Elite Jogging For Dummies

Easy miles to move the legs after racing.

I am in Los Angeles now, having flown in yesterday for a week of work/vacation. I'm staying with my friend Tory at his house.

This morning I got up at 6am and drove out to Studio City, where I used to live, to run up in on the Betty B. Dearing trail, where I used to run consistently when I lived here. Most people think of LA as a vast concrete wasteland and they are 90% right, but the other 10% is spectacular. The little portion I'm talking about here is the Santa Monica mountains, which divide LA from the San Fernando Valley. I lived for four years on Laurel Canyon, right at the bottom of the Hollywood Hills and right next to the trailhead going up into an extensive network of side canyons and trails.

Starting at the trailhead off of Laurel Canyon, I ran up through the single track trail into the meadow and then continued on the spine of the mountain. I crossed over Coldwater Canyon, and then dropped down into Franklin Canyon, which is protected parkland/habitat area. It's amazingly close to a lot of chaos, but remarkably isolated and there is a lot of solitude to be found there. I was disturbed, but not surprised to see that a few more hilltops had been leveled and replaced with hotel-sized mansions. I ran down through Franklin Canyon to the Hastain Trail, and climbed another 300 feet before turning back.

It is a challenging run wih lots of climbing-but one of my all time favorites anywhere in the world.

The solitude of yesterday's run found its exact opposite with today's run. It's Tuesday, so speedwork, but where to run today? The plan was to head over to John Marshall High School to run on their track, but when we got there, school was in session and gym class was in full effect, so we decided to look elsewhere. We couldn't find anything close, however, so back to JMHS. This school is in the Los Feliz neighborhood in Los Angeles, and is the site where the movie "Grease" was filmed.

The "track" is an unlined dirt path that roughly circles a multipurpose playing field. I ran a warm up mile, and discovered from my time and effort that the track was about 40m short of 400 meters, so it would be a little awkward keeping track today and my times below are not based on any accurate measurement.

I ran a 4 lap warm up , followed by 4 strides. Then

1 x 4 laps in 5:05/ 2 laps easy

1 x 2 laps in 2:20 /1 lap easy

1 x 4 laps in 4:55 /2 laps easy

1 x 2 laps in 2:18 /2 laps easy

1 x 4 laps in 4:52 /2 laps easy

4 laps recovery

4 laps walking with Tory.

Tory ran 9 laps and then we walked together. He's just getting back into shape and it was great to be out there with him.

The funnies thing about this run was the setting itself. About 20 minutes into my run, out come the kids for another period of gym class. They milled around for a while and then started jogging some laps en masse. These are city kids and I stood out like a sore thumb, but it was so much fun to be out there among these kids.

Easy miles in Tory's neighborhood. We started out running up into Elyrium Park, which i s a small enclave leading up into the hills, but the trails fizzled quickly and we ended up coming out on a street within a half mile or so. The interesting thing there was the skunk that was about 10 feet off the trail (didn't get sprayed).

I ran up through the neighborhoods and checked out the Mt. Washington area, which reminded me of Pasadena.

Big travel day; I drove from LA to Orange County for lunch with my brother and then on to San Diego where I picked up Heather from the airport, and we drove up to Carlsbad, where we're staying for a couple of nights.

Saturday won't make a good day for a long run, so I had to get it in today. Heather and I went out this morning at 7am or so, and headed out along the Pacific Coast Highway, running south toward Encinitas. Heather turned around at 5 miles out and I pressed ahead. I ran past the surf shops, bars, campgrounds, motels, beach houses and assorted small businesses that line the PCH in this area. The run felt great through 15 miles, when I started to break down a bit, but I picked up the pace and pushed fairly well from 16 through 19. Most miles were about 7:30-7:40 pace, which felt hard on the pavement/concrete I was running on. I was pretty wiped when I got home, and dripping wet owing to the humidity.

An early easy run before getting on the road to head up to Newport. I ran north from Carlsbad up into Oceanside, and turned around when it stopped being scenic. I headed back south through Carlsbad on the PCH to Cannon Road and then back to Carlsbad. Legs felt decent considering yesterday's longish effort.

Today I ran on Catalina Island, having traveled here yesterday for my friend Adam's bachelor party on another friend's large boat. I got up around 6:30, and headed up a steep single track trail, gaining altitude rapidly. After about 1000 feet of climbing, I ran into a buffalo in the middle of the trail. I startled him when I dropped into a small saddle. We had a staring contest for a few minutes, during which he was absolutely still. There was really no way to get around him, so I headed back down the mountain and up a fire road where I did some surges. It was a gorgeous morning and the view over the ocean was spectacular.