Barrio Logan

For my birthday Chelsey offered to take me to any five stations on the San Diego Trolley system that I want. This is a great present for me. I chose Barrio Logan as my first stop. Barrio Logan is a neighbourhood just south of downtown San Diego. The trolley stop is almost directly under the Coronado bridge. Barrio Logan used to be known as Logan Heights; its named changed as Mexican immigrants moved into the area. In the 1960s, however, the neighbourhood was split by the construction of I-5 and then the bridge. Both of those projects created huge concrete flyways that cut through the heart of the Barrio. In partial compensation for this, the land underneath the bridge was left as Chicano Park. A few years later, however, the city planned to develop the land. The residents of the neighbourhood protested, staging sit-ins in the park and painting murals on the concrete support pillars. The city eventually relented and the park remains.

That's where we headed on our trolley trip. We had a nice little time walking around the park, which is not that big. We also stopped by a new grocery store to grab some lunch. The store is a distinctly Mexican grocery store; it was not entirely foreign, but walking through it was like a little reminder of wandering through the grocery stores in foreign countries and trying to figure out what some things were.
-Jason

sports

Almost as soon as we moved to San Diego, we found an adult water polo group. They're a great group of people and we rarely miss a Friday night pick-up game.
When I started my new job, one of my favorite things about the office was the Thursday afternoon inter-office volleyball. I'm now the volleyball commissioner. I've also joined the office soccer team (organized through the office but in a city league), and started an office tennis league (inter-office). This week I was convinced to join the office softball team (city league). So, my new schedule is:
Monday: Softball
Tuesday: Tennis
Thursday: Volleyball
Friday: Water polo
Sunday: Soccer

Whew!

Carlsbad 5000 2013

I came back from my Carlsbad Marathon disappointment with another race in Carlsbad - this one the shorter, faster and more famous Carlsbad 5000. I've run this race a few times but never had a really good race here, including last year when I ran quite poorly. I was excited this year, however; since coming back from the marathon, I'd been doing some good workouts with my track club and had a pretty good idea of what I was capable of - and it looked to be quite a bit better than last year.

My main concern in that regard was getting caught in traffic at the start of the race and held off my pace. So I made sure to get near the front and get out fast. As it turned out, it was a little quicker than I had planned, and for a brief moment near the first mile marker I thought I might be ready to run even faster than I had been hoping. That was not to be, however, as I slowed down in the last two-thirds of the race. However, I didn't slow down that much; I more or less held on to the pace I had expected coming in. Consequently, I finished in 18:47, easily meeting my goal of under 19:00 and knocking over 2 minutes off of last year's time. That's pretty good in a 5km.
-Jason

Carlsbad Marathon

Back in January I ran the Carlsbad Marathon. I was hoping to qualify for Boston, or at least get close enough to set myself up for a good shot in my next marathon. However, after a relatively successful race at the Borrego Springs Half Marathon I think I got a little lax over the holiday season. My big concern, after making that mistake in Borrego Springs, was not going out too fast. I accomplished this by sticking with the 3:15 pace group. Nevertheless, after about mile 10 I started to feel badly, which is never a good sign in the marathon. A few miles later I was struggling along with a bit of a headache and having trouble with my vision. When I saw Chelsey a little after halfway I bailed out of the race. I felt quite terrible about dropping out of my second marathon in a row, but I did not feel very good and still had over 11 miles to go, so it just didn't seem like a good idea. Live to fight another day, and all that.
-Jason