Running Commentary

That's what this illuminated doorway looked like to me when I ran by it yesterday morning. Not the portal of "Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here," but the portal of "Change Is Here and Turning Away From It Won't Save You So You Might as Barrel On Through the Door!" I saw it as a marker for this day, this remarkable day when, if only for one day, the optimists of our nation, sick at heart from years of fearing, face the future and bravely say, "Bring it on." * * * * I'm contemplating my own (minor) version of change in this blog. I want to remind myself and my readers that it is first and foremost a running-related blog. If some of my running activities have served sometimes as metaphors for other, more general human activities, well, that's just gravy. So for a little while, until some other direction looks inviting to me, I'm going to focus on my running-related activities. I'm looking to the major mags for inspiration. They have ...

Who knows whether I would ever have become a runner if my mother hadn't set me an athletic example to follow. From Southern California, she grew up outdoors--swimming and camping and rowing as a child and young woman, playing tennis and walking three miles to work most days as an adult. She would have been 98 today. Love you and miss you, Ma. My mother, flanked by my dad (on right) and his brother. When I was a child it never occurred to me that she was lovely. But wasn't she!

That's what I thought "EC" stood for when I first saw this sign. Come to realize it means El Cerrito, as in the high school. I was at the track at said school this morning. By the time I was there the sun had risen and I was about halfway through the 8.25-mile hill run I had set out to complete before breakfast. I've found that eight is about the maximum number of miles I can cover before I've had any real food. I did carry along a chocolate Clif Shot, of which I slurped up about three-quarters, but it wasn't the same as having Miniwheats and the trimmings (my favorite breakfast). Stopping at the high school was unplanned, but when I found the back gate above the track open, I was sucked in. The city opened this all-new school just recently, and I hadn't checked it out yet. It was suitably impressive (see below for a side view), if a bit fortress-like. It has been widely recognized for all its "green" features and, while I'm really tired of e...

...do I want to be there, in my city.... Actually, it's not my city (Berkeley is my city), but I work here and get to run here. Last night I was able to slip away from my desk about 5:30 and run southward down the Embarcadero for a 4.5-miler, along the waterfront and around the ballpark of that orange-and-black team . I made it back in time for the first PDF to hit my desktop for proofing. Sadly, the camera phone just doesn't do justice to the SF panorama that beckons me when I venture into the semidarkness here. You'll have to take my word for it that the lights in the lower right-hand quadrant of the frame are glowing on the Bay Bridge, and the rakishly canted oblique that isolates the dark upper left-hand corner is the arrow shaft of Claes Oldenburg 's sculpture Cupid's Span. Wonderbar, I know. Guess that's enough about the scenery. But the run--when I calculated all my numbers on MapMyRun , it told me my pace was 10.37 minutes per mile. For me, that's s...

The title of this one is for Bubba . Who knows what I was thinking when I got my prescription running glasses and turned instantly into a Harry Caray lookalike. When I don these glasses suddenly I find myself wanting to belt out a drunken rendition of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." I did my 10+ miler today and it went reasonably well. I haven't plotted it on MapMyRun yet, but I'm pretty sure it was close to 10.5. Ran out the BART path to the end, partly to find out what wildflowers do in the dead of winter. Turns out some of them, in this temperate climate, bloom (if only modestly). Of course, it didn't feel like a winter's day. Brilliant sun, a mild breeze. And this after the freezing weather of 10 days ago. All went fairly well, although my right ankle is now sore and I'm not sure why. Friday night I did run in SF with my friend M, along the Embarcadero under a big moon, lights of the Bay Bridge twinkling as we cruised by. (Correction to the last post: ...

Wanted to share this scene from my Christmas-vacation running adventures. Awoke on a Sunday morning and headed out from our motel in Ventura. It was crisp, clear, and lovely! We were on the edge of town, right where agriculture (see above) meets urban encroachment (see below). After I haven't run for two straight days, as was the case on this day, I'm always pleased and amazed to find that my body takes to it like the proverbial duck to the proverbial H2O. So now I'm home, it's January, and I'm easing into the preliminary marathon-training schedule I have penciled into my 2009 calendar. We're having a chilly (wintry!) winter, but I'm finding that if I jerk myself out the door before I'm fully awake that I'm pretty warm by the time I've run a mile or so and am coming to consciousness. As part of my training (doing The Ave again this year, which falls on May 3), I'm working on overall strength and fitness. I find the easiest time to do this is...

I just gave myself a laugh. Because it's a new year, I was thinking I should change my blog template. I scrolled through the selection of models that can be plugged in as-is (no annoying tinkering needed). Hmmm. Like Goldilocks sampling the porridge, I found them all too hot or too cold. Until--I came across the one that was just right! You're seeing it now. Yup, I picked out the one I'm already using. This is how I felt today. (Tortoise courtesy of the Los Angeles Zoo.) I was trying to be in a New Year's frame of mind as I ran in the rain, but mind and body were 100 percent tortoise. One reason I'm compelled to run is that it tells me so much about myself. It's impossible to fake a good run. So today I slogged along, happy to be running with my friend M and her great pooch, but cold and sad somewhere deep inside myself. Like the Beachboys, I live for the sun, the literal and the figurative one.