PV Trail Cleanup Saturday 6-7-08
A message from Beach Runner and SoCalRunning member Bernice…
You can learn more about the cleanup by visiting here…
National Trails Day and Portuguese Bend Cleanup
“Hey! How have you all been?
Maybe you’ve checked Socal Running (Ning), maybe you haven’t. Just in case you haven’t, we’re having another Trail Maintenance in Palos Verdes (sponsored by REI) this Saturday from 9AM-12NN. Some free stuff from REI, including lunch. We’ll have an hour run at 7AM starting from the Trump Golf Course, as usual. Just Section 1 and part of the road. Then change into our work clothes for the trail maintenance. Long pants and closed shoes please. Sunblock for tan line control. Bring your own garden gloves for sanitary reasons. (I forgot to bring gloves last time. Eeewww!) Drinking water is provided. Don’t forget your happy face.
I’d just like to add, the trail maintenance we did in May was therapeutic for me. It was kinda nice pulling out those weeds and cutting the overgrown plants. Met a lot of new people who love the trails too. And had fun with the Beach Runners, of course, including Gary, whom I had the pleasure of sharing some thoughts with.
Just so you know, Peter, who is coordinating this project, informed Steve and Gary of this, as courtesy, since it was going to overlap with BR Long Beach Saturday run. It’s only a few of us anyway. And I’m pretty sure manual labor doesn’t appeal to the general public. Just us trail addicts who want an excuse to go to PV. So for some of you doing the LB run in the morning, you might want to squeeze in a few hours with us.
Let us know if you can make it so we can reserve a slot for you for your free REI shirt. ”
BERNICE (questions?)
If you want to contact Bernice about questions…i.e you can still go and do cleanup after Beach Runners then you can visit her Ning page.
Please Take the Beach Runner Survey
Dear Beach Runners,
If you have not done so…please take our survey.
It only takes 10 minutes and will help Steve and I design a better marathon training program.
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Thankyou soooo much
The Earth Needs Us!!!
For some time now…these thoughts have been on mind. Actually ever since watching An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore.
The more I read the news, read the reports of the top scientists, and speak to our elders like my grandparents…it is obvious…that the Earth is disastrously warming.
Granted. Not much. But even a few degrees can make profound huge differences in the health of our ecosystems. And from what I can figure out, they are not doing so well.
In our lifetimes we might see…the destruction of the world’s coral reefs…the end of Amazon rainforest…the melting of the North Pole…no more major glaciers…whole islands going underwater.
A real tragedy of epic proportions. There was a while when I could just put my head in the sand like an ostrich and focus on my fitness levels and my job and my family and my money. But that time of American prosperity seems to be coming to slowdown and new realities are setting in.
And a new challenge. One that will ask us all to work together to save this planet and our very civilization.
I’d like to make my Earth Day Message a pretty one with pretty flowers and some sweet meditative lets go out to nature and commune with the animals. And trust me, I will be doing this tonight with my trail running group at Trump Golf Course at 5:30.
But I think a bigger message needs to be told here today. A one of AWAKENING TO THE TRUTH. The calling is upon us.
I wish I could say I live a green lifestyle…but I have a long way to go. And making this a daily priority and living the example of a low impact, environmentally healing individual growing a green community around me will be a priority for me and my writings on this blog also in the years ahead.
Please, please, start educating yourself especially on the issues of climate change. There is more to life than the podium, or a medal, or the gym.
Together we can make a difference.
God Bless,
Gary
The Goals in our Souls…
Catalina Race Report Part 2
What does it take to train for the Catalina Marathon?
That’s the question that I have been trying to figure out now for three years.
And I think that I have found some answers.
Our first test was the Buffalo Run.
How did the Beach Runners do?
Pretty damn well. We walked away with 8 yes count them 8 podium spots.
Christy and I both took first in our age groups.
My race was certainly a BREAKTHROUGH PERFORMANCE. These do not come by very often. And you really got to train for these. A BREAKTHROUGH is when you jump to a higher performance level altogether. I’m not just talking a little improvement…but a huge jump in results.
I went from 51st overall in a tough as nails race to 12th overall. Pretty good.
The reason: well there were lots of them. Sure I was training with all the Beach Runners on the weekend but during the week I was doing HARD CORE INTERVAL training.
I cannot say enough about the importance of doing intervals. I have this killer video of Matt and I doing hill intervals together if I can ever get my imovie to export correctly!!!! Arghh!
So I’d do one hard interval workout a week with Matt. Then wild man Jake returned from India, and we’d do fast uphill tempo runs of 7-10 miles once a week.
And I’d run up to the top of Palos Verdes as fast as my body could. Working STRESS and RECOVERY principles over and over again.
I’d read the Josh Waitzkin book THE ART OF LEARNING for like the third time and I was hearing his words about I had to be willing to INVEST IN LOSS. Josh was the U.S junior chess champion who switched to TAI CHI and when on to win 9 national championships and 2 world championships even beating the Chinese! It is a must read book if you are interested in PEAK PERFORMANCE.
I had to be willing to get my ass kicked every time I could on a training run. And Matt did kick my ass finally on some hills one day.
Then when that race came all that hard work paid off big big time. There’s too much to write about what happened on that run. It was like time slowed down…I got into some strange feelings in my body that would sound way too weird to explain.
But those champion athletes out there know of what I speak…like new super powers you discover in the course of competition.
Post Buffalo Run
I was tired for like two weeks after that race. Way too long to be resting with Catalina on the way. This I have to blame on a drop in my nutrition habits…way too much coffee and sugar in this period and not enough greens.
It was like a complacency I have to be very careful about victories. Especially during the crazy winter race schedule I had planned out for myself.
Walt Disney World
This little side story must be told. A little more into my character…
So some time ago I began the process of learning to be a copywriter. That means I write advertising. Direct response long copy advertising in the mold of Claude Hopkins, Eugene Schwartz, and Gary Halbert.
Through my studies of this fascinating field a name came up…Jay Abraham. Jay is one of the foremost experts in the world in marketing…this is who Tony Robbins hired for this marketing.
And so what I found out is that Jay lived in Palos Verdes. In fact, his office off Hawthorne Blvd was a training ground for many a great copywriter…John Carlton, Brian Keith Volles, even Gary Halbert.
It was like I was destined to work there. Even more powerful was the visions I kept getting in my imagination on long trail runs up on those hills…visions of writing for Jay Abraham.
Why I kept getting these visions…I don’t know.
But like I’ll write about in my upcoming book, visions like this are very very powerful callings for our hero souls to embark on journeys. Journeys that our souls need to take to find our destinies.
Okay, I’m getting a little funky here. Let’s get back to the story.
So I walked into Jay Abraham’s office one day with some copy I had written including blog posts and emails that I send you folks. They tried me out…but ended up referring me to another brilliant marketer Rich Schefren whom I began writing press releases for.
So with like 10 days to go before the LA Marathon…Rich invites me out to his conference in Walt Disney World for the week to help out and learn more marketing stuff.
Which means I’d miss out on the most important run for my Catalina people…the five hour run! Argh!!!
There were deeper forces here at play than a long run. Deeper yearnings pulling at the ship of my soul…I could feel the winds picking up…I was restless at home…so I put up those sails and went.
I got to listen to John Carlton for a day and a half at his workshop. Priceless. Another writing idol of mine. Met a bunch of great copywriters such as Tony Flores, John Newtson, and Charlie Byrne.
And sat and listened to awesome marketing presentations. Met so many great people. Wrote press releases. Did video work. I was a player for a few days.
Meanwhile I was eating LIKE A KING. I’m a batchelor and quite literally can live off oatmeal, green juice, tofu, and broccoli for days…so to be at some swank Disney hotel with a view of the lake…with a balcony…eating fancy fancy spreads every meal was…well…I felt I had arrived.
I got like one run in during this time. Great run. Around Disney lake. Saw lots of cool birds like egats, ducks, and even hawks. But as you can imagine, all of this high life wasn’t so good for my Catalina training.
And my big goal was to win the American Trail Championship for my age group…the combined times of the Buffalo Run and Catalina Marathon. I got second last year with another BREAKTHROUGH PERFORMANCE of going sub four hours at the Catalina Marathon. So I need just to be a little faster…and with that kick ass Buffalo Run…I was primed for success.
Except for all this fine living I was now doing.
So I was supposed to leave on Wednesday morning…but Tuesday night Rich asks me whether I want to stay for another few days and help write a handbook for a special workshop he was doing with…no other than…that’s right you guessed it…
Jay Abraham!
Weird. Way F*&%ing weird!
So you can guess what my answer was…
“Hell yes!”
So I wrote the next few days for Jay Abraham and Rich Schefren. It didn’t go all that well for me. I wish I could have improved my performance there in many many ways. And had to cancel a couple of my classes…
But I did it. Some goal I had developed on the trails of Palos Verdes. Sitting here, writing this now gives me weird shivers up my spine.
And there I was in Walt Disney World…this vision coming true. Jay was a gentleman. Rich was just a firecracker of intellectual energy. I don’t think I had the full chops to hang in there with these marketing giants…but I tried with everything I had in me. It was as difficult as miles 6-10 of the Buffalo Run.
One thing that I’ve learned from marathon running is to just HANG IN THERE when you’re beat tired. I’m tough. I don’t get intimidated easily even with very smart guys like Rich and Jay.
It was like seeing 3:58 on the last turn to the finish line…you’re giving it all til you just can’t go anymore.
And another dream of mine came true. A BREAKTHROUGH for my new career. It just goes to show what you can accomplish when you go for the yearnings in your soul…make goals out of them…believe in yourself…then work your butt off.
The LA Marathon
So I got back on a Friday and ran the LA marathon on a Sunday. Why? Not sure. Always wanted to do both LA and Catalina in one year. And with the opportunity right there…well…you know the story.
I was slow. Which was good. How slow? I didn’t pass a Beach Runner until mile 8. Jake was going nuts. But I had a plan. Real complicated plan…go super slow.
That plan lasted until mile 13. Then I went a little faster. But I had a great time out there on the course that day. I coached sooooo many people I felt like Steve Mackel. At one point I ran into a seven eleven bought 10 cliff bars and was giving them out to hungry looking runners.
I ran the last mile in with Bernice. Who had trained with me up in Catalina…we came down to the finish stretch I was pumping the crowd up…yelling like crazy…and Bernice passed me with like 5 feet to go.
And I stood there watching hundreds of runners crossing that finish line…
Thinking of this wonderful world of dreams all these runners had…and how they put their sails up…how they crossed the rough seas…to make their soul yearnings come true…their sacrifices…
I saw hundreds upon hundreds cross that finish line and get a medal put around their neck.
I stood there dumbfounded by it all.
Cheering on Beach Runners coming across the finish line.
And out there, in Pacific, the the Island sat out waiting for the rest of the team…and me…just two weeks later…
Gary’s Catalina Marathon 2008 pt One
Dear Runners,
I wish that I had a cool video like Steve. But after a couple of years of flawless MacBook Pro performance, my computer is making strange looking videos.
I guess that I am writing this one.
My Catalina Marathon 2008 Story…
Setting Your Intention
It all started with an intention run I did back in October. About five runners showed up and we had a amazing trail run up in Palos Verdes above Ladera Linda school (I don’t think we went up Monkey Hill though).
I remember coming down some switchbacks and teaching how to run a downhill…sit in your core…relax your legs…let gravity take over…LET GO…and I remember standing there teaching and…
Everything seemed just right. Like this was my destiny. What I was supposed to do in this lifetime. Teach runners how to run on a trail.
Do you ever feel that way in your life?
This profound sense of connection to the Universe and Purpose?
We finished up the run with yoga on the cliffs overlooking the ocean. If you’ve ever joined me there you know what it is like…one of the most beautiful spots in all of Los Angeles to do a yoga session.
A place very special for Steve and I. A place that birthed our famous ChiRunning Yoga Retreats…which now that I think about it…we have not done for a while. More on that later also.
So we sat there and I directed everyone to tune into their intentions…listening to your heart.
A recent spiritual teacher had told me, “Gary you got the meditation thing down in your head…it’s time you began meditating with your heart”.
Now a heart meditation is a different matter altogether different than a mind meditation.
After years of on and off again Zazen (Zen Meditation) I can sit and quiet my mind. In fact, quieting my mind so that I can concentrate on my body and the train has been a reason for my good trail running lately.
So we all sat there…listening to our hearts…well I least I was.
And three visions came to me.
1.Of running like a warrior. Vision of myself going all out on the trails. Real tough running. At one with my body, breath, mind, the trail. All levels of peak performance.
2.Of improving my coaching. I tend to do number one above too much. So I saw myself slowing down on a Saturday, working with all levels of runners, coaching, guiding, demonstrating, inspiring…whatever it took to get people ready to run the Catalina Marathon.
3.Of contributing money to charity. To quit running for myself and begin running for a higher purpose. I’ve never done this…and hopefully this would be a good start.
So these three intentions I took with me into the Catalina Marathon Training season for 2008.
The other runners shared their visions…Anna said that she saw water running down the hills. A real sign of things to come.
This was to be “My Calling”…a powerful concept from my first book I am writing (another story).
The Training
Big changes were in order for Beach Runners.
Steve and I have always worked closely together on all our coaching projects: Beach Runners, ChiRunning workshops, and our websites.
We decided we would do something different, I like Long Beach…running along the beach…through Naples…to the Queen Mary has always been a real joy.
But I LOVE running the trails of Palos Verdes. It is my passion, my calling, where I feel most at home with the Universe right now.
And considering we were training people for the Catalina Marathon, I figured that why now just train up in Palos Verdes? Run hard core rediculous trails every week.
We’d have views of the ocean. Catalina Island. We’d see wild flowers. I’d be able to teach uphill and downhill techniques.
So with the hope of the most amazing mentors that’s what we did.
See one of the things I’ve realized in coming up with the ideas for this book is that you must have a team around you for success. Especially with a goal as difficult as running the Catalina Marathon.
I cannot say enough about the team members that made all of this happen…
Matt for taking charge days I wasn’t there and marking trails.
Jim for always being there with Accelerade and Water.
Janet for working with the ladies in the back.
John for keeping the middle of pack moving.
Keith for bringing us great ideas and motivating the faster runners.
LaTonya for working with our half marathoners.
I’ve never been in charge of a group of runners like this every week and this team was what made it happen…if you know anything about my organizational skills…you’d see how important all these people were.
Please look them up on http://socalrunning.ning.com/ and thank them.
But really every runner that showed up there made this thing happen.
We had about 20-30 runners on a given Saturday. And the training began.
Doing the Work
Our runs were simply amazing every Saturday.
Those that were there for them know of which I speak.
Hills became legendary. Monkey Hill beat up so many runner the first few weeks I had to schedule the course around it.
Like Anna predicted…the rains came.
We ran through inches of mud like little children beating if off our shoes with sticks and scrapers.
We ran up to the top of the Radio Towers (five miles of uphill!!!).
We ran to the top of Del Cerro and saw one of the best views in all of Los Angeles.
We got lost on trails. We realized that maybe getting lost every now and then is not such a bad thing.
While not everyone stayed with us during the training…the majority did.
It was exciting…we had two training groups…one in Long Beach…and now one in Palos Verdes.
Training for the big races to come….
Gary’s Los Angeles Marathon 2008 Part 2
RunCast5-Catalina Marathon
So I finally finished the Catalina Marathon. Catalina is an island located about 20 miles from Los Angeles. One major goal of the year accomplished already. Fantastic.
This is one of the hardest marathons in the United States with approx. 18 of the 26.2 miles are uphill. I loved every moment of it. The views, the people, the weather.
Spending three months of running trails to prepare really paid off.
Enjoy
Gary
Beach Runner Long Beach Marathon Video
Thought you might be interested in seeing my video. It took some time to figure this out & get it posted. Anyhow when you have a moment (about 12 mins.) you can check out video from my race Oct 14th. My friend edited it pretty well. I’ll post on my socalrunning.com members page shortly, too…Gotta run…
http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=3994792485168094573&hl=en
Best wishes,
Betty
Blister Prevention on Steve and Gary’s RunCall 8 w/Manny Escalante
DATE & TIME: Monday, July 23rd at 6:00pm Pacific
FORMAT: Simulcast! (Attend via Phone or Webcast — it’s your choice)
TO ATTEND THIS EVENT, CLICK THIS LINK NOW…
http://instantTeleseminar.com/?eventid=460497
Steve and Gary’s RunCall 7 @ 6 pm Monday
EVENT: RunCall 7
DATE & TIME: Monday, July 16th at 6:00pm Pacific
FORMAT: Simulcast! (Attend via Phone or Webcast — it’s your choice)
TO ATTEND THIS EVENT, CLICK THIS LINK NOW…
http://instantTeleseminar.com/?eventid=444369
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Co-Founders
