The FDA issued a recall on certain products that contain hydrolyzed vegetable protein, including products such as McCormick & Company Onion Gravy Mix, two flavors of Pringles (Restaurant Cravers Cheeseburger & Family Faves Taco Night), and many more well known products that contain hydrolyzed vegetable protein (HVP) paste and powder distributed by Basic Food Flavors, Inc.

For a complete listing of products included in the HVP recall visit the FDA website.

The planning is done. All that’s left is the execution. Four more days of taper. Then it will be back to life as it should be.

Speaking of taper, I’m keeping my running light this week:

• Tuesday: 30 minute tempo run. (Done. 3.3 miles).
• Thursday: 3 miles. Stretching.
• Saturday: 2 miles with Cal Coast.

That will add to last week’s cutback of 26 miles. My legs should be fresh on Sunday. Everything felt pretty good during yesterday’s quick tempo run.

Yeah yeah. I know. This was supposed to be posted Saturday. But hey. The weather in Southern California is beautiful, so I took some time to enjoy the outdoors. Well – okay. I had to work. Boo hoo!

On Friday, I posted my starting line and pacing plans. Today I’m discussing my fueling plan. A good fueling plan needs to take three things into account: (1) what should I eat, (2) how much should I eat, and (3) how often should I eat it?

The best resources I’ve seen that discusses this issue are this one and this one from Hammer Nutrition. These are *excellent* technical articles.

So now that my race day plan is in place, it’s time to remember to do all the little things the day before and the morning of the event. These are the things that, if forgotten will leave me a little stress puppy.

Day Before the “Big Day”

Only three things to do on Saturday:

1. Stay off my feet as much as possible
2. Check to make sure I have adequate supply of Hammer Gels (9) and Endurolyte caps (27). If not, hit up the Nutrition Superstore in Costa Mesa.
3. Head over to Dodger Stadium for packet pickup around noon.
4. Grab lunch/dinner in Chinatown.

Nine days. Count’em. That’s one day less than ten days. Drumming my fingers on my desk…..

Okay – so honestly – it’s time to start filling in the blanks for race day. There are two things that are missing right now – my race plan and my evening before and morning of plans. today I’ll make an attempt to tackle the first half of my race plan – the Start Line and my Pace Plan.

First things first. I’m old enough now to realize that once you get out of school, plagiarism is acceptable. Interestingly enough, have you tried to Google “Marathon Race Plan”? Nada.

I have determined that the best thing for a stress eater is the Wii Sports game that comes bundled with the Wii game system. When I feel stressed out during the day I go back to my room and play tennis on the Wii. Last night I hit Pro level on tennis. I’m getting in some good exercise too, since I set myself a rule that if I am going to play a video game, I am going to use the cleared area in front of the set to move around in. So I get in there and step into the swings and stuff.

I can’t believe that I’m writing this this late in the game. Ten days until the Big Day and my body is trying to fight off a cold. I feel like a truck has hit me. Apparently I’m not the only one – check out this blog post from KNBC News Anchor Chris Schauble: http://www.nbclosangeles.com/station/as-seen-on/Iron-News-Man—March-10-2010-87228927.html. He writes today he’s feeling better. I can only hope the same….

So this got me thinking. I’ve been running for 18 weeks through cold, wind, rain (well okay – rain a couple of times) and I’ve been pretty healthy. So what gives? I slow down one week and whamo!

So, I was watching the hockey game last night (L.A. Kings (yea!) 6-0 plastering of the Columbus Blue Jackets), when all of a sudden, Marathon (my new pet) jumped up and made a beeline for the underbrush. Something had spooked the crap out of him. Poor fellow.

Here’s the deal. The Los Angeles Marathon sent their official “Final Race Instructions” email. Anyone who has not grown up or lived in L.A. for a while might be a little intimidated. Some of the gems:

• “You must wear your Bib on the front of your shirt and leave the B-Tag attached to your bib.

Okay – I made it to week 2. Some of the things that I will be thinking about and doing this week:

• Taking it eas(ier): I’ll be maintaining intensity but cutting back on volume.  Last night I pulled off 6 miles at an average pace of 9:28. My longest run will be this weekend at 8 miles. Nothing else over 6 for the week. Sunday’s run will be in the two mile range. I could get used to this.
• Eating: I’ll be putting a little greater emphasis on carbs this week. But – I’m not going overboard!

Once again I have insomnia but I swear I heard something that woke me up at 1:30am and now I can’t get back to sleep.
I am struggling with the whole blog thing. Since I consistently (and some would say constantly) do Twitter and Facebook for Ingles Markets it seems to be just one more layer of busyness that I might not need to add. Yet it also occurs to me that within blogging I would be able to write more than just those 140 characters in the Twitter block.