Feeling retro?

This week has been an exceptionally good training week. In preparation for next weeks 50K, I have been doing lots of hill training. Well, if you can call cranking the old treadmill to 5%, hill training. I feel really strong and my plan is to tear up all of that elevation gain. It’s amazing how much faster I feel when I am on flat terrain after “hill training”. I will hit the trails this weekend both Saturday and Sunday. I am now running in the pair of Salomon shoes that I received for free last year at the Pacific Shoreline Marathon. They definitely made a HUGE difference (thanks Lori and Mari, for the advice). I want to camp up in the Mt. Wilson area the night before and after the race. I am having a hard time finding a campground in the area. There seems to be a few, but there is very little information on the internet about the sites. So, if anyone knows of any good places to camp please leave a comment. It would be greatly appreciated.

I have been doing more location sound gigs recently. Tuesday, a couple of hours after our little shaker, I headed up to LA to the MTV studios to do a shoot with the band Panic! At The Disco. They were doing a promo for the game “Rock Band” and well, something about.... rock band....MTV.....cool rock tunes, got me feeling retro. So, I spent the better part of 2 days taking my braids out to give my hair and head a breather. I’m not sure if all this hair can take the amount of sweat I subject it to on a daily basis. Braids are very convenient. It’s that or dreads, we’ll see.. Until then.........



Paul

Heat, skateboards and dead legs

Wow, what a weekend!

I am going to start off with Friday. I did a :45 swim with some strength work. It was a pretty easy training day. Then I did a location gig at Sole Technologies, where they make and market Etnies shoes for skateboarders. They were having a skate contest and party at their facility in Lake Forrest. It was called “GvR” which means Goofy vs. Regulars, referencing “goofy footed” skaters vs. “regular footed” skaters. We were shooting a behind the scenes look at the event. We shot all day and night until around 10:30 p.m..

The next morning, I was up at 6 am and off to the gym for a 2:15 session on the bike and :50 run. I knew I was gonna be tired the rest of the day as we shot late into the night again. The band “yeah yeah yeahs” played and we wrapped around 9 p.m..

Sunday morning I actually felt pretty good. I was up at 8 am and got to the gym at 9. I did :50 on the bike and then met up with my Daughter for a run. I was scheduled to do a 1:30 run, but, Brittany is training for the marathon in February so I have decided to do her long runs with her on Sundays. She was slated to do a 14 mile run.

Since my last marathon in June, the longest run has been 10 miles. So this 14 miler was substantially longer than the 10% increase that you are supposed to do. But hey no problem, I am a seasoned runner right? Hmm.... The heat certainly didn’t help. We ran outside and although it was cool with a nice breeze in the morning, it got pretty hot midway through our run. The first 10 or so miles felt great. I had a tough time keeping a steady pace since I have done a lot of my running on the treadmill lately. Brittany kept looking at me as if to say “are you going to pick a pace and stick with it?” Around mile 12 I finally settled into a pace.....slow.... Man were my legs dead. The last 2 miles were tough on both of us and the heat was brutal. Brittany said she thought she could finish in 2:45 and we did, for a 11:48 pace. Not bad, and it was her longest run so far. I told her that it won’t get much harder than that as I remember my first 14 miler as my hardest training run.

This week is a lighter training week with about 10 hours scheduled. I am going to take it easier on the runs, since we have the 1/2 Marathon on Sunday. I hope it is not hot!

Paul