A Case of the Runs

After six Los Angeles Marathon-s, I decided to sit out this year's event. It was a hard decision.  For the last few years, I remember shivering at Dodger Stadium for hours before the race, wondering why I keep putting myself through this.  I haven't exactly been doing well at LA Marathon (save my somewhat-close-to-PR run in 2012 ), and with the growing price tag, I decided to see what would happen if I didn't run it. View of the pier. So "The Ukrainian" registered as usual, and I was now the chauffeur.  This was probably a boon for him, since I was able to drop him off at Dodger Stadium without having to wake up at 3 AM to park in Santa Monica and take a shuttle.  The drop-off area was kind of crazy, but I made it out all right and proceeded to take my sister to the finish area in Santa Monica so she could do the ever-important duty of passing out cold towels at the finish. Since the day's arrangements were not known to me until very close to ...

I was recently given the opportunity to try the Ensō roller by Evofit.  I have a tried a couple of other popular massaging gadgets and was excited to see one that was customizable. Since I'm not pounding the pavement as often as I used to, I've actually been injury-free for about three years now.  However, once in a while I feel myself getting tight quads and calves.  Worse, my upper back has been an area of constant struggle lately.  I fortuitously won a spa gift card recently and used it for a massage, at which time I was told that my upper back was "really tight."  She proceeded to loosen it up -- painfully! -- and then it took a few days until I would touch the area.  Fast-forward a couple of weeks... still sore.  Carrying my stupid purse/lunch bag during my weekday commute hasn't exactly been helping, either. Anyway, I immediately started arranging the discs per the enclosed instructions.  The discs click into place, and given that I r...

"The Ukrainian" managed to convince me to go running this morning.  Yes, I actually need to be convinced these days to run, and I think I am only partially motivated by future races.  It is less of a problem on the weekends because I don't have to run in the dark, but as you know, it's tough to keep in some kind of running form being a "weekend warrior."  However, the workouts I do on other days DO help me maintain some of my running fitness, without having to put my shoes on! It's no secret that I've been relying on DVDs to keep me exercising consistently, and Physique 57 is one of my favorites.  I have been doing Volume 1 since last year and been drafting a review for Volume 2, but in the meantime, I "splurged" on this e-book, The Physique 57 Solution: The Groundbreaking 2-Week Plan for a Lean, Beautiful Body .  I generally don't buy a lot of Kindle books because I can "lend" them from the library, but I made an excepti...

EVENT: Los Angeles Chinatown Firecracker 10K DATE: Sunday, February 23, 2014 LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA RACE BEGAN: 08:35 am FINISH TIME: 1:10:29 When I first ran this event in 2012, it was the Year of the Dragon, and somehow it was decided that we'd keep collecting these firecracker run zodiac animal medals until we got all 12. With this one done, we only have 9 more... I decided to wear this pair of Thirty 48 running socks for this, as my feet have been hurting a bit lately during my runs -- bunion and blister pain have been coming up more often, more likely because I haven't been running as often as before.  Also, I guess a lot of my socks are kind of running thin, so these felt so good on!  The socks were thick, but not to the point that they crowded my shoe.  I felt a good amount of support, too.  My feet were comfy and dry throughout the sweaty run and afterward walking around Chinatown and taking the train home. Ru Running Series socks: ·...

As a preface, I fully admit that I'm pretty spoiled.  After my last year of college was spent with a few 2-hour (per way!) bus rides to and from UCLA per week, I started driving regularly at the age of 22 when I started graduate school.  I had my share of bad stories from riding buses back then, but I figured these were part of my rite-of-passage before I got to drive myself. I've been to New York a few times and now Japan , and it's interesting to see how busy and efficient their transit systems are.  In Japan, they are packed, but super clean and don't smell.  In New York, they are also packed, sometimes smelly, but roomy and frequent/on time/comprehensive -- same in San Francisco. In contrast, the public transit in Los Angeles is just as bad as you may have heard, and this is after many recent funding measures to improve things.  I've taken urban planning classes, so I definitely know about sprawl and all the things that makes LA, well, LA, but I can defi...

I haven't been to the gym in a long time (since July 2013 ), so this "Gym Stereotypes" video gave me the worst nostalgic feeling. I'm not sure if there's a "female" version of this video, but if I were to make one, I'd feature the: - treadmill sprinter (also in the video above) - Lululemon devotee - locker room sprawler : puts out her crud everywhere in the changing area and mirrored areas - chatty (also in the video above) - obvious overexercisers : super thin/sunken, marring away at the cardio machines before you get on one, and still when you get off one, never lifts any significant amount of weight (I know this is sad and somewhat insensitive, but I used to see a lot of these in college and may have even dipped into this category for short periods) - show-y stretcher : stretches (or foam rolls) in an area not intended for that purpose, for a long time, so people can see how hard she's worked - mirror magnet (also in the video ab...

Please excuse my tired writing today.  I'm drinking coffee and working on it.  It all started when I could not stop watching the Olympic games last night.  As much as I swore that I don't care for the Winter as much as the Summer games, I essentially watch most sports nowadays, and I couldn't look away.  Plus, I keep laughing at all the # SochiProblems . Even "The Ukrainian" is watching, although understandably due to the sports themselves rather than anything else (though he's apparently been to Sochi). ------   Anyway, It has been a really long time since I've done a " bar " review.  The main reason for this is because, well, I don't really eat many of these anymore.  The other night, I was home alone and was going to eat a Clif Builder's Bar I had lying around, but it was actually expired.  I didn't bother to check until I realized it tasted a bit off.  Yep, one year past expiration. However, I couldn't help but pick up...