Scenes from Samara 5

Crayfish for sale on the sidewalk.

A neat wooden-fenced basketball / soccer court.

Friendly pack of dogs outside my building.

A decrepit former church, half now used as a photo store.

Another view on the ex-church.

The Elixir of the Peasantry

People often ask me what I eat while I'm training, if there are foods I choose for pre-race, in-race and post-racial nutrition. I tell these people they're asking the wrong question. What you should be asking is, "What do you drink?"

Kvas fermenting in a jar

The answer, as any reader of this should know by now, is kvas - a hearty, low-alcohol beverage made by fermenting black bread. It's the perfect balsam to rehydrate the weary soul of the proletarian athlete. It's like Guinness made an energy drink.

There are two types of kvas - the mass-produced kind you buy in the store, and the kind you find on almost every street corner being sold by old women. They taste different - the first is more like beer and cola, the second like beer and hard apple cider. It's because the first is really a type of soda that has been made to resemble brewed kvas, whereas the second is actually fermented and brewed alongside beer at the local brewery.

To celebrate the Obama-Medvedev love fest, Coca-Cola was offering Kvas for a limited time in Whole Foods stores in New York. More infos here.

If you are a resident of New York and see this, I will pay you back warmly and graciously and maybe even with some money.

Samara, no hotspot of soccer talent

So I decided after last week's mind-numbing 0-0 draw against Spartak that I would give Samara's soccer team the Wings of the Soviets another try. Unfortunately, yesterday's game confirmed the Wings ferocious mediocrity as they unleashed a storm of half-manliness on the unsuspecting Moscow team Lokomotiv.

Despite the fact that we had a two-man advantage for the last 25 minutes of the game - that's right the other team got two red cards - our players were unable to score a goal, and barely mustered a single respectable shot from their tired little girl thighs.

Resorting to other measures, the fans made their own excitement. Little did I realize that when I approached the ticket counter and asked for "a seat in the western bleachers for 200 rubles" I was actually asking for "a seat between two rowdy bands of gopniks ready to throw punches." After a bitch slap, a taunting hair rustle and some harsh words, a couple beefy dudes started jumping the rows to my right and hitting each other. I managed to snap this blurry photo of the police breaking it up as evidence:

There was one hero in the game - the Wings goalkeeper, Eduardo Lobos of Chile, who managed to stop a penalty in the first half and thereby save his team from even further humiliation.

Extreme training

I normally go on runs in the evening to try and avoid the heat, but today as I was sitting in my boxers feeling the sweat slip down my back I decided I might as well run and feel the sweat slip down my back. Besides, with our current heat wave what's the difference between a 7pm run at 95 degrees and a 1pm run at 100 degrees?

Sticking to the shade it actually wasn't that bad. About halfway through the run, the water in my bottle already felt like tepid tea rather than something refreshing. Luckily I found one of those old hand-pump faucets by the side of the road and gave myself a cool shower on the back of the neck.

The stats -

• Number of drunken, passed out men: 1
• Number of strays: 4
• Chased by: 1
• Number of new anti-NATO graffiti: 2

Oh, and much love to the guy who sprayed me with his hose as he was washing his car. This one was for you!

Don't worry!

A new grocery store opened around the corner from me and I walked in to check it out the other day. They were fully stocked except for a few shelves near the registers:

The sign reads: "Here there will soon be alcohol."