My RUNS

PEDAL BOARD QUESTIONS

Sat, 6 Feb 2010 14:13:32 -0600

Now then, where shall I put the linear boost??, I do want to have all the effects affected by the little pedal, so shall I place it at the beginning??, well, but then, will the Metal Zone overdrive is going to sound so loud that I will not be able to play it anymore?, well I know something, it should go before the Phaser, that thing really brings the sound down when it is activated!!.

What about the octave pedal??, why in the world did I get that pedal?!?!, I cannot fit that sound into anything!!, and I already have a bass player!, hey wait a second, Wolfmother use this very effectively, there shall be a use for it!!. Shall it go after the delay??, well, I do not want the delay to have hard modifications, because at the end of the day, it is one of the effects that I kind of know how to use and dominate.

And the crybaby wah??, it shall go on the beginning?!?!, no way!!!, I like it at the end!!, it gives that cool Jimi Hendrix sound!!!, why would anyone wants to place it on the beginning?!?!

Well, I guess I have it figure it out....for today...now lets get those cables to fit the arrangement.

For this and other reasons...I have not been able to run more than 15 km per week. Happy birthday to me!!

Regards,

RUNNING GOOD 5K’S

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 22:21:48 -0600

Hi, it has been a while since I blogged. This beginning of the year has been harder for me than what I thought!, and it is basically because I have been trying to do a lot of stuff in little time and I have been going like crazy!!

However, I have managed to made some good 5k runs during January, and I believe I am close to getting the amount of km that I ran on January of 2009, and that is my goal to at least start the year good!!.

One other thing I am doing with my running, is that I stayed with my Nike + shoes, but I just added the platform of the new balance shoes to it (see below pic, Nike meets New Balance)

And so far, it has behaved very well!!, another thing i am doing different this year, is that, because my treadmill broke, I am starting to run outside a lot more, and to tell the truth, I believe this has helped me increase my speed a little bit. Now, when I run in a treadmill, I feel like someone is holding my feet and I am not able to run as fast. I hope this new way of training helps me on my races, which, by the way, I am planning on doing my first race on February!

One of the things that I noticed during this start of the year, is that I started with the wrong foot. I do not why, but I felt that I was just not focused on what I was doing and I was rushing all the time in every aspect of my life. It was like that until I heard the following quote “you will not always get what you want in life, but if you work real hard and are kind to people, amazing things will happen”. I believe most of you know who said that, and although it sounds like a very basic concept, it has really helped me to understand and value again, all that I have so far.

Have been rehearsing a lot, and listening to a lot of music again, here are some of the things you will find on my playlist now!:

Wolfmother - California Queen
Los Odio! - Susy A
The Parlor Mob - Hard Times
Muse - Uprising
Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs! - Zero

Listen to that music, you will not regret it!!, and you will feel a lot of energy on your next run!

Look at my other blog, the 365 project, I believe I am going to finish January without missing one single pic!!

http://365pro.tumblr.com

See ya!

The MUSIC SNOB

Sun, 10 Jan 2010 16:00:21 -0600

Found this on a webpage on Tumblr, it is a good read, nothing to do with running, but still a good read. Here is the original link

http://fuckyeahrocknroll.tumblr.com/post/323774856/how-to-be-a-better-music-snob

being into music isn’t just an interest…it’s a fucking full time job for some folks.  Music Snobbery is something that most people of a certain demographic will take part in from their late teens well into their early 30s. for most music snobs it was likely that during college they would spend some time working for the local college radio station or at a record store honing their craft…or maybe even starting a band to help out in the endless cycle of trying to be cool and get laid…..or if they were really lucky and had some rich parents or a trust fund they might even put out a record or two on their own label..this is the Mortal Kombat finishing move of Music Snobbery. this is essentially what happens to people who didn’t like sports or weren’t good enough to make their highschool baseball team. and this goes on and on until they stop caring as much about music because they either:  a)have a kid and have less time to devote to finding out about cool music or  b) get burnt out on trying to one up their friends and retire from music snobbery content with the knowledge that they have excellent taste and can no longer learn anything of true value.  back in the olden days before the Internets it was a very difficult thing to be a music snob, you had to read magazine articles and books about underground rock n roll to hear about new bands or “important” older bands and then you had to devote lots of time and money into traveling to out of the way independent record stores or ordering things through the mail without ever hearing it first. this made for some interesting discoveries (raincoats, wipers, vaselines….aka anything kurt cobain listed as a major influence) or it could result in some really crappy cds that you couldn’t sell at the used cd shop (free kitten, gumball!). and back in these happy times it really meant something to be able to namedrop some bands on other music snobs to let them know you were in the know and not a total poseur.   then something terrible happened: THE INTERNET. and everything went to shit and it was as easy as clicking on your mouse and downloading a song by some obscure band from scotland that only had 2 eps and you could suddenly claim you’d heard them way before anyone else or whatever. the effort was now totally gone. but even though it has become much much easier to know about cool music, it’s still important to be into the right cool music…especially if you are a person younger than 23 who is talking about music to a person older than 29. there are certain bands that you must be aware of if you are to ever shed the label of young poseur. post punk as a genre is really a cottage industry for a good name dropper to verse themselves in. liking the Cure and The Smiths don’t count.  a really basic list of bands to name drop if you are worried people think you are a poseur  1. Sonic Youth (although very popular at one time, you must always list them as one of your favorite bands) 2. The Nation Of Ulysses (coolest punk band ever) 3. Nick Cave (Bad Seeds/Birthday Party) 4. Gang Of Four (it’s important to understand that all dance punk bands are gang of four clones) 5. The Jesus And Mary Chain (it’s important to call bands out for ripping off the J&MC) 6. Hawkwind (the cool kids, Pink Floyd. also good for getting high too.) 7. ESG (also good to play their songs at dance parties to impress certain people) 8. Pere Ubu/Rocket From The Tombs/Electric Eels (the whole 70s Cleveland punk scene) 9. Les Rallize Denudes (super obscure Japanese rock band who are considered the Velvet Underground of japan. all their albums are bootlegs and they were using feedback and noise like noone ever had before. also one of them highjacked an airplane one time…so CRAZY points for that.) 10. The Fall/Wire (UK post-punk bands that stayed aroud forever and everyone likes to list as an influence) 11. Brian Eno/John Cale (they produced everything cool in your record collection) 12. The Clean/The Bats/The Verlaines (any indie band from New Zealand as this is the birth of indie pop and that’s what the Shins are) 13. Can/Faust/Amon Duul II (really all Krautrock bands are good) 14. James Chance/Lydia Lunch/anything considered No Wave 15. The Stone Roses (unless you are British…then it’s like listing Nirvana as your favorite band) 16. The Screamers (LA punk pioneers. never released an album) 17. The Gun Club/X/The Zeroes/The Weirdos (other early LA punk bands as they are less popular than New York and London bands) 18. Suicide/New York Dolls/Television (70s new york city punk that isn’t the Ramones or Blondie) 19. Swell Maps (important to note they influenced Pavement) 20. Captain Beefheart (although i don’t know anyone who actually listens to them who isn’t 40) 21. Pylon (unless you live in athens…then it’s not a big deal) 22. The Sonics/the Monks/The Seeds (garage punk pioneers) 23. Neu! (although a Krautrock band…they are even cooler to name drop as they influenced a lot of punk bands) 24. Drive Like Jehu/Scratch Acid/Big Black (thinking man’s dude rock) 25. The Wipers/Raincoats/Vaselines (aka the Kurt Cobain obsessions)

On the running side....I ran 16 km this last week, and it felt good!!. I am remembering now what running is all about.

NIKE+ SENSOR ON NEW BALANCE SHOES - FAIIILL!!

Wed, 6 Jan 2010 23:44:07 -0600

The first two runs were quite decent, after that....everything started to go bad!!. As an example, today I ran on a route that I know pretty well, and on what I know its 5.02 km distance, the Nike+ sensor told me that I just ran 4.5 KM!!, I am missing 700 meters!!. No wonder on my last runs my pace was very slow!!, and as fastest as I wanted to run, I just could not keep up!!

I believe that this is one of the main reasons I got that stupid chest pressure!!, anyway, what I did, is that I took the sensor and place it on the Nike tennis shoes that I have, but I am going to use the shoe platform (plantillas) from the New Balance on the Nike tennis shoes and I will buy new Nike+ ready tennis shoes...sorry!!

On the other hand, I started a project this year along with @maddyhubba , @misterfonzie and @bowerm. The project consists on taking a picture every day of the 365 days of the year for 2010. They are posting their pics on their running websites, but because I do not have access to this blog from anywhere, I am doing a separate blog for the project. Please visit http://365pro.tumblr.com to see the pics.

Anyway, here are some of the pics I placed this week!!

Bought a new electro-harmonix phaser, going to try it this week!! yeaahh!!

CHANGES IN TRAINING PERCEPTIONS - BACK TO ZERO

Sun, 3 Jan 2010 14:28:41 -0600

Hello everyone, first of all happy new year 2010 to everyone!!. This 2009 was a year that could be resumed as the best year of my life, this year, my baby was born, and that has been an experience that cannot be match with any other!!

On the running side, 2009 was a year of contrasts, for one end, I made my PR on official 5K races and 10K races, and I believe that I had not been in better shape in my life than the first half of the year.

However, this exercise payed its toll on the second half of the year, that is when I got my ankle injury and went from being physically active to ZERO, nada, back to the roots.

Although I have managed to come back to running after the injury, I cannot say that I am 100% ready, and proof of that is that the last runs I did on 2009 where difficult and I even felt a small chest pressure (see previous post), which was due to lack of physical condition and maybe some extra weight that I gained during the christmas holidays. I am still however, kind of surprised of how I went from having the physical condition of a consistent runner to the one of a couch potato.

Therefore, my training perception for 2010 needs to change. To explain myself better about this, I will describe how my latest training went.

First of all, the distance I am doing went down from 5k to 3k, and sometimes, I am not even setting up a km goal on my trainings. A couple of months ago, I would call this “slacking off” (and maybe most of the runners that read this will think the same) and at very slow pace. The reason for this is that I am right now in “trying to enjoy the run” mode.

Also, another thing that I am changing is that I am spending more time on defining the playlist that I will listen to during my run. The first reason why I started running was because it was a great excuse to listen to the music I liked without disturbing anyone, therefore, I am coming back to the roots.

Will the changes I am doing on my trainings make me a better runner?, probably not, but for now, I need to come back to enjoying the sport. I will worry about the PR’s and the official races later on.

On the music side of things, I got for christmas a pedal board!!, that thing kicks a$$!!. I have spend a lot of time setting it up and I even bought a cheap phaser to add it to the board!!. I have invested time on it, but I have really enjoyed it!!.

Recall how you runners spend time logging your trainings and comparing the miles you ran week after week??, well, this is the equivalent to that but for a guitar player!!!

Here is a pic of it, it’s not the most updated one, but you can have the idea!!

Also, I got mentioned on this super list of 110 Twitter runners made by Hellasound. Hellasound is a fellow musician that composes music designed specially to run!!. It is a great experiment the one he is embarking on, so I definitely suggest for you to take a look at it.

To be included on this list was a great surprise for me!!!, now I feel like an official runner.

http://www.hellasound.com/site/read/followfriday-on-steroids-110-folks-to-follow-in-2010/

Thanks to everyone who is reading this and is posting messages, I really appreciate the comments. And again, I encourage all runners to get a Twitter account, there is a great community of runners there that will surely encourage you to improve the quality of your life.

And just like a friend of mine mentioned (Mike Balles):

Rock the world,

LISTEN TO YOUR BODY

Sat, 26 Dec 2009 22:07:03 -0600

Hi,

Yesterday I ran 5 km with the New Balance shoes and with the Nike+ sensor inside a Nike Tennis Wallet. It was a hard run. 5 km runs are becoming harder for me during the last weeks, and on the last two runs, something awkward happened: I felt a pressure on my chest that I had not experience before.

I talked to my dad (who is a more experienced runner) about this. To tell you the truth, I was expecting from him an answer like “oh, that has happened to me before!, do not worry”, but instead, the answer I got was “go and see the cardiologist”. It is definitely, not the type of answer you want to hear.

So, I got home and started reading and doing some research on running magazines about what was going on with me, and the answers I got from the magazines were not very optimistic.

I woke up early in the morning, fed my baby, drank some coffee and on I went to the doctor. The first exams showed a variation on my heart pulsations, but nothing to worry about, according to the doctor, this something normal on people that work out. Therefore, he schedule me for a “stress test”.

I came home, got some pants, got my Nike+ equipment and on I went to do the test. I was planning on recording the work out with my Nike+, but when I arrived there, I ended up with a whole bunch of wires connected to my chest, and I just did not felt in the mood of recording the work out.

The stress test was more difficult than what I thought. You are basically running on a treadmill that has a very severe inclination!. The whole purpose is to get to the maximum heart rate of 180 (I believe). At the beginning, it feels like a normal run, but when the intensity starts to build up, it starts to get hard!!. You actually have to run while grabbing yourself from the handles because the inclination will tend you to fall from the treadmill.

By the time my heart rate reached 170, I could barely breath!!. I told the doctor that I was starting to have difficulties to breath, however, I did managed to get to 180, but it was though.

My exams came out, and luckily for me, everything turned out to be normal!!!. I am OK!!, or at least it the chest pressure is nothing related to the heart. It maybe just that I am out of condition and that I did force myself too much.

I will try to run again tomorrow at a lower pace, and see if I have the chest pressure again. Lesson learned here, listen to your body, do not run just to run, or to lose weight, run because you enjoy the sport.

If you exceed your limits, you may end up not running at all again, and every time you take a look at a pair of tennis shies, you will miss the good feeling you had when you were running!

I will keep you updated on how this thing goes. Right now, here is a video of my band playing do the evolution by Pearl Jam. Enjoy!!

Thanks for the comments (both in Facebook and in the blog page). I really enjoy reading the feedback from everyone (runners and not runners!!)

TREADMILL BROKEN, NEW TENNIS SHOES NEEDED, MY RUNS ARE HURTING!!

Thu, 24 Dec 2009 01:06:29 -0600

This blog will be about the difficulties I am encountering lately to run. My treadmill broke, and my runs are hurting!!

After doing some analysis, I am starting to realize that I have run already around 670 km with my tennis shoes, and now every step that I am taking is feeling as if I am hitting the pavement without any type of cushion!. I know better to understand that I had to replace my tennis shoes before, but the thing is that I am not used to not using tennis shoes that look like new!!, but definitely, I need to replace them now!!!

I have a pair already of New Balance shoes (New Balance shoe on the right, Nike shoe on the left) that I bought during a race in Monterrey where I forgot my Nike Tennis Shoes. The only bad thing is that they are not Nile + ready tennis shoes. I made some research and found out that you can actually use a Nike Shoe Wallet to store the Nike sensor and use it on any brand of snickers!!. I will definitely give it a try next week, as I do not want to spend money on new shoes!!

On some other news, my treadmill broke from the base!!, I guess i gained some extra weight during the holidays and the treadmill did not handle it!!. So now, running has become a little more difficult for me.

I have been running outside lately, but the quality of my training has not been where I expected it to be, and I do believe that I am lacking motivation here. I have entered www.dailymile.com and opened a profile there, lets see if that helps!!

On the other hand, I have also bought new music, specifically the last cd from Wolfmother, and it kicks A$$. Will try to squeeze it in on my next training!!. I believe I have not updated my playlist since the last cd that ZOE got out, and that was at least 1 year ago, so maybe that can help!

Thanks for the facebook comments!!, I did not knew that my notes section on facebook updated when I updated my blog, thats a nice feature there!.

Also, I strongly encourage all runners there to open a Twitter account!!, the amount of runners that are on Twitter is amazing!!, and it always good to ask for advice from other runners out there in the world!!

Well, peace out and merry christmas to everyone!!!!