New City, New Running Routes

I'm running the Long Beach Marathon tomorrow (for the second year in a row!), so I've been spending a ton of time on the roads around our new house lately.  It dawned on me that it might be fun to show all of my frequent readers the scenery I'm witnessing firsthand as I've been building up my mileage.

Easy Runs

Every week, I have 2-3 easy runs, which are generally 5-6 miles in length.  The pace really is whatever I determine is easy for that day, as these runs are used as active recovery from my longer, harder runs.  Since I'm running slowly, I have time to look around and really enjoy my scenery, since I don't have to focus on sticking with a certain pace.

Here's my normal easy route:

5 miles

I start at the house, heading west, and crossing both Del Amo and Atlantic to run past the Long Beach PD's north location (yep, we live within 1/2 a mile of a police station!) and through Scherer Park.  This park is seriously adorable, and it contains playgrounds (with a very convenient bathroom), basketball courts, a dog park, ponds, and around 8000 ducks and geese.

Seriously:

All of these are OPP -
Other People's Pictures.
While I have my phone on me when I run,
I rarely stop to take my own shots.

Anywhoo, some of the 8000 waterfowl.

One of the ponds in the park.

This is such a pretty area that if I'm running through here on a weekend, I often see photographers stomping all over with their clients, shooting everything from engagement photos to family pics to quinceanera snaps.  I try not to get involved ("hey, who's that sweaty person behind Uncle Ted?").

After I head through the park, I turn south and climb up the decent hill that runs along Long Beach Blvd.  Crossing Long Beach at San Antonio (which runs diagonal, making figuring out where you are hard sometimes), I head into the Bixby Knolls area known as Country Club, as it contains a ton of giant houses and well, the Country Club.  The homes back here are insane.  They're all sorts of styles - modern, Victorian, cottage, etc, but they're generally gigantic and cost millions of dollars.  Our favorite is this guy, which kind of reminds us of the Riordan Mansion in Flagstaff:

So cute!
We love the grassy berm in the front.

This area is also commonly used for movie shoots, and some of the houses are pretty famous in their own right:

Recognize this one from Ferris Bueller's Day Off?

Or this one from Donnie Darko?

I have to admit to not enjoying Donnie Darko

very much, so I didn't know this house was in the movie.

However, it's MASSIVE, so you can't miss it.

Even in a neighborhood full of giants, it stands out.

For 5 miles, my turnaround point is Los Cerritos Park, which is another lovely green space (they're really good about that around here), again with an exceptionally convenient bathroom.

Hello, random walking lady!
Welcome to the blog!

After that, I retrace my steps and head home!

Tempo and Interval Runs

For those who aren't familiar with marathon training (aka normal, sane people), most plans include a weekly tempo run, where you do 6-12 miles at the pace you're planning to use for your actual race.  They also tend to include speed/strength/interval runs, which are banks of miles run slightly faster than your actual pace with breaks in between for jogging/walking.  Including warm-ups and cool-downs, these runs end up being between 8.5 and 12 miles for me, and since I need to stay on pace the entire time, I prefer to run them in areas uninterrupted by cars or traffic lights; because of my focus on pace, the scenery doesn't really matter.  Time to hit the LA River!

My normal course for a 10 mile tempo run:

See the big arrow?

That's right - it's THAT Compton.

The LA River bike path starts waaay up near where our Glendora rental house was and runs for 20-30 miles all the way down to the port of Long Beach.  Although there are a few interruptions in that stretch, I have a good 6 miles south and at least 8 miles north (potentially more - I just haven't made it past that point) that is freely accessible, paved, and only open to pedestrians and bikers.  It's truly perfect for these types of runs, and it's highly utilized by all sorts of folks working on their fitness, walking to and from school, and commuting via bike to work.

The entrance to the bike path is exactly 1.5 miles from our house, straight west on Del Amo Blvd, so it's easy for me to head out of the house, do my warm-up mile along Del Amo (the only annoying light is the one at Long Beach Blvd), passing the McDonald's, the 7-11, and the Sizzler, and then starting my first faster mile as I'm heading onto the trail.

The bike path is rather urban in this area; while the river runs through its bed (about 30 feet below the level of the path), the long drought out here means that there isn't much water in it in our area, and heading further north, it gets drier.  Most of it looks like this:

She's a beauty, non?

So it's not exactly picturesque.  But!  It is relatively flat with only a few rolling hills (also known as underpasses), it runs without interruption for a good length in each direction, and even on a weekday at noon, it's generally populated with a good amount of other folks.  All of these things equal a perfect location for tempo and interval runs.

The "rolling hill" at Somerset Blvd.

Besides, even though it's not gorgeous and lush, I've learned to appreciate the bike path for its own unique charms.  I've become "running friends" (aka, we say hi and yell encouraging things to each other while we're running without actually knowing each other's names) with 10-12 people on the trail, and it's nice to see them every few days.  Continuing the theme of lovely parks, there are several of these just down the non-river side of the path, and many of them have delightful bathrooms (there's also a Home Depot with a good bathroom along this stretch.  Sensing a theme, are we?).  There's also a small public equestrian facility adjacent to the trail, and over the past few months, I've been able to watch a new filly or colt (not sure which) grow up and start working with a trainer in the ring; last time I ran by, they were working on learning about bridles, which I'm sure was super fun (cautionary statement - the vast majority of my horse knowledge comes from reading The Black Stallion set of books growing up).

In addition to these things, the path sometimes has retaining walls, and over these, the city plants and maintains grapevines, to make things look nicer.

Although they sometimes have wasps,
they do break up the monotony of the scenery.

Actually, seeing a wasp does that quite well, too.

Since there is some water in this part of the river, I also see lots of wading birds, and recently (the past week or so), a decent sized flock of Canadian geese have arrived as well.

Sandpipers in the river.

Don't trust this a$$hole.
He would love to f*ck you up.

On my longest runs (as shown in the map above), I've almost made it to the underpass for the 105 freeway, so I'm covering ground on foot that I don't think we've done in a car yet.  While there are some homeless folks who live near the trail, the structure of the underpasses generally keeps them off the path itself, and I've never felt concerned or threatened while I'm out for a run (with that said, I absolutely wouldn't run on this path in the dark.  Nope, no way).  Overall, it's a good location for this type of workout.

Long Runs

Ah, long runs.  The hallmark of any marathon training plan.  These build in mileage as the weeks go on, generally tapping out around 20-22 miles in length 3-4 weeks before the event itself.  Even though these are the longest runs both in mileage and time of the training plan, they're my favorite.  The whole reason I like running marathons is that I like running for 3-4 hours at a time, just bopping along listening to music, exploring nearby areas, and keeping myself mentally entertained as I go.

Here's the route from my longest run of this training season:

22 miles

As you can see, I started out at home, then headed along Del Amo onto the trail, went north for awhile, then turned around heading south down the path, and into downtown Long Beach itself, finishing out at Belmont Shores, right along the beach (you might also see the little orange line blip to the right in the middle of the map - that's Los Cerritos park, mentioned earlier, which is a great bathroom break).  You've seen the lovely images from the northern part of the trail above, so I'll take over here from that point.

Until I get to downtown Long Beach proper, the bike path looks pretty much the same; however, as you go further south, the river fills up as it starts to become brackish, the salt water from the port mingling with the fresh river water (fresh, of course, being as opposed to salt.  I'm unsure as to how "fresh" we can consider the water in the river).  You also start to see the ports of Long Beach and LA up ahead, and the tons of cranes and shipping containers are neat to witness.  The wading birds also give way to seagulls as you get closer to the shore.

I know this picture is a duplicate,

but you can see the port in the background

on the right side of the shot.

Click it to make it bigger.

I have to admit that the reason I run north on the path for tempo runs during the week is that running south on the path isn't super awesome when it comes to the underpasses.  They're steeper and darker (there's still plenty of light to see by, even with sunglasses), and given the way they're built, the homeless folks there are right next to the path itself.  I've run through this area before and almost brushed elbows with a legit drug deal (thankfully, just pot, so nobody was all bent out of shape about me being there).  The path gets relatively crowded on weekends (think massive packs of road bikers), so I'll only run this stretch when I know that there will be other witnesses coming by very soon, should something bad occur.

Eventually, you get to the end of the river path, and it transitions into the Long Beach bike path, which runs past the aquarium, through the harbor, and onto the beach itself.

A shot of making the transition from the river bike path

to the one on the beach.
You ride/run around Catalina Landing,
where you swerve through massive hordes of tourists
catching the boat to Catalina Island.

The Landing folks do a pretty good job of keeping
the tourists in their corrals though,
since they know how heavily the path is used here.

Crossing under the final bridge of the path.
See the Queen Mary in the distance?

At this point, you're in downtown Long Beach, which is tourist central, particularly on weekends.  I try to get into this area no later than 9am, mainly because otherwise, the path looks like this:

Surreys and all.

Although it can be congested, the positives far outweigh the crowds here.  Obviously, the scenery is spectacular, and there are open, clean public bathrooms every 1/2 mile or so.

Looking back toward Shoreline Village,

the lighthouse, and downtown.

After the harbor, the running path divides from the bike path, although they run parallel to one another, separated only by a small paved median. The bike path continues to be asphalt, but the running path switches to hard packed decomposed granite (DG), which makes it a bit nicer on the joints.  

The bike path, before the addition of the run/walk path.

This area is where the earlier miles of the marathon will take place tomorrow, and it's where my half marathon a few months ago was also run.  It's really great for running, although it can get toasty when the sun gets high in the sky.  For my part, I run past the Belmont Pier (featured in the blogs I wrote about when Mom visited) and finish up at Belmont Shores, the end of the beach path.  On the day of the 22 miler, Chris met me there in the truck with a change of clothes, and we headed to an outstanding brunch at Saint and Second, which we both highly recommend.

Next week (hopefully), a race recap of the marathon, where hopefully all of this training pays off!

Later!

Amy