Santa Monica Beach Run

A change of pace today. I went to the beach to check out the area around Casa Del Mar. The hotel is only half a mile from Santa Monica Place (the mall at the end of 3rd Street Promenade) so I parked in the free mall parking and took a run to the hotel.

Starting from the pier, I ran across the bridge,

down the overpass over PCH,

across the pier,

across the original site of Muscle Beach,

admired this middle-aged man who was swinging back and forth across the rings like it was no big deal,

across the back of the hotel (see how close it is to the beach? The doors below the arches lead into the ballroom),

kept going for about another half mile,

and turned back around to admire the view. I could barely make out the ferris wheel from a mile away (on the left between the two clusters of palm trees), but from the hotel (red brick roof on the right) it's plainly visible from behind the hotel.

On my run back I stopped at the muscle beach area to hang out with all the fit people. There are ropes to climb, pull up bars, parallel bars, little rails on which to practice tightrope walking, monkey bars, and swings. What's really fun is that everything comes in adult and child sizes so little kids can try everything too.

I did a few sets of push ups with my feet up on child-sized parallel bars, and then hung upside down from some monkeybars and did hanging crunches. I hung upside down facing the ocean so every time I finished a crunch I got to see the waves. It was nice to be a kid again, goofing off on monkey bars. And yes, my abs are on fire.