Our resident runner, Jennifer Tran, was all set to run the LA Marathon last weekend. She ran during lunch, after work, on holiday weekends and seemed to rarely sleep. All along the way, she wrote about her experiences for Kspace, and shared what she was reading about and experiencing.

Like my high school basketball coach implored, “Quit looking at your feet, you’ll never get anywhere!” This is true of almost anything, especially when it comes to running. Marathon’s are a competition, but they are also a celebration of city life, and in the case of the LA Marathon “urban life.” For Los Angelenos, it’s really one of the few days that makes for a good excuse to get out of your car and explore on two feet this wildly complex and eclectic city.

I was debating on whether or not to share this, but I think it’s important for me to keep in mind before waking up on March 21, 2010 at who-knows-what-hour before the LA Marathon.

As I was slowly trying to pull myself out of my taper madness I thought, hey, what a great time to share this moment with the rest of the world on YouTube. Enjoy!

Two weeks to go till the LA Marathon and I have been spending most of my time tapering and googling the word “taper” so that I can remember all the negative things that come with it and be able to endure the next two weeks. I am hoping that this means that I will come out of the race sane and somewhat in tact.

Signed up and ready to go for the LA Marathon?! That makes at least two of us! I created a twtvite to have a list of people on twitter so folks know who to cheer for on race day.

For a mere $99 (which is less than what you would pay for a iPod Nano) you can track calories burned, your amount of sleep, and distance traveled with a new cute sure-to-lure-iAnything-lovers-product simply called “Fitbit”. It’s a tiny device that you wear throughout the day that monitors and tracks your fitness. The device syncs up with the fitbit.com online community site which will then track and analyze all of your data.

If you’re a running enthusiast, race addict or extremely goal oriented in general, you probably keep your eye on your pace at all times. When I find myself coming back from illness or injury as much as I’m excited to be able to run again, the first week or so is usually met with a ton of frustration. Without fail, my pace is usually knocked slower by almost a minute.

When I signed up for the LA Marathon (day of opening) I knew going in that I absolutely needed to have some formal training under my belt. I signed up with a package to train with the official training group for the LA Marathon, the Road Runners. The concept behind the Road Runners is simple, you surround yourself with a group of people who run at your pace and allow the group to keep you in rhythm and motivated to stay on pace.

If you love music as much as I do, then you can’t do a run without your iPod Shuffle clipped to your hat, jacket, tank, shirt, etc. That being said, I’ve recently been exposed to the idea of “cadence running” – basically the BPM (sound familiar?) of your feet hitting the ground. What is commonly known as BPM (beats per minute) is equated to SPM (steps per minutes) for runners. You cadence or running BPM should fall within the 155-165 range (elite athletes are usually in 175-185 range!)