Running Commentary

...let me tell you about my week. I got out for a run Monday, in between the raindrops. It was my best run in a long time--made it 5-plus miles without my knee brace and felt fine. It was a dark and stormy morning, as you can see from this snap of the neighborhood palms, but it was also a morning that teased me with a taste of spring to come. Blossoms! Tuesday I went to the gym--no photos taken and not much fun had by all. Yesterday I went to Kaiser to get my knee X-rayed (haven't received the results yet) and then, because I had a spare hour before I had to be at work, I went over to the city and just walked around for a while. It proved to be a lovely opportunity to space out, so I did. BTW, the round silo (shaft? architectural element? thingy?) in the middle belongs to the San Francisco MOMA building. Finally, to return for a moment to the subject of running--which for me encompasses all corporeal elements, physical and mental--here's a tip on a very interesting new blog . T...

For a while there, I was sailing along, blogging quite a bit and feeling on top of this thing. Suddenly the rains came and the workload exploded and poof, my blogging discipline disappeared. I got out in the world now and then, however, so here's my version of a bread-crumb trail: a number of photos to chronicle my recent days. I made it out the door to run two mornings during the last week. I managed to dodge the drops on the first run, although things were pretty soggy. Bonus: soggy trails are good for injured knees, providing a soft surface to pound your feet on 90 times per minute. Evidently, not everyone stayed dry. Spooky light filtered through rain-drenched branches, casting undulating shadows that crackled like black fire on a concrete bench. Finally, the sun broke through for a while on Friday. These SF residents seized the moment to dry out while they could. And toward the end of the day, the moon joined in rejoicing over a clear sky. So today, Sunday, I volunteered to he...

My mom, that is. It's taken me a while since her death, in 2005, to think of her without pain, but I'm finally getting there. During her last three years of life I visited her four or five times every week, so naturally enough, my last memories of her are of a person in steady decline. At last it is hitting me that for someone who lived 94 1/2 years to be ill for only years 91 through 94 is no tragedy--more of a triumph, really. No, they were not good years. But what were three bad years when held up against 91 good ones? Not that I'm not sorry I shared those final years with her--it seems like the least I could do given how much I owe to her. It's thanks to her if I have any sense of humor, any intelligence, any facility with language, any physical strength, any enduring worth. Did you know that before "The Addams Family" was a hit TV show it was a series of New Yorker cartoons by Charles Addams ? Here's my mom sometime in the early 1950s, dressed as the...

Cue the scary music. Kidding--it only looks like I was on a runaway bus, courtesy of my superior photographic equipment. I may win some kind of award for special effects, you think? Anyway, this was taken from the (non-runaway) bus window two days ago as I traveled home from work over the Bay Bridge . The time was 5:29 p.m. The point of the picture is to testify that yes, daylight is definitely lingering a little longer at the end of each day, if for the most part imperceptibly. And this means that spring is on the way and along with it sunny early morning runs and baseball on TV (and even baseball in real life now and then). In case you weren't bored enough by the bridge-view picture, in keeping with the transportation theme, on the left is a plane up in the wild blue yonder I spotted not long ago . Really, there is a plane. See, up in the sky. This is an unremarkable photo unless you start thinking hard about the improbable number of human beings that were w-a-a-a-y up there in ...

Well, kinda sorta. Last Saturday morning I went out for a run. Wore my brace, walked a lot, did run. I can't say my knee felt a lot better afterward but also can't say it felt a lot worse. This plane, which may be a boat but certainly isn't a bird or Superman, is a recent addition to the scenery along my usual running route. Its name is painted on its nose: Spud's Scud . Whether it touched down where I found it or was dragged there by Spud, I really can't say. Sunday Z and I drove south, to the Sunol Regional Wilderness, for a hike-a-ganza, which regular readers of this space will know is one of Z's and my periodic activities. The ideal 'ganza consists of a vigorous walk in a bucolic and salubrious setting, followed by a hearty picnic lunch. Sunday's hike was, sadly, a bit short of wonderful because we took a wrong turn. The master engineer and his work. Then we spent about 45 minutes figuring out how to cross a rushing Alameda Creek in order to get ou...

This picture is really only a "Kilroy was here" thing, a marker to show that I really did go swimming this morning. Note my trusty bike tied up, there in the lower left-hand corner. An early morning swim can be a wonderful thing. I, a rather generic human, on good days feel a profound and magical oneness with the watery world of a swimming pool, chlorine-soaked though it is. I don't think I'm alone in this. I've yet to encounter a non-mellow post-swim woman in the locker room. Nakedness, the great equalizer, emphasizes how much alike all of us are who thrash around in the nurturing turquoise bath of King Pool . Although we inhabit a wide range of bodies (old! young! fat! thin! short! tall! black! white!), all of our bodies come identically equipped to slip into the water and take miraculous refuge in the environment of our shared origins. During our swim hour we are a uniform pod of dolphins, sleek and graceful. In other news, I've made an appointment with my ...

Who can resist a good pun? Or better yet, a bad pun? Not I, for sure. This morning I went out on my bike to run an errand so I thought I'd extend the ride for fun and for exercise by heading south to Emeryville and then cutting back through Aquatic Park on my way home. I got as far as the railroad crossing at 65th Street, where I encountered this rather sinister looking freight train at a standstill on the tracks. These black tank cars stretched for as far as I could see up and down the track. Luckily I'm not paranoid enough to have dwelt too long on what they might contain, but nevertheless I flipped a u-ey (yewee? you-ee? eweiee??) and headed east in search of an alternate route. I finally headed uphill, ending up at the Berkeley Library, downtown. Sometimes I could swear it's the library, not Rome, to which all roads lead. Anyway, I got in a bit of a bike ride (maybe five or six miles) and as a bonus scored a fresh book to read. This update on my current state of not-es...

Back at work this week, in the wonderful world of advertising. Never a dull moment. (Or maybe all the moments are dull?) One advantage of my job is that I get to walk at least a mile and a half every day I work--more if I walk from my house to BART, as I did today. At this time I can use the exercise, since I am still not really running. Yesterday morning early I went to the gym. I forgot my water bottle and did a hard workout anyway--as I finished up I realized I was disoriented and spacier than a starlet on drugs. I believe I was dehydrated, but it was scary. I met my friend R for breakfast and was barely coherent. I ingested a lot of water, sugar, and caffeine, and was more or less fine by the time I left for work around 11:30 a.m. Note to self: If you forget your water, drink from the water fountain. A lot. I am still exercising patience, if not much else, because my knee is still hurt. My d-in-law-to-be said my description of my ailment sounded like IT band trouble, and she's ...

In keeping with my New Year's resolution to be happy with whatever is happening, I'm not making any plans for running specific races this year. I intend instead to stay in touch with whatever is really going on with my knee and to try and plan for ways to exercise and still promote healing. (At some point I may go to a doctor--haven't defined that point yet.) So yesterday I headed out on the Ohlone Greenway, only instead of running the half-mile or so it takes to get there from my house, I walked. When I got to the dirt path I ran slowly. I ended up going all the way to Brighton Street (about 2.5 miles from home) and back but did that by a combination of running and walking. It did feel wonderful to be outdoors and not on a gym machine. My leg and hip were sore the rest of the day, and I can't quite decide whether the soreness was just the normal aftermath of running or a more ominous aftermath of re-injury. All I will do at this point is to keep exploring how much I ca...

I read somewhere that January is the new December, meaning that you have a month to adjust to the notion of keeping your resolutions before you must get stern with yourself and demand accountability. I'd like to expand this concept to include a grace period for making resolutions--who's ready to set intentions in concrete after contemplating the whole idea for only a few days (usually Dec. 26 to Dec. 31)? In that spirit, I offer my third resolution (intention? goal?): I resolve to keep moving. Yes, my knee is gimpy and so is my hip. Yes, the weather is on and off. Yes, I go back to work Monday. But I don't want that to stop me. Sometimes in this space I talk in euphemisms and even polite platitudes to keep from revealing some of the emotional rawness that plagues me now and again. So today I want to say what is in my head: I am definitely more than two-thirds through my life, which means I will die within the foreseeable future. And I suspect that after I'm dead I will ...