Running Commentary

My brain on noise--actually, my camera phone's view from inside the car wash. You can almost see the noise in there, no? I have come across a couple of books lately that seem relevant to my mental meanderings as recorded in this blog. The first is Listening Below the Noise , by Anne LeClaire, a woman who some twenty years ago decided to observe one day of silence per week. Since she made that decision, she has never spoken a word on a Monday. Her account of the experience is compelling and thought provoking. (Silence is on my mind today, particularly because as I type I am distracted by loud gospel music coming over the fence from the yard adjacent to mine in the back. I've turned on my own noise-- a CD of collected piano concertos-- to combat the outside noise. Don't know whether this makes things better or worse.) Although I doubt I would duplicate LeClaire's experience, I freely admit that the notion of a silent day attracts me. I am not someone who listens to music...

Because it's slow at work and I'm between freelance projects, I did a lot of Web surfing today. Found myself wondering what it would be like to blog five days a week, like one of my favorite bloggers , or even every day like some blogs I've visited. Confession: I signed up for Twitter but never tweet. Even that seems to someone like me that it requires the revelation of TMI. Imagine if I blogged nonstop! It would be, like, Ran today. Ran today. Didn't run today. Shoulder hurt. Swam today. Did nothing today. Hip hurt. Ran anyway. Sunny this morning. Ran today. And so on. But then I run across some everyday blogs by people that are actually interesting. Compelling, even. Still, the notion of nonstop writing is in my mind akin to the notion of stream-of-consciousness talking. Interesting to the talker, but.... In other snooze, I took a few phone pics when I ran in Reno last weekend. This lovely mosaic is at the (surprise!) rose garden . And this line drawing etched into co...

Peace I ask of thee, oh river Peace, peace peace When I learn to live serenely Cares will cease From the hills I gather courage Visions of the days to be Strength to lead and faith to follow All are given unto me Peace I ask of thee, oh river Peace, peace peace -- Song for Girl Scouts, learned at Camp Wasiu circa 1955

The sun has indeed been out the last two mornings I've run early--Friday and today. In the Bay Area, a clear sky can only mean one thing: Summer's almost over. Around here, summer = fog and fog = summer. This is an ordinary BART support pillar, but wait--that's early morning sunlight painting its flat surfaces a pale gold. All hail the sun! This morning not only was the sun shining, the moon was hanging around too. And flowers preened in the clean white dawn. My running life has resumed, I'm glad to say. I'm a little slower; the runs are a little shorter. But I'm out there, and for that profoundly grateful. For the time being I'm going with a weekly schedule that includes two street runs, two workouts at the gym (which include short treadmill runs), and one swim. Two plus two plus one equals five, so that leaves two days when I rest. Usually they're work days, meaning I walk briskly those days (and every work day) for at least 2.5 miles. On swim days I ...

...and up is down. As I recover from my hip injury (Fifteen weeks! It's taken fifteen freaking weeks!) I find myself favoring my entire left leg from waist to toenails. Well fine, you say. But by being so out of balance I seem to have tweaked my right hamstring. So when I went for a run (!) this morning I couldn't decide which body part to baby. I decided to be a LION and baby neither. I actually had a fine run. Five miles. Even two weeks ago that distance seemed like an impossible dream. In other news, I swore I wasn't going to blog again until I finished the freelance editing job I'm working on. But my flip-phone photos are piling up and crying out to go for a cruise in the ether. So here are a few from July. I'm closing that folder and starting on August (the above is the first and only one for August, so far). . On July 19, I ran from the chicken... ...to the graffiti and back, a distance of about two miles. Woo woo! On July 22 Boomer , my favorite nephew, blew ...