Fortunately the Station wildfire has moved away from the foothills areas (thank you, firefighters, for working a miracle  ) but the fire is still burning in the Angeles National Forest and full containment isn't expected for at least another week. The air quality in the Pasadena area has improved but is still not great - alternating between moderate and unhealthy due to smoke and ash.

So I did the shorter midweek run, 5.6 mi @8:56 min/mi, indoors on a gym treadmill. Then the usual crosstraining on elliptical and Lifecycle. For the long weekend run I headed down to the beach - since I had a choice of locations I went to Long Beach, and did 20 mi @10:02 min/mi. The 20 mile run was on very flat ground (similar to what the marathon will be) so, as usual, I automatically sped up by 15-20 sec/mi relative to what I run in the foothills. I felt good after the 20 miler - my first ever! I ran all the way through, walking only for about 20 sec at each water stop (first one at 4 mi and then once about every 2-3 mi). Legs were quite tired but not totally exhausted afterwards, which was good. Iced knees and hamstrings that evening for good measure. It was not particularly cool even at the beach - 70 deg at 7:10 AM start and 80 deg at 10:30 AM end - but at least the air was clean. As for nutrition on the run - couldn't find any raisins in the house so instead I took a mini pack of Reese's Pieces. Not exactly conventional but it was a nice shot of sugar at about 17 mi and they worked fine for me.