New York, London, Paris, Rome, Eagle River!

It was pretty cold today - single digits in the AM, warmed up to the mid-teens by noon.  So, Michelle and Jason dragged me to the Alaska Club in Eagle River for today's run.

When we were walking from the front door to the parking lot Michelle mentioned that she forgot her ID card with the bar code to get onto the gym.  I was curious as to what kind of ninja skills she was going to use to get in.  I was giving all my attention to her stealthy moves and she slid right in past the guards.  A few seconds later, as we entered the bowels of the gym, we saw some friends there and they asked us if we were here for the movie.  I was clueless.  Then I looked around and there were lights, cameras, cables, about 20 film crew in black clothes - there was a lot going on.  I cant believe by paying attention to Michelle and her ninja skills made me miss all that.  There were about 20 actors ("talent") there.  It was easy to tell the actors because they were the ones that spent most of their time sitting around on the couches in their designer gym clothes.  It was also easy because Eagle River is a small town and everyone who was not film crew or an actor in the gym I knew anyway...  Now I know where Deja gets her ninja skills from.

Michelle and I found the whole "scene" rather disrupting to our running plans.  We had to jump over paraphernalia everywhere, dodge people on the track setting things up, and get blinded by the bright light (actually, if we saw a moose or bear it would be a normal Alaska run).

The good news is my mile pace speed up to a nice 10:06 min/mile!  I can probably thank showing off and Olivia Wilde for that.  As a beginner to the "club scene" I have a lot to learn.  I lost track of the time as I was showing off - I was running the wrong way around the track (Saturdays is a clockwise day which I realized by glimpsing the sign on lap 4).  Michelle started running in the correct direction - we ended up giving each other High Fives as we passed each other.  I did not want to stop and change direction because I was in the middle of my speed timing distance.  Before I knew it I had run a mile.  I am pretty happy with my time - a good improvement over my last timed run - even though I had to dodge multiple film crew members and various pieces of production equipment throughout the run.  The track got pretty chaotic as time went on and after the first mile we went to finish the run on the treadmills.  No chasing rabbits into holes or worms on giant leaf smoking a bong on this run.