Busy week- Update.

I’m obsessed with the Olympics still. I’ve been watching the re-plays for a week now. It makes me want to go to the Olympics. Sigh.

It’s been an eventful week for both music and running. I got a phone call from the Culver Hotel last week asking me to come in and audition as a lounge performer. On Wednesday night I played my two hour set trying my best to imitate what I thought they needed. I’ll find out this week if they’re interested in having me regularly. I hope they are.

I met with one of my music mentors, Harold, last Monday. He makes his living playing and writing, which is what I hope to do. He shared some ideas and contacts with me. As it turns out, he’s very good friends with some of the people I’m trying to make a good impression on, people who do booking and what not. Harold said he’d put in a good word for me. I’m going to follow up with him this week and continue to meet with him regularly if possible. He’s a great person and musician and is the type of person I want to be around. It’s a belief of mine that you need to surround yourself with the type of people that you want to be.

This morning I got booked at Genghis Cohen for next Tuesday. I’m very excited about this. Slowly but surely, the dates on my calendar are starting to grow, which makes me hopeful. I still need to solve the problem of me not having a good recording to share. I need to get that taken care of soon. I’m beginning to feel like I am missing out on opportunities to perform and share my music. I’m marketing myself like crazy as a performer, but leaving my audience with no evidence of my performance or reminder of my existence.

As for running- I recovered from last week’s 18 miler quickly. I go through phases of either loving running or just running to keep myself fit for the next time I love running. Right now I love running. I did an easy 10-miler with the Leggers this past weekend. They train using the Galloway method where you incorporate walk breaks. I’ve never done this. I’ve always run my long runs straight through and run my marathons straight through. I like the walk breaks though. They don’t slow down my splits. Actually, I’m able to run faster during the running time than I can when I run straight through. I think this will be a great way to train for and run my ultra-marathon this December. I will practice this method at the Pasadena Marathon in November as well. I’m reading Galloway’s Marathon book right now and I like it a lot. It explains why walk breaks can help achieve faster times and prevent injury. I mean, that’s exactly what I want.

Max and I ran in the People Magazine Red Carpet Fun Run 5k yesterday.

The race wasn’t timed, or marked after the 1st mile. I finished with 22 minutes. The race felt easy and relaxed which made me feel good about the time. I predict if it had been more competitive and marked all the way through, I could have easily knocked a minute off. I’ll put that theory to the test next month when I run the skirt chasers 5k. Anyway, it was my first 5k in a year and it felt good. The 5k has been a very difficult race for me psychologically in the past. I ran cross country in college and those races put my head through the ringer. I’ve avoided doing 5k races after college because I felt such a burn out from it. I would get too emotional while running them and lost the ability to relax. I think I’m over that for now and have the fitness and the ability to get very competitive very quickly if I decide to. Though the 5k isn’t my goal right now. I think that I will improve my 5k time automatically as a result of my marathon and ultra marathon training though.

And yes. I’m the weirdo who craves coke immediately after a run.

Last week I was hired to coach a track club in Beverly Hills. It is ages 5-18 and they practice twice a week. The other two coaches are NCAA track and field bad asses that intimidate the hell out of me. My brother Austin (2x All American track runner for LSU, 400, 800, 4×400) told me to try not to be intimidated, that I have knowledge in distance and endurance training that a lot of runners don’t have. I can learn a lot from the other coaches and I can help them out tremendously by just lending a hand. So far so good.

This week holds a 22 miler. More to come.