10 Best Brooks Shoes For Half Marathon

Best Brooks Shoes For Half Marathon in 2023

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

Week 17 of 2020 Los Angeles Marathon Training

Despite a snowstorm hitting the mountains pretty hard and the rain and hail which fell from the skies the night before, the Team to End AIDS runners still made it out to Griffith Park to run 20 miles in preparation for the 2020 Los Angeles Marathon.

A heavy snowstorm was hitting Big Bear Mountain hard, it was raining and hailing the night before, but none of that was going to stop us Team to End AIDS runners from running 20 miles today. You read it right folks, our training run for this week was 20 miles, a distance that even us marathon veterans still get nervous about. We always have a pretty good idea of what's in store for us during the longer runs, but we also have an even better idea of what's in store for us when we're finished: Advil, an ice bath, and a nice long nap. And while we're at it, maybe a Jack and Coke since we all abstained from drinking any alcohol this past week for the sake of staying hydrated.

We started at 6:30 a.m. which is an hour earlier than we usually begin, and fortunately the alarm on my Ironman watch was working and did not let me down like it has in the past. Then again, these days I wake up a lot earlier than I would care to which is a darn nuisance. I packed up my water belt with some new energy gel packs, some chocolate chip Cliff Bars, water and Gatorade, and I headed out to Griffith Park on an especially cold Saturday morning.

As I was making the turn onto Highland Avenue, however, I realized that I forgot to bring my Nine Inch Nails hat with me. Now I have never forgotten that hat before when it comes to any Team to End AIDS run, so this was odd. I suddenly felt naked without it and briefly contemplated driving back to my apartment to retrieve it, but I knew it would be a waste of gas to do so (and gas prices keep getting worse and worse by the way).

Still, I got really nervous about how people would view my hair when I got to Griffith Park. When I get up in the morning, my hair (which my dad says "grows like a weed") usually resembles some punk rock hairdo to where I'm convinced that, if I was blonde, some smart ass will look at me and say "hey Flock of Seagulls!" Of course, my defense about my hair being all messy in the morning has always remained the same:

"I worked all night on this!"

Well no one really mentioned my hair when I arrived as everyone was busy dealing with something else, the numbingly cold weather. It wasn't snowing in Burbank, but the frost that had formed on the ground was very thick and looked like it would take forever to melt. One other thing I forgot to bring this morning was my gloves, and I began missing those more than I missed my NIN hat. What got us a little bit warm was the realization that we actually managed to get up so early on a Saturday morning. Jessica ended up saying it best:

"You know you're up really early when Starbucks isn't even open yet!"

Coach JC informed us that he measured the distance, and 20 miles from Griffith Park is LAX (Los Angeles International Airport) but we were not running there today. The big surprise though was his announcement that there were not going to be any hills on this run. Instead, we were going to be treated to a trivia contest just like the ones we played during our 2020 training. Coach JC then looked above and apologized to the late Coach Scott for not including his favorite trivia category of musicals today. Instead the category was movies, and I was psyched about my chances. Anybody who knows me best knows that I am a master at movie trivia, and the members of the Lucky 13 pace group looked to have their ace in the hole with me being there.

This run took us out of Griffith Park and onto Forest Lawn Drive which is an especially dangerous road to travel on either by foot, bike or car. As always we run against traffic since drivers will have an easier time seeing us on the road, but Forest Lawn Drive has a number of blind curves where it's hard to see what's coming in the opposite direction. I made sure to remind everyone to run in a single file when we went around those curves as the thought of any of us becoming road kill was not the least bit appealing. The fact that we were also running by a cemetery threatened to be prophetic, and it's hard to think of another time during training where we were acutely aware of our surroundings.

When it came to the trivia questions, I had most of them down. Some of them had to do with the name of Indiana Jones' childhood dog (Indiana as we learned from the "Last Crusade") and the name of the building terrorists took over in "Die Hard" (Nakatomi Plaza, which I was just at the other week). However, I did get stumped on questions regarding such classics as "Bringing up Baby" and "Breakfast at Tiffany's," movies I should have seen by now but haven't. This is where the other members of the Lucky 13 pace group came in handy. I would not have known that the pet in "Bringing up Baby" was a Bengal tiger or what Audrey Hepburn called her cat in "Breakfast in Tiffany's" otherwise.

For the record, no one in Lucky 13 used their cell phones or Smartphones to get the answers to any of those questions. As for the other pace groups, I can't help but wonder…

Some questions drove me nuts because they involved movies I have seen dozens of times and should damn well know the answers to. I totally remember that scene in "Ghost" where Whoopi Goldberg gets possessed by Orlando who ends up asking his wife "damn baby what did you do to your hair?" What I don't remember is what the name of his wife's new hairstyle. Was it autumn sunrise or crimson sunset? Not knowing the answer was torture because I ended up doing a perfect impersonation of Goldberg's dialogue from the scene, but the name of the hairstyle kept eluding me. How could I forget those small little details?!

Then there was the one regarding the "Cell Block Tango" number from the movie version of the musical "Chicago." I have heard that song numerous times but couldn't quite remember the order of the crimes as they were mentioned. I remember "Cicero" and "uh-uh," but the others were harder to place. I had to refer to another actor in my pace group for the answer and even she wasn't sure what it was.

I was impressed at how well I handled the first half of this run because I figured that my legs would start giving out on me at the halfway point, but instead I was actually doing very well… That is, until the last few miles. You see I had this slight pain in my left foot that had been bugging me some this past week, and it eventually became a major irritation for me today. It wasn't an excruciating pain, but it became impossible to ignore it as I ran on.

As a result, I found myself mostly walking the last two or three miles of the run by my lonesome. The rest of my pace group members were already way ahead of me as I was limping to the finish line, and I kept cursing at myself along the way. There's always a point in a marathon when you feel like you've hit a mental brick wall and you feel like you can't run another mile. I definitely hit that wall on this day's run, and I had to struggle to make it across the finish line (which I eventually did).

I told Coach JC about my sore foot and he said that it is probably the result of tendinitis, an inflammation of a tendon. In other words, a tendon or two in my left foot was getting pulled a little too much to where it was crying out at me "hey stop it! Show me some respect!" JC gave me a plastic bag of ice to put on my foot, and he encouraged me to go easy on it for the next day or so.

Still, I had to drop by the supermarket and limp my way to the frozen section to grab a 20 pound bag of ice. Whether I wanted to or not, I was going to have an ice bath. As much as my body convulses at the slightest touch of cold water, these baths are always quick to heal my swollen body. After that, I had a nice long nap and later woke up to write this article.

I ended up coming out of this run in kind of a cruddy mood. I shouldn't have because I did complete the 20 mile run even if I didn't complete it in a triumphant way. I guess I expected more from myself today than I should have, or maybe I'm just worried that I'm going to run into the same situation on the day of the marathon. I've ran the Los Angeles Marathon twice before, but today I came close to suffering my first real injury as a runner. I've handled things well up to this point, but could this be an omen of things to come?

Well whatever, I completed the 20 miles so I should be patting myself on the back for that. Furthermore all the Team to End AIDS runners who participated should be doing the same. We will have a recovery run of 10 miles next Saturday, and we'll know by then which pace group won the movie trivia contest. If Lucky 13 loses it'll be on me, and I will have a lot of old movies to start watching.

FUNDRAISING UPDATE: So far I have raised $776, and that puts me at 78% towards my fundraising goal of $1,000 for AIDS Project Los Angeles. I need to get to the $1,000 mark by the middle of February or else it will jeopardize my chances of participating in the Los Angeles Marathon. Please make a donation, and please donate only what you can.

CLICK HERE TO MAKE A TAX DEDUCTIBLE DONATION.

Related articles:

Week 16 of 2020 Los Angeles Marathon Training

Week 15 of 2020 Los Angeles Marathon Training

Day 17 of 2020 Los Angeles Marathon Training