The Day Before


Here's a photo I took last week of the sky in San Francisco. I'm posting it today partly to illustrate the kind of lovely skies we've been seeing this month because of all the storms--a more normal cloudy Bay Area sky is slate gray and unbroken. I'm also posting it because it's all I have right now. No images from last-minute runs, because there have been no last-minute runs, unless you want to count 1.5 miles last Tuesday on the elliptical machine. (I'm counting it. I'll take what I can get.)

There have been no runs because I've been trying to rest. I have a cold. The time I haven't been resting has been taken up with praying. Praying it's not really a cold, praying it will go away, praying for a message from the universe saying, "Yes! You should run! You'll run a PR!" The universe has been discouragingly silent.

It has been hard to read recent emails from members of the LMJS marathon training group who are having to drop out of tomorrow's Oakland Running Festival half marathon or marathon. I know how that long training road leading up to race day can be both tedious and exhilarating--and I know how gratifying it can be to reach the starting line knowing you're in the best possible shape for the ordeal at hand.

But I don't know how to accept that I've traveled that long training road and still may fail. My decision at this moment, which may be different at some other moment not far off, is to run this thing and damn the torpedoes. I know I have the miles in my legs and the fire in my heart--but I also know that geez, my nose is running like a faucet. As they say (and they say a lot of things, don't they), we make plans and the gods laugh.

I'm off to the race expo to pick up my bib and maybe to whine a bit to fellow runners. Everyone who's trained for the Oakland Running Festival is a hero in my book, those who don't run, those who do, those who start but can't finish, those who do finish but turn in less than their best performance, and even those dratted runners who run a personal best.

Thanks especially to Merrilee, who hasn't been afraid to share her experience and by doing so inspire me to share mine. I don't know whether LMJS still puts the phrase "A Community of Runners" on its website these days, but at least for me, it's a phrase that describes a reality. Here's to a great race for our community.

Final thought: If your feet smell and your nose runs, you're built upside down. Sorry--I couldn't resist. Keep on smiling, y'all.

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