on the way out to the coast today for what is quickly becoming a weekly surf trip, i paid $1.84 per gallon of unleaded gas on the indian reservation. maybe it’s white guilt, but i can’t help but feel like i’m taking advantage somehow.

on my run yesterday, i ran into matt and eliza. among other things we talked about, we talked about raking leaves and why it’s important. it’s important because if you don’t rake, the leaves will smother the grass and then bye-bye lawn and hello nasty looks from neighbors.

so when i got home from surfing today, i used my hour of spare daylight to rake the yard. raking is fun, picking up the leaves is a bummer. and while that yard-work meditative state was settling in, i remembered that i don’t like grass and that by raking leaves, i was effectively giving comfort to the enemy.

and why am i doing this? because when you live somewhere that has the jay-approved coupling of politeness and judgment, neighbor and landlord approval means something. or at least not hearing about it means something. though i am resigned to rake and mow for as long as i’m renting, when i have my own house, i’m going to tear out all the grass and plant a small farm of dark leafy greens.

today was probably the longest run i’ll do before that 20k — 15.5m with lots of hills. i mean, i’ll probably do a few there-and-back runs to/from work between now and the race but those commute runs are more double workouts than they are long runs. i am ready…

or ready for a 20k in western washington. i am not ready for a 20k in 90°-and-on-fire southern california. i’m just not. the average temperature when i run up here has probably been 45°, exactly half what i could potentially be running in down there. nuts, right? i mean, if it dips to the 60s by race day, i’m going to beat that fucking mountain to death. if it’s 90, or even 80, the reverse could be true.

theory on why this morning’s run was so incredibly good (i suspect i could have done an additional five miles without too much effort): not overtraining during the week (kept it to 30miles over three days and biked the other two), eating really well yesterday (12 bananas, two papayas, and one giant lettuce/fruit salad), and getting eight hours of sleep last night. eat right, get lots of rest. can it really be that simple?

downside of a pineapple express: there’s a shit-ton of rain, the ocean swell comes from the south and makes the waves incredibly large and sloppy and bad for surfing.

upside of a pineapple express: it warms up the air to a balmy 60° and if i find a mango or a papaya to eat for lunch, i can pretend that i’m living somewhere tropical.

i hammered an 11mile run this morning. while hammering, i saw a guy wearing a members only jacket, smoking a cigarette, mowing his lawn, in a downpour. tough! also, he wasn’t just letting the grass spray everywhere, he was actually bagging it. i couldn’t figure him out, and the look he gave me didn’t say ‘come ask me follow-up questions to your weirdo thoughts about my retro clothing choices/smoking habits/lawn-mowing preferences’.

then i came home and made some crazy awesome raw dessert food, chopped up and devoured a giant salad, was interviewed for the german edition of the financial times (due out in the next month), and bought a used longboard (pictured below). the surfboard will also help me to pretend that i’m living somewhere tropical, at least until i get to the water next weekend and it’s only 54°.

matt, eliza, jay @ 3min. and that’s matt next to the play button.

now i guess the only question is, what happens to joe the plumber? this election seemed like a referendum on him, and dude got trounced.

where we were last night:

photo by jeff kirby (whoever he is)

also, i can now die with dignity. good job, washington. and fuck you, martin sheen. didn’t you have some more important shit to work on back in your own state?

i’m watching the live feed of the nyc marathon. nbc is really trying to make the marathon a tv-friendly sport. it isn’t. and al trautwig (my least-favorite commentator now that john tesh retired? is dead?). they’re cutting it like it was an mtv video. the olympic footage was so much smoother, limited to overhead and side shots. the olympics also have the benefit of separate men’s and women’s races, so they didn’t have to do this lame split-screen shit. also, for the olympics, there were fewer than seven people commenting at one time. they could take a lesson from the tour de france about what it is to comment over a longish event — 1 or 2 guys in the booth, one of them older than george burns and both of them talking about the drinking they’re going to do after the race.

i ran 70 miles this week, and i’m not sure if i’m undertraining for a marathon i have no plans to run or overtraining for a half-marathon that i’m doing in five weeks. so yeah, the quantity of miles is too many and the quality miles too few. it maybe seems like a stupid move, but i am so 100% addicted to long miles right now that i’m powerless against it until the mileage taper starts in a week. this week: fewer total miles, more faster miles. 7ish per day instead of 14ish.

and nbc, stop it with the lame music that is only tangentially related to running. the eagles? jesus, dude. that sucks.