal. Maintenance is another goal.

Jill: I love that so much. That’s a great analogy. And I think that happens to a lot of people with running, that they push really hard, they train for their first race, and then the next day, they just take their foot off the gas and quit running or they take a really long break, and next thing you know it’s like starting over from square one. And you’ve never done that with running either.

Andy: Well, I went out and ran a half-marathon, what was that? Monday, the other day. And it was a lot slower than my current races because I haven’t been running that distance on a consistent basis. I haven’t been doing the training. And my times have slowed down. And I’m okay with that because I know I haven’t really been putting in the work and sometimes it’s hard to get motivated, especially when you don’t have any goal races coming up.

That was what was always driving me, “I’ve got this race coming up. I want to do better than my last race…” but every race has been canceled. And virtual races, while fun and you get medals in the mail, they’re not the same and I think everyone kind of knows that. Because you don’t have the crowds there, you don’t have the other people. When I do races, I always just chase people. Like I find somebody, I’m going to chase them, and if I get to pass them, that’s awesome.

Jill: So, basically, your motivation for running, pre-COVID was to do well in races. And so you’ve had to really…

Andy: Not really do well in races, but I’m always competing against myself.

Jill: Yeah, do well against yourself. And so, you’ve had to shift that to running to, you know, for self-care, “I’m running to keep myself feeling physically good and mentally good because really…”

Andy: Mostly mental.

Jill: Yeah. And I love that though, the Peloton, I’m so glad that we got a Peloton because, like, it really turned out to be an awesome thing for you so that you can come home, hop on the bike for 20 minutes, workout rally, really hard, and kind of, like, just get a chance to just mentally check out and rejuvenate. I think it is much more powerful of a restorative than sitting on the couch for 20 or 30 minutes and watching TV.

Andy: It was a good investment. Peloton, you can send the checks directly to us…

Jill: I know, right? I talk about that damn Peloton all the time. I’m waiting for them to notice.

Andy: But seriously, it doesn’t have to be Peloton, but just something that you can do when it’s too hot or too cold or raining…

Jill: Or just convenient. It’s so convenient. You don’t even have to…

Andy: Yeah, because I was on that thing in the heat of summer, just because it was so hot and I couldn’t really convince myself to go out in that heat.

Jill: We actually didn’t have that bad of a summer though.

Andy: But I don’t have time to run in the mornings or the evenings. It’s the afternoons…

Jill: But you did it last summer.

Andy: I did, but I had a marathon…

Jill: Isn’t that fascinating? Like, you can do it. You just didn’t want to this year.

Andy: I didn’t have the motivation this year.

Jill: So fun. I’m right there with you though. I kind of feel like, when COVID happened, I gave myself permission to just relax with fitness and then the Peloton showed up and I’m, like, all in with the bike. Now I’m trying to get myself back into running and it’s not the easiest thing. I’ll talk about that next week on the podcast.

Andy: Yeah, it’s different.

Jill: What would you say – if somebody said to you, “Hey, I took a break this summer from running,” Peloton or no Peloton, “I took a couple months off from really exercising and I don’t know how to get back into it,” what would you say?

Andy: I would say go out there and just do, like, what would you call it? Kind of see where you’re at with your running, like not push yourself too hard, but go out there and see where you’re at, and then just start there. Like, start again. Sometimes, you’ve got to start over. But such is life, right?

Jill: Yeah, I feel like life is a series of starts and stops and starts and stops. And I look back on my whole life and nothing has ever been continuous.

Andy: Yeah, the only thing that’s continuous is change.

Jill: That’s a great way to put it, yeah. Alright, well thank you for joining me today. And do you have anything else that you want to offer to our listeners before we say goodbye?

Andy: No. I don’t think so.

Jill: You’re done.

Andy: I thought we’re going to go get Mexican food.

Jill: We are going to go get Mexican food and cervezas. Did I say that right? Is that how you say beer in Mexican? In Spanish?

Andy: I think so, yeah.

Jill: Cerveza. I’m excited for that. I haven’t had a beer in a while, so alright. Y’all are listening to just our little side conversations here.

Andy: Yeah, I’m really sorry if I’ve been off topic. I’m just so tired.

Jill: You’re so tired. Thank you for being a good sport and I mean…

Andy: I get to sleep in tomorrow. I’m excited about that.

Jill: I know. I’ll be quiet. We do have a kitten though, so she may have opinions about whether you should sleep in or not. We’ll lock her out of the bedroom. Andy named her. Her name is Younis. She’s adorable. She’s a tiny little three-pound monster and we love her.

Andy: She terrorizes all of us.

Jill: She terrorizes all three of us, yes, it’s so good. Alright, thank you so much for joining me, my friends. I will be back next week to talk all about my own personal struggles with getting back into running. And I’m sure there are at least some of you out there that can relate.

So, in the meantime, get your ass out there and run. I love you. And I will see you next week.

Oh, and one last thing. If you enjoyed listening to this episode, you have to check out the Rebel Runner Roadmap. It’s a 30-day online program that will teach you exactly how to start running, stick with it, and become the runner you’ve always wanted to be. Head on over to rebelrunnerroadmap.com to join. I’d love to be a part of your journey.