Running Commentary

Here's where I am. Slowly learning to love my new city. Long time no blog. Welcome back, all three of you! Where I am running-wise is injured and very cranky. This is no new condition for me. After averaging between 600 and 1,000 miles per year for decades, on this day, if I can get in 4 more miles, I'll finally have run 200 miles in 2018. Boo hoo. But today's post is not all whine and jeeze. It's kind of a giggly day because I get to say "fartlek." Hee hee. Anyway, this morning, I had the fartlek eureka moment. I finally went to a sports medicine M.D. a couple of days ago, and she showed me my recent MRI. Scary to see my glute tendon as a stark white bulge between some big muscles--yup, tendonitis.  The nice thing about sports docs is that they hardly ever tell you it's essential that you stop running immediately, but ONLY for 6 months. This doc, who is a joy, prescribed some therapy she thinks will help, and also told me not to stop run-walki...

I call this image "Circle Shadow." The blob in the lower left corner is the shadow of my running shoe, which I had set on the edge of the glass table outside, on the patio. I snapped this not because it looked like a deep and insightful metaphor--I snapped this merely because it caught my eye. I liked it; here it is. For those of you who were paying attention for a brief period yesterday evening, you my have seen a "Day 15" in this space at that time. I can't guarantee you're not crazy, but at least you're not crazy if you think that this is not the "Day 15" you saw here. That post was an attempt to humanize myself--to "out" my flawed self, if you will. (As if I don't do that every time I post.) I had found a book of poems I wrote when I was going through my divorce in the late 70's. It wasn't a good poem, actually, but it resonated with me because it took me right back to those days of visceral trauma. I was get...

Summer feels like it's already a-comin' in. Even though I recently accepted a freelance project (work!), the warm days and blue skies have me feeling like I'm retired enough that I can stretch lazily and then plunk myself into a patio chair and enjoy the absence of cold. One activity I've been working at for months--years--is the cussed puzzle known as Sudoku. Ta-da!  This morning I finished the first 3-star puzzle I've ever done without either quitting in the middle or peeking at the solution. My brain feels so agile that I now believe I'm safe from ever succumbing to Alzheimer's. I know, dream on. Note to Pierre: It seems we've lost touch since our days at the ad agency, but if you ever see this, please know that you are the one that inspired me to persevere in this thankless pastime. It's been and still is a long road; I won't feel I can happily quit until I do a flawless 5-star. Moving right along here--. May is the time when little kids ...

Lucky day thirteen, even though it should be day fifteen. Better a late day than no day, right? This has also been a busy day. Wasted almost an hour of it with a First-World Problem: One of the main drags in West Sac has a live railroad crossing mere yards from an Interstate on/off ramp. Traffic in this area gets brisk around 4 p.m., so naturally (?) I thought 4:30 would be a good time to go out and back in a quick trip to the post office. Why yes, at the train crossing there was one slow caravan of evil-looking black tank cars holding things up when I when I went, and another evil-looking one going the other way and holding things up when I came back. For today I'm taking a holiday from any substantive thinking. No, my observations about evil-looking tank cars do not constitute substantive thinking. Thank you.  I am offering instead some random photos from about a year ago. (Sometimes I think the only reason I blog is that it gives me a chance to pore over my million phot...

Okay, okay. So this should be Day 13. I missed yesterday--so sue me. I have no credible excuse.  All I can do today, because yesterday ain't coming back, is to face forward. Besides: Hooray, hooray! It's the first of May! I was a slug yesterday, but not today. This morning I ran / walked over to the gym to meet with my fabulous trainer, Jim. One thing (although not the only thing) that makes Jim fabulous is that he is a strong, agile eighty-year-old. He's a compact, wiry guy who is stronger than you'd ever believe. Trust me, he could bench press Arnold Schwarzenegger  with ease if he were so inclined (and if Arnold would let him). I had a good session--a nice mix of core, balance, and upper-body stuff .  Afterward, I walked down the hall and into the spin-bike room. It was blessedly dim and quiet--not a single meaty gym rat to be seen. I spun for five minutes, just to see how it felt because the last hour-long spin class I did left me with a slightly gim...

I recall posting a photo on FB recently of sunlight coming through the window and striking the counter in my kitchen. Below it I wrote, "I love light!" When I was in aht school studying photography for an advanced aht degree, instructors, who knew more about the meaning of aht than I did, told me that images of light striking a thing or a place may be attention-getting, but in reality have very little  meaning. No value. No lesson to teach the viewer. For a while I went along with them, thinking yeah, well, light is only light, and so what. But more than 25 years removed from those well-meaning aht  gurus, I've changed my mind. I know I said in this space a few days ago that life is running and running is life. I still believe it. But in concurrence with that conviction is my belief that light is life and life is light. What is the worst torture one human can inflict on another (or in some cases inflict on a helpless animal)? Depriving that being of light. Throwi...

Home means Nevada, Home means the hills, Home means the sage and the pine; Out where the Truckee silvery rills, Out where the sun always shines; There is the land that I love the best, Fairer than all I can see... Right in the heart of the golden west, Home means Nevada to me. [It's true.]

Red alert--sandperson is inbound here on Coffeeberry Road. All I have to offer this late in the day is this heartwarming photo of how appreciative Mo is of the new bed I bought him so he could be comfortably near me when I'm at my desk. Oh yes, one more thing--I did make it out early today to run-walk. I felt okay, but while my left quad did't actively bark, it gave a prolonged low growl. G'night. Sweet dreams to you! Ps. Okay, no more cat pictures, at least for a few days. Meow.

His royal highness Danny Mo, geriatric cat extrordinare.  King of our house and of our hearts. You didn't really think I'd blog for seven days straight without mentioning Danny Mo, did you? Talk about someone who perseveres into old age! He's not just my kitty; he's my hero.  Took him to the vet today, and she says he's holding his own. He even RUNS now and then. Up and down stairs! The vet's best guesstimate is that he's between 16 and 18 years old--or between the human ages of 80 and 88 (see table at left). Hope your day is as good as his!

Because I'm a fan of most kinds of locomotion, even locomotion at 30,000 feet above the earth, and because selfies are in vogue, here I present for your entertainment my own trendy selfie. You may not be able to pick me out in the above selfie, but take my word for it--that's me moving in a forward direction as I make my way back from SoCal last Sunday. I'm the one in seat 8-6. See? Today's entry is a short one. Was out and about all day. The only part of the day that seems relevant to this blog is the part about going to my monthly visit to Kaiser PT. Khris, my PT guy, has been tolerant of my rehab lapses and running misdeeds, and supportive of my slow recovery, ever since I first met with him last June. (Yes, I've been fighting left hip-butt-leg pain since then. Do you wonder when I rejoice at run-walking four miles?) This morning Khris took me into the PT gym and assessed my progress in strengthening the offending muscles. He's been especially a...

What? You ask if this is still a running blog? The answer is yes, it is. There are people who say baseball is life. Although I love baseball (Go A's!!), I don't think it's unstructured enough to be a doppelganger of life.  I think it much more likely that running is life, and life is running. Both require forward movement--try running or living backward full time and see how that works for you. Both happen in all kinds of weather. Both entail setting goals and then hitting or missing them, but continuing regardless. Both can go on for as long as there's breath in the body, although as the body ages the moving forward gets more difficult. But the motivated don't give in until running and living are both irrefutably over. This rumination is just a lead-up to my insisting that even when I don't blog in this space about running, still usually in some metaphorical way, I do blog about running. Take today. I'm excited about doing a short work-out on the g...

Above: Me in the barre room at the gym, holding my ever-present phone and continuing the ongoing electronic chronicle that seems at times to be my only life. It's confusing. I'm standing next to the sink in the bathroom, brushing my hair. My phone pings. It's a text from my daughter-in-law: a lovely picture of my one-year old granddaughter. The phone pings again. It's my nephew, who tells me that he and his wife just got into town. Another ping--my daughter-in-law's sister has replied to the photo of my granddaughter by posting her own picture--it's her adorable daughter. While I'm replying to the photo-texts, as I scroll through my text file I see a draft I typed last week to send to my niece, who is in Pennsylvania. I send it to her now, explaining that I forgot to send it after I wrote it. Another ping--my nephew is in the doctor's office now for the meeting that brought him to town. Ping--my daughter's mother weighs in on the adorablenes...

It's a SoCal kind of day. Also, a Cal kind of day! Just hanging out on a warm morning, waiting to walk over to the Little League field for a rip-roaring T-ball game. We've already walked over to the field once--a short trip so our young athlete could participate in photo day. Watching the adults try to get this particular slice of American youth organized brought to my mind the expression, "It's like herding cats." They are all so young; each one beautiful in his or her own way. I'm not a huge fan of getting old, but the anxiety that it sometimes causes is mercifully mitigated by seeing a green-grass field covered in healthy youngsters. Thus goes Day 4.

This is really the fourth day of my 21-day blog adventure, but I'm calling it Day 3 because I really want to make 21 posts. It won't be ideal if my 21 days actually take 30 days to complete, but still that seems better than the prospect of writing on only 10 days out of 21 and still calling it 21.  No cheating, self!  If there's an excuse I might make for yesterday's lapse, the one I choose is that I was in transit. One cancelled flight plus one delayed flight equals a lot of time on my hands. That's my gate, below--a plane did eventually make its way to Gate C21. At the time I took this picture I wasn't making the connection between my commitment to 21 days my gate number 21. So why didn't I notice the reminder sent to me in the form of an airport gate number? Because I chose to feel like a lot of time on my hands meant I could make significant progress on reading A Thousand Splendid Suns.  This book is the May selection for the WSBC, aka the West Sac...

Please remind me why I thought this 21-day thing was a good idea. I don't remember taking any mind-altering drugs, so it must have seemed like a fine idea to the stone-cold sober me. Go figure. Today: I walked / jogged over to the gym. I took a half-hour "Core & Stretch" class and then went into the weight room and got on the stationary rower for five minutes. I fooled around on a treadmill for a bit before I cried uncle (or maybe aunt) and headed for home. On my walk back to Coffeeberry Road I stopped in my tracks at the pond--itty bitty ducklings! I didn't see their mama and spent the rest of my walk worrying that these babies might not survive if ma or pa didn't show up soon. Nature, red in tooth and claw. There ya go -- Day 2. Now that wasn't so hard, was it? Keep on breathing --

The first race I ever ran was a 2-mile fun run that came before the 10K. I was shocked when I learned that I'd won, but despite my amazement, I started to think I might be destined to become a running super star! Ah, the dreams of youth. Went for a fairly jolly run / walk this morning, reveling in the springtime sounds, sights, and smells along the Clarksburg Branch Trail here in West Sacramento. The birds. The trees in their newly donned greenery. The freshness of the rain-washed air!  As I moved happily along, I was thinking as I often do that gee, I ought to get out more regularly. I was wishing I was better at keeping a schedule than I usually am these day. I thought about the two separate times in the past when I made a commitment in this space to blog every day for 21 days--and followed through on that commitment.  What a good idea, I thought. Too often I neglect to use my ABILITY because there's no one outside of myself to hold me to ACCOUNT. What the heck. I...

Random photo of the blogster many years after March 22, 1978  Today is March 22, 2018. I'm flashing back to March 22, 1978--some forty years ago. The scene: I'm living in Key West on Rose Street with my husband-at-the-time and our two sons. It is a warm and muggy day, one of many such days for those who live in Key West. My husband-at-the-time is at work.  Both boys, the older, who is seven years old and the younger, who is not quite four, are taking a nap. I peek into the back bedroom and see them sleeping, sweating  peacefully, wearing just their shorts and sprawling on top of the covers.  I've been padding around the house barefoot on the speckled terrazzo floor, which is still fairly cool. I decide to go outside--maybe I'll turn the hose on and water the parched miniature palm by the front gate. My new red sneakers are on the rattan couch, so I grab some socks and sit to put the shoes on. I pick up the left one, admiring its color and the snazzy whit...

Note: Today is January 2, 2018. I actually wrote most of this post last November. I abandoned it in the middle and got on with my day. So here it is--better late than never. Here's hoping I can write again sometime soon. Some fans of my blog waiting for me to run again and write again  Well, I'm more or less back. To my readers (all three of you) who've been wondering why my blog has stopped, I'm here to tell you it was stopped because I was stopped.  This short post is to let you know my blog is back, and that I am back. I have been on the DL since the first week of June. If you're not a runner, hearing about the pain and weakness in my whole left hip/leg chain will bore you into a coma. If you are a runner, hearing about the pain and weakness in my whole left hip/chain will bore you too--mainly because, as a runner, you have either heard all about it before or else you have already experienced every running injury ever known to humans. So I won...