City mouse. Country mouse.

This morning I gushed about my love of urban running. But I was in a hurry to get to work and did not have time to post photos from my morning adventure. (It would be poor form to travel for work and then be late to the office!)

So here are a collection of my gritty, grainy photos from downtown San Diego. Yes, there are pretty places (like Balboa Park, just a few blocks away) to run in this city, but those places don't come with street art...

Has Banksy been here?

(If you're going to see a mouse rat in the city, a graffiti rat is the kind you want to see, no?)

And while I love the pretty running routes, they don't make me feel like part of the city the way hurtling down 6th Avenue does.
Dodging delivery trucks does.
Sprinting through intersections before the light change does.

America's Finest...

Urban running comes with its fair share of grit and grim reality... Angry, shouting, shoving matches between people with a grudge to settle... Homeless people trying to stay dry in a rainstorm... Car accidents at intersections that ruin a person's day (or life)...

But for all the grit, there is a humming vitality and a hopefulness, too... People hustling to work because the economy is starting to recover... An entrepreneur selling palm-frond flowers to make a buck... Dogs leading their owners on a tour of the neighborhood... A new restaurant getting its first delivery of linens... A city maintenance worker whistling while she goes about her work...

That energy is unlike anything else.

Source: flickr.com via V_Smith on Pinterest

I'll run trails if you ask me to..

But if I get to choose, I'll take the concrete jungle, please.

Are you a city mouse or a country mouse?