Running Commentary

This post, unlike my last one, is not a whine and jeez session about other people. This one's about me and what's been going on in my life and my running life (often I find the two feel pretty much the same). I am in an unsettled period right now. I feel a strong urge to spend a lot of time alone--I described it to Z as "me time"--and yet when I get it I am lethargic and scattered. I am in a struggle with aging. Not very original, but for me it is neither a familiar nor a comfortable state. I'm proud to be reasonably fit and want to stay that way, so I long to do the extended runs and lengthy races that I have always loved. But I have all sorts of hip / glute / flexor issues that give me literal pause when I try to train long. Still, I get out there and run / walk when I can. Saturday I was truly psyched to do a run on the Bay Bridge on Sunday. It is one of my favorite places to run, plus I had been feeling pretty strong all week. Sunday morning I awoke ea...

Some oxygen seekers at the ISU track I ran on the street-side path inside the cemetery fence. It was the time of day for the sprinklers to run, and run they did, shooting high plumes of silver water into the dawn-fresh air. I turned right—if memory served me there was a gate in the cemetery fence at the very back of the expanse. I ran up between the rows of dead people, some of them recently deceased and some long gone. I considered the concept of disrespecting the dead. I guess you believe in it more strongly if you are a fan of the afterlife—if you’re not, it probably seems unreasonable to you that the dead could like or dislike any kind of behavior at all. Be the truth as it may, and certainly I can’t tell you what it is, I couldn’t help pondering whether running up and down between the rows of tombstones and markers, dressed in spandex and a red shirt of the finest wicking material, could be considered disrespectful. I turned left on another dirt path between the...