LA County Board of Supervisors

Yesterday, the LA County Board of Supervisors presented awards to Mark, Gabi and Craig, in recognition of their work and contributions to the homeless community in the award winning documentary, Skid Row Marathon.  

This project started in 2013 after Gabi, a life long runner, read an article in the LA Times about a judge who was training formerly homeless individuals, many recovering from addiction or incarceration.  

Skid Row Marathon was initially released in the Los Angeles film festival and has gone on to critical acclaim, winning over 13 awards at various film festival around the world.  The documentary documents the beginnings our our running club and the individual stories of 4 of our runners including Judge Craig Mitchell.  

The documentary demonstrates how small steps and the impact of a few can have on an entire community.  After watching Skid Row Marathon, audiences will see the homeless in a different light.

Congratulations to Mark, Gabi and Craig!

Unofficial start of summer

Usually we run on Mondays and Thursday in the early mornings.  However if the Monday happens to be a holiday (Holidays usually seem to fall on Mondays), we run the follow Tuesday.  Perhaps it was the long weekend and we hadn't seen each other in a while, but today we had a decent number of people show up.  We ran our usual route from the Midnight Mission thru the Arts District to the half way point at Hollenbeck Park in East Los Angeles, back thru Little Japantown.  Finally we finish and hang out at the intersection of 4th and Crocker St before we go onto our respective days. 

During today's run, I noticed an unusual amount of fires that had been put out, places were tents and shopping carts once were.

Everyone seemed really excited about the upcoming run this weekend.  We will have 5 teams participating in the Griffith Park Trail Relay Marathon.  Basically teams of 5 people take turns running the same difficult trail, until the team has completed 26.2 miles, which is the distance of a marathon.

Last year there was roughly 90 teams, meaning there was 450 runners or so.  After the races are over, running groups stick around and enjoy good food, drink and each other's company.