Run, Beer, Dim Sum

We Run LA

I was so productive this past weekend, it felt like an outer-body experience.  I was able to work a full day Saturday, clean up the animals, do my laundry, drink heavily, and complete two of my goals for this month.

First off - let's discuss this the Firecracker 10K.  I spent a considerable time convincing a couple friends to do it with me.  I was able to get four others which I thought was successful.  There's an art to asking someone to wake up at 6AM and basically run a little more than 6 miles.  You need to bribe them with the beer that comes after the run and then some dim sum in Chinatown.  This only works with non-Chinese folks.  You can't bribe Chinese people with something that they had to do every Sunday since the day they were born.  Dim sum for us is like brunch for white folks minus the mimosas and drag queens.

Now I know I had this goal of finishing under 55 minutes and I trained really hard to make it happen.  However, I ended up finishing at about 66 minutes.  This was due to the fact that I stayed with my running buddy throughout the race.  My original plan was to just leave everyone and go, but I started feeling really bad when I forgot to mention that the first three miles of the race were uphill.  I forgot to mention because I forgot how to read a map.  I just figured since it was gradual as opposed to one huge incline, it would be easier.  While running, I actually thought about the mother of my child (long story for another day) cursing at me as she saw those hills.  So besides a slower friend to keep pace with and unexpected hills there were other factors that disrupted my goal time:

Water Cups
During these races, there are volunteers (usually school age inner city teens from a neighboring public school) handing out water cups.  Sometimes, they hold their cups in the way where they hold it two at a time with their fingers in the cup gripping to keep them together.  When you're thirsty, I guess you really don't have the time to think about whether their hands are clean or not.  I know this will gross most people out, but you need to pick your battles.  So what happens is you run, grab, drink, and throw.  Next thing you know there are hundreds of cups just on the ground.  As a runner and part time environmentalist, I found this to be disturbing.  Who really wants to run in trash?  So I would actually end up running with my cup until I can find the nearest garage can to dispose of the cup.  I drank water about 3 times, so you can imagine how many detours I made.

Views
LA views are some of the best in the nation.  Any canyon/hill you run around, you are guaranteed to have a beautiful view of downtown LA if you can get past all the smog.  So when you're running up hill and you see a view of DTLA, you can't help but stop and have your friends take a picture.

View of DTLA from Elysian Park

Other Runners
There are those who run fast, run slow, run with dogs, or just straight up walk.  The trick is to figure out how to run around all of them with tripping or shoving.  Luckily, because I'm so skinny, I can always squeeze between two people who are in my way.  

Finally, the best part about running is the free swag you get after you cross the finish line and I'm not talking about those lame medals, the water, the food, or the goodie bags.  I'm talking about the socializing around beers.  The only sad part about the beer was that they were serving Mic Ultra.  I guess with all these runners, a light beer made sense.  That and it was also 10AM.  So after hanging around and talking to some friends we walked off to Ocean Seafood for dim sum where we were greeted by a nice hostess.  I'm sure she was the only hostess who knew how to speak English which was why she was the hostess.  Now I don't do this a lot, but there are times when it's necessary to speaking in my native tongue.  Getting dim sum is one of those times.  You see when I show up asking how long the wait is and make small talk in Chinese, I can get a table in 15 minutes.  When the all white group show up and basically just asks for a table...the wait can be about 45 minutes long.  It was kind of like the check-in line for the race.  The LE line had no one waiting, but all the other lines where they weren't some sort of Asian last name...well, that took a while for people to get a pinnie.  Sorry, I digressed.

Dim sum was awesome and I couldn't have thought of a more perfect way to end the day.  Well, another friend of mine came over and asked if we wanted to get foot massages.  I was totally game, but alas, I drove my friends there, so I guess that would have been the more perfect way to end the day...