Beetroot juice.

(Gets a little vivid about bodily functions towards the end, you've been warned.)

With my running not as good as it was earlier in the year, I've been trying a few things lately to put a spring back in my step. I bought my barefoot runners, started doing new roots and I've started two different juices. One I've used before. It's a cherry concentrate drink I've used before. Full of antioxidants and nitrates and voodoo. Supposed to be good after a workout. Who knows? I just want something to drink after a run, it's more fun when it's cherry flavoured.

The other stuff I'm slugging, as you've probably read above, is beetroot juice. Not concentrated, just pure juice. A paragraph in a running magazine told me that folk who drank it for a week before a run did 10% better than folk who didn't. And paragraphs never lie. Look at that one up there, it's all the stone cold truth.
Beetroot juice, in case you didn't know or can't imagine it, is FOUL. It's purple salty pirate sweat. Putting 140ml of it down my throat every day for the last week has made it the longest week of my life.
Also the back of the bottle has a warning. It warns that it may discolour your pee. May discolour your pee. There's no 'may' in the matter, I've been pissing flourescent pink for five days now. And that's not the only thing...

Anyway, I set out this evening for a cheeky wee saunter about Edinburgh. Didn't make it easy on myself, the first ten minutes was all uphill. I laid into it, beetroot juice coarsing through my veins. At the top of the hill I did a lap of Charlotte Square, came back along Dean's Bridge, and ran down past the Western General. Was doing pretty well, to be honest, had an easy 4km under my belt in just over 20 minutes. Had seven in my mind, but just before the six mark I got a sharp pain in my shin and stopped. Not a major issue, it sorted itself out after a bit of walking. Still an improvement over my last few runs. Also, I was still a fair distance from home, so I'd be able to cool down a little, maybe do a few sprints.

ANYWAY, I should also mention that I spit when I run. I hate spitting generally, but I get a lot of phlegm in my mouth when I run, so I need to clear it out. Wherever possible, I spit out onto the street, into a drain or maybe a hedge. I do not EVER spit when I'm not running. It's horrible. People who do disgust me. At least burst into a sprint before you spit, I'll let you off then.

Right, this is going somewhere, trust me. So I was finishing up on my run, about five minutes out and I needed a spit. I really need one. My mouth had, eh, filled with phlegm. I hocked up a bit more to make this worth my while and, as I took a corner, I let loose.
PHLEUGH.
On front of three people I spat the biggest* gob of beetroot juice coloured phlegm I've ever seen. On front of three people, I essentially coughed up blood and ran on like a madman.
If you're having trouble imagining this, here you go:

So when you hear about the zombie outbreak in Edinburgh, you know what really happened.


*and only

Fast, not furious.

Okay, I've good news and bad news.

It's about my running. I lost my way in April, there. Almost stopped running altogether. I'd other things on my mind. A lot of travelling, moving flats, tons of good movies in the cinema. Joss Whedon alone took a good 10 hour chunk out of my April. No regrets, though. But I got back into it. Bought new minimalist runners (that I'm still breaking in), got a magazine or two to give me ideas and back onto the footpath I went.
So.

The good news is I've gotten my 5k time down to a fairly consistant 25 minutes. Sometimes less, rarely more. Today was 25:06. The fastest EVER is 12 minutes 37 seconds. And that was on a track. A FLAT track. Wuss. He probably had the wind behind him and all.
Anyway, that means nobody in the world can claim to be twice as good as me at a 5k run. YES.

The bad news is 5k is about the limit of what I can do right now. I tried to push it to 6 this evening and I nearly collapsed in a hedge at the next set of traffic lights. Going too fast, I think. Heat ain't helping either. If I wanna get back up to me tens and twelves I need to, sigh, slow down.
Damned if I do, damned if I don't.

A brief sidestep.

Right.

This past few years I've become less and less religious. I've questioned it more and more and, finally, I came to believe that the world we live in is the only one we have. As I've lost faith in religion I've come to love science more.

I love how a carbon nanotube the width of a hair can bear the weight of a car. I love how Norman Borlaug is credited with saving A BILLION LIVES by traveling the world genetically modifying crops to grow better in harsh conditions. I love reading about how we'll no longer need blood donations in the future because, well, we can just brew some up. Science is fucking brilliant. Science gets things done.
Science lets Cathy Hutchinson. who's been paralysed for 15 years, drink her morning coffee without a carer.

Sorry, religion, we're through.

Trip to America III: Leaving Los Angeles.

That building I couldn't remember last time. It's the Santa Barbara Courthouse.

It was built at a forty degree angle.

Now that I google it, I remember it being very impressive. Santa Barbara in general is impressive. One of America's most expensive places to live, it has a very Spanish/Mexican theme to it, with bright white buildings, palm tree and sandy beaches. I won't lie, it's f'king paradise.
We tipped out to the area my brother stays and studies in. He's up the coast a little in a place called Goleta, more specifically Isla Vista.

 

Again, paradise. A day or two later, we went further. Donal had a car rented, so we went up the Route One towards San Francisco. California is a lonnnng state. We drove up the One for a good four or five hours without getting anywhere near San Francisco. The scenery changed dramatically.

From paradise:

Hey, it's a slightly different picture.

 To the Old West:

To what looks like Ireland on a sunny day:

And to what Ireland usually looks like half an hour later:

Scottish people, replace 'Ireland' with 'Scotland', I can't please everyone.

Anyway, we drove up and down the state that day. Was fun. On the way back we swung by a town called Solvang for something to eat. It felt a little... odd. Didn't take any photos (it was dark, go google it) but it's a town set up by Danish folk back in the day. It feels like you could bump into Hans Christian Anderson. So we arrived in this... Danish wonderland and went for something to eat. What did we have? Meatballs? Strudel? Ehr... Danish Pastries? Did we bollox.

We'd a Chinese.

Donal blinded the staff with his shirt while we ran out on the bill.

Right, hold onto your hands. Part five's coming up soon and you'll NEVER GUESS what we got up to next so DON'T EVEN TRY.

Trip to America II: Realising I'm gonna have to give each post an individual title now.

Where were we?
Right, so we'd established my beefs with parabens and phthalates. I've met me parents, went back to the hotel and we've discussed the results of the Mahon Tribunal. Gripping.
So the next day we got up and went for breakfast. America really knows how to do breakfasts. This place had three chefs behind a counter making omelettes for you, however you wanted them. They'd a breakfast bar with sausages and rashers etc.They'd a cereal bar with Corn Flakes, Special K and Fruit Loops. FRUIT LOOPS. It's like sugar coated skittle for breakfast. They'd a bready bar too, with waffles, bagels, danished  etc. They juice for fruits I've never heard of and four types of milk. FOUR TYPES OF MILK.
And yet my mother found something to complain about. The mugs. I can't remember what was wrong with them. But, damnit, there was something about them. We're a very discerning family.

We met my brother shortly after. He picked us up in a car he rented and we took a mosey around LA itself.
I don't like LA. Noone I've ever met does. It's just... not nice. Geographically, it's fucking obscene. The place never ends.
You could try and claim that I can't judge a city by driving through it for four hours, okay. But you could also go read another blog.
We DID visit Venice beach, which was pretty nice. It's all happy and smiley, there's skateparks and an outside gym. There're native Americans selling crap whittled out of wood and Vietnam vets making space landscapes with spray paint and pot lids. There're girls trying to give your prescriptions for weed and dingey t-shirt shops that make witty Jersey Shore references... probably. Venice beach is fun... for an hour.
I took a photo.

Not of Venice Beach, mind. It's a wee dog we saw nearby.
Oh, also I took another. It's of a truck. America loves its trucks.

I realise these things may not come as surprises to many of you people. America loves breakfast. America loves big trucks. America hates parabens and phthalates. But humour me. My photo taking was sporadic at best and I've to narrate all this crap. So if I have a photo of a building I can't remember and a cloudy sky, you're damn well gonna hear about it.

See?

Okay, I gotta go. Got less wrote than I thought I would. Less photos done too. Anyway, here's two more in rapid succession. They (I feel) successfully illustrate a key difference between the two sides of the Atlantic.

East side of the Atlantic:

West side of the Atlantic:

Clowns.

Trip to America I: My face is cold.

Evening!

The more eagle eyed amongst you might notice this blog's been looking a touch malnourished lately. It's been technical difficulties mostly. My laptop coped over about two or three weeks ago and I'd to send it away to get the fans replaced. Then, when I got it back, the cable that connected my phone to my laptop was in the other room or something. And I was tired. The next day I was drunk. Then the Avengers was one. Okay, it wasn't exclusively technical difficulties.

But sur' anyway, let's get started. Back on March 22nd I took a trip across to America. My brother's been there since June of last year. He came home for my sister's wedding in October so I figured it'd be nice to return the favour. So I pulled on my socks, loaded up my MP3 player with EXCELLENT TRAVELING MUSIC, left my MP3 player with EXCELLENT TRAVELING MUSIC charging beside my bed and tipped off towards Edinburgh Airport with an MP3 player with EXCELLENT TRAVELING MUSIC back home, charging away. It charged for two weeks, you could run a fucking small town off it.
Here we go.

Oh no, wait, that's Heathrow.  I've no pictures of Edinburgh Airport. Do you? That's great. Well done, you.

I've no huge issues with air travel. The flight itself, all eleven hours of it, was pretty smooth. Food was okay. And the girl beside me asked to be moved to another seat (her telly wasn't working, I smelled fantastic by the way.) The only problem was the eleven hours side of things. A little known fact about me is that I cannot sleep A WINK when I'm moving. Buses, trains, boats and planes, every hour, every MINUTE I've spent on one I've spent awake. Airlines, obviously, take this into account. They provide you with entertainment. I remember ten years ago having the time of my life on a Virgin flight playing F-Zero with a SNES controller. Excellent. Not so much with British Airways. They've films, yeah, but it's usually stuff that's there to please your average family. TinTin and Journey 2. Two films about penguins.  Bah. And they're shown on a screen that makes you think your head's been bubble wrapped. So I stared at this for what felt like a lifetime:

(Look closely and you'll see I flew across a town called Aberdeen in the Midwest somewhere.)
Though it felt slightly less like a lifetime with the help of this:

Anyway, I got off the plane at about 7.00 in Los Angeles and phoned the folks. Y'see, us Finegans had a plan. My parents had arrived in the US five or six days earlier. They did San Francisco, then Vegas and then, about an hour before me, they flew into LAX. So I met 'em and retired to the hotel. Oh, whisht, I've just seen that photo I took of the soap. Let's take a wee detour for a second.
The most interesting thing about the hotel, besides my parents (who'd lots of stories about Vegas, San Fran and Monaghan), was the soap.Yes, the soap. Here, have a look:

"No added parabens or phtalates."
Could just be me, but I've no idea in the slightest what a paraben or phtalate is.I'm happy not knowing. And these pricks making soap (or soap packaging) have now given me two more things to worry about. MSG, saturated fat, skynet, gypsies and now I've to avoid parabens and phthalates.
They could've wrote "Now with extra parabens and phtalates" and I would've went to bed happy, knowing my skins was now all parabenny.
Anyway, not a big deal. The next day we woke up, met my brother and hit the road. This was going to be in part one (this part), but an unplanned rant about soap marketing has made me a bit tired. Not enough parabens in my diet, I'm guessing. You'll get part two when I'm good and ready.


(Oh, the cold face reference in the title is down to the fact that I shaved my beard on day one of the trip. You can see my razor above. I took regular photos of my beard as it came back but I'm not sure it's blog material. I might whack 'em all together when I've the whole trip written out.)