Running Commentary

This photo represents the cipher of the day--it means "a short out-and-back run in the dead dark of the dawn." I'm trying to get in as much mileage as possible before Christmas ever for beautiful Burbank. Z and I are going to visit the kids--the 2008 version of over the river and through the woods. He's driving; I'm going into work for a while and then flying later. I'll miss my computer. I realize that in this blog I'd like to take some time to look back and then look ahead, but also know that time for doing that may be limited in the remaining eight days of 2008. Looking back and looking ahead may be rather like an out-and-back run: I can do it, but in the end I can only find real meaning by taking step after individual step. Below, Bay Area signifiers that it's mid-winter! One interesting phenomenon I've observed over the course of my 2008 runs is that I'm manifestly back in touch with my photographic self. This has come about in such a ge...

The buildings looked lit from within but the illumination was actually the mirrored sunrise. It did rain later in the day, so the old sailor's saw held true. This photo was taken yesterday morning as I ran out the Bay Trail to Emeryville. I logged about 7.5 miles in the fresh and breezy dawn. The time stamp on this photo says 7:15 am--when I took it I was a little less than halfway to the turnaround point. I ran four times this past week--am ramping it up a bit because I realize if I do I can break 900 miles for the year. If I can go over 900.25 miles, 2008 will be the third-highest-mileage year of my long and mystifying running career (mystifying to me, that is--why do I do this!). Here are some sample mileages from my records (which, I estimate, have a margin of error of plus or minus 10%): 1978 = 145 mi. (I was living in Key West. This was my first year; my first run took place March 22 and it lasted about 8 minutes. The distance was likely a half-mile.) 1983 = 823.25 mi. (I ha...

Elizabeth will be back someday, perhaps as the author of a best-selling novel. As part of a New Year's campaign to be more accountable, I've decided to abandon my nom de guerre for the purposes of this blog. Yep, Elaine is me--now you have the Full Monty . To borrow from Stephen Colbert , may this be the beginning of many posts of truthiness. As your reward for reading this post, here is the special gift of an image I captured today from one of my favorite webcams . Note that in the image the time is 9:13 am. I believe I've posted a Chita image previously (maybe a couple of years ago?) but I wanted to do it again. Chita is in Siberia. Chita is always cold and usually dark. Its citizens, who carry on their daily lives as if they are living someplace reasonable, are for me the embodiment of courage, so I love watching them lurch around as the camera updates the scene every eight seconds. As you enjoy our current chilly weather, just realize that if a Chita native came here t...

Wh at a change. From rainy Monday to crystal-clear Wednesday. Today I wore gloves on my morning run for the first (and probably last) time this winter. I did my hill run in hopes it would warm me, and it did. On my way back I got interested in chasing the moon. I may have done better than the cow I saw trying to jump over it! You judge whether I caught it or not.

BTW: It's not as wintry here as in some places around the country, but it's cold enough for me. The Bay Farm Ferry dock —at the start of my Saturday group-yet-solo run. To say that Saturday I ran with my running club is really to misspeak. I arrived at the designated meeting site three minutes late, and there were no runners to be seen. They had actually taken off on time—at 8:30 am. A couple of other latecomers, K and J, arrived shortly after I did, and the three of us started running together. They soon left me behind, at my urging. Even though I had told them to go ahead, I still experienced a few minutes of “oh-poor-old-and-slow me” time. It was cold (amazingly so for the Bay Area) and I was (sob) alone. Imagine my pleasure when I came to an intersection of the trail and a major road and found K and J standing there, waiting for me to catch up. “We didn’t want you to get lost,” they explained before they ran off ahead again. When I reached the end of the day’s 5.8 mile loo...

So much for my promise to catch up. The days are short, my to-do list is long, and the rain is falling down.

Not the grocery store silly, the blog. I'm checking in but I have to do it so fast that I can't even use all the letters in the words. U C? Below is a picture relevant to nothing in particular. Look on it as a placeholder for when I get back to this blog with some actual information. I do have some, too, including the scoop on my happy participation yesterday in the long-awaited 10 K trail run. It exceeded my expectations on the fun-o-meter! I promise to check back later in the week with a report on that and other ped-powered experiences. For right now I'm processing the shock and subsequent relief I went through this past week when Z was suddenly ill but then recovered well. Let's just say I went through a perspective adjustment which has left me a bit dizzy. Some would say how could I get any more dizzy, but I'm staring at the air above their insolent heads, not deigning to hear them. Maybe the shock is the point of the red tree. It represents how my week has elec...