FISTFULAYEN

I’m training for the LA Marathon and have been writing a few blog posts along the way, with “few” being the operative word as of late. Around the holidays I tried to spend more time with family and less time on the computer, then work picked up pace starting week one, 2012. But there’s plenty to report.

Very sincere thanks to Ryan, Kerry, etc who put me over the top of my training goal of $2012 for Pablove. Honestly, having these folks give money to Pablove along the way has kept me training despite injury. I thank you for keeping me going. Let’s not stop here. If you’re reading this and can contribute anything, from $1 on up, to Pablove, please do. My new goal is to be their number #1 LA Marathon fundraiser. I’m currently $6,000 behind the leader. Any help is appreciated and the cause worthy.

Hello from the plane home from MIDEM! Every year the music industry gathers in Cannes, France for a long weekend of meetings, idea sharing, dinners, and drinking. It can be pretty heavily weighted toward the latter of those and this is the third year in a row I’ve taken my running shoes and used them as the balancing point to keep me closer to the former. It’s not easy, but others can be recruited into waking early and coming with. The first year we had a great little run club including Yancey Strickler, Ian Hogarth, and Sydney Wayser. Year two Glenn Peoples was my running pal. This year we had more interest than ever but mis-coordinated schedules kept J Herskowitz, Ian Hogarth, and Tim Heineke out of the MIDEM Early-AM Run Club and my only taker was Cortney Harding. Courtney returned the favor by getting me out for a 7:30am Crossfit class on Monday morning, too (Yes, Crossfit in Cannes! And it was good!), which was an incredible way to start the day and way better cross-training than I’d have accomplished in one of the Croisette hotel gyms.

We’ll do the same thing again at SXSW this year. The LA Marathon is the Sunday SXSW Music ends (poor planning on someone’s part, yes. mine, perhaps?) so it will be a taper week for me but stay tuned if you’d like to join and I’ll post more information in a future post.

It’s been great connecting with colleagues over running on these trips. I got to hear Official.fm’s J Herskowitz’ NYC Marathon story last evening, the tales of the many marathons Thingfo’s Cortney Harding has done on our run, and Cornerstone’s Jon Cohen‘s long (and fast!) run career yesterday (knee surgery kept him one off his 10 NYC Marathons in a row goal last year).

I’ve had more than one person tell me their reading these blog posts has inspired them to get out there and lace up, and nothing could make me happier. Remember what my mom (who herself is a former marathon runner and cross country coach) told me: “The hardest part is putting on your shoes.” Kudos to everyone who can get past that first step, no matter how much or fast you run or walk. Get a Fitbit and get your 10,000 steps/day by any means necessary.

My training has been a roller coaster. Here’s the update:

Training was rolling right along no problem until that magic point that often trips up those who try to pour on mileage, mile sixteen. The week between Xmas and NYE I completed my sixteen mile long run as part of a forty-five mile week total in a brand new pair of Newton natural running shoes (exact same model as my old pair) Santa brought. Saturday was eight miles at pace and Sunday was the sixteen miler. The eight felt great but during the sixteen I had pain in my left knee. It wasn’t terrible and I finished strong but I could tell something wasn’t right. The next day I stepped out to do an easy three-miler and couldn’t go one.

After a day’s rest I finished the week’s workouts without much pain, including the eight miler the following Saturday. But when I stepped out to do seventeen on Sunday I made it four, turned around and walked four home. I knew I was injured and needed to heal this properly.

Damn. I’ve been here before. And for the same reason. Crank up the mileage and the body reacts. After doing thirty to thirty-five miles per week for years I still got tripped up at the forty-five mile per week mark. Textbook typical. I thought I had a strong enough base to skip this step. Of course that was naive.

I wasn’t sure if it was IT Band or PFPS but it doesn’t much matter, the prescription is the same: Rest, Ice, Advil, and try to fix whatever biomechanical thing landed you here to begin with. I went to my sports med doc and we talked it out. Dr. Randy Davis in Marina Del Rey has seen me for countless running and skateboard injuries over the last 12 or so years and like any good sports med doc his attitude isn’t “you’re too old to ride a skateboard” or “you are turning your bones to dust by running” it’s “you wanna get back out there, right? ok let’s fix this and get you back at it ASAP.” He thought my kneecap was ok and that it’s mostly IT band flare-up, which is good news to me. I’ve been through that on the right leg and have overcome it over many years. He prescribed Ibuprofen horse pills and physical therapy.

Next stop was Meredith Soelberg’s office. Meredith is a former competitive gymnast and marathoner who knows about as much about what happens under your skin as anyone. She went Columbo on my injury, put me on the treadmill to study my gait, examined old and new shoes, watched me do box jumps, and interrogated me to try to get to the bottom of what’s really going on. She also put me on a pared back running schedule, prescribed cross training to keep the fitness up, stretched and massaged my legs, and applied ionto therapy.

I started swimming and enjoying it. I get up at 5:30am, make it to the Y when they open at 6am, and share a lane with a friendly older dude named Frankie. I can knock out just over a mile before I have to get back home to start the day with Lucinda. It feels good. It’s not hard physically, but hard from a coordination perspective. I feel like I’m learning something totally new, but getting better.

I picked up a book called Smart Marathon Training by Jeff Horowitz. It takes a different approach than the Higdon program I’ve been following. It tops out at thirty-five miles per week (conveniently the same as my base), focuses on three quality runs per week (tempo, speed, hill, and/or long runs), nd adds cross-training (his preference is biking) instead of the “junk” miles. His take: get into marathon shape and no more. If all you’re getting out of a four or five mile “easy run” is cardiovascular fitness then get that in a way that builds complimentary fitness and doesn’t wind up the same muscles you’re pushing on the quality run days. I am disappointed because I was enjoying running six days a week but it makes sense and given where I’m at seems worth a try.

So now, thanks to Meredith’s help, I’m back in action. I ran twenty-six miles last week without pain, including a ten-miler in Cannes on Sunday morning. I’m going to ease back into a plan that looks more like the Horowitz plan, quality days and cross-training.

Thanks to everyone for the support!

ian

MIDEM asked me to host “Visionary Monday” this year, a day of talks and panels focused on engaging artists in the new music business. It’s an incredible day kicking of with Saatchi & Saatchi’s CEO Kevin Roberts, continuing with artists Paul Van Dyk, Zoe Keating, and Mark Ronson, Dan Rose of Facebook, and some brand new research being released by both the Future of Music Coalition and TechDirt’s Mike Masnick.

If you’re here at MIDEM in Cannes, France, join us in Auditorium Debussy at the Palais. Kevin Roberts from Saatchi & Saatchi starts at 10am local time.

If you’re not in Cannes, please tune in live online here at LiveStream. It all starts at 10am here in Cannes which is 1am PT or 4am ET (adjust accordingly for where you are).

Follow @midem on Twitter for more info and updates.

And don’t forget about our meetup tonight at 6:30pm at Au Bureau, 49 Rue Félix Fauré!

Thanks and see you there!

ian

Last week’s Internet-wide SOPA/PIPA protests divided the Internet between content owners looking for stronger anti-piracy tools and technologists who believed the proposed legislation was an overreach. Those opposed said SOPA/PIPA opened the door to content companies taking down sites such as Tumblr and WordPress based on infringement by even one of the sites’ millions of users. Though I was at AOL/Nullsoft when Gnutella was created I am not pro-piracy by any stretch — half of what our company, Topspin, sells is easily-pirated digital audio and video (it could certainly be argued Topspin stands to benefit from SOPA-style legislation) and our raison d’être is helping artists leverage their creativity to build a fan base and earn a living. But I found myself on the side of the technologists in this debate; based on my read the legislation didn’t solve the problems it aimed to and created a number of unintended problems instead. I voiced my opposition to SOPA/PIPA in a letter on Topspin’s homepage last Wednesday, archived on Topspin’s blog for posterity.

Given many of SOPA’s proponents are people I count as both friends and business partners I found myself in frequent debates on the topic in person, over email, on Facebook, and in Twitter exchanges. In these debates I tried to convince this wasn’t an question of “is piracy good or bad?” but more of a mouthful: “what is the practical way to support an ecosystem where copyright holders have options and control without breaking the openness and innovation which makes the Internet valuable?” This is not a question of pro or anti piracy, it’s a question of how to put the controls of pricing and access into the hands of the person who owns the copyright while allowing innovation on the Internet as a platform for discovery and consumption.

More than one person turned the question back on me: “If SOPA/PIPA aren’t the answer, then what is?”

The first question that needs answered is: Do we need a legislative solution beyond what’s available today? Via previous legislation (DMCA, PRO IP) we already have a laws for protecting copyright online, as evidenced by the innumerable take-down notices issued to sites like YouTube every day and US government shut down and arrests of Megaupload and the company’s officers. But these take-down notices are exactly the problem, opponents will tell you. I spoke to a lawyer representing music publishers who described the cat/mouse game he plays with illegal lyrics sites every day. He can only practically issue so many take-down notices and can’t make a dent in the hundreds of thousands of pages these sites have up. Meanwhile legitimate sites which share ad revenue with the artists, or even artist pages who want to give their lyrics away for free online in the context of their own site, are pushed to search-results-page-two or further back. Similar are the complaints about torrents of MP3s or lossless files in search results, linking to .torrent files on transient off-shore servers and bundles of albums at sites like Megaupload, Rapidshare, and others who have plenty of legit purposes right alongside the illegal sharing of copy written material. Prior to this SOPA debate I would have told you further legislation wasn’t the answer or needed. Now that we’ve seen some very scary legislation introduced I would prefer to err on the side of proactivity from the technology camp. If we’re headed toward more legislation, let’s help craft the solution rather than complaining about the byproduct of lobbyist pressure. If there *is* something we can do to improve the cat/mouse game for content owners while maintaining an open and innovative Internet, let’s be a proactive part of that solution.

Also, as you are imaging what the Internet looks like once your solution is implemented, please keep in mind an increasing number of artists are releasing their content outside of the traditional models, in many cases for free. Take a look at the top 50 albums of 2011 on Pitchfork, 4 were given away as free downloads instead of sale (The Weeknd, Clams Casino, Danny Brown, and Frank Ocean). Read this incredible case study on how Pretty Lights went to #1 on Pirate Bay and reached millions of people as a result. Free is a price point many creative people will intentionally release their content at. Any legislation must be about giving artists control of how they release and charge for their creative work, not dictating a business model or price point to them.

There is a solution which curbs piracy, grows the industry overall, gives equal opportunity to all content holders, and allows for exponentially more innovation in the digital media space than we’ve seen in the past fifteen years. My proposal:

In brief:
A content registry where copyright holders can express the rules governing the use of their content and a legislative requirement sites dealing in media respect the rules expressed by the rights-holder in the registry.

In more detail:
A central organization or consortium would construct a content registry software solution and service. Copyright holders would place their media along with all the rules governing the use of said media, in the registry. These machine-readable rules would contain the prices for various uses of the content, from download and streaming to inclusion in subscription or other services. Any application creators willing to abide by the registry’s rules would be welcome to utilize the content, though rights holders could still opt in/out of specific services via the registry, too.

If you are building a sites with legitimate uses which could also be leveraged for piracy then you use the registry for a different reason, testing to see if the content uploaded by a user is available for the use in question. For example, if I upload a file to Rapidshare for free download, Rapidshare does an Audible Magic-style identification on the file then checks the registry to see if this content is available for free download. If so, awesome. If not, kick it back to the user. This is a non-trivial development challenge with many questions about who would build and maintain it, but it’s not science fiction. The technology exists. YouTube has very sophisticated recognition and rights management technology today. Similar systems have been built by countless companies over the years. Look under the hood of services such as MediaNet, 7digital, Rhapsody, and many others and you’ll find independently-developed versions of such a registry managing rights, paying rights-owners based on varying kinds of usage, etc. This solution would make a similar registry and technology available in a non-proprietary way.

An industry-wide content registry is not a new idea. In fact when Rob Lord and I started Medicode in 2001 the notion of a “digital packing slip” respected by all members of the digital value chain was a key part of our vision. I pitched this idea at Yahoo! when they purchased Mediacode in 2004 but couldn’t make it stick. VEVO CEO Rio Caraeff worked on something similar at Universal Music Group several years ago but wasn’t able to make progress there, either.

Today, if you want to start a music service, you start by visiting the major labels, sharing your idea and asking for a license to use their content in your service. Assuming you can get the meeting and general approval of your particular use, they ask for an advance payment (a steep barrier for most any startup technology company which immediately whittles the field down to relatively few players) and dictate the terms of an agreement. That’s just for the four (soon to be three) major labels. Once you’ve cleared that hurdle you need to find a way to cut a deal with thousands of independent labels to build a catalog of music. Also, this is just music which is easily organized by label, distributor, artist, album, track, and genre — other forms of art (movies, images, etc) are even messier. No wonder piracy reigns supreme. Building successful consumer-facing businesses on content is a nearly insurmountable challenge. Few, if any, technology companies have historically made it to positive cash-flow on this model in the past 15 years. It’s a high stakes game (evidence: the more than $100M Spotify has raised thus far) and the road is littered with the bodies of those who have attempted to run this gauntlet (recent evidence: Beyond Oblivion, a $40M smoking crater where $20M was spent on music licensing before a product even existed). For more on how this model works read Michael Robertson’s pessimistic piece re: Spotify.

But what if there existed this registry of all content, one where any developer was able to use your music to develop a service, so long as he respected your wishes. You, the content owner, could set the rules and the prices. Which tracks are available for free download? Available for streaming? How long a streaming sample allowed? High definition? At what price points? The market could decide if the price you’re asking is fair: “My service only supports downloads with a wholesale price of $0.70.” “My service is only interested in free downloads.” “My service is only interested in content which is available for subscription streaming.” The content owners could opt in/out simply by setting the rules. The upside to the industry as a whole is massive, developers willing to play by the rules can integrate media into their apps (and pay for the rights to do so) simply, and a true digital marketplace for content governed by market forces, not gatekeepers of large catalogs of content. I strongly believe the net of this will be more money to content owners more quickly than the current course we’re on today. We keep hearing “digital music needs to get to scale quickly for the music industry to succeed”; why wait for one player to scale when you could scale an industry of players?

Until this SOPA/PIPA debate I hadn’t thought of adding a legislative component to this idea of a content registry. Thinking on it over the past two weeks the “enforcement” component here strikes me as a reasonable pill to swallow. Oh there’s still something about it that makes me queasy and I reserve the right to change my tune based on the specific implementation but I think the quid pro quo here can be net positive for both sides. It would allow is a way for good actors to reasonably stop illegal uses on their sites while letting the many legal uses sail through without scary threats. You would effectively be drawing a bright line between white and black hats in the content services game, a line Safe Harbor works against today. This would be useful to both content sites who want to proactively respect copyright so long as the cost of becoming a white hat is not overly burdensome.

MPAA and RIAA: What do you say? Shall we work together to build an industry-wide technical solution to curb piracy and grow the overall pie? Embracing the above solution would show you aren’t simply interested in regaining yesterday’s control but are truly interested in seeing innovative content applications so long as your copyright is respected. Count me on board if you want to tackle this together.

Thanks for reading. I share this here to get feedback on the idea. If it resonates I can follow the thread. If it doesn’t I can refine my position. If it’s confusing I could devote an episode of This Week In Music to talking about it. Feel free to poke holes, comment, and share.

ian

ps – Dumb question:

In order to find a solution you have to identify exactly what you’re trying to solve. I found myself asking this question repeatedly and getting blank stares: “What, exactly, are you hoping SOPA/PIPA stops?” I’d ask. (Incredulous) “Piracy! Of course!” Arrrrrrr and avast ye! Unfortunately many don’t appreciate piracy is far from the only factor which has caused the traditional recorded music business to shrink in the past 12 years. What, specifically, are you hoping SOPA/PIPA eradicate? Limewire? (It’s dead) Torrents? File share sites? Sneaker Net? File transfer via AIM? Something else? When discussing a legislative solution to a technological problem, an “I know piracy when I see it” argument won’t pass muster. In order to propose a workable solution you have to first enumerate the specific situations you’re looking to overcome. What people told me they were trying to stop:

• Upload and share of copy written material to download sites (Megaupload, Rapidshare, etc), particularly when these sites are hosted on non-US soil and domains
• Search engines linking to Torrent sites
• Illegal lyrics sites

Anything else? Please be specific. I’d love to see a comprehensive list of the piracy outlets folks want to see stopped. For what it’s worth, these are all quite difficult because they’re general activities that have legitimate non-infringing uses, too, so any solution to these is by definition non-trivial.

[Reminder: I'm attempting to blog weekly as a put one foot in front of the other en route to the LA Marathon in March. Thanks to readers like you I've raised nearly $900 thus far. My goal is $2012. If you're reading this I'd appreciate you giving anything you can afford to Pablove. Thanks!]

After ten days of travel, I came home from LAX on Thursday evening in time to kiss my five year-old goodnight. Around 8pm she complained of a tummy ache. Around midnight she started throwing up, and didn’t stop until about 7pm the following evening. Last night around 10pm the bug took out my wife, Julie, who was up all night back/forth between the bed and the porcelain god. I woke up this morning feeling a less than perfect in the tummy department myself, but knowing I had 14 miles to run today to keep with my training. I was pretty sure I was next in line for the flu bug and heard the clock ticking. I thought maybe I could outrun it, literally, getting the run done before I went down for the count.

I laced up, put Lucinda in the stroller, and headed out the door. The first three or four miles were uncomfortable but not unmanageably so. Around mile five I knew I was toast, though. I was only two miles from the turn-around, but I knew I wasn’t going to make it. I was starting to get the hot flashes of the flu. Ugh.

Maybe I’ll get the 10 in, I decided. So I turned around at 5 miles and started running home. It started to become pointless. My GI distress was severe enough that every step was a challenge. I decided to call it, and walked the final mile plus to the Hotel Erwin, where I folded up the stroller and spent $10 on a cab ride home. Once home I succumbed to the flu bug myself and I’ve spent the day in/out of consciousness and the bathroom. I think I may have had the easiest of the family, though, I’m already feeling much better, sitting upright, and drinking some water. I have Accelerade popsicles freezing right now, ready for my breakfast tomorrow.

I’m definitely bummed to not have completed an important day in my training program. It’s ironic that I managed to make it through all my key runs traveling from home to NYC to Nashville to SF to Vegas (including a hungover tempo run on the Vegas strip Thursday morning) but didn’t manage to get through a long run right here at home on an excellent night’s sleep. There’s no accounting for illness, as they say. Hal Higdon talks about people who get anal retentive about their program, wondering if they will finish the marathon if they miss one session. I’m not that guy, but I would like to see how the plan works when applied. Since I did nearly 7 today I’m going to swap this out for Tuesdays run and try to do my 14 miler when recovered on Tuesday. I’ll let you know how that goes.

[UPDATE: I put the 14 miler behind me this morning (Tuesday, as planned). Felt good. Telemetry can be found in my RunKeeper account right here. Special thanks to my stroller-riding running companion, five year-old Lucinda, for her patience. Lucinda's playlist from today can be found right here.]

Brad Barrish sent me this link from Outside Magazine tonight: The 10 Biggest Fitness Myths. Here’s my response. I’m curious to hear how y’all feel about these myths and my responses:

1. Stretching. Agreed. I *never* stretched until recently and it treated me well. I’m stretching more now, seeing if it might help with soreness as I add miles. My right IT band is tightening as it’s been known to do in the past. Still, I find the foam roller more effective than stretching. More important than stretching is likely increasing mileage slowly. Stretching and yoga definitely *feels* good, though!
2. Barefoot. What they report there matches my personal experience with barefoot running. I have stopped barefoot running for the time being due to a weird little injury in my foot, a swelling under my right ankle which seems to be irritated by barefoot running (I keep meaning to have it looked at but just haven’t had time). Still, barefoot runing did really improve my form and my time, I’d like to go back to it on the short runs again soon and will do it as soon as I’m sure it won’t jeopardize my training program.
3. Core strength. The “myth” they’re pointing to here seems like unhelpful bullshit to me. I believe my improvements in form and speed are directly related to weight-training. There’s just no question that solid foundational fitness allows you to hold better form for longer amounting to better performance with less fatigue.
4. I don’t know anyone who thinks guzzling before running prevents cramps. Is this really a myth? More on my hydration experimentations below.
5. Re: Ibuprofen. Makes sense. I’ve never heard any science around this and like the above I never read any sports nutritionists who recommend this. Eating a good meal of whole foods post-run probably speeds recovery more than anything. Hardcore dudes do things like spray magnesium on their legs and wear compression tights. But that’s only after something gnar gnar like a marathon or ironman.
6. Their comment re: dehydration is directly related to the post last week where Dr. Noakes debunks the hydration myth. Based on my personal experience, I would have to agree. I don’t take any liquid on runs less than one hour. On a run of an hour or more I would take a small amount of water (12 oz per hour) and some gel packs. Based on what I know hitting “The Wall” comes from running out of glycogen stores in your liver, not a lack of water or salt. I’ll let you know if that changes based on my experimentation over the course of this training.
7. I have no experience with ice baths so I can’t comment here. Sounds fuckin cold and unpleasant, so if it’s a placebo I’ll skip it, thanks.
8. I’ve heard the same research they note here, that the fastest way to burn calories is with high-intensity interval training. Sounds like you can get just as much cal-burn benefit from very short workout, based on the research. It also sounds really un-fun. I only get the one day of interval training in per week on this marathon program so I’m likely spending my time all wrong, plodding along for hours on these long runs. Heh. Maybe this will be my next experiment…
9. They’re claiming fructose is good for you when training and can in fact make you faster. Not sure I buy this one, it’s counter to other research I’ve heard. Carbs in fructose are difficult to access. I call bullshit. Get your fructose from whole fruits, not high-fructose corn syrup.
10. It’s funny, I’ve read a ton on supplements and everyone says basically the same thing: no conclusive evidence of anything here that improves performance. I take a whole food multi vitamin, a vitamin D, and some fish oil. For the rest? Eat good whole foods, lots of fruits and veggies.

See you next week.

ian

Week 4 in my marathon training lead-up! Truth is I’m just looking for a reason to blog every week to remind people I’m raising money for Pablove while training for the 2012 LA Marathon. I’m over $700 from three blog posts with about 12 weeks to go. Any help getting to my goal of $2012 is appreciated. Click here to donate any amount.

Hopefully there will be some tidbits in these blog posts that help you with your training of any kind or length. I know I’ve already got a ton of value from the feedback people have left in the comments. If you have something to share please don’t be shy.

Hello from a plane home from Nashville, TN. This morning’s run was INCREDIBLE, probably the most beautiful place I’ve ever had the pleasure of running, but more on that later…

Thanks to a comment Mike Hughes left here on the blog I’ve just discovered Ben Greenfield’s podcast and have been catching up on lots of episodes over the past couple of weeks. Some are definitely better than others but there’s a ton of great info there, particularly from Ben himself who I find to be more knowledgeable than most of his guests. This morning was an exception to that rule, though. I listened to a great interview with the man who wrote what is widely referred to as the definitive (and certainly heaviest) book about running, South African Dr. Tim Noakes, author of The Lore of Running. I commonly use Tim’s book as a free-weight/sleep-aid and pick it up whenever I want to fall asleep quickly. Not that it’s boring, it’s not, it’s just DENSE, more a physiology text than a “how to run” book.

On Ben’s show this morning Dr. Noakes was giving a preview of a new book he has coming out next year where he uses science to dispel the (he says) Gatorade-created myth that we need many liters of sugary, salty sports drink during exercise. He says the science doesn’t point to the need to hydrate ahead of being thirsty nor does it point to a need for more salt as you sweat. His advice: drink to thirst, no more, no less, and water is fine (he also says if your body is used to a salty sports drink you shouldn’t go cold turkey, wean). This typically amounts to 12-18oz of liquid per hour, not the 40oz the Gatorade Science Foundation recommends. Shocking.

You can listen to the entire podcast here.

Tim also mentioned that at 62 he’s running as fast as he was in his early 40s, a turnaround he attributes to adopting the Paleo Diet.

As I mentioned in last week’s post, this past week was a marathon travel week, from home in Los Angeles to New York City to SF to home to Nashville. Each stop was full of meetings and on top of it we had a crazy end-of-year crush of a work week. I still had to cover approximately 35 miles on foot over that time to keep up with training. It wasn’t easy to fit it in, but thanks to some help from friends I got it done and enjoyed every minute of it.

Monday and Tuesday: New York City

I stayed mid-town near 30th and Madison. I landed around midnight and by the time I collected my bag and headed into the city it was after 2am ET before I got to sleep. Still, I set the alarm for 6am ET (3am PT — OUCH) to get an easy 3 miler in. I headed east in the dark, searching for the path along the eastern coastline. It wasn’t easy to get all the way there but eventually I found the entrance along 25th street. Not exactly scenic, especially in the dark. But, three miles done: check.

The crazy thing was noting how easy it is to get in way more steps in NYC than I get back home. I went from meeting to meeting all day, walking when I had time instead of taking the subway. At the end of the day I’d logged more than 25,000 steps. On a non-run day in LA I come in more around 5,000, daily goal is 10,000 and even on a run day in LA I’m only around 15,000. It was a good reminder a walking commute is plenty to get a minimum level of physical activity and burn 500 or so calories.

Day two called for a seven mile run so I headed to the West Side Highway for what is by all accounts a much nicer run path. Tis true. Not only is it a better run but I finally got a peek at the skate park at Chelesa Piers. Looks damn fun. Only problem, the weather went from no rain to light rain to steady rain while I was out. Not terrible, though. Fine run. Check.

Wednesday, Northern California

I woke up Wednesday morning in Northern California and headed out for a short 3-miler. The hotel recommended a running path and I found it but also found it was pitch black at 6am. I ran along it for a bit but it really didn’t seem like the smartest place to be all alone in the dark so I bailed and ran along a street instead. Funny part was it was colder in Northern California than it was in NYC this early December.

Thursday, Santa Monica, CA

Thursday morning I was back home and since the Higdon program I chose for this training plan called for hill training I ran to the beach then hit my favorite hill in Santa Monica (Pearl Street between Lincoln and 12th in Santa Monica) for some uphill sprints.

Thankfully Friday was a rest day because I was up all night Thursday working with Topspin pals Bob, Paul, Shamal, and Brian (I love you mans) and only managed a couple hour nap rather than a night’s sleep.

Saturday and Sunday, Nashille, TN

Saturday called for six miles at marathon pace which I did from where I was staying with friends (thanks for hosting, Shelly, Jeff, and Emmylou!) in East Nashville into a gorgeous park called Shelby Bottoms.

Sunday was long run day (13 miles) so at sun-up I retraced my steps into Shelby Bottoms and just kept on going. Around mile four I found a foot bridge heading east over the river. The view from the bridge was stunning. The sun was just peeking over the horizon and the river was filled with fog while the sky was otherwise clear. So here floating in a river lined with tall trees on each side were wispy billows of fluffy beautifulness. It was an incredible run worthy of a photo and a two page spread in some running magazine. Also, just like in NYC, I managed a run past the local skate park which looks fun and worthy of a visit. The only downside: it was *cold* in Nashville this weekend, particularly at dawn, in the high 20s F. My hands froze on Saturday’s run so I hit a running store and picked up some two-layer mittens from Saucony. I fared much better during the hour and forty-five minutes I was on the trail this morning but still came back with frozen fingers.

Now I’m doing the opposite of stretching, sitting in a seat on a plane, headed for home. Tonight is Kid Rock at The Malibu Inn (!) and tomorrow I’m on a 6am flight again… Are the holidays here yet?

Reminder: You can follow along with my training at RunKeeper here and donate to my Pablove fundraising page here.

Question of the day: How am I going to get my running workouts in when I head to Mammoth between Xmas and NYE? Bundle up and hit the streets or find a treadmill? I’m wondering how my speed training will fare at altitude…

In the Nashville spirit I offer you this great short documentary of the esteemed Johnny Corndawg marathon training on tour (thanks Jeff Colvin for turning me on to both Johnny and this video):

Oh one more thing. I finally looked up the results of the 10-miler I ran in Nashville a month ago. Results here. Note that while I won the 35-39 age group I wouldn’t have won either 40-44 or 45-49! That was a fun and beautiful local race competing directly with a huge Rock N Roll Half Marathon on the same day. I’d highly recommend it.

Thanks for reading and supporting. See you on the road.

ian