Running Commentary

Going to a ball game on a weekday afternoon is generally regarded as a lazy and mindless activity. But for me on this particular sunny day, baseball (paradoxically) constituted a mindful engagement. I left work and went to the A's-Detroit game by myself. I sat in a section that was fairly empty, although on three sides I was surrounded by what was reportedly some 20,000 schoolchildren. They were not, shall we say, quiet. In my ears I had the radio commentary of Ray Fosse, Ken Korach, and Vince Cotroneo . The A's were not at their best. I even texted my favorite nephew that "the A's suck." And yet--and yet, as I sat there I got more and more interested in what Ray and Ken and Vince were saying. I realized their broadcast constituted a narrative about the A's in particular and baseball in general; they were dipping into a story that is ongoing and rich, calling on their past experiences to illuminate the present happenings and to speculate about the future. Th...

I believe I've titled a number of previous posts "Checking In." Well today, I'm checking out. Checking out the contents of my brain, that is. First, I wanted to note that I went to LA (Culver City and Burbank, to be specific) over the weekend for the birthdays of my son the doctor and my granddaughter, who is the sweetest granddaughter that I (or anyone else in the world) could have. Here's me after Dr. D and I ran up Baldwin Hill. My boy was kind enough to lope along at a pace that didn't leave me looking like something Harley and Hazel dragged in (Harley and Hazel being the resident cats in Culver City). After the short weekend I came home for some running-related activities. First was volunteering at a water station for my club's Tilden Tough Ten race, aka the anti-Bay to Breakers. It was freezing in Tilden Park--note the posture of my fellow volunteers. We considered snuggling up to those cows but thought the better of it. Monday I went to the gym. I ...

An odd theme has surfaced in my photo / running life lately (I link those two adjectives because I don't always separate them in my mind). I'm hoping I'm seeing rabbits because I'm getting as fast as one. Is that's what's hoppening? I've had two bunny encounters recently, one when I was on a rainy run and and one when I ended a run in the middle of an Easter egg hunt. (A picture of the latter didn't end up in this space but can be seen in my Facebook wall photos. Please do friend me. Eek, I used "friend" as a verb.) Last night I had a bunny encounter of the third kind. It started when after work I went up the hill to Piedmont High, expecting to run track again with the Tuesday night gang just as I did last week. Before we could run a step, however, we were told the track was closed because a championship lacrosse game was about to begin. Someone (me, I think) suggested running down the hill to Lake Merritt and formatting our speed work in a li...

The Food Part of this Post The title of this post is intended to signal a confession: I'm not a full vegan. I've decided that while I won't actively seek to ingest honey, neither will I refuse to eat foods (mainly breads) that list honey as an ingredient. My Vegan Living for Dummies book contains many useful guidelines for converting to total veganism, but also encourages a person to be realistic about how stringent she chooses to be in pursuit of physiological and spiritual fidelity to vegan principles. I read the book as acknowledging that successful adherence to many (but not all) vegan principles is better than failed adherence to an extensive set of unbreakable laws. The Running Part I'm set to run at the track again tonight. Last week the hardest part of the experience was avoiding getting lost on the way to the track. Well, not really. There was definitely room for improvement, however, in the arriving-there-on time-and-un-lost department. During this past week I...

After my rain-soaked track session last week (see previous post), I was emboldened to show up at a different track the following Tuesday, this time in the latter part of the day. The women's team was doing a speed workout. I'd like to say "I ran with the team!" but that would be an exaggeration. I was where the other team members were. They ran--I ran. I was just a little behind them, that's all (insert smiley face here). But I'm not going to bemoan my lack of speed. I was there. I ran my own best way. I had fun! I'll go again next week if the stars align. As you can see, it was a lovely evening, with gentle spring sunlight throwing long shadows across the turf as the brightness of the day faded into evening. Endorphins filled the air. I ran with so much energy that I'm starting to label my new vegetarian diet a "success" rather than merely an "experiment."

I feel like a mole. Or a vole. Or a groundhog, even. One of those creatures that lives in impossibly tangled tunnels beneath the earth and only occasionally sees the light of day. Too much time has gone by unaccounted for in this space for me to even think of extricating myself from my subterranean burrow and catching up. I do have a collection of phone photos taken in the course of my unintended hiatus, but they all need to be accompanied by explicatory narrative, narrative I'm at this point unable to supply with muc h éclat. Let's see what we have: The USATF-PAC team I've joined through my running club. As part of my earlier-expressed desire to run more and specifically to run more with other people, I participated in the Zippy 5K in Golden Gate Park last month. It was great to be with the newly formed team and great to race with more than my personal interests in mind. The Team The Start of the Men's Race Then I have some photos from various solo runs I've done....