I Came, I Ran, I Went Home, or, the LA River Smells like Hamster Cages

10:14PM 5/14/2007

Finished my night run about half an hour ago, been browsing the blogosphere since. Right now I’m in a stage where I’m learning about different blogs, bloggers and blog tech almost every time I get onto the computer. Really, I’m still very new at this and I don’t put a significant portion of time learning about it, though my tangents generally find me a good blog or two daily. I can usually whether a blog will interest me by browsing the first few posts and reading the “About” page, if it’s there. If it looks like a stretch I add it to my Google Reader and erase it after a few days if I find it’s uninteresting. With that, if anyone out there has a good blog for me to look at link me either through my e-mail (check by my name at the bottom of the post) or leave a comment here. I’m always game to read something interesting especially if it relates to Personal Development, Los Angeles, Theatre, Running or any other kooky, but amusing blog on any eccentric topic (like my guilty pleasure).

Now, for the run today, as I mentioned before I decided to run at night; something I haven’t done during the ILR program at all, and very seldom in the past (perhaps because I only ran if something big was chasing me (or I was chasing it)). Well, the run was fine. It’s a different feeling running at night than during the day; at night everything seems calmer, quieter, it’s easier to get into myself, but think about bigger things than what’s going on later in the day. The jog today didn’t follow my usual pe-p route because I didn’t feel like straying too far from the complex at night, I ran up and down Victory some, then dove back into the complex where we have a nice round where the cars are parked to do laps. There I puttered around for a while, walked, then ran again until I felt like going in. I don’t know how the distance today compares with my usual distance, but it felt okay, I got a nice workout and sweat like the underside of a pot lid over boiling water. My t-shirt’s still wet.

Unfortunately, passing the LA River was disgusting this evening. I’m not sure how this came to pass, but it smelled like the inside of a dirty hamster cage. I was perturbed in a bad way going past it back and forth; the good thing is that it made me run faster. Still, one must wonder what pet store used the river as a dumping ground? Phew…It’s not going to be such a rush running in the upcoming park if the river smells as foul as it smelled tonight. It should take a shower!

Tomorrow I’m going to track down some wrist-weights like the ones Daniel had during our Runyon Canyon workout. I tried Big 5 today, but they only had pink ones, and as everyone who knows anything knows: I love all colors. But for wrist-weights, pink’s too foofy for me. I’m looking for something manlier, like blue or yellow, maybe a nice teal.

I also had the strange desire to forgo my usual Tuesday respite from running and go for a brisk run at Hazeltine park during mid-day; a few laps, just for kicks. I’ll see what the time situation tomorrow will look like before I commit, but looking at tomorrow’s schedule currently I don’t see why I can’t fit an hour of running into it. Per usual, Random Goodness Tuesday is coming up. I already have an article idea ready to go, it’ll be interesting, though more low key than the others I’ve written for Tuesday. Anyway, apparently I’m in a rather chatty mood this evening (that’s what happens when one gets runner’s high at night), so I’ll let you off the reading path to go make something of yourselves.

Till tomorrow, good run, good fun!

(ILR level=26…+1. And an extra 2 for Norma and Lasondra, I love running more because they are doing it too.)

- OLEG KAGAN (lifeinoleg {at} gmail dot com)