Running Commentary

Long time, no blog. The pandemic, my advancing age, and my slug-atude have all contributed to my silence. But I'm still getting out there fairly often, although "run" has morphed into "run-walk." That said, I'm still strong and relatively fit -- just not as resilient as I once was. Enter Charlie:   We have had her for a week now! She is wonderful in many ways, but the reason I am putting her in a blog post is that, as we've spent a number of of walkies together, she has let me know she wants to run. Not only that, she wants to run at my approximate pace. She is small, and has short legs, but her speed and my slowness work together well.  She and I both will need to train carefully to ramp up our game, but she and I both are up for the challenge. She is the biggest pandemic blues chaser I could ever have hoped for. Confession: She is a lot of work, having spent her two-year life in a breeder kennel. The dynamics of family life seem seem unfathomable to he...

Note from self: You should blog today. Reply from me: Shut up and go away.  Self: It's been three years since you blogged. Some people think you're dead. Me: Buzz off. Don't you know there's a pandemic going on? It's not the time for writing self-congratulatory posts about my rather boring running life. Besides, there are plenty of thoughtful, articulate writers weighing in about our current global challenge, writers with words that enlighten and comfort. Self: Doesn't matter. What happened to the you who used to say, "to be a writer, you have to write"? The same person who used to say, "If youtwant to be a runner you have to run"? Me: Leave me alone. Self: You were out today, and in your run-walk version of motoring you found that the track was open. Now there's a feel-good story: Aging runner woman does a mile in a blazing 16 minutes. By the time she jogs home, she is filled with love for this incredible planed and all her f...

Here's where I am. Slowly learning to love my new city. Long time no blog. Welcome back, all three of you! Where I am running-wise is injured and very cranky. This is no new condition for me. After averaging between 600 and 1,000 miles per year for decades, on this day, if I can get in 4 more miles, I'll finally have run 200 miles in 2018. Boo hoo. But today's post is not all whine and jeeze. It's kind of a giggly day because I get to say "fartlek." Hee hee. Anyway, this morning, I had the fartlek eureka moment. I finally went to a sports medicine M.D. a couple of days ago, and she showed me my recent MRI. Scary to see my glute tendon as a stark white bulge between some big muscles--yup, tendonitis.  The nice thing about sports docs is that they hardly ever tell you it's essential that you stop running immediately, but ONLY for 6 months. This doc, who is a joy, prescribed some therapy she thinks will help, and also told me not to stop run-walki...

I call this image "Circle Shadow." The blob in the lower left corner is the shadow of my running shoe, which I had set on the edge of the glass table outside, on the patio. I snapped this not because it looked like a deep and insightful metaphor--I snapped this merely because it caught my eye. I liked it; here it is. For those of you who were paying attention for a brief period yesterday evening, you my have seen a "Day 15" in this space at that time. I can't guarantee you're not crazy, but at least you're not crazy if you think that this is not the "Day 15" you saw here. That post was an attempt to humanize myself--to "out" my flawed self, if you will. (As if I don't do that every time I post.) I had found a book of poems I wrote when I was going through my divorce in the late 70's. It wasn't a good poem, actually, but it resonated with me because it took me right back to those days of visceral trauma. I was get...

Summer feels like it's already a-comin' in. Even though I recently accepted a freelance project (work!), the warm days and blue skies have me feeling like I'm retired enough that I can stretch lazily and then plunk myself into a patio chair and enjoy the absence of cold. One activity I've been working at for months--years--is the cussed puzzle known as Sudoku. Ta-da!  This morning I finished the first 3-star puzzle I've ever done without either quitting in the middle or peeking at the solution. My brain feels so agile that I now believe I'm safe from ever succumbing to Alzheimer's. I know, dream on. Note to Pierre: It seems we've lost touch since our days at the ad agency, but if you ever see this, please know that you are the one that inspired me to persevere in this thankless pastime. It's been and still is a long road; I won't feel I can happily quit until I do a flawless 5-star. Moving right along here--. May is the time when little kids ...

Lucky day thirteen, even though it should be day fifteen. Better a late day than no day, right? This has also been a busy day. Wasted almost an hour of it with a First-World Problem: One of the main drags in West Sac has a live railroad crossing mere yards from an Interstate on/off ramp. Traffic in this area gets brisk around 4 p.m., so naturally (?) I thought 4:30 would be a good time to go out and back in a quick trip to the post office. Why yes, at the train crossing there was one slow caravan of evil-looking black tank cars holding things up when I when I went, and another evil-looking one going the other way and holding things up when I came back. For today I'm taking a holiday from any substantive thinking. No, my observations about evil-looking tank cars do not constitute substantive thinking. Thank you.  I am offering instead some random photos from about a year ago. (Sometimes I think the only reason I blog is that it gives me a chance to pore over my million phot...