Mt Wilson via Echo Mtn, Mt Lowe Railway- starting to taper for Leona Divide 50

I hit the Sam Merrill trailhead at dawn to head up to Mt. Wilson for a last tune up run before starting my taper week before Leona Divide next Saturday April 18.

It was a beautiful, cool morning.  I ran relaxed up to the summit in about 2:20; jogged  dog leg out to the east side observatory,  then cranked back down in 1:40 totaling 24.5 miles in 4:07.  I am pleased with the run -- for the last few weeks I have been "playing tag" with a flaky left calf.  It's had hot spots that have migrated between the soleus and the gastrocnemius; lateral to medial to center and back over the weeks.  As these hot spots have come up I have worked on them with foam rollers, a rolling stick, and for the deeper trigger points, manual massage, digging in deep with my thumbs.  I've managed to avoid injury but have been feeling right on the edge.  The run today was free of this problem-  it seems that I have worked out all the kinks.

I've been wearing compression sleeves just in case and have generally been running "defensively" to keep my pace in check so as to avoid injury.   Also I've stuck to wearing long pants, as in 2013, based partly on the thinking that keeping the calves warm is a good idea to prevent cramps/knots. (The other aspect is to be a bit more poodle-dog-bush proof).

One lesson over the last few weeks:  I have found that when these calf hot spots crop up in  a run, typically when I am feeling good and pushing the pace, stopping and applying strong finger pressure at the trigger point really helps to work them out/relax them.   I think that these knots haven't resulted in injury this year because of the continual foam rolling of my calves over the last two years improving the overall health of my muscles-  in comparison to 2013 when I was just starting foam rolling and was still plagued by the occasional calf "heart attack".

Another lesson today-  in the latter part of the run, tearing down the lower Sam Merrill trail at full blast,  it was getting warm and so I had opened the zips at my knees (I wear long zip pants on these runs).   After getting down to the bottom I found that the pant cuff on my right had slipped down over the heel of my right shoe.  I suspect this may have happened on my run last May 31, 2014, when my right foot slipped and busted my acetabulum.  The pants I had been wearing that season had pretty badly frayed cuffs particularly on the rear of the right pant leg.  I don't think I'd appreciated the potential for a problem with the long pants but now it makes sense.

My only other concern for Leona has to do with air quality.  My long runs this season have typically left me with rather sore lungs after 20+ miles, making it difficult to breath deeply in the latter stages of these runs.  The feeling is a less severe version of how I remember feeling running in these hills in the late 80's and early 90's when the smog problem was much worse than it is now.  After those runs, shallow panting was all I could manage due to the smog burn.   For now I am trying to load up on vitamin C (500mg chewable) and E (400iu) before and after these runs.  I know that both of these antioxidants are thought to confer some protection from the ozone in smog (ozone being the "active ingredient" of smog, so to speak).  Even so I experienced lung soreness  today and it does seem to correlate with the brown scum visible looking out over the LA basin from the mountains.