Running Commentary

In the Classroom, Actual and Metaphorical

2012-01-17T16:18:00.000-08:00

I spent Saturday and Sunday at a Level 1 coaching clinic sponsored by the USATF. Not all of it pertained to running per se, but despite that, 99 percent of it was still quite interesting. The presenters were articulate, learned, and funny—who could ask for more. No offense to the very fine RRCA, but this weekend’s course was by far the better of the two coaching clinics I’ve ever attended.

It was just as well that I was confined to a chair for two days—kept me from weeping with frustration over my re-injured piriformis (a.k.a. my butt). I’m afraid I whined too much to the three other women from my club who were taking the course. So much that today I feel whined out. What’s really shutting me up is an article I was just reading about the 2012 Houston Marathon trials. I hadn't known that the 2012 men’s trial winner, Meb Keflezighi, was only able to place eighth in the 2007 Olympic Trials—small matter of running on a fractured hip. And by the way, last Saturday he won by running a marathon PR.

My hip isn’t even broken! But, man, it is sore. Walking my usual mile from the SF bus terminal into work this morning was a halting affair. Oddly, however, I’m not freaked out. At least for today I am willing to take things one day at a time—even one step at a time, to coin a phrase—and have faith that my recovery will take the form it needs to take. (This is my lesson of the week, courtesy of life, a.k.a. the metaphorical classroom.) I’m even entertaining the possibility that I won’t be able to run long again anytime soon. And, being 65 years old, I’m accepting the outside possibility that I won’t be able to run long ever again.

But I’m stretching and strengthening and cross-training (very cross, some days), and not abandoning hope. I feel blessed to be in good physical shape and in excellent health, and believe that the nature of my running life, whatever it turns out to be, won’t ultimately affect those two conditions. Stay tuned.

Uh-oh

2012-01-12T15:32:00.000-08:00

It was a dark and stormy night. Ok, it wasn’t stormy. In fact, it wasn’t even night—it was 5 am. But it was dark, for darn sure. Except for the almost-full moon, which lit my pathway to misery. Misery because that morning, Tuesday, I went out for a run and ended up re-injuring my piriformis.

At least this time I know what it is and I know how to treat it. I’ve already seen Dr. Jess, who told me to revert to running 4 slow minutes and then walking for 1 minute. I’ll do that, but not until I’ve spent a couple more days not running. Yesterday and today I went to the gym for some bike / rower / elliptical cardio and supplemented that with some strengthening exercises and some targeted stretches.

Things may work out. Because this weekend and next I am unavailable to perform my duties as a pace group leader for the Oakland Running Festival Half Marathon training group, I won’t be called upon to do a long-ish run for another 2½ weeks.

Fate was unkind enough to injure me again, but fate has also been kind enough to give me some free down time in order to heal. Oh all right, fate didn’t injure me—I did that on my own. But maybe fate made the timing of my injury as good as any injury timing can be. For that, I’m grateful.

It's a New Year

2012-01-03T15:50:00.000-08:00

I am just feeling blessed. I'm easing back in to running and it is feeling good. I'm still doing a few walk breaks, but for the most part am chugging along steadily since my last post, where I talked about running the Dam 5K Dash with the beginning running class.

When I'm running with a group, I say to myself, "running with a group is the best way ever!" But then a couple of days later I wake up before dawn and head out to the chilly streets. Before long I'm saying to myself, "running this way, alone and free while the rest of the world is asleep and the day just being born, is the best way ever!"

I'm so thankful I don't have to choose only one way or the other. This past Saturday I ran with the group my running club is sponsoring for runners training for the Oakland Running Festival Half Marathon. I am a pace group leader for the slightly velocity-challenged folks, among whom I definitely number myself. We did about six miles at Bay Farm Island on a run that started in close-to-freezing weather and finished in crisp winter sunlight. We were all filled with purpose and determined to face the six-mile challenge and succeed. Which we did!

Then Monday, the official New Year's Day holiday, I awoke around 5:30 am and suited up in double pants, double shirts, and gloves. (It amazes me how often just putting on my running duds lifts me out of any reluctance I might have about heading out the door.) I ran the 1.6 miles from the house to the Hopkins track, the scene of so many challenging runs in my younger days that I used to call it the Crucible, and tested my healing glutes with a few speedy 100s. I was circumspect--ginger, even--doing these intervals, and they went well.

By the time I was on the way home, I was pretty happy. And even though it was January 2, I found especially celebratory the holiday lights that were still up around the 'hood.

I even forgot my resolution to stop trying to take pictures in the dark. I figure my life is my party, and I'll photograph if I want to. (It goes without saying that also I'll cry if I want to, cry if I want to....but not today.)

I'm a Runner

2011-12-19T17:09:00.000-08:00

The final page in Runner’s World magazine is a feature titled “I’m a Runner,” which spotlights famous people and tells about the running side of their lives. Well, today I am a famous person (if only in my mind) and feeling like I can once again say, “I’m a Runner.”

Saturday I did the Jingle Bell Dash in my role as a coach with my running club’s beginning class.

The temperature at the San Pablo Dam Reservoir, site of the Dash, was 34 degrees when I arrived around 8 am. Brrrr. Cold but crisp and beautiful.

I was able to complete the 5K (3.1 miles) without pain—even ran farther than that because I was jogging back and forth among the students. Marco, Cheryl, Marcia, and Mary Ann (see r.) collected some hardware for their great performances in the Dash.

Santa was on hand. Oh, come on. Why not?

Then today! Remember at the beginning of my injury saga how I mourned the mobility I had taken for granted BP (Before Piriformis)? I posted a picture of the UC business school building as a distance marker I could no longer even dream of reaching.

This Morning, it wasn’t the business school, but at least it was Oxford St. and the UC campus.

I did four miles, starting with a walk-one-minute-jog-four-minutes routine. Because I was reasonably pain free, I jogged the entire last .75 mile.

At this, the darkest time of year, it’s fun to feel a little light seeping back into my running life.

Star of Wonder, Star of Light

2011-12-15T16:11:00.000-08:00

Winter is a dark time, no doubt about it. Which, oddly enough, makes it a time of light. These days I am back to running before dawn (jog/walking, really), and the salient feature of running through dark streets is the brightness of the lights. Surely the dead of December is what inspired the pagans (there's a prejudicial word for you) to celebrate with ceremonies of light.

The air has been so crisp and clear. I've been tempted lately to try to photograph seasonal lights--a bad idea when I'm armed only with a camera phone.

Monday early, after completing a fairly pain-free four miles, as I stretched at my favorite stone wall I was lucky to notice I was myself being noticed. Winter, a time for starry skies and inky black cats.

Also a time for the city to get dolled up in lights. For the first time in a long time, I feel a bit of Christmas spirit animating my outlook. Sleigh bells ring--am I listening?

I'll try to listen Saturday at the Jingle Bell Dash 5K. I'm running it with students in my club's beginning running class, and I can't wait. Brisk weather, jingle bells, budding new runners. Who could ask for more?

Occupying My Running Shoes

2011-11-13T15:01:00.000-08:00

So I did run this morning. I'm still interspersing some 1-minute walk breaks in between 3- or 4-minute stretches of running, but the overall effect is that I'm in constant motion--a good thing.

I left the house around 6:20 am--purposely late enough that the sky would be light early on in the run. I headed east up the (gradual) hill and made a left at Milvia, heading north. It occurred to me that I could check out the Occupy Berkeley encampment, so I went left on Allston Way, and there it was. Not a lively bunch at that time of day. I find the Occupy movement a complicated subject, a subject I can't express my feelings about in a sound-bite-length sentence.

I am in favor of what Thoreau described as civil disobedience. In his essay of the same name he wrote, "The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual." It seems to me that respect from this country's establishment for the individual rights of honest, hard-working people is what those identifying themselves as the 99% are seeking. I support all who dare to stand up and call attention to themselves when the establishment, which both the law and common decency call upon to act with integrity, fails to act in a way that advances the collective good.

However, I'm not in favor of "disobedience" without the "civil." I'm not in favor of people who demonstrate their rights by trampling on the rights of others, people who break windows and destroy property and inflame those around them by the violence of their childish tantrums. So that's where I stand: in favor of occupying and also not so much in favor of occupying.

I left the encampment to its Sunday slumbers and loped on down the (gradual) hill. I had it in my mind to do 4 miles today, and I was only slightly over 2 at this point. It meant I could swing north again and check out progress on the extension-in-progress of my favorite little Berkeley trail, which follows the Santa Fe right of way but is currently developed over only three blocks. Imagine my joy when I saw signs that another two blocks will soon be developed, to the north of the existing three.

Also imagine my joy as my Garmin showed me I was going to make my 4 miles--and I was feeling a little fatigue in my injured parts (also known as my butt) but no actual sharp or scary pain. Four miles is not a long distance, but for someone who was having trouble even walking pain-free just a month ago, 4 miles is a gloriously long way.

I love the little map I can download from my Garmin after a run. It's the kind of map a bright first grader using CAD might draw.

Stealth Athlete

2011-11-12T18:43:00.000-08:00

Surprised today to note that it's been well over a month since I was injured. At any rate, I'm happy to report that I'm definitely on the mend. I've been feeling a lot better in the last two weeks but have kept fairly quiet about it--don't want to awaken the running gods and have them notice that I'm on my way back.

In the course of this injury I've 1) missed more than two full weeks of running, 2) spent 5 days immobilized with either food poisoning or the flu, 3) learned to "swog" (swim-jog), 4) spent way too much time on the stationery bike that I set up in my kitchen, 5) rowed thousands of meters on Concept Rower river, the tributary to nowhere, and 6) ridden my bike on nearby streets and trails a lot more than I would ever let on to my excellent and earnest MD.

The ingenious stationery bike stand, holding my trusty Univega in the "ready" position. Note the telephone and the TV remote also at the ready.

I read recently that non-weight-bearing cross-training while you're injured might not be the best thing in the world to do. The reason? You keep your cardiovascular system strong, maintaining your stamina, and when you come back to running you take that Cadillac endurance engine you've been revving up every day and try to gun it in your too-recently broken-down Volkswagen bug chassis. In other words, your muscular-skeletal strength is way below the level of your husky cardiovascular system.

This makes sense to me. My solution to this problem as I rejoin the world of left-right locomotion is to stealth run. Look, I tell my body, I'm walking fast and jogging slow. This isn't real running at all!

Last Thursday I had my greatest adventure yet. I logged 3.25 miles before breakfast. I even broke a sweat--something that hasn't happened while I was in actual running clothes since the beginning of October. My hip felt OK. ("Hip" is shorthand for my piriformis and gluteus medius muscles as well as the poor whupped sciatic nerve those two inflamed muscles have been whaling on.) The hip wasn't completely quiet, but every time it barked I slowed to a walk.

I am almost back to where I can worry that a big stretch of the Ohlone Greenway is fenced off for construction and will be until July 2012. In order to worry about it I have to be running far enough to get to it--a distance of 1.5 miles. And I got to it Thursday. A comment on my life that it was a hugely exciting event. So exciting that I'm planning on doing again tomorrow for the "long" run of my week. If it rains I'll probably just be pleased that once again I'm running enough to even worry about inclement weather. Yay!

All I Have to Fear Is...

2011-11-01T15:54:00.000-07:00

...well, you know what it is. Sitting at my desk wondering why I feel so bad right now. I do a body scan. Lump seems to have settled in my chest. I feel some nasty cortisol making its way through my very bones. Hmmm. Just what has got my fight-or-flight hormones in such an uproar?

Of course. I'm going to the track after work tonight for the first time since way before I got injured. I'm nervous to go to the track even when I'm feeling at the top of my game. And now? Even though I have been cross-training (see photo, above, of the tennis club where my friend B. met me early Saturday and generously instructed me on how to water-jog), I feel I'm still weak as a kitten compared to a real runner. Well, hello, kitty. What can you learn from this fear-ball you've swallowed?

I was reading through old blog entries yesterday and was chagrined to note that since the time of my first posts--early 2006, that would be--I've lost close to a minute per mile in my training runs. I can't imagine how slow I might be now that I'm injured. Maybe 5 minutes slower per mile. Sure, I "ran" on the treadmill yesterday, but the ugly truths are 1) I unweighted my hips by holding myself up by grasping the treadmill rails and 2) I was so afraid of doing damage that I took some five minutes to do a quarter-mile. (Some people call that walking. Not me.)

Anyway. I'm afraid that when I take a vigorous step and put my full running weight on my legs that it will be so painful I'll stop immediately. I'm afraid I'll look like a fool. (Never mind look like a fool doing what--I always have that fear, so I can be doing just about anything. Including writing in this blog, and I'm afraid of looking like a fool.) I'm afraid I'll go so slow that I won't actually, technically be moving at all. I'm afraid I'll be pitied. I'm afraid I won't be pitied. And so on.

I've found the best prescription for defeating fear is just to go out there--to the "there" of the moment--and do whatever I can do. So I'll do that today.

Keeping On

2011-10-17T14:16:00.000-07:00

I've been known to say, "If I ever can't run anymore, just shoot me." Well, pal, start searching that cupboard for your gun. My piriformis injury has not noticeably improved in the almost two weeks since it stopped me cold. I am trying everything in the world to heal this thing, and seem to hold on to an irrational hope that it will eventually resolve itself.

In desperation this morning I went to see my M.D. (Up until now I've relied on Dr. Jess plus the advice of experienced running friends--and have made upcoming appointments with Claudia the divine acupuncturist and Chinese medicine doc, as well as with a highly touted PT person.) My doctor, herself an active athlete and all-around beautiful person, said this injury can be slow to heal and that I should continue what I'm doing--and also back off a bit on the bicycling. Water exercising, yes; rowing machine, possibly; upper-body strength training, yes; gentle walking, yes. She didn't mention heavy sighing, but I'm practicing a lot of that, too.

This past weekend I drove up to my home town, the Biggest Little City in the World. (Photo at left was taken in the McDonald's parking lot in Auburn. It stars Casper the car, my bike, and a large caffeinated beverage that kept me alert for driving and also dampened my loud, solitary whining for a few minutes.) The visit was in honor of the first birthday of the third-cutest boy baby ever born, my great-grand nephew, Julian. The first- and second- cutest boy babies were my own two, of course. No, I'm not going to say who was first and who was second.

Moving right along here--Sunday morning I breakfasted in Carson City with my favorite nephew and his bride (see below--even as they try to hide behind their shades, they look great.) After we ate we went on a wonderful, gentle bike ride in the most bracing and salubrious air you'll ever find. Who knew that Cartoon City has a great, smooth bike path that takes the scenic route right by the state prison and the water-treatment plant! (It is actually a lovely path.) Along with the baby boy's birthday bash, the ride with these two was a highlight of my trip.

Today, Monday, my exercise was riding my bike from home to the doctor's--this was before I got the warning about biking--and I am thinking I might go to the gym at the end of the day to scout out some endorphins in the pool or on the rowing machine. After all, today there'll be no rushing home from work to catch the end of a post-season baseball game on TV. We're at the most seven games away from the eternal baseball-less night of the off-season. Another deep sigh. A lot of that going on here.

As I made my way on my bike through traffic this morning, I saw one of those "What are you grateful for?" bumper stickers. It reminded me that my problems, because they're my problems, are huge to me, but also that whining about them is the luxury of someone with no real problems. So excuse me for now--I have some more luxury I need to indulge in. Hope your day is fine, and hope it's injury free.

Quick One

2011-10-11T21:20:00.000-07:00

A brief update before I go to sleep. This morning I went aqua jogging for the first time. A bit weird to have my body submerged in water and at the same time feel sweat forming on my forehead. But it went well. And I think I feel a hair better this evening. I consumed a steady diet of NSAIDs today, and also iced the offending muscle three times. Progress, not perfection is the goal of this recovery effort.

The photos of this day, alas, do not show any wondrous vistas or captivating details of nature spied in the course of a satisfying pre-dawn run. The first one features the view from the bus stop this morning at 6:45, when I waited on the corner for transportation to SF, the swimming pool, and work. This is the time of day I'm used to doing the old left-right-left-right as my body awakens and begins to thrum as I run along. This morning it was the time of day I joined a group of the living dead, also called commuters, in a rattly metal vehicle--which was the only moving thing that did any thrumming.

And the second one is my new best friend, the aqua-jogging vest. What if I told you I almost didn't try it because I'd never done it before and was afraid of looking like a fool in the pool? Afraid with a feeling very similar to the one that seized me yesterday before I went to my first spin class? In both cases I dreaded looking like an ignorant novice, but in both cases I decided I could take being such a creature if only it would help me heal before I went completely stir crazy. And, if you can imagine it, no one paid me much attention at all, either in the spin class or at the pool. I think they were all too busy being afraid of looking like fools. Funny buggers, we humans.

The Numbers Game

2011-10-10T14:40:00.000-07:00

Injury report from Day 9. I'm not proud to say that I've realized a large part of my chagrin at being injured comes from numbers rather than from anything real. Numbers as in mileage.

Perusing my running/workout log as I recorded my Saturday bike ride brought home to me how attached I am to meeting mileage goals. Never mind that my total for this year is now well above 700 miles, meaning that if I didn't run another step for the rest of the year I would still log the eighth-highest total yearly mileage in my 33-year running career.

That's not the point I go to. I go right to lamenting that I've run 20 miles or more for six weeks straight, and that my high-mileage streak just ended. I realize this, and then -- forehead-slap with palm -- I also realize why I am injured. Can I spell o-v-e-r-u-s-e? Not running a seventh 20+ mile week in a row is undoubtedly the best thing I've done for myself in a while.

In other news: Here's a link to exactly what I have run myself into: Piriformis Syndrome. (Love the illustrations, but not the syndrome.)

I met with my running friend L. yesterday, and her encouragement was wonderful tonic for what ails me. She said when she suffered a similar injury a few years ago, taking spin classes helped keep her fit and saved her sanity. So today at lunch I went to my overpriced gym and did 25 minutes of a 45-minute spin class (didn't want to start out too aggressively). The result was a nice endorphin hit, and no discernible pain in the butt (which is where the piriformis is, as you know if you followed the link above).

Assessment for today:

I'm off the mileage train
I'm all over the bike
my pain level remains about the same, and
I'm hopeful that the future holds healing for me.

Be There Then

2011-10-08T10:54:00.000-07:00

A tip of the bike helmet to Ram Dass, who reminded us many years ago to Be Here Now. No offense to him, but it seems pretty easy to be here now, at least right Now. I'm at my computer. Bright sunshine is pouring through the windows. The iced tea I just made is cool and sweet in my glass--the one emblazoned with "Reno High School" lettered in an arc over a mighty fierce-looking husky head. I have an ice pack on my piriformis muscle. I can hear a weed whacker going somewhere in the neighborhood. Danny Mo, the world's best cat, is asleep nearby, on top of his favorite cardboard box.

That's my Now. Harder for me than being here now is being There Then--"Then" being the past or the future. Which means I'm assessing how engaged I was when "back Then" was Now and also forecasting how engaged I'll be when I get to the future and it changes over from being Then to being Now.

Case in point is the bike ride I just took along the Bay Trail. In the image above you get a glimpse of what the world treated me to--the Bay still as a lake, the smells and sounds of a quiet Saturday morning enveloping me via the fresh breeze. When the Now was Then, I was There. (Stay with me Here. Now.) But I was also not There--I was in the future extended and wonderful bike rides I was envisioning; I was in the long runs I recently did on this trail but can no longer do; I was in the old folks' home of my future; I was in the Key West of my past, some 33 years ago, in the Then of when I first started running.

So I started chanting to myself, Be Here Now. As I chanted, I dissected that sentence. It's phrased in the imperative, meaning that the subject, "you," is implied but not written. (Pondered whether when I'm talking to myself the subject might be "me," but that was confusing because me is the first-person objective pronoun, not the subjective. Decided to leave that grammatical conundrum and stick to the point. And hoped I remembered the point.) The verb is "Be," which is a reminder that collectively we're known as Human Beings, not Human Doings, so we need to breathe the very air that's around us right this very minute. "Here" is an adverb meaning, well, right here, in this one and only place. And "Now" is a second adverb, thrown in to remind us not to injure ourselves by trying to split our brains between the present and the past and/or the future.

About now you may have decided this would be a good time to see if there's any football on TV. I think if I liked football even a little I might decide the same thing. Now if there were baseball--but no. I got myself into this post, so I'm obligated to get myself out, and get you out too.

"Be There Then," then, for me is a reminder to reign in my consciousness and actually focus on the here and now. To acknowledge and dismiss those fantasies that have me turning some temporary bike-riding cross training into a serious athletic career, or that have me harking back to two weeks ago when I was able to run 10 miles from flat Berkeley to hilly Berkeley and back before breakfast and come home not even breathing hard. No. Those two places, and others like them, are the "Then." When they are the "Now" is the time to suck them dry for every pleasure and pain they might offer.

When I was looking out over the Bay was the time to give thanks for my of-the-moment (mostly) fit and healthy body and its ability to appreciate the beauty of just being alive.

I gave it a try Then. And writing this serves me as a reminder to try it as often as I can. My tea glass is empty and my post is about finished. The ice pack on my butt has lost its bite. I just gave a contented sigh. And that's where I am Now.

Try-Athlete (Injury Report on Day 5)

2011-10-06T14:51:00.000-07:00

Here's a scene-setter -- a rainy day in my world (click to enlarge).

Today I'm not an actual athlete but a trying-to-be athlete. My last post in this space made reference to a run that took me above the Cal campus; little did I know that was my last healthy run before I officially joined the ranks of the injured. The second half of that run was straight downhill -- and that on top of a cross-country race that also featured some staggering downhills, hills that sucked runners downward with the inexorable force of normal gravity seemingly doubled.

Following these perilously slanted adventures, I went out for a 10-miler last Sunday (the day that is now known as Day 1). From the start my right hip (my "good" hip) was strangely sore. I ran-walked a bit, I stretched periodically, but--did I turn around and go home? No. I ran the 10, and limped home muttering something like, "mumble, mumble...a bit sore in the butt."

Monday (Day 2), I was still limping. Tuesday (aka Day 3), I went out for a test three-miler -- got an F on that test. Tuesday night I went to see Dr. Jess. Turned out she was out of town, but her colleagues breaded and battered my glute and my piriformis, the culprits in this sad tale. Then came Wednesday (Day 4). Went swimming to see if that test would yield better results than the running test. Oh great: another F.

So today is Day 5. I am positively limping. I went to the gym for a tri-try, which is to say that I tried three different activities to see which one might get me through this inevitable running downtime ahead. First was a half mile on the elliptical. (It was a no-go -- insert sad trombone here.) Next was the Concept 2 rowing machine--only 1,000 meters allowed. (Insert smiley face here--no pain!) Third, I tried the spinning bicycle. (Another smiley face! Spun for only 7 minutes, but worked up a slight glow and felt no pain.)

I'm going to row and spin as much as I can, then, and not run. This means not do the Primo's half marathon Sunday (I'm viewing my entry fee as a donation to the schools, which it in fact is, so that part's OK.) (Do you think there are too many parentheses in this post? Me too.)

I'm stopping at Walgreen's after work to buy a cane and I promise from this day forward -- at least through tomorrow -- to keep full weight off the injured part as much as possible. And I promise to try and be good. And to tri, or at least duo, by rowing and spinning.

Off the Top of My Head

2011-10-02T14:07:00.000-07:00

Or should I say, poured out from the top of my head. I have this mental image of slicing off the top of my cabesa, like I'd do to a pumpkin, and then tilting the newly opened bowl and spilling a few of my chaotic thoughts onto the page.

First would come musings about the shortening of the days and the advent of autumn. In the Bay Area we mostly get some scraggly leaves scuttling along the sidewalks, and some corresponding moulting branches overhead. No spectacular fall foliage to be seen here, so move along, please.

Then I'd shake out a few words about how it feels to do a lot of my running in the pre-dawn dark these days. I'm training for my tenth and final marathon, CIM, which means I'm racking up as many miles as I can before I just run screaming out of the house. Although, come to think of it, the screaming part of that could be upsetting, but the running part might help boost my weekly mileage.

Anyway. I was up early one day last week, putting the shoe rubber to the road before I was even awake. When I came to I was doing some crunches in front of the Haas Business School at Cal. Getting up there, and then to Northside and beyond, seemed fine in my sleep-addled state but not quite so fine the rest of the day as I yawned my way through the deathless advertising prose that I love looking at. And in these times of economic uncertainty, I certainly don't under-appreciate that same deathless prose.

Finally, I'd spill out some lines describing the solitude of the El Cerrito High football field on a Sunday morning. My run today took me there--I felt right at home amidst a gaggle of geese, being something of a silly goose myself.

Gritty

2011-09-05T15:58:00.000-07:00

I picture myself deep in the forest, just me, alone with the path, the overarching trees, and maybe a nearby crystal-clear body of water of some kind (the fantasy isn’t always super specific).

Some days, like this past Sunday, I can sustain that illusion for a little while. On that day, which was given over to an 11-miler, even the bench I did crunches on was in the wild—note the exotic jungle cat exiting the frame.

But today—not so bucolic. I needed a little hill work, so I headed for the mean streets of Albany. (All right, this one’s a bit of a fantasy, too. Albany is a web of streets, but few of them are especially mean.)

I made my way up Marin Ave. to the Alameda, then north to the top of Solano Ave., where the asphalt stretched endlessly down the hill before me in the early Labor Day light, and I might have been the last runner left on the planet. The scene called for a theme song -- maybe something Rocky-esque? -- but alas, my inner radio was silent.

I did find an urban bench in a schoolyard to do my crunches on. Gritty, huh.

The Concept of Rest

2011-09-02T17:00:00.000-07:00

I just took a nap. Whoa.

Like many currently alive human beings, I tend to behave as if I’m a human doing rather than a human being (this clever label is not original with me—I thank one of the many Buddhist writings I’ve dipped into over the last ten years for this synonym for a typical contemporary homo sapiens).

The King schoolyard. Photo time-stamped 6:22 am, September 1, 2011.

Yesterday I ran over to the King Middle School track before breakfast and did three Yasso 800s before running home again. I’m working up to ten, but three was all I had time for. I wanted to do some track work and to make my workout fit into my training regimen for this week, which will take me to a 22-mile total and include a long run of 11 miles.

I bring this up not to humble brag (much) but as an indicator of my tendency to take an increasingly demanding running schedule seriously. Problem is, I also take an increasingly ambitious work schedule seriously (job in the city! proofreading a book! copy editing another book! writing a newsletter article!). I'm not saying I'm special—I don't believe I'm at all unusual in having only two settings: on and off. It means I'm like millions of other folks—just always tired and unable to pause long enough to figure out why.

So today, the nap. I worked from home this morning so I could meet with Dr. Jess midday for a hip-pummeling session and then take the afternoon “off”—that is, get some more work done in the latter part of the day.

I once knew a guy who said to me, “You don’t chill well, do you.” Well, no kidding. But today, for a change, I chilled. I'm mighty proud, and even a bit rested.

No Longer a Bright Young Thing

2011-08-30T17:04:00.000-07:00

I’ve wanted to write about turning 65 but find my thoughts are too complicated to slap together. (Confession: I’m enough of a word person that I can usually “slap together” a more or less coherent blog entry in a pretty short time. I think in complete sentences, so all I usually have to do is write them down. Deathless it ain’t, but it gets the job done.)

So here I was on Wilshire Boulevard at 6:20 am the day before my birthday. Will I know how to get to odd places like this when I can no longer make it out the door under my own steam?

And here I was outside Veteran's Hospital, in Westwood. Thinking about how cool this little parcourse is, especially the all-weather elliptical machine. Wishing blessings on our vets and over-the-top success in their rehab.

This is a running blog. So. On the day before my birthday I ran. On my birthday I ran. The day after my birthday I didn’t run and felt so depressed I kept looking in messy drawers to see if somehow I’d left a gun in one that I’d forgotten about. The following day (today) I ran five in the morning, going out before dawn. All day I’ve been a different person than I was yesterday.

Point is, part of my chagrin at turning 65 is that I know the day is coming when my most reliable connection to happiness, that is, running, will not be possible for me. There are a lot of other factors contributing to the chagrin, but the inevitable loss of my running life is the biggest one. Running is more than the old left-right. Running is the badge I wear that proclaims me as a living, functioning being—a viable person with energy and enthusiasm for moving.

I know, I know, I probably have many running years left in me. I invite you to look over the results from any recent race you might want to choose. Look them over carefully and tell me how many 70-year-old women you see. Two? One? NONE? Whereas you’ll find a higher number of 60-to-65-year-olds. It’s that last half decade that gets us, that sees our light dimming to gray and then to dark.

Today I do feel happy, do feel optimistic. But also, I do feel realistic. Man, I hate getting old. So there you go.

Endurance

2011-08-25T16:40:00.000-07:00

Last night after work I headed out for the longest run I’ve taken in a while. I headed north from the Battery Street adlandia office, along the Embarcadero, hopping from side to side as I bobbed and weaved through throngs of tourists and still maintained some of my forward motion. It went well; I didn’t trip, I didn’t wear out—just ran the scenic five miles out to Fort Point and then back.

I’m in a happy period in which running feels relatively easy. And I’ve had plenty of running-related food for thought, which makes the miles go by faster. The food for my running mind is coming from two sources.

First, the Pepper Street gang jumped the birthday gun and bought me a Kindle. The first book I downloaded was To the Edge, an autobiographical account by thirty-something New York Times reporter Kirk Johnson of his experience preparing for and then running Badwater, the 135-mile ultramarathon that takes place every July in one of the hottest places on earth. It’s a riveting tale of obsession and determination, a tale that takes a microscope to the quality Johnson reveres, endurance.

Second, I am copy editing a yet-to-be published book of essays by a sixty-something paraplegic dealing with the challenges he must meet every day. As I was running last evening, it occurred to me that I relate to both these men—the young runner and the aging warrior (for the latter author is a warrior, fighting not only against the limitations of his disability but also the distressing diminishment of vitality that comes with aging).

I relate to them both because they are related to each other—through their intimate knowledge of the nature of endurance. For me, food for thought.

Ob-La-Di

2011-08-21T07:44:00.000-07:00

Yes, life goes on. For as long as I can remember, every day I've awoken and found that to be true. And every day is a possible running day--such a wonderful thing. And on it goes.

Last weekend I was in Key West for the funeral of someone I used to be very close to. A sad, sad day. A day that was partially redeemed by being a running day--albeit a running morning with the temp already at 87 degrees. Picture it!

Then yesterday I ran in Santa Rosa, in a cross-country race with team Ducks (LMJS). I have no photos. Do have a red bite mark on my ankle where a bee stung me as I flew down the hill toward the finish line. Well, it felt like flying to me. Such fun, notwithstanding the late Mr. Bee.

Finally, this morning I did a 4-mile recovery run on my regular Ohlone Greenway route. I wore no Garmin gps, set no chronograph. Just diddled along, enjoying the cool dawn (no 87 degrees here).

On my leisurely run this morning I took a few moments to admire the details of the historical Berkeley mural, which I have whooshed on by on countless occasions. The details are grand.

So much time has gone by since I last posted. So much time. Ob-la-di, ob-la-da. It's a blessing.

There's Always Something to Look At

2011-06-09T15:26:00.000-07:00

Even on a lazy, put-in-the-miles run, it's true that there's always something worth seeing. The early-morning world, before much brain-fog has rolled in, can be a lovely place to lope along in. The devil may be in the details, but the angels sometimes reside there, too.

These Running Days

2011-06-05T08:19:00.000-07:00

Ran by this signpost this morning. Note how not-straight the tiny path on it is. Then think about how many non-curving lines there are in nature. So why do I think I should be able to fly like an arrow?

Have been thinking about the rhythms that characterize all aspects of this living world. Ups and downs, lights and darks, lefts and rights--not much that occurs does its occurring in a straight line. I'm loping along and then, whoops, here's some flowers for you and by the way you can't continue on this road today. Turn right, right now, whether you want to or not.

I'm trying to bump up my mileage and finding that I need to tap into the rhythm inherent in everything in order to get from here (the low-mileage state) to there (the higher-mileage state). So my last six weeks have progressed in this order: high / higher / lower / high / higher / lower, with this past week being a "lower." But "lower" isn't a pejorative term. The pulled-back week included a 10K race and a couple of early morning neighborhood runs that were nourishing to body and spirit. We've had loads of unseasonal rain lately, and beautiful skies have been one bonus gifted to us by the soaking.

Along with working on increasing my mileage, I've been trying to incorporate some Chi Running techniques into my form. My friend L is completing the rigorous process of becoming a Chi Running instructor, and as part of her training she has to do some student teaching. A couple of us were the lucky recipients of her mandatory knowledge-sharing and spent a full morning doing some exercises and learning techniques that may help us run faster and avoid injury. No down side there!

This morning I ran down to the Berkeley bayshore. The forecast had told me it would be raining, but it wasn't. For some reason, this morning's segment of the up-and-down felt toward the down side--legs dead, brain full of cotton--but the magic running fairy lifted me up a bit before I got home.

Still feeling a bit muzzy, really, but haven't slipped so far down the slide that I can't appreciate the gift of this day. Bring on the rain. I know sun won't be far behind. In the meantime, click on the above photo to see the Golden Gate under a glowering dawn.

A Path, a Track, and a Street

2011-05-03T16:10:00.000-07:00

It feels great that for the time being my running has settled into a doable routine of relatively short excursions. I seem to have recovered from the Oakland Marathon, which is now more than a month behind me in the rear-view mirror.

Last Saturday I joined the gang at the Little Farm in Tilden Park for a bit of rolling-hill fun. After that run I stayed on to support the runners who are in the LMJS Beginning Running Class. It feels like a wonderful investment of my time and energy. I hope to work more in supporting and training, especially with beginning and / or older runners, now that I am qualified as an RRCA running coach.

Then Tuesday I went for the weekly team track workout, trying out some "speed" for the first time in several months. In this photo you can catch a glimpse of legendary LMJS training organizer and guru Karen, on the left, as she treks around the track. The track workout is at Cal these days, which means that when it's over, I just run home!

And finally, Thursday I got up early and loped on down to the Ohlone Greenway, my long-time and well-worn running path. Dawn broke before many cars or people were around and painted this normally bustling Albany street with gentle spring light, giving it a deserted, Hopperesque air.

This post reminds me of something I sometimes forgot in the course of my training for two marathons in a row: running can be fun!

It Was (Not) 20 Years Ago Today

2011-04-28T16:23:00.000-07:00

...but it was 15 years ago today,
when two runners went out to play,
so they raced around Lake Merritt,
like rabbits after a carrot,
and after that were together to stay!

Which is my way of saying, my sweetie-for-life, Z, and I are now celebrating 15 years of togetherness. Our lives changed that day in 1996, thanks to the LMJS Fourth Sunday Run. Yay LMJS! Yay love!

Road Racing!

2011-04-26T12:12:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, I struggled up out of my running funk and put in some miles just for the fun of it. I was feeling like the little slug to the right, whose portrait I took while trying a post-run stretch on a neighborhood stone wall after a slogging jog. Even now I think I still may have a slight cold, and also, my hip still aches, and my knee's a little wonky, and, and, and--blah, blah, blah. So, I said to myself Saturday morning, just run. And I did!

That day, I ran around Lake Merritt before meeting the LMJS Beginning Running class, where I'm acting as the volunteer encourager this spring. What fun it was, first to run the lake and then to meet with the fabulous Karen, teacher of all good running habits, and the group of just-starting-out and wanting-to-get-back-to-it runners. They showed up on this breezy day, all of them dressed in activewear and running shoes and committed to joining the dance of the old left-right. It was all a feel-good, smashing success.

Then Sunday, although I had waffled so much about whether to do the Zippy 5K that I'd never even registered, I took the example set by the beginning runners' courage and made the trip over to SF with the team. It rained on our carpool as we crossed the Bay Bridge, and it rained some more once we got to Golden Gate Park to warm up for the race. The rain had abated by the time the gun went off, so at least we didn't get much wetter than we already were. For some reason I can't fathom, I felt great the entire way. I remember this race from last year, when I felt that somehow the course must have been mis-measured--it seemed so much longer that 3.1 miles! But this year I was surprised to see the finish line as soon as I did. Everyone wearing the team's signature duck singlet did great. (Click on the image to get the glorious full effect.) And I ran 30 seconds faster than I did a year ago. I can't say I set the world on fire, but do feel as if I lit my own sweet match.

Leading up to the weekend, that is, during week 3 following my marathon melt-down, I had done several runs in an effort to prime my recovery pump. Probably the prettiest was the one that took me to the Lafayette-Moraga Trail with the LMJS training run. Along the way there I stopped mid-run to do some crunches and sissy push-ups. I slunk off the trail to this little hideaway while the rest of the runners thundered by, just yards away.

I also swam a couple of times in the dreamy pool at my wonderful, overpriced gym, which is near where I work. No wonder the minute I saw it I signed on the (expensive) dotted line. Once I retire, I'll be back at the Berkeley municipal pool and splashing around with the rest of the hoi polloi.

One day I went for a walk along the Bay Trail, where the kites were flying high at Berkeley's Cesar Chavez Park. I was grateful then and I'm grateful now for my mobility, even when I'm not as agile or as fast as I'd like to be!

One Fish, Two Fish

2011-04-12T14:54:00.000-07:00

Well, one fish, so far anyway--a fish more red fish than blue fish.

After writing recently about my year as a vegan wannabe, I spent a week being inexplicably fatigued and depressed. I knew enough time had elapsed since my exhausting marathon experience that I needed to return to running. I knew I had to be present for friends in need of solace in the aftermath of losing loved ones. I knew I had to show up for work in fighting form rather than in flighting form. All these imperatives, the kind that I'm used to rising up and meeting, felt overwhelming to me.

Eating a fish seemed like a reasonable remedial action to take, so I took it.

My body, which for the most part has done well during my year-long adventures in foodland, last week seemed ready to glare at the whole living actively thing and just mail it in and return to bed. I felt as if it was telling my inner hunter-gatherer to go find some protein. (Side note: I stopped eating meat in 1988 but continued to eat seafood. This aspect of my history made turning to some piscine protein a natural thing to do.)

The inner moral imperatives that drove me to forgo animal-based food for a year arose mainly out of my desire not to participate in the infliction of pain and suffering on other living creatures or on the earth itself. That said, I recognize that death is a natural part of the food chain, and we humans are all food-chain participants in one way or another. If you believe (and I do) that a terrible life is equally or even more awful than a terrible death, then it's possible to argue that killing a fish is better than killing a chicken, a cow, a pig, or a lamb. My objection to seeing an inexhaustible food source in fish, who seem capable of living pretty well in their watery world, has always been tied more to the alarming degradation of our oceans than to the cruelty of ending fish lives (although I haven't been crazy about that, either). I know that fish farming can be an ecological nightmare, so I searched out and bought a couple of pieces of salmon that were labeled "wild caught."

I swear that when I cook chicken for Z I can sometimes feel the pain and suffering of the animals rising up at me out of the pan--something about the body reactions they must have had to the inhumane treatment they received before they ended up as parts in the meat case. (We know that the unalleviated release of stress hormones by human bodies under duress can cause illness and also cause the sufferers to pass their angst on to others--surely other living creatures can be affected in a similar way.) I didn't feel those sad vibes when I cooked the salmon, although who's to say I wasn't just fooling myself. I don't know how much fish I'll buy and eat in the months to come, but I do feel that at least for now, that door is partially open.

What's indisputable is that I had a fine run early today. Whether it was related to last night's dinner is not a question I can answer. But I did feel good when I awoke, and had a lively time this birdsong-filled morning. Wispy fog drifted overhead but never really took hold (see below).

Sight # 1 from the run: Here's the backside of the mighty and and rather puzzling Berkeley gate I featured in this blog not long ago.

Sight # 2: And here's the Berkeley Montessori School, housed in the old Sante Fe railway station. Looks like budding Berkeley peaceniks have been decorating the window.

I don't want to misrepresent myself in this space, and that's why I'm writing about my fish tale. I feel that I'd rather not eat fish, but if and when I do, I need to 'fess up. Life, death, fish, running. Complicated stuff!

Spring Morning in Berkeley

2011-04-09T09:09:00.000-07:00

Today was the first really normal-feeling run I've had since the marathon, which was two weeks ago tomorrow. I skipped the club fun run in order to head out on my favorite Berkeley streets and paths, knowing on some deep level that to shake any lingering post-event depression I needed to get back to the familiar.

The sun peeked over the hill, painting the swing set with light just as I ran through the playground behind Live Oak school.

This run was no big deal--I decided to do a little hill running and then some fartlek on the flats. So I ran from the house, leaving just after 6 am, and down to the Ohlone Greenway. I cut east and ran up Peralta to Sonoma, from Sonoma on Tulare and over to Marin, up to Colusa, then over to Solano and back to the Greenway, where I did some fast-slow playing around, stopped for some high push-ups (that creaking sound you heard all the way over at your house was my arms attempting to lift my body up!) and a few crunches. Toward the end I ran into Kate and Lu, my running heroes (two of many). Lu is helping Kate prepare for Boston, where I fully expect Kate to sweep her age group, despite her own belief that she'll stink up all of Beantown. The three of us agreed that it was a lovely morning.

Spring means buds bent on becoming flowers push up through the dirt and turn toward the sun in their eagerness to bloom.

That's it! A blessedly normal run, a fine shot of endorphins with a coffee chaser, and life is good. Running today, performing this fairly simple affirmation of my own vitality, I spent some time honoring three of my friends who have passed away in recent weeks. Three strong men, all victims of various illnesses. They all led worthy and energetic lives, and they all died with dignity. May I emulate their fortitude and grace, both while I live and when I die.

This Is the First Lunch...

2011-04-05T13:46:00.000-07:00

...of the rest of your life. I remember when I first heard the saying "Today is the first day of the rest of your life." (Chances are, that was before you were born, kiddo.) It's a hoary cliche now, but at the time it gave me pause. Well, it's still the first day, as is every day, and your next lunch is also the first lunch of the rest of your life. Meaning that every meal could be (should be) an embarcation upon a mindful and healthy course.

Lunch today: herbed potatoes; chard with garlic, onions, and red pepper flakes; soy-cotash (edamame, not lima beans); spinach salad with green apple chunks and honey mustard dressing; carrot and green pepper sticks; half a whole-wheat mini-bagel. Credit Trader Joe's for most of this medley of leftovers. I wish I could say I eat this well every day, but I'm trying to cut down on the lying thing.

Note: I always regard a food-related blog post as a de facto running-related post, in the same way as I feel a post about an injury or about a weather phenomenon is running related. When I run, it always has to do with my environment, my body, and the interaction between the two. And what is more germane to the subject of my body than the food that builds it?

All of this analyzing--of my diet, my health, my body--comes up for me now because it was on April 1, 2010, that I decided to pursue a vegan diet for one year. I say "pursue" because "follow" is too passive a verb to describe what eating animal-free has entailed. (For one thing, it's entailed avoiding entrails and also animal tails--but I digest. I mean digress. Note to self: No more coffee before blogging.)

My plan was to pause and re-assess my diet after the one year. What I realized five days ago is that for me there is no pausing. There is no saying, well, I think I'll eat a few animal products now. I had thought I would mull over the misgivings that would have arisen over the year, re-examining and probably modifying my commitment. But, as they say (there they are again), once you've taken that shirt out of the box, there's no way to re-fold it and put it back in. I can't go back to being the person who knowingly participated in the animal-killing food biz.

I don't call myself a vegan, because I'm not pure enough to adopt that sobriquet. I wear leather shoes. I eat honey. When I find that I've inadvertently started eating something made with butter, generally I go ahead and finish it. I'll confess the worst: I buy range-free chicken for Z and cook it so he can make sandwiches for lunch (seems better than letting him eat processed deli meats). And, as I've said here before, I eat eggs from Flyaway Farm, a chicken collective run by my honorable co-worker. I know she runs a cruelty-free operation--I've met those chickens. But eggs are eggs.

The main questions for me the runner should be, how has my body felt on an almost-animal-product-free diet? How does it feel right now, a week and a half after running a difficult marathon? In answering, I find I have very little that's negative to say. Eating animal-free feels clean and healthy for me, even when I am less than righteous (vegan donuts--yum! Soy ice cream--yay!). I have had only one cold in the past year, have had a ton of energy, have run two marathons and two half-marathons, and feel on this day like I'm mostly recovered from my latest self-induced physical ordeal. I believe I feel more spiritually at peace than I did before my experimental year, now that I can look any cow or chicken in the eye without guilt. (And any pig. Was there ever a more horrifying food name than "pulled pork"? Maybe the Denny's promotion that features "Baconalia"--sounds like, and may be, a terminal disease.)

So the news regarding a year's worth of trying to eat in a cruelty-free way is--ta da!-- that there's no news. My life goes on, and with any luck will continue into the coming year much as it's been for the last 12 months. I'm planning on going for a run tomorrow morning. When I get back I'll whip up my favorite shake--soy protein, brewer's yeast, fresh strawberries, orange juice, plus a jigger-full of soy milk. Cheers!

The Day Of

2011-03-29T16:44:00.000-07:00

Here's a pre-race Melissa O., LMJS member and Oakland Running Festival pacer coordinator extraordinaire. Loved her outfit!

So I ran the Oakland Marathon. From where I sit now, two days out, I'm glad I did. From where I sat yesterday? Not so glad. I'll get this out of the way early here: I ran my worst marathon time ever. I had to run-walk a lot of the way. I'm not proud of my time. But I am proud that I pushed through and finished. My cold did not substantially abate, but I toed the starting line because I'd said I would--and at least my cold hadn't gotten much worse.

The starting line.

In many ways the race was a magical experience. It started with the weather clearing up for the first time in two weeks. It continued when I met my new friend M at the start and was able to run with her a lot of the way. Seeing Oakland (and seeing Oakland and seeing Oakland and seeing Oakland) on foot was a treat.

My friend M, looking strong as she chugs up the first big hill.

The first 10 miles of the course were pretty much uphill. Because the hills came early, they were reasonably easy to scale, although scaling them took its toll later on, I'm pretty sure.

The final hill took us so high that we saw alpine musicians and mountain goats. Oh, bah, that's really a dog.

But running wa-a-a-ay up and then wa-a-a-a-y down was fun. It was also fun (GREAT fun) when I got to Fruitvale and saw a smiling Z waiting to cheer me--the sweetest sight!

Somewhere along this section we passed the halfway point.

Then we were on International Boulevard, which was colorful and festive. But running south from there, I found my energy flagging and my body beginning to protest.

M gives a thumbs-up as she runs beneath the fire.

The run to West Oakland felt long. By the time we passed under the flaming arch at the Crucible, the sun (incredibly!) was out and we felt too warm. Just when my body and my mind were about to start throwing punches at each other (Body: "Stop!" Mind: "No!"), there was Z again, smiling and keeping me smiling.

Toward the south end of Mandela Parkway, I told M to go ahead. She looked strong, and I wanted her to have a great finish. Not long after she took off ahead of me, there was my friend L on the course! She was screaming at me like a happy maniac and boosting my flagging energy. She'd come to cheer on the group she paced during our training and to scrape melted-down runners like me off the pavement and kick us in the direction of the finish.

By the time I got to Lake Merritt I was pretty trashed. A great (but, sadly, unidentifiable by me) runner appeared as from heaven and gave me an unopened bottle of water, which I downed in a flash.

Near the Lake Merritt avian sanctuary I could swear I saw brightly colored birds roosting in a tall column, one on top of the other. Nah, probably not.

Finally I turned left onto Broadway, mere meters from the finish. There again was Z, my sweetie-for-life, urging me on right up to the end.

That's it. No triumphant finish-line photo here--I even forgot to check my time or shut off my watch. I know it ain't over till it's over, but for me, thank the stars, it was definitely over, then and there.

Oakland was my ninth lifetime marathon. At this point I don't know whether there will ever be a tenth. I'm eager to get rested enough to start running again, but not at all eager to think about another 26.2-miler.

The Day Before

2011-03-26T11:30:00.000-07:00

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.

Quick One

2011-03-21T16:21:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when I've done a number of runs without blogging in between them, I'm left with a phone-camera full of photos and nowhere to put them. I'm currently wrestling with my Flickr account to let me in, but I don't think anyone really goes there anyway, so I don't care that much whether I post there.

Anyway. I have done five good runs since the last time I wrote here. One was the marathon training group's final long run before the race, a 20-miler that covered a lot of the marathon course. The two after that took place in Phoenix, when I was there for Spring Training (go A's)--a couple of 4-milers. After that came a 12-miler down by the Berkeley marina, a run in which I did some run-walking and had a surprisingly great time. The final run was this last Saturday. It was an 8-miler with the marathon training group, a careening, sloppy rain-fest that, oddly enough, was enjoyed by all (including me).

Here are some brilliant runners, members of the Oakland Running Festival group, who joined the LMJS Saturday regulars two weeks ago. Here we were near the figurative and literal peak of our rainy 20-miler.

This is a Phoenix canal, seen on one of my two short runs in the desert, looking a little blurry in the low, pre-dawn light.

And from my leisurely 12-miler, here's the San Francisco Bay as it looked from the Berkeley side--like a lake.

And here are a couple more from bayside. That day, my mind was more on seeing than on running. It happens, and when it does, I just let it.

* * * *

The final of my five recent runs, the rainy 8-miler last Saturday, was for me the opposite experience of the bayside run. I was VERY focused on running, it being the last group run before the marathon, which is this coming Sunday. I was so focused, so energized that when we got back to where we'd started, I was shocked to realize I hadn't taken a single photo.

Final thought for this post: Today is the Monday before the big day. I feel as if I'm getting a cold. That makes me laugh--it is guaranteed that a runner coming up on a big race will feel like she's getting sick. All I can do is rest a lot, drink a lot of fluids, remain calm, and scream hysterically if I really do get sick. After all, I'm a rational being.

Thinking About Pain

2011-02-27T13:13:00.000-08:00

Not thinking about pain in the abstract right now, thinking about pain in the lower left quadrant of my body. I just did 13 miles along the Ohlone Greenway, having wimped out yesterday and not done the scheduled 12 with the training group, which went to Walnut Creek. On my run today I was specifically thinking of pain and how I relate it to the wise words of running guru George Sheehan, who said more than once that we are all an experiment of one.

Well for a while today, I was a darned painful experiment. Around mile 2, my left knee hurt. By mile 4 the pain had migrated to my left quad. By mile 5 my left piriformis muscle was on fire. By mile 7 the pain had traveled across my glute and settled in the left bursa, the site of my original injury. By mile 8 I had decided to change my plan to run the Oakland Marathon into a plan to run the Oakland Half Marathon. As soon as I decided this--Yes! That's it! I'll do it!--as if on cue, all the pain left my body. The final 5 miles of the run found me tired, but pretty much pain-free.

This is the first of today's phone photos, which you'll find strategically placed throughout this post to break up the possibly (probably) boring text. They're also here because, hey, what else can I do with them?? It's my blog, anyway. Here, you see how the wildflower garden at the 5-mile mark has been lovin' the rain.

While running that home stretch, In my mind I reviewed versions of pain wisdom I have heard from various sources. Stretch more. Stretch less. Take ibuprofen. Stop all NSAIDs. Get a cortisone shot (this last from a pain book I respect a lot). Rest. Cross-train. Run through it. Take acetaminophen. Run slowly. Lift weights. Do yoga. Get acupuncture. See a massage therapist. A.R.T. is the only way to go.

Past mile 5 the trail goes into Richmond, still running alongside the BART tracks. This is no upscale neighborhood teeming with self-involved, Vibram-shod, Garmin-wearing recreational athletes--and yes, I mean people like me, even though I don't have a pair of Five Fingers--but still I did see a smiling runner or two.

Would it surprise you to hear that I have tried every single one of the above remedies in the course of my long (32 years) running life? Still, I have no fool-proof answer to my current bout with the big P. I'll do what I usually do, which isn't to follow a defined program as much as it's just to keep moving. It consists of running as much as I can, maybe slowly and even doing some running/walking. (Confession: Today I set my watch to beep every six minutes, and when it did, I walked for a count of 40 foot-falls, which took only 20 seconds. It seemed to help.)

I believe I am a typical runner in that I am willing to try almost anything except stopping running. Way back when, probably before you were born, you youngster, you, I felt a sharp pain in my left knee one day as I was running. The year was 1985. I was so discouraged that I decided I must be getting to old to run (I was 39), so I would just stop. I actually did stop, for almost a year. I took up swimming laps four times a week instead. One day, somewhere around the 11-month mark of my imposed aquatic regimen, I pulled myself out of the pool and, ripping off my goggles, screamed "I am so sick of being wet!" The next day I started running again. My left knee has continued to hurt off and on since that time some 25 years ago--heck, it hurt today. I ice it frequently, strengthen the muscles around it when I think of it, and keep on running.

After turning around at mile 6.5, my eye was caught by the cool lines of this bridge. I've confessed to loving the lure of a trail--bridges are also high on my hey-looka-there list.

I have not made a final decision about whether to run the full marathon or the half. I have about four weeks to decide, and at this point truly can't tell you what my decision will be. All I know is that, whatever course I choose to take, it won't involve quitting running. I'm not going to quit until I get old.

And this is where I ended up. Lying on my back on a picnic table at the tot lot near my house, doing a few crunches and gazing up at a robin's-egg sky through a lattice of branches and tender new leaves. When I got home, spring training baseball was on the radio. The A's ace had just given up four runs in the first inning and there was still only one out. I smiled anyway--spring is in the air.

Rainy Run

2011-02-19T15:55:00.000-08:00

Today was slated to be a 20-miler for the marathon training group. I paced some half marathoners and one intrepid full marathoner. I say intrepid because anyone who came out today was intrepid. Overnight the forecast went from a 25 percent chance of rain to the reality of a steady downpour. I only made it 14.25 miles (only), but at the relatively slow pace of my gutsy group that meant being out there for more than three hours.

My hip let me know it's still an issue, but I was able to persevere. I know I am not alone in my aches and pains. At this point in training for a long race, runners with no pain are probably not running enough! Every single person who came out in the rain today is my hero.

In some odd way, for me (and possible for others?) it was even fun. Yes, cold, yes, wet. Bring it on--I'm alive!

We ran on the SF Bay Trail, from Emeryville to Berkeley to Albany to El Cerrito and back. There's only one real hill on the course, so here's the view from its modest summit--which is reached by chugging up the road to the Golden Gate Fields parking lot. The buildings to the left are part of the racetrack complex. The taller buildings, on the far horizon and off to the right, comprise the Emeryville skyline. Our start/finish point is out of the frame, wa-a-ay to the right, past all the buildings, at the Emeryville marina.

And here's the home stretch, about 0.5 mi from the finish. I'm a sucker for photos of paths, if you haven't noticed. Part of my runner self responds strongly to the adventure promised by a curving trail. Even when I already know what I'll find around the bend, I still get excited at the notion of the motion that will take me to whatever that is.

Tomorrow is supposed to be sunny and dry, of course. I'll believe that when I see it!

Omnibus

2011-02-16T11:47:00.000-08:00

Because I'm scheduled to do a long run this weekend and will most likely be brain dead for days afterward, I wanted to do a rather scatter-gun post while I'm still a little better than a typing monkey. A scatter-gun post is one that's lucky if it nails anything other than hot air. Or you could call it an omnibus--a vehicle for anything that wants to jump aboard.

One guaranteed running-related item is that I didn't run at all last weekend. Still, Saturday and Sunday had much to do with running: Along with a number of other LMJS folks, I took a two-day coaching certification class. The food was great! (Oh, yeah, I think I'm supposed to report on the class here.)

The best thing I can say is that I was exposed to a large amount of very useful information about the best ways to train and about how a good coach can impart this information to others. A 100-question test along with certifications in CPR and First Aid stand between me and my coaching certification, but I'm trusting that these are challenges I can address and manage to meet.

The worst thing I can say is that the classroom was very cold, especially the first day. Also, coming away truly informed after spending two long days on my sit-bones was an exercise in perseverance--and not an exercise I performed with unqualified success.

In addition to my journey into education, I have gone on a couple of runs since the the March 6 half marathon I ran. Last Friday's run, a modest 4.5-miler, was significant in taking place when, for the first time this winter, there was enough light to illuminate the ground before 7 a.m. This is a pretty lame photo, but it's a keeper because it shows the path through the bushes that I was able to take for the first time since last October. Next up: spring!

Monday I was working like a demented person on a freelance project with a tight deadline and I only managed a late-day walk around the neighborhood. Tuesday I made it out the door very early. I had an OK run--a run subtly informed by the coaching class input that's been roiling around in my head. Later in the day, however, my hip / leg / knee were barking. So loudly that I've scheduled a session with Dr. Jess for this Friday. I need to find out whether I'm hurt or merely adjusting to the heavier training load (the latter, I'm sure).

I took the above picture Friday. I am still amused every time I run through this gate--Berkeley's answer the the Arc de Triomphe, I guess. It seems mighty--imposing? industrial? silly?--seeing that it frames a trailhead that leads to a three-block path.

In other news, which might be running-related if you accept that any nutrition information is potentially running related, I read a pleasingly sensible article on weight loss in this morning's paper. It's refreshingly moderate on a subject that generates a lot of firm and ferocious opinions, the straw-man-ish argument over which is worse, fats or carbs. Unsurprisingly, the answer seems to lie somewhere that has nothing to do with either fats or carbs, but rather is all about energy (calories) taken in and energy (calories) expended.

And finally, on my walk* to work from the casual carpool drop-off area this morning in SF, I was surprised by a sun-bright sky dumping a hailstorm on my head!

It was so surprising. I and my normally comatose fellow commuters looked to the sky as one, and we all burst into smiles. Moral: Be sure to get out of bed every morning--you never know what you might miss if you don't!

*Walking is definitely running related. When I asked Warren, one of the instructors of the coaching class, what the best cross-training is, he said only walking really addresses the running muscles.

Kaiser Half

2011-02-09T15:32:00.000-08:00

The day.

I have been reluctant to write about the Kaiser Half Marathon, which I ran last Sunday. Although my experience was positive, there's an undercurrent of sadness in my race-day reflections because while I was still out on the Great Highway, a runner who had just crossed the finish line collapsed and died. Deaths at races, like deaths at many other kinds of events, are rare--but they do occur. For me, learning of this particular death felt like a splash of ink hitting the sky-blue bucket of the day.

I traveled to SF with Lucretia (l.) and Kate (r.). They wowed me with their times--especially Kate, who scored a medal by finishing second in her (and my!) age group. That was more than 45 minutes before I crossed the finish line. (These girls rock.)

We toed the start line at 8 a.m. Well, that's a figure of speech. For me, it actually means that I milled around some 200 yards behind the start line along with thousands of other enthusiastic but not-too-fast runners and then, about four minutes after the starting gun sounded, crossed the mat that started my timing chip.

I felt fairly strong--strong enough, anyway--the whole time. The day was unusual for February, with bright sun and very little wind. It was hot before the whole thing was over, but I was careful to stay hydrated. Maybe learned my lesson after cramping up near the end of CIM in December? Maybe not, but at least I felt OK. The main issue was pain in my left hip, the legacy of that pesky fall I took in April two years ago. The pain seems to come and go when I run, never getting acute, so I take the sensible attitude that it's to be ignored. I do ice it and use a foam roller on it (this disclaimer is to forestall any kvetching about taking care of myself that this post might provoke from my offspring).

The start.

The middle.

And here's the money shot.

Up next in my life: more running, more taking askew phone photos, more being thankful that I can still do these things I love.

A Rail-Trail Excursion

2011-01-30T15:46:00.000-08:00

Saturday was a long run for the Oakland Running Festival training group--a 16-plus miler along an old train corridor known as the Iron Horse Trail. I have a special affection for the Iron Horse, having been an RTC member for more years than I care to or dare to count.

It was the longest run we've done to date. Its relatively flat topography was for me a mixed blessing--no quad-killing hills, but also no variation in the landing angle of my repetitive footfalls (repetitive to the tune of some 90 per minute--for about 180 minutes). My hips and knees complained, but they lived.

I paced the 11:30-12:00-minute milers training for the half marathon, which was inspirational and fun. I love to see new runners making and honoring a difficult training commitment. However, they were scheduled to run 8 miles total, so they turned around at the 4.5-mile mark--leaving me with only 11.5 more to run to make my 16.

Because we were the caboose of the running groups, I was suddenly alone on the trail for as far as the eye could see.

(How do you like the way I worked some train lingo into this post about a trail in a rail corridor?) Around mile 6 I hit the water stop / aid station, staffed this week, just like for the past two weeks, by the intrepid and cheerful Susan. Wonderful!

After the stop, I was looking for the 8-mile turnaround marker, but realized I was going to have to go beyond that in order to find a public restroom. Just as I was abandoning all hope, somewhere around 8.3 miles, I came upon the Danville farmers market. I found the bathroom.

I also found this stand, which my exercise-addled brain thought might be a mirage.

I'm going to leave you in suspense about whether this vegan girl succumbed to temptation or not. If it pleases you to picture me making a whistle-stop (train lingo!) for mini-donuts, I don't want to spoil your fun.

I started this post a couple of days ago but couldn't get around to completing it until today, which is Tuesday. Tuesday is normally track day, but I'm skipping that in an attempt to stay fresh for the Kaiser Half Marathon, which is Sunday. I ran an easy 3.5 this morning in the pre-dawn fog, fog that was actual and not only inside my early-morning brain. I'll miss being at the track--it's always a heady experience to be around so many buffed and stellar women--usually a couple of men, too. Sometimes just being around them all makes me feel strong, like a speeding locomotive. (Note final use of train lingo here.)

ZZZZZZZZZ

2011-01-28T14:57:00.000-08:00

The above title refers to my recent rediscovery of the secret of life: SLEEP. I say rediscovery because periodically I accidentally sleep enough and realize how happy it makes me--good natured, even. My current appreciation of slumber started week before last, when I did only one mid-week run and a little swimming and devoted the remaining early-morning hours to sleeping. To my surprise, suddenly my appetite was sharper, my job less onerous, my spouse even handsomer than usual! All this happiness made me greedy for more happiness, so I've continued the practice of getting enough sleep right up through this week. Wow.

All this is not to say I've been a total slug. I met at my overpriced gym with a trainer for a free assessment and then again for a 50-minute customized workout. Whew--hard. Who knew I could do a plank (with leg lifts!) on an instability ball for a whole minute (that may not be the exact name for the ball, but I call 'em as I experience 'em). I have also swum twice. ("Swum" looks funny, but it is, in fact, the past participle of "swim." You could look it up--I did.)

And Tuesday, I showed up at the track for a the weekly LMJS speed workout. I was able to leave work early, and when I got to the track I was the first one there.

The field was dark, bordering on pitch black.

Because our group had run in the dark during the holiday break--and had a great time!--I just figured we'd do it again. Imagine my surprise when at 6 pm sharp, the lights sprang to life and the whole arena immediately populated, like a broadway stage when the curtain comes up.

We did a good workout. I was pleased to run with a couple of people about my speed. They inspired me to stay through the very end of the session, which consisted as usual of some agility drills on the "grass" part of the field. I completed all the drills without falling on my face, which I found kind of amazing.

So, feeling pretty rested, and having a couple of swims, a workout, and my speed night under my belt, I'm ready to go home and sleep seriously tonight in preparation for the training group's 16-miler tomorrow. Getting serious sleep is a challenge I'm willing to meet.

Heading for the Hills

2011-01-23T20:43:00.000-08:00

Short update: Saturday's training run was steep but--for me anyway--less debilitating than the run last week. (I know, we hope for a higher recommendation than "less debilitating than a killer run," but sometimes "not awful" has to suffice). The run, which fell a little more than a mile short of the 10 miles it was billed at, followed part of the actual Oakland Marathon course. We went from College Avenue up, up, up. If you've ever been in the Oakland flatlands on a moonless night and seen the illuminated Mormon temple hanging high up in the hills, well, that tells you just how up, up, up we went.

Here's the temple, unilluminated but still up, up, up there.

Then we went down, down, down, and I finished with only a bruised toenail or two and a gimpy quad muscle to show for it.

Today, I actually felt pretty human, especially after sleeping ten hours last night. I wanted to move a little but not a lot. The answer? Going to the tennis court with a racquet and four balls and running around for a half hour. Oh yes, and even hitting the ball now and then. I haven't played tennis for some twenty years, so practicing against the backboard is for me a form of aerobic cross-training. Bounce, swing, miss, run. Repeat! But it was a lovely sunny day, and the sheen of perspiration I managed to summon up felt just right. I may even feel energetic enough to make it to the track Tuesday night. Even though some say hill workouts are really speed workouts in disguise, that doesn't mean that actual speed workouts aren't beneficial!

At left: Portrait of a blogger, with tennis balls.

The Sign Said Stop

2011-01-19T14:50:00.000-08:00

...so I did. This was this morning, at 7:09. The sun was finally coming up, after I'd been running for more than an hour. I skipped the track workout last night because I was still sore from Saturday's hilly fun (see previous post), so I felt I had to get out this morning. I did my version of a tempo run--a 1.5-mile warm-up, a 20-minute steady run at a pace between my 10-K and marathon paces, followed by a 1.5-mile cool-down (also known as getting home again). Gee. That description makes it sound like the run was scientific, cut-and-dried, efficient, productive. I suppose it could have been, might have been one of those things. The loose-cannon factor in that "tempo" formula is what's called "perceived effort." Some days my ostensible 10-K pace feels like the speed of a Nascar contender, while other days it feels like the speed of the loser in a turtle race. I check my Garmin periodically to make sure I'm on-pace, and I can only call my consistency approximate--at best.

Be all the details as they may, it was wonderful to be out in the pre-dawn world. Big, big moon setting in the west, a light breeze, a cloudless sky. My aches and pains told me that I'm in training. They also told me that the infrastructure is basically strong and getting stronger. It's all a blessing.

Long, Hard One

2011-01-16T09:06:00.000-08:00

Yesterday the marathon training group did a long run along the Carquinez Strait, on the east side of Martinez--along the bluffs above the invisible water (fog, y'know). Whew. In the past when I've trained for a marathon on my own, I've never done long runs two weeks in a row. But now I'm trying to be flexible and to believe that makers of this training schedule have designed a workable program, one in which doing 15 miles on the heels of doing 12 is fine.

Crunch time--where the rubber soles met the road.

It was a hard run (did I already say that?). The fog never lifted, and a cold wind was blowing by the time I turned around at 7.5-plus miles on this out-and-back course. The "plus" was a little extra I had to tack on in order to find a secluded spot to, uh, heed the call of nature. Now I'm sure you've never done that.

Might have been hallucinating on the return portion of the run.

My left hip was sore, as was my left knee--this left-side vulnerability is most likely a result of the hard fall I took in 2009. Posts from my injured April can be found in the 2009 archives of this blog. Anyway. I was sore yesterday--from tension, my shoulders hurt too--but somehow in retrospect, I rate this run as excellent. I love running with the group, even though at the end I am likely to be the last one in. The first part of the run, which was the hilliest, flew by, thanks to good conversation. And a mighty fine aid station (bananas! gels! bagels!) appeared like a vision out of the fog right before the turnaround. Thanks, Susan.

Finally, I give you this bonus photo (click to enlarge). It relates not at all to running other than to show the quality of the light Friday (seen here at the bus terminal in SF), which signaled to me that the cold, rainy weather that has characterized this winter may be on the wane. This was taken at 5:30 pm, as I waited to make my escape from work into a three-day weekend. Documented evidence that the light is lingering longer and that spring may come!

I've Been Remiss

2011-01-10T16:34:00.000-08:00

I have wanted to post--no disenchantment with blogging here--but somehow I just haven't made it to this space in a while. Since CIM I have done many runs, even a 5-mile fun run / race on New Year's Day. I've remained healthy enough, although it's about that new twinge I've been getting on the inside of my right knee --

Anyway. The most shocking thing to me is that I just haven't been taking many phone photos on my runs. I'm sure that's mostly because I've done so much running with my fellow club members and team members, and when these people are running they tend to keep on running, not stopping the way I often do to take some quirky picture. Between track most Tuesday nights and the LMJS training group Saturday mornings, for the time being I'm running in a lot of company. (The training group is in preparation for the Oakland Marathon, at the end of March.)

Consistently running with other people is a new experience for me, and I'm finding that for the most part I like it. They tend to keep me honest, that is, to keep me running at a slightly faster and more consistent pace than I would choose on my own.

I do still run alone once or twice a week, but those runs take place mostly in the dark and will continue to happen there until the sun quits staying in bed so long. Hard to take pictures in the dark (witness my sky photo, to the left--sad, huh).

Much better is the image at the top of this post, taken at 7:20 am two days after Christmas on an early morning run in, yes, Culver City. Z and I were in LA for Christmas, which was a treat. Cold weather for the southland, however, just like we've been having in the Bay Area.

I do have it on good authority that spring is on the way. (A little bird told me.) So look for photos of sunshine and lollipops coming to this space soon.

The Winter Post

2010-12-20T15:22:00.000-08:00

Christmas around the corner. Lots of rain here. It is cold. Nose-biting cold. But the photo to the left puts the whole Berkeley winter weather thing in perspective. I took this picture about five minutes ago--it's what I see out my window as I sit at the computer. The rose is smooshed up against the glass. Roses love rain, even cold rain, and when rain beats down they get giddy and leggy and happy to bloom.

I've had weather luck in my running since CIM--have managed to slip between the raindrops, so to speak, for every run except one, which I used the treadmill for (see my last post).

Here's another rain-related image, taken last week as I was logging some early morning miles. Not very wintry by Christmas-carol standards (no building a snowman in this meadow), but lovely nonetheless--a burst of winter color: a cushiony underfoot mosaic for a passing runner to appreciate.

Saturday I ran with the Oakland Marathon training group I'm in. I was amazed and pleased to do ten miles without a great deal of effort or any lingering post-run pain. I think my CIM run was more a long training run than any kind of a race. That's both sad and not so sad--I had a slow time, but my body absorbed the heavy mileage and got stronger from it.

As I accumulate more mileage, I'm beginning to think my vegan diet is a keeper. I started it last April 1, determined to stick with it for a year, and am finding that I feel energetic and strong most of the time.

Breakfast of champions

Full disclosure: I am occasionally eating eggs. Because my move to veganism was motivated more by an aversion to factory farming and the animal cruelty and environmental disaster it engenders than by a blanket condemnation of any and all animal products, I don't feel that eating the eggs I eat is a violation of the anti-impact contract I have with my conscience. The eggs come from Flyaway Farm, which is an elegant name for one of my work colleague's backyard chicken coop. I have met the Flyaway Farm chickens, and am fully satisfied that they meet the cruelty-free standard that is one pillar of veganism. If anything, they are so happy and well cared for that they add to my stock of anti-meat karma. And I'm sure that the protein, choline, and vitamin D in the eggs contribute to my running health.

I was able to get out for a run early this morning. One pleasure of running before dawn this time of year is seeing all the holiday lights. I rounded a corner and met with this illuminated column shooting into the dark sky--what the picture doesn't really show is that the strings of light are attached to the trunk of a very tall tree. The lights define the trunk, and a lacy garment of evergreen branches swirls around it. Magical.

Peace on Earth? Mark me down as in favor of it. May your holidays be as beautiful as these lights.

Eight Days After CIM

2010-12-14T20:22:00.000-08:00

Not long after completing CIM, I pretty much told the story of my marathon in pictures via Flickr. I've been slammed at work and busy trying to return to an even keel after the emotional highs and lows brought on by the long race and by the season in general.

I am so very happy to have run the marathon, even though my time was less than stellar. My feet and calves cramped up toward the end, but I hobbled on in. I was 34th out of 43 in my age group. I'm proud to say that the 1st place runner is my friend, fellow team member, and also the kind person who drove me to Sacramento for the race. She's an inspiration!

Recovery has been a challenge. I've gone from feeling euphoric to feeling older than mud and back again to being high. Because I'm a glutton for the agony of distance running, I am training for the Oakland Marathon, which is in late March. Last year I did the Oakland Half Marathon and loved it. Anyway, last Saturday I went on a group training run but only ran 5 of the 9 prescribed miles. My right quad said, oh no you don't, so, I didn't. Felt glad to run; felt sad to hurt.

Tonight I was scheduled to go to the track for a workout but wimped out when it was pouring rain at 6 pm, the prescribed workout time. I drove to the gym in Emeryville and ran 3 miles on the treadmill instead. I had a bit of a breakthrough! I've always disliked treadmill running, and since I've gotten a little older have really disliked it because I've gotten terrified of losing my balance and shooting off the back of the darn thing and landing in a heap of broken bones. But tonight a funny thing happened. I started off very slowly, holding onto the side rail with one hand, even, and gave myself permission to be as much of a sissy as I felt like being. I started picking up the pace for 3 minutes and then dropping it down for 1, then repeating. At some point I realized that my balance felt solid and I wasn't holding on to the rail! I got into a good rhythm and was able to work up a good sweat.

I feel like I got to a good place on the treadmill mainly through positive thinking--I've been telling myself ever since CIM that I am strong and that I am an athlete. I've been reading George Sheehan, who has to be one of the wisest runners ever to put rubber to the road and pen to the paper.

This post has nowhere in particular to go--it's more a meander, a checking in with the space. At the top is a photo taken along the Embarcadero in SF a couple of days ago. Because you can view my marathon photos by following the Flickr link, above, I'm just sharing some winter leaves with you because I really don't think I'm allowed to create a post that doesn't feature a blurry phone photo.

Board Game

2010-11-29T15:37:00.000-08:00

A week ago Sunday I did my last long run before CIM. Afterward, I looked at the little map the run created in my Garmin Forerunner 205 and then I looked at the photos I took along the way, and it struck me that the whole thing was like some geography-based board game that takes the runner-player through many hazards in assorted different lands.

It had rained the night before, so the first part of the game-board road map, the Bay Trail heading south from Berkeley, was lined with puddles.
On the way back from Emeryville, not so much.

I headed back to Berkeley, where the next segment of the game map had me dropping by the house to pick up the insoles for my running shoes. I had run seven miles before I realized I had inexplicably left them lying on top of the dryer. By the time I went through the front door, I was at mile 12. Surprisingly, I felt no ill effects then, or even the day after, from having run without that extra padding under my feet. Maybe the new less-is-more-in-the-shoe-department trend is more than a fad? Maybe running with nothing but a piece of rubber between me and the road won't cripple me for life?? Even if that's so, after I retrieved the insoles, my feet emphatically thanked me.

I left the house and moved on to the next piece of the game board, my perennial running route, the Ohlone Greenway. When I arrived under the BART tracks, just past Gilman Street, I was about at mile 15. Even in November, the morning glories that are bent on eating all of Albany were showing in purple and green profusion. I could almost hear them chomping.

For me, mile 15 in a long run is about where I start to realize I've been left-righting for a long time. To shake myself up and avoid falling into a shuffling coma, at this point I veered off the straight segment I'd been on and hooked a right just south of the El Cerrito border, to Cougar Field, where I ran a couple of miles. A lively co-ed soccer game was under way!

All this time, dark and light clouds were chasing across the sky (I was wearing my new rain jacket, even), but precipitation never materialized. I left the soccer players to their corner kicks and their yellow cards, and continued along the greenway.

The next part of my game map ran west on Stockton St. and ended on San Pablo Ave. OK, this was not a random foray. Who should be on San Pablo Ave. that day, doing some remodeling with our neighbor in his veterinary clinic, but --yessss!--my own Z.

I had to use my cell phone to find him, but find him I did. By that time I was past mile 17 and had become slightly delirious. Not a problem--I headed back up to the greenway, up Gilman Street, and onto the track at King Middle School.

I took the hint from the sign at the track, and headed home along the last leg of the game board, California Street.

In all, I covered 23 miles. The run was a bit disjointed and a bit painful, but I did it. I'm hoping that means that next Sunday I'll "just do it," for the whole 26.2.

Nerves

2010-10-31T06:12:00.000-07:00

I did run in SF last Tuesday, on the eve of the first game of the World Series. South on the Embarcadero, a lively 5-miler along the water, around the Giants' ballpark and back.

This morning it's a different kind of run coming up. I just had a bowl of cereal and two short cups of coffee. It's still dark outside--Sunday 6 am, and most of the world is still asleep. Should I head out for my scheduled 18-miler? Or just go for a 20 and the heck with worrying?

Instead of sitting in the kitchen, I sit at my desk to eat so that I don't bother Z, who was out late last night doing his docent gig at the Blackhawk Museum Halloween party. Instead of the Sunday paper, right now I read Runners' World. For motivation. To convince myself that I'm not too slow, too old, too undertrained to do this. I go online and use the RW pace calculator. To break five hours in the marathon I really will have to run an 11-minute pace. I can do that without too much pain in a 5K or a 10K, but a 10K x 4 is a whole nother thing, as we say.

For today, the goal is to go out, run for a long time, and appreciate what I can do (rather than bemoan what I can't).

Last post, I wrote in a fairly unfocused way about my "path." This morning, my path is what I'll go down for a few hours. Because my impulse to run feels so strong, so consistent, so urgent, this path can feel like something that has chosen me. But make no mistake here--surely I have chosen it, not the other way around.

Do I Have Something to Say?

2010-10-26T09:57:00.000-07:00

And if I don't have anything to say, can I make it look as if I do by changing my usual font and writing my non-content in red?

Or by adding in some blue sky?

I'm often so busy that I feel I don't have the time to write in this blog, even though I have so much that I'd love to record here. Today I do have a little time, but not much in the posting pitcher to pour out. It's like, the old Beatles song I sometimes sing to my sleepy self when I run early in the day:

Nothing to say but what a day, how's your boy been
Nothing to do, it's up to you
I've got nothing to say but it's OK

Good morning, good morning
Good morning ah

Ah, indeed. I had a conversation with my friend R. this morning that touched on ways for a person to follow a meaningful path, a daunting endeavor given the particular strictures a person can feel limited by--finances, relationships, employment, health (you fill in the blank). For myself, I have no pat answers. I feel honor-bound to run and to eat vegetarian and to drive my car as little as possible, and in some general way these things feel like they head me toward a "meaningful path." But they feel more like odds and ends than like anything substantive.

I started this post with the idea of conveying how sometimes in order to write about running I need to write about not running. Most immediately I intended to comment on the busy-ness of my life right now (I'm working full-time instead of half), and on how said life means I'm running less and am in a bit of a panic over my commitment to run CIM. Then came the thought: If running is meaningful, is what I do when I'm not running meaningful too?

I just took a short walk in the autumn air. Enough navel-gazing for now.

Often Z has told me he would like to leave a legacy of something worthwhile that he has made that will endure. I think I know that feeling. Yesterday I took this picture of construction workers atop the unfinished Oakland Kaiser hospital. I was at Kaiser to have my injured pinkie examined. (It's healing. It's fine. I've got nothing to say but it's OK. Good morning.) In general I'm not a fan of building large resource-consuming buildings, but there's something in me that loves bigger-than-life construction. The steel! The cranes! The burly workers! I feel the same way about construction as I feel about speed.

Leaving a worthwhile legacy. Building something big. Going fast. In my mind these are closely related to what I might do when I'm not running, that is, related to my meaningful path.

All something to think about when I run in SF this evening. Whew. I wish I were on that run right now.

Fun in the Big City

2010-10-22T13:15:00.000-07:00

Because I am now in San Francisco for the bulk of my day (of my life!), I am working on ways to fit in a run now and then. Doing this will become more and more of a challenge as the days grow shorter and the light heads south.

Yesterday around 6 p.m. I headed out the office door for a 5-miler. I don't know why my legs felt like lead for the first 2 miles, but they did. I was heading north, into the wind, which probably didn't help.

I took this from the end of the pier. I felt like a running tourist--or maybe just a running fool.

I ran up The Embarcadero to the end, out the SF Municipal Pier and back, and then up the hill on the path that leads to Fort Mason.

This was taken after I crested the hill. I ran around the grassy area before heading back down. A couple of years ago when I did this route I had to stop on the hilltop and rest!

Two years ago, when I ran this route fairly frequently, it seemed harder. For some reason the hill seemed much less ferocious last night than I remember it. At any rate, I got there and I got back and today feel no worse for the experience. This kind of modest improvement encourages me to keep on pushing myself.

Today, Friday, is a cloudy, rain-on-rain-off again kind of day. I did go out at lunchtime and do a small stair climb.

I stopped at the turnaround of my stair climb to take this photo. The building with the court on the roof is the SF Bay Club, the posh fitness club I visited earlier this week. I had thoughts of joining but then came to my senses. Do I need to spend mega-bucks right now for a gym? I remembered one of my mantras: To be a runner, you need to run. Not, to be a runner you need to take body-sculpting classes and lounge around in a pricey spa. Sigh. Look for me on the mean streets, then.

I'll let you know when I finally make it all the way up the staiea to Coit Tower. After four days of incremental increases, I feel like I'm on my way there. Would hate to injure myself by thoughtlessly climbing a jillion stairs when I'm not ready. I'm pretty fit for hills right now, but steep stairs require the use of some different muscles.

Progress, Not Perfection

2010-10-20T16:34:00.000-07:00

First, for you, flowers for reading my blog.

Next, a report form day three of my full-time working life. Briefly: It's OK! I made it to the track last night just as if I'd spent only four hours at the office, not eight.

I've gotten out on my lunch hour two days out of three to climb a few steps. Haven't gone all the way up to Coit Tower yet--hence the title of this post. Tomorrow I'm going to get out of the house early and either go to the gym or go for a run in an effort to start feeling like I'll be able to get a full ration of a.m. workouts in during the coming winter.

Here, a report of a different kind: My injured pinkie doesn't hurt but is still bound to its neighboring finger in hopes it will straighten up and type right (typewrite?). I tell you, my brain is dictating faster than my fingers can dream of typing right now, and it is frustrating.

Finally, a heart to you for bearing with me. (This photo doesn't have much to do with running, but I like it so I'm posting it. It's my blog and I'll post if I want to.)

Long Run

2010-10-17T16:50:00.000-07:00

Wouldn't you know that the first real rain of the season would come today, long-run day for me as I ramp up for CIM, which seems to be approaching at a rate of speed that would alarm even Einstein, who contended (and proved, after a fashion, I believe) that time doesn't always pass at the same rate--it's a bit like silly putty in its malleability. Anyway, rain it did.

It wasn't raining when I headed out the door around 8:30 am, but it sure was by the time I came back, well over two hours later. Last weekend I ran 12 miles on a hot Saturday and was discouraged by how difficult it was. This week my goal was to do 14--and I ended up doing 15 and not feeling too bad. I added on the extra mile courtesy of my runner friend Mac, whom I encountered out at the Richmond end of the Ohlone Greenway.

He asked me if I'd ever run through the tunnel on the path's extension "over there," and he pointed across busy San Pablo Avenue. At this point I had done some add-ons to the straight route offered by the Greenway (made a detour to the Cougar Field track) and was still at only about 7 miles, so when he said the trail was a mile long, I went for it. It was interesting to see--I'd never known of its existence. It was a bit gritty--no foliage, but some graffiti and some trash to break up the landscape--but its main drawback for me was that it was more like 1.6 miles long than 1.0. Hmmm.

I did get to the end of it, which turned out to be near the Richmond BART station, but I'll need to look at a map before I can tell you where I was when I took this photo. After I took it, I turned around and headed home. By the time I was at mile 11, the rain was shedding the sobriquet "sprinkle," and I was quite wet. I wish I could blame the rain for what happened next, but in fact, I think it was lack of attention on my part (combined with gravity) that made me take a tumble.

Compared to some of the epic falls I've taken in the past (slings! crutches! broken bones!), this one was pretty benign, and I was able to dust myself off and proceed with nothing new going on except a nice little adrenaline boost and--oh yes--a left pinkie joint that suddenly insisted on bending the wrong way. Being the intrepid endurance athlete that I am, I soldiered on, and ran home, only whimpering a little. Dear Z, who isn't a doctor but occasionally plays one in our kitchen, applied a popsicle-stick splint, and I'm now as close as I'm going to get to being good as new.

In other news, and I mention this here mainly because it's going to challenge me to find training time, starting tomorrow I'll be working full-time at my ad-agency job instead of the half-time I've been doing for the past 3+ years. It will mean some cold, dark, early runs--and maybe some noontime runs in SF. I read a quote this morning by elite runner Heidi Westover, who works full-time and still trains at an astoundingly high level. She was talking about sticking to her rigorous schedule: "This is what's going to get you where you want to go,so you're gonna do it." So, to the best of my ability, I'm gonna do it. As I've been saying to myself since I turned 60 (now that was a while ago, Einstein), if not now, then when?

September Song

2010-09-27T11:07:00.001-07:00

I started working on this post so long ago that I no longer have any clear idea what I had in mind for it (today is October 6). Hmmm. September was a busy month. I think my idea was to touch briefly on what went on for me. About the only way I could even remember was to look at my camera phone for the images that caught my eye as I barreled through the days.

The first part of the month was taken up by our trip back to Connecticut for the wedding of my son the doctor to his sweetie the doctor. The two handsome men above are my boys. The bride and groom are with their sibs, and the dreamy flower girls complete the party. Our Miss Nat, the smaller dreamy gal, is now a veteran flower girl, having been in two weddings this year.

The end of the trip for me was a visit to see my friend M in Rhode Island. I ran two mornings in a row along the Blackstone path in Providence.

My last night, we stayed at M's beach house. No running, but a couple of good long beach walks.

Back in the Bay Area, I went on an exploratory 10-mile run to see whether I felt fit enough to register for the California International Marathon, which takes place in Sacramento December 5. I ran to the end of the Ohlone Greenway and back without dying, so I decided I can probably do the marathon. These are the fall flowers in the wildflower garden at the path's end--pretty sedate compared to the riot of color that lives here in spring.

A week or two (?) later, I did one of the Saturday fun runs our club holds--this one up some killer hills in Briones Regional Park. The views might have been great, but I can't prove it from what I saw that day.

Also, one weekend I travelled to Hayward with the team for a USATF cross-country race (the 6th Annual Garin Park XC Challenge--above is the men's start). It was hot. It was hilly. A great time! The cross-country series is new for me. It's been a revelation. I'd never have thought I'd like running up trails as fast as I could go, but I do.

And check out this candid of some of the team after the race. They look like they're fresh from a stroll in the park.

Last but not least, and apropos of nothing except general adorableness, here is the new family member of my son and daughter-in-law the doctors.

Holly is so sweet I hear they save on sugar bills by just dipping her paws in their coffee in the morning.

Will You Still Need Me, Will You Still Feed Me...

2010-08-28T16:45:00.000-07:00

...when I'm 64...which I am this very day!

Drove up to Santa Rosa this morning with four of my teammates to run the 18th Annual Phil Widener Empire Open, a PAUSATF cross-country race. (Below is a photo of the men's Masters start--couldn't take a picture of the women's Open start because I was too busy starting!)

I had a wonderful time today. Driving my little Honda full of chattering women to Santa Rosa, racing with them (they sang Happy Birthday to me when I crossed the finish line), and having breakfast afterward at the Cafe Azul made my day. It reminded me of being in high school and tooling around in my parents' car with all my girlfriends, everybody talking at once, our happy energy fizzing and sparking until the whole car glowed.

I came across a couple of lovely sentences yesterday when I was finishing up A Three Dog Life, by Abigail Thomas: "The past is not as interesting to me now as it was when I was young.... There's nothing I want to relive--certainly not youth--and as for what's to come, I'm in no hurry."

I can't say I always have the feeling these sentences describe, but for today they are accurate. I was perfectly happy this morning being exactly where I am in my life, neither regretting what's been lost nor longing for what might come. Who could ask for a better birthday present than that?

Moving

2010-08-15T11:33:00.000-07:00

The local paper has a big story today about California's proposed $42.6 billion bullet train. Part of me is appalled at the notion of spending that kind of money when countless nonexpendible services are crying out with economic pain. But--part of me is pumping my fist in the air, saying, "Yeah. I wanna move fast!"

We are human beings, and I believe that as such, we are hard-core nomads, wired for movement. To me, the most apparent evidence of this is that we run. But when I look around, I see that the innate instinct toward locomotion informs countless aspects of our civilization. Our cities--heck, our country, our very civilized world--are created around our compulsion to move our bodies (not to mention our goods and our very lives) from one place to another.

I run under a train track.

I live on a street, which by definition is a place for movin' right along.

It's street connected to many other streets.

And I take a bus home from work.

Speaking of multibillion-dollar projects, the above photo was taken at the start of my last bus ride out of the SF Transbay Terminal, which is being demolished to make way for the "Grand Central Station of the West," a most visible and extravagant shrine to the phenomenon of movement.

As we await the completion of the new terminal, currently forecast to happen in 2017, we catch our buses in this temporary terminal, which has a bit of a shrine-like feel on its own, what with angel wings reaching skyward toward the holy, towering sentinels of city business.

As we stand deep in the cleft of this urban canyon, we wait impatiently under the clock, nervously shuffling our feet, which are singing to us, "Let's move! Let's move!"

Where all this leaves my stand on the bullet-train, I really can't say. In forming a responsible opinion about this issue, I can see reasons both for killing the project right now and for charging full steam (full electricity?) ahead. So I'm trying to live for now in that uncomfortable gray space called ambiguity, a space whose nature is a whole 'nother blog post.

A Crummy Blog Post

2010-08-08T16:46:00.000-07:00

I slack off at keeping this blog current, but that doesn't mean I stop running or that I stop taking pictures (both when running and when not). When I look at the pictures stacked up in my phone it strikes me that they are a visual bread-crumb trail that I can follow from where I am back through the days that are behind me. The photos are doors along my trail of past runs, doors I can knock on and have opened by my memories. (I have the feeling this mixed metaphor is about to flatten me like a runaway train. Yikes, another metaphor.)

Anyway. Here's a brief visual trip back through some recent runs.

One Saturday in late June my club's Saturday training run took us to the Little Farm in Tilden Park. This was around the time of the Oscar Grant trial, which was feeding racial tensions across the state. I came upon these two peaceful bovines, the light-skinned one gently licking the dark-skinned one. No tension here.

On another Saturday, the training run was on East Bay Municipal Water District land, along the shores of San Pablo Reservoir. Before the run I jogged over to a nearby school to use the restroom and found myself next to this sign. At the time I saw it I had just been feeling cranky about some imagined grievance. (At home? at work? Do I even remember?) I loved the message here. I says to myself, self, I says: chill.

And then there was Carmel. In early July I had a wonderful solo run along Scenic Drive. Many thanks to my precious sister-in-law for the loan of her Carmel digs for the weekend. If I could run by the ocean every day I would be the world's most peaceful person.

I have continued my solo runs along the Ohlone Greenway, of course. In Berkeley and Albany my eyes are often caught by details. As I ran, I'd been thinking about soaring in my running shoes, and when I saw this bird I thought, yeah, just like that!

On July 25 I ran the San Francisco Half Marathon. The course went over the Golden Gate Bridge and back, then through the Presidio and on to the finish line, in Golden Gate Park. The run was fabulous--what a nice distance a half marathon is--and I was happy enough with my time. The best part of the day for me, however, was spending the afternoon with my favorite nephew, his wife, and Z. We started out doing a little sightseeing in the park and ended up at the top of Mt. Tamalpais, in Marin County. I posed with my medal and Fave Neph took the picture.

In case you haven't had enough, let me tell you that last Tuesday evening a club training run took us to the streets above Piedmont High School. When I get to run down streets like this, I feel like the most blessed being on the planet.

The last bread crumb in the trail is actually a cake. My running club had a run / picnic / potluck this morning. As Len Goldman, the long-time (13 years!) president, finally stepped down from his post, he was feted for his achievements. When asked how club members could survive without him, he was heard to say, "Let them eat cake!" OK, I made that last part up.

No more rambling for now--actual or figurative. Till my next scribbling here, may the birds stay away from all the bread crumb trails you lay down, and may knocking on the doors of memory bring you as much pleasure as it does me! (And may your metaphors be unmixed. Lotsa luck with that.)

Happy Bastille Day

2010-07-14T20:56:00.000-07:00

Fourteen years ago today I ran the San Francisco Marathon, my first. I was less that two months away from my 50th birthday, and I was under-trained and overexcited. My boyfriend of two months, Z, showed up at the 16-mile mark and ran with me to the finish.

I've had this picture on my refrigerator since 1996, and I never get tired of looking at it. One reason I love it is that I appreciate how rare it is to pinpoint a specific instance of joy, an event so special that I can say with certainty, "This was one of the happiest moments of my life."

Me and Ma

2010-07-08T14:29:00.000-07:00

I'm thankful for the passage of time, which has (paradoxically) allowed me to remember more. Specifically to remember more good things about my mother than I was able to during the time directly following her death. Her last three years were hard on her and hard on me, and it's taken time to put them in perspective. She lived to be 94! She lived a long, complicated, unspeakably rich life! Should I use another exclamation point? Surely the memory of her evokes many (!).

Here we are, she and I, in front of our house on Bon Rea Way, in Reno, circa 1966. Me: 19 years old; Mom: 55.

Sometimes I still get the impulse to call her on the phone and ask her a question about cooking, or about literature, or about travel--she was an expert on all these subjects. Sometimes I just want to tell her how cute our cat is, or how funny Z was last week when he and I spontaneously started talking in rhymes. She loved animals. She loved wordplay. Or I want to describe the run I took when Z and I were in Carmel. She was an athlete, a legendary swimmer. So much of who I am I owe to her good genes and to the good examples she set.

Change

2010-07-07T14:26:00.000-07:00

How funny it is to say "I feel like my life has somehow changed." Funny because of course it has. Change is what my life--what anyone's life--consists of. My closely held illusion that everything in my little sphere remains the same is just that: an illusion. All the same, one reason I haven't posted for a while is that my world feels a bit unexplored lately.

On April 1, I started eating a more or less vegan diet. Somewhere around that same time I started running with a women's team from my running club (see my last post). These are two specific, identifiable changes in my life, so it's easy for me to attribute all other manner of changes to them. It strikes me, however, that they may be the symptoms rather than the causes of a general shift I'm feeling in the nature of my existence.

Abstract enough for you?? I would be more clear for you if I were more clear myself. All I know is that as I get older and start to believe in my own mortality more than was the wont of my younger self, the more I tend to appreciate the impermanence of my body and its small presence in this large world. And I do mean appreciate--there's something very freeing about really understanding that my life is not open-ended.

* * * * * * * * *

This past weekend Z and I went to Carmel. Many aspects of our brief stay were pleasing; not the least of these was that I was able to run straight up Ocean Ave. from the beach at the bottom to Junipero St. at the top without stopping. I attribute that to my weekly workouts with the team.

Many thanks to Z's sister for lending us her darling cottage.

Thanks also to the great women I've been running with for showing up at the track last night. We warmed up and cooled down on the track, but our run took us to the hills. Phew!

These Days of Running

2010-06-13T15:35:00.000-07:00

I haven't written in weeks. I'm happy to say I've been running a lot, however.

I'm working out with the women's team at the track on Tuesday evenings, plus I'm doing training runs with my running club often on Saturday mornings.

Since I last wrote, I've done two races, taken one fall, and pulled a groin muscle at the gym. Busy times! Also, I have to note that I got really worn out last week. I mean dragging-around tired, spacey, running-into-walls tired. I don't know whether it was from an increase in my running intensity, from my new vegetarian diet, from working too much--or just from being older than I've ever been before. (You are in the same boat as I am on that last count, you know.)

The other reason I might be tired is that time has sped up. It definitely has. I planned to put in a garden in March, and finally got around to doing it today. What? It isn't March? April, maybe? I was so sure it was no later than early May, anyway.

This garden represents the victory of hope over common sense. Believing that these leggy, spindly sets are going to produce a bounteous harvest is kind of like believing the A's will win the World Series this year.

As I worked in the garden earlier today, I slipped into my intrepid wildlife photographer persona and took this picture of one of our more savage backyard denizens. And I survived.

Lazy Afternoon

2010-05-20T17:22:00.000-07:00

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. Their voices rose and fell with enthusiasm informed by deep knowledge about their subject.

They were weaving the contest unfolding in front of us into the larger fabric of the fascinating game of baseball in a way that was more mesmerizing than soporific--although I did find myself very relaxed. Sitting in the sunshine and munching on a couple of veggie dogs with all the fixin's completed my pleasure.

It strikes me that the activities I enjoy are not necessarily those that empty my mind. They are more those that focus my thoughts in a way that for a time shuts out the chaos that is modern life definitively yet gently. Baseball. Reading. And yes, running.

Checking Out

2010-05-19T14:38:00.000-07:00

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 used the elliptical machine for ten minutes or so to warm up and then had the brilliant idea of throwing it into reverse just to see what that would feel like. It was kind of fun! My friend R and I were talking earlier today about change and how it is often attractive--not for what it actually can be but just because it offers the prospect of novelty. I am generally in favor of change, even when I haven't sussed out what a particular change might bring in the long run. (I digress. The backward-looping elliptical machine was a novelty of the most innocuous kind.)

Jumping right along here. I have decided to continue my vegetarian ways until April 1, 2011, which will make my experiment a year-long one. I find I am up and down and in and out and back and forth (and any other metaphors you can think of that might signal vacillation) concerning my new diet. I feel very healthy and energetic on it, but have to admit I'm nonplussed to think of never eating certain foods again. For instance. Is a brown rice and soy milk protein shake a satisfactory substitute for a grilled salmon panini? Some days yes, some days no. But the ecological implications of regularly consuming salmon are difficult for me to dismiss.

I do love my daily protein shake. The ingredients vary, depending upon what's on hand. A fish, it's not. But still, it's tasty.

That Wascally Wabbit

2010-05-12T15:52:00.000-07:00

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 linear rather than an oval-shaped configuration. So off we went. The pack soon left me behind, but I did my workout and had a great time anyway (two minutes fast, two minutes recovery, two minutes fast, two minutes recovery... rinse and repeat five times, puff puff).

All well and good, and it was--until it came time to run back up the hill to retrieve my car from where I'd parked it, near the high school track.

Were mind and body so spent that I hallucinated these bunnies onto this wall? You tell me.

A word about being left behind by the pack. I am not being self-deprecating when I say I am the slowest runner in the group; it is just true. I'm at least ten years older than the second-to-the-oldest runner--plus, I was never notably fast even when I was younger. It truly is not a big deal to me. I feel so grateful to be out and loping along and to count myself as a team member and a recognizable runner in the eyes of both the active and the sedentary population. Especially since my nightmare encounter a year ago with the world of pain pills, crutches, and handicap seating on public transportation, I consistently feel that any run I do, fast or slow, is incredibly precious. I cannot turn back the clock. I cannot exchange my slow-twitch muscle fibers for fast. All I can do is be grateful to be who I am and to have all that I have and to run and not crawl.

Speaking of all I have--watch this seamless segue--my Mother's Day was made by receiving identical cards from my son the producer and my son the doctor. They swear they acted independently and I believe them. Great minds think alike.

Honey, I'm Home

2010-05-11T15:14:00.000-07:00

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 did a couple of sweet solo runs. The first one was hills. On one especially steep part it was a pleasure to sprint off Peralta Ave. and take a quick detour via one of Berkeley's many paths.

The second run was a straight shot, out the front door onto Acton Street and down Channing, through Aquatic Park, and to the end of the Berkeley Pier and back.

Pretty straightforward (and just plain pretty, really), except for the wind coming off the SF Bay. As we say in nautical lingo, it was a lotta knots.

On my way home I stopped for the obligatory crunches at the Joseph Slusky Calliope sculpture. Do you see the moon? You had to be lying on your back to notice it.

And here's what could be called industrial sculpture. This anchor chain was once part of a landscape design near the now-defunct Berkeley Ferry terminus. Currently it lies abandoned in the grass. Who knows how old it is or what uses it's been put to over the years. Each link is about the same length as my size 9 1/2 running shoe. Big.

More Speed

2010-05-07T16:16:00.000-07:00

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."

Popping Up for a Moment

2010-05-03T15:56:00.000-07:00

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 much 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. Among them was a run from my house to the King track to do some "speed." This endeavor went well until the sky opened up as I was running home after my workout.

This isn't usually a waterfall--normally it's some plain old stairs. But it was raining buckets; I got wet.

I took refuge at the playground.

This bunny made me smile, if damply.

In other happenings, I ate mostly vegetarian for the month of April. It was an interesting experiment, one that I'm now faced with turning into a way of life. I'm just beginning to realize that I'm looking at a large and far-reaching committment.

Finally, Here's an animal riddle for you. How does a kitty-cat who has no front claws and has only one tooth left in his entire head catch and kill two mice in a three-day period? Only last week, Danny Mo did just that. We know the mice were alive before he got hold of them because we heard him chasing them all over the house in the middle of the night. We also know that by morning (two mornings, that was), they were very much not alive. One he left by the front door so I could step on it--thank heaven for bedroom slippers--and the other he deposited at the foot of our bed. If you think you can answer this riddle, feel free to do so.

The mighty hunter rests after one of his wild nights. And whose pillow do you think that is? Hint: It does not belong to Z.

How It's Going

2010-04-12T08:51:00.000-07:00

No blue skies and flowers today--we have cool spring rain instead. Through my window a few minutes ago I saw a very fat squirrel in the process of bulking up, as if a nip of autumn were in the air. He's not quite in the Fatty McFat class yet, but is working on it.

I had another wildlife encounter Saturday morning as I took a short hike in Martinez after arriving too early at the Contra Costa shoreline for my running club's weekly training run. (Training run sounds far more respectable than fun run, which also describes the event pretty well.) Poring over Google Images results makes me think my little friends (I saw two) were common newts. I wouldn't tell them they're common to their face, however; they should go on thinking they're as special as I think they are.

The run was near Rankin Park, pictured below, but it was no walk in da park. We ran the course of the Brickyard Race, which is next weekend. My running companions and I meant to go out four miles and then return but we missed the turnaround and ended up going out about five. I can multiply (by two, anyway), so I think we ended up running about ten. The route is scenic--looks out over what I believe is San Pablo Bay. It's also very hilly. My quads and hams thank me for the workout.None of what I've written so far tells you how my investigation of veganism is going, even though when I titled this post that was what I had in mind. My report is brief and happy: It is going well. I thought I would find it a lot scarier and more complicated than it's been to stop eating eggs, dairy products, and fish, and at the same to be learning enough about general nutrition to stay healthy. Well, as we're fond of saying around here in times of desperation, it's not rocket surgery. Over the last week I have pretty much eliminated eggs, dairy, and seafood from my diet (diet cola too, just because), and I feel strong and energetic. Full disclosure, however: I did eat an egg breakfast at a cafe after the above-described run.

Anyway, I'm taking brown rice protein and vitamin B-12 and trying to eat a variety of healthful plants of all different stripes (beans! strawberries! broccoli! rainbow chard! tofu!) Dare I say it's fun? Well, it is. I feel that having been a non-meat eater for many years prepared me well for this current step.

It's a voyage of small and interesting discoveries. Did you know that Mini Wheats contain gelatin, which is most definitely an animal product? And did you know you should steam tempeh before you cook with it? Did you even know what tempeh was? I didn't. Ditto seitan, which I can now confidently say has nothing to do with the devil.

When queried by the many (two?) interested people as to how it's going, I now say, "I'm a vegetarian." I believe that true, pure and conscientious veganism is not what I'm practicing, but I feel good being headed in that direction even if I never get much farther than I am. The pressure to change, which was coming solely from within, has lifted. For twenty-two years I have said "I don't eat meat but I do eat seafood and dairy." Now, it's just "I'm a vegetarian."

This Flower Thing

2010-04-07T10:22:00.000-07:00

This flower thing--let's just get it taken care of right now. Soon I will be back in this space with more heavy thoughts about physical and spiritual nourishment, but the featured topic today is flowers. This time of year, as I walk and run my way through my daily life, I am a hopeless fool for flowers. The only thing worse than a hopeless fool is a hopeless fool with a camera phone. So here are my flower photos, all in one sweet, fell swoop.

Here are two from my walk to work in San Francisco.

And here are a couple from the East Bay.

These are from our very own front yard.

And here's the finale--a crimson carpet showing how all good blossoms meet their end.

So now, please go out and have a flowery day!

Nutrition for the Body and the Soul

2010-04-05T09:53:00.000-07:00

I just read over my first-ever post, from December 2005, and realized what a wiseacre I was in those ancient days. Rather than being appalled, I found myself hoping my writing hasn't lost that wacky edge.

I bring this up because some days I feel myself, and consequently this blog, heading off in a pretty serious direction. Today (this past week, actually), the topic is food. What it is that I eat, why I eat it, and whether I want to modify my choices. I've been interested for a while in the nutritional and philosophical implications of choosing to eat vegan. The last time I ate meat (on purpose, anyway) was in 1988. I've continued to eat dairy products and fish, but still figured that if I did choose to go vegan it wouldn't involve making any very dramatic change in my dietary habits.

I stopped eating meat in the first place right after I read Diet for a Small Planet. Frances Moore Lappe was so articulate in her indictment of the meat industry that after that eschewing (rather than chewing) dead cow flesh and dead chicken flesh and dead pig flesh seemed like a no-brainer. Okay, fine. I found the results of my decision made me feel livelier--I even lost a few pounds. Then, in 2005, I stopped drinking alcohol. Wow. I loved waking up for my morning run fully clear-headed and I rejoiced over no longer having to make the big financial decision between high-end merlot and Two Buck Chuck. So fine. I felt happy--and I admit it--sometimes even righteous.

Trying to eat in a more healthy way has always had a spiritual component for many people, me among them. I am not a heavily religious person (nor even a heavy person, anymore), but I do see myself as part of a larger creation. I find it so cliched to talk in these terms. It is hard to know how not to sound too airy-fairy on this subject.

But! Pacifist that I long to be, still I soldier on here. In the last year or two, reading the front page of the newspaper and signing onto Yahoo have become ordeals for me. So much violence, so much volatility, so much political and environmental chaos in this world of ours. Being from the generation of "the personal is political," I've asked myself, what can I do here? The answer that's come to me is, I can create as much peace as possible within my own heart and I can will for that peace to have some kind of effect on the world around me. If I really am the smallest cell in the organism of the universe, surely it's my duty not to be a cancerous cell. Plus, my practical voice chimes in on this internal monologue, a healthy being is a strong being--which is one definition of a good runner. Ta-da!

As a healthy, peaceful aspirant, I find I am uncomfortable consuming seafood these day. I read the news and my heart weeps for the oceans. I read that to farm fish, a practice that's billed as an environment saver, it takes two pounds of fish food (most of it ground fish), to produce one pound of farmed fish. Plus, the food is mixed with other products, products that create mold and pollution when the farmed fish excrete their waste in the huge, concentrated masses that are a by-product of fish farming. I also don't really want to eat eggs (salmonella! foul treatment of fowls) or milk (abuse of lactating cows by making them repeatedly pregnant and then not allowing them to raise their babies--plus, they usually end up as hamburger).

If you think you know where this is going, you are right:

The "dummy" would be me, and the subject would be veganism. I'm about halfway through this book and have to say, like Dorothy must have exclaimed when she awoke on the Yellow Brick Road, I am amazed.

To find out why I'm amazed, check back soon for Part II of the great food-awakening series.
Teaser: Don't miss the answers to these provocative questions: What has label reading revealed to the writer about her so-called righteous food habits? Also, can ya believe everything you read?

I might even write a post about actual running. What a concept!

Looking Ahead

2010-03-28T19:56:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I did run the Oakland Running Festival Half Marathon. I felt under-trained and, because of that, extremely nervous at the race's start. (Note: Click on the photos to see them larger.)

I needn't have worried. What a great race! Well organized, with a smörgåsbord of neighborhood sights and sounds for all of us, slow and fast, to enjoy. So much fun that I (almost) forgot how much work I was doing. We saw all kinds of bands.

My baseball team was well represented by some hard-core fans.

In West Oakland we ran under a flaming arch, courtesy of The Crucible, a nonprofit arts education center.

And just when we were all about out of steam, with only three-plus miles to go, we got sprinkled with fairy dust by an official emissary from Children's Fairyland.

I came in 11th in my age group, but got the same medal as those ten people who finished ahead of me. Who could ask for more?

Well, I could ask for more. From myself, that is. The more I am asking for is related to the title of this post, "Looking Ahead." It came to me on March 22, the thirty-second anniversary of my very-first-ever-in-my-life run, that I've now been a runner for more than half my life. Along with that thought came the realization that this activity that has become so much a part of who I am feels like it will go on forever--but it will not. There were 39 women in my division, the age 60-64 bracket. In the next division, the age 65-70 group, there were 15. The division after that was called 70 and over, and consisted of 2 women. Hmmm.

I am not into doom and gloom. Me, Debbie Downer?? Not. All I'm saying is that, in general but particularly in regard to running, I do need to look ahead. I need to ask what I want to do in the years I have left. If I can answer that question, I need then to determine how can I go about getting it.

Yesterday after the race it came to me that I want to run more than I am running right now. I want to train smarter. I want to enter more races. I want to have more friends who run. I want to be a better, more active member of the running community than I am now.

I began this blog in 2005 (!) without an articulated purpose in mind. I was intrigued by the idea of the blogosphere, a phenomenon that came to my attention about the same time I was feeling the urge to write about this crazy heel-and-toe activity that I'm so in love with. As the blogging has lurched forward, periodically I've declared I want to write more, I want to talk about training more, I want to focus on nutrition more, I want to take better pictures. All these things are all still true; they just feel a little more urgent than they did before yesterday.

If you've hung out with me in this space a little or a lot since 2005, or even if reading this right now constitutes your first stop here, I invite you to check back now and then. More, I invite you to check in, that is, to use the comments feature. Tell me what you do or don't want to do regarding running (or anything else that comes to your mind). And tell me what you think I could do to become more focused as a runner and as a person who just declared what she wants to do.

Yesterday and Today

2010-03-21T13:23:00.000-07:00

That would be yesterday not in the long-range, historical sense, but yesterday as in the day before today (and today not in the larger, metaphorical sense, but as in plain old March 21). Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away. Hey, that could be a song. Nah, would never catch on. Anyway. Yesterday I went up to Inspiration Point in Tilden Park for the weekly LMJS fun run. I'm consciously taking it easy from now until next Sunday, the day of the half marathon that I've so cavalierly committed to. So I figured I would run about 6 slow miles as I watched the rest of the pack disappear in the distance. Didn't happen. Instead, I ran with my new running friend, B. I'm pretty sure his natural training pace is about 9.5- to 10-minute miles, but he kindly slowed down for me. The result was that I ran probably a minute per mile faster than I would have on my own--and had a great time! My run couldn't be described as "taking it easy," but for now, anyway, I don't seem to have suffered any ill effects.

At the end of our 6-miler there were bagels, Gatorade, and even a cake. The cake was there partly to cheer on the club's marathon and half-marathon training groups, who have been running together many consecutive Saturdays in preparation for the Oakland Running Festival (the same race I'm signed up for). The cake also commemorated three club-member birthdays. Too much fun was had by all.

Today, then. In the interests of not overdoing, I decided to ride my bike for an hour along the Bay Trail. It's a mild day, and the trail was very busy by the time I headed out around 10 am. I rode south from the Berkeley overpass, out to Powell St. in Emeryville, and then back. To tack on a few more miles I continued north along the trail to Gilman St. before turning around.

I'm afraid I can't remember when I wrote about the upcoming construction of three big sports fields along the trail near Gilman St. Maybe 2006? 2007? (If anyone knows how I could search my own archives, feel free to share that knowledge.) Anyway, at that time I wrote that I was happy to see fields being built (hooray for playing ball, any kind of ball) but worried about the hundreds of red-winged blackbirds who were about to be evicted from their habitat in the name of physical fitness.

Well, it's now nesting season, and today as I neared Gilman St. I saw and heard dozens--sadly, not hundreds--of these wonderful, noisy birds. They've traded trees for power lines (see those dots / birds above), but do seem to be thriving. I hope many of the ones nesting in the area before the fields were completed were able to move to another equally hospitable neighborhood. Not much in the way of nesting sites on a soccer field. But much in the way of a healthy game or three. Such is the bittersweet march of progress.

So has gone this day. When I arrived home I was struck by the rather bedraggled appearance of our valiant pear tree. Amazingly, this stick-like thing, undoubtedly a relative of the Charlie Brown Christmas tree, generally produces a respectable number of crispy Asian pears in the course of a season.

I've been thinking a lot about food lately, partly because this month's Runner's World has a particularly enticing section on food. Grains! Greens! Groovy!

Food has also been on my mind partly because I've been making an effort to spend less on groceries and draw more from the resources that lurk in the home fridge and cupboards. I often ignore what's right under my nose in favor of the latest shiny Safeway thing. For lunch, then, I says to myself, self, I says, what is already around that will feed the noontime beast? The answer: a whole-wheat bagel, three tablespoons of leftover pizza sauce, a scrap of low-fat cheddar and another scrap of soy "cheese," scallions, mushrooms, cold broccoli from last night's dinner, a big fat carrot. Put the cold veggies on a plate, pop the laden bagel in the toaster oven (8 minutes at 350). Carbs! Protein! Green and orange veggies! Aaaaaah (cue the lip smacking).

Hold On Here

2010-03-19T08:42:00.000-07:00

It just struck me how odd it is to use the expression "hold on" when really what I'm trying to say to myself is "let go." Let go of all that's gone on in my life since last I posted. Let go of that urgent feeling that I have to relate everything that's happened in my running life and the rest of my life (if the two are in fact separate). I call it the James Boswell syndrome, naming it after the 18th-century biographer of Samuel Johnson. I fell in love with Boswell during my college years--not for his biographical skills but for his addiction to recording every possible detail, the tedious along with the interesting, about his own life. (His London Journal is a good starting place for anyone interested in his autobiographical oeuvre.)

So. What's been going on with me and isn't so soporific that it could be marketed as the new Ambien? Work, a lot of it. (That's my excuse for not posting.) But other than that, plenty of fun and quite a bit of running.

I went to Phoenix with Z, my two favorite sons, my favorite nephew, my favorite niece-in-law, and my favorite fiancee of my son the doctor. It was the 25th anniversary edition of the Annual Merrill A's Spring Training Excursion. Yep. Our first trip was in 1985, when my favorite sons were aged 14 and 10.

Here they are as they look today. Only a little bit older, but a LOT wiser (I think).

And here's my favorite nephew (far left), along with Z and my favorite oldest son.

And here's Z and my son the doctor trying to keep up with me on a morning run in Papago Park as I leave them in the dust (yeah, right). These and a few other Arizona photos are on my Flickr page.

On the Saturday after our Arizona trip, I went on a 11.5-miler to assess my readiness for running the Oakland Running Festival Half Marathon, on March 28 (next week! argh!). The run went well (see photo for the exciting urban dead end where I turned around on that out-and-back run). I was so pumped up that I came home, went online, and signed right up for the race.

By nightfall I had a cold; by the next day I was so tired I could barely move. Then Monday I worked late at my job in San Francisco and didn't get to bed until after 3 am. You get the picture. I was one tired puppy (or old dog, if you will).

By Wednesday I was feeling as if I might live after all and so went out early for a four-miler. Daylight Saving is upon us, so for the first part of my journey I had to identify the wonderful blossoming cherry trees along my route by smell. When I stopped for my obligatory crunches, as I lay on my back I could see a cloud of pale flowers etched against the clear dawn sky. Heaven!

So now it's Friday. My cold is practically gone, Danny Mo is on the bed (warning: cat photo ahead), and I'm resigning myself to having failed to recount every little thing that's happened in my life over the last three weeks. May we all enjoy this blessed time of year, and may we be as peaceful as a warm cat.

Energy

2010-02-26T13:04:00.000-08:00

Thursday morning my run from the house to the Bay brushed me up against both inertia of motion (the frenetic commute on I-80) and inertia of rest (the lake-like silence of the San Francisco Bay). I could feel both of these forces pulsing within me, coexisting, yin and yang, as I pushed body and mind into the dawning day. I realized one reason I run (one of about five million) is to try and find a balance between action and awareness, external motion and internal peace.

On Habits

2010-02-20T20:37:00.000-08:00

No, not the kind the nuns used to wear, but he kind I referred to, if obliquely, in my last post. The habit of thinking of myself in a certain way, a way that puts a fence around who I can be and thus limits my access to the full range of experiences potentially within my reach. I think I don't like beets; ergo, I never get the chance to experience beets.

But there's an upside to thinking about myself as the kind of person who doesn't, who doesn't...well, fill in the blank. How about if I turn it around and think of myself as the kind of person who tries hard not to miss a Saturday morning training run with my running club? Until I made the deliberate decision to adopt the habit of perceiving myself as that kind of person, I was unconsciously thinking of myself as someone who usually flakes on Saturday mornings. But, now--

Two Saturdays ago I showed up at the club run at Crown Beach in Alameda and ran about six miles in the rain. My knee was still very much an issue at that time, but I thought of Sunshine, who has run through her knee pain and is still thriving, and I showed up. I arrived a bit late and because I was running alone veered off course at the start, but I eventually found myself by the water, rain coming down, peace in my heart. I did speed up enough to catch up with a couple of young women and so ended my run all aglow.

Then last Saturday I ran with some folks from the club who were taking it easy. Translated, that means slowly enough that I could hang with them. And instead of being "the kind of person who doesn't run hills," to stay with the group I ran up one side of a rather large hill, from Rockridge to Montclair, and then back down the other side--all with no apparent ill effects. Here I share with you a picture of my friends' sturdy feet. (I didn't get their permission to use their photo in this space, so for now this is all you get. Fine feet, though, no?)

And today I went east through the tunnel and ran in Walnut Creek, along the Iron Horse Trail. I was alone the whole way because I was extra slow, having had an annoying and invasive routine medical procedure perpetrated on my body yesterday. I probably shouldn't have run, but because I'm the kind of person who tries hard not to miss a Saturday morning training run with my running club, there I was. The air was cool, the trail was wonderfully endless, runners and bikers were out in profusion, and random trees were busting out in blossoms.

I've also been in the habit of thinking I'm the kind of person who doesn't have enough energy in the evening to get much done. Well, that person just wrote this post. Could that sucking sound be another habit flying out the window--in this case, into the night?

Danny Mo is watching me so I told him I would put his picture online. Maybe if I do that fuzzball won't jump up on the bed and land on my stomach at 3 a.m. I'm not sure I can become the kind of person who thinks a 3 a.m. cat is adorable.

Food as Teacher

2010-02-15T16:31:00.000-08:00

Ever since I was a child I've known that I dislike beets. Beets? No thank you. I can't stand beets. A few weeks ago I went to the El Cerrito Farmers Market. I bought a beautiful piece of fish; I purchased some handmade tamales. I wandered among the booths, hoping something irresistible would catch my eye. I found myself in front of a winter vegetable stand. But what were those large and lovely gnarly roots, looking a bit like parsnips only a deep cranberry color? Beets. Oh, I hate beets. A little voice in my head asked, when's the last time you actually tasted a beet? Oh, only thirty or forty (or fifty?) years ago. What's your point? Being the wild and crazy adventurer I am, I decided to buy one beet. It was a big one, though, probably 5 inches in diameter, big enough for Z and me to each try a portion.

You've guessed how this is going to end. I took the beet home, peeled it, sliced it and steamed it for a few minutes. (It was beautiful nestled in the stainless steel steamer.) Then I tossed the softened red chunks into a small pan with some sesame oil and chopped onion for a few minutes more and, voila. The results tasted so good--creamy and sweet. The next week I went looking for beets, this time at the Berkeley Bowl. As you can see, above, I bought more than one. And, talk about wild and crazy, this time I even cooked up the greens. Delicious!

The beets experience has left me wondering what other pleasures I've deprived myself of by exiling them from my life before giving them a chance. My goal for the time being is to stay vigilant and try to examine my own de facto prejudices before I accept them as real. (What? Go to a movie about a drunken country and western singer? I don't like that kind of movie. Well, guess what.) Already I've noticed more than one time that I was on the verge of rigid but unexamined behavior. I've stopped, and pondered whether I was beeting myself. Food, as it were, for thought.

Bonus photos: Fog on the path this morning; blossoms too (this is a running blog, after all).

Enough About Me...

2010-01-28T08:48:00.000-08:00

...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. That it belongs to my son the doctor hasn't influenced my assessment of it at all. (If my blog weren't a serious and dignified space, you would see a smiley face here.) Anyway, do check it out. It has good information for anyone who is old or anyone who isn't old but is planning to be so someday.

Catching Up

2010-01-24T11:21:00.000-08:00

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 help at my running club's Fourth Sunday Run. We dodged the rain.

A good time was had by all!

She'd Be 99 Today!

2010-01-19T14:52:00.000-08:00

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 cartoon Morticia for a costume party. I was still quite little, but I remember regarding her transformation with awe. She was her, yet she was also Morticia.

Thanks to my favorite nephew for scanning this and many, many other old family photos and making them available electronically. They've been the means these last few weeks of restoring to me a more complete picture (pun intended) of days, people, and events that will never come again.

Of course this post is running-related. How much running do you think I'd be doing if it weren't for my mom? (For that matter, how much of anything? Thanks, Ma.)

Photo Taken From a Runaway Bus

2010-01-15T16:07:00.000-08:00

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 that caricature of an aircraft when I took the photo. Bridges, buses, planes--cell phone cameras, for that matter. How I take all this technology for granted!

At this point I feel bound to confess that these mooooooving pictures are posted because although I've worked out twice recently, I haven't taken any new photos. If I had, you'd see that I went for my best run in more than a month on Thursday. I did wear my knee brace but almost didn't need it. The early morning was cool and clear and I felt at peace in my body. A nice change from the almost belligerent way I've been executing my runs since I came up lame in November. (Note that in talking about my hostile attitude even the verb I use is violent.)

You'd also see a picture of me at the gym this morning, floating gingerly along on the elliptical machine at level 3 for only a half-mile and then row, row, rowing the boat machine at a ridiculous resistance level for an unremarkable 300 meters. In other words, I've been taking it easy.

I did go to the doctor yesterday and she referred me for an X-ray and for physical therapy. Between my body's natural inclination to heal and the support of an eager health-care team, the old gray mare may eke out a few more days, weeks, months, years of doing the old heel and toe. I intend to stay tuned to find out what happens next!

Up, Up and Away?

2010-01-11T14:53:00.000-08:00

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 out of the dead end we had reached. It wasn't until we'd crossed the creek (on a masterful and artful arrangement of stones Z created by throwing small boulders into the water) and walked another quarter of a mile that we realized we needed to recross the stream and head straight up a steep hill to get to the path we wanted. Z created another sterling crossing and over (and up) we went.

A free-range-chicken sandwich on whole-grain bread washed down with a diet cola? Welcome to my life in twenty-first-century America.

We ended up hiking probably 2.5 miles (at the most) but it was getting late and we were hungry. We returned to the parking lot, got our lunch out of the car, and dug in. I'd say we had a good day but not a great day. This morning we looked at the calendar and set a date less than a month from now to return to Sunol and go right where on Sunday we went wrong. Should be fun!

This is a great time of year to hike--the air is cool and as last year's flora decays it nourishes this year's nascent growth.

Water World, Etc.

2010-01-08T14:37:00.000-08:00

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 medico for next week. Swimming is divine, biking is invigorating--but they're not running. Time to get my knee back. Stay tuned.

Apropos of nothing in particular (except, perhaps, the New Year), I'd like to share a great blog post I found (via the Communicatrix) that will help you read a book every week this year. C'mon, now, it could be fun.

Finally, in the spirit of full disclosure, I'm confessing that I borrowed the wonderful concept of making January the new December from the above-mentioned Communicatrix. By blogging every day she moves so fast and presents so many great ideas that my brain can't always keep up. When it falls behind, I'm liable to forget where I read the latest brilliant thing--I'm just happy if I don't forget the thing itself.

TRAINing

2010-01-07T14:27:00.000-08:00

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-especially-training is brought to you by my Bowflex, which was Z's Christmas present to me, a finger-touch heart monitor/watch. Thanks to my favorite nephew for showing me his Bowflex last time he was in town. I haven't figured out all the bells and whistles on mine yet, but was able to ascertain that I arrived at the library with a heart rate of 90 bpm. This beautiful blue gadget has many functions. Among other things, it's a watch, a chronometer, and a pedometer. Pretty sure it has a popcorn popping mode if I can just find it. At any rate, while I am not running I'm sure I'll enjoy tuning into my heart rate as I do other activities that are fine except for their not being running. No, I'm not whining. Much.

Okay, okay. I just took a few moments out here (real-time action at Running Commentary central!) to call Kaiser and schedule an appointment for next week. My gimpy knee has been sore on and off for years, but this time the pain seems more persistent than usual. Some physical therapy may be in order. Just so no one tries to get me to stop running.

The Party's Over

2010-01-06T16:21:00.000-08:00

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 a doctor so it must be true. I've been stretching and foam-rollering (yes, that's a verb--trust me, I'm a proofreader) the afflicted area and it seems to help some.

I'm on the verge of scheduling a sports massage and even going to the doctor. My Zen-like patience with not running is wearing thin. Ommm.

Be Here Now

2010-01-04T10:08:00.000-08:00

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 can push--on this day. Tomorrow's push will be a fresh story.

One More Resolution

2010-01-02T18:02:00.000-08:00

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 find few opportunities to move around freely on this beautiful earth. (I may move around on some other plane, but speculating about that is a whole 'nother post.)

Between the now (life) and the then (death), I want to enjoy what the world has to offer. And all that it has to offer is largely why I am such a tree hugger and an outdoor exercise junkie. So one way or another, I resolve to keep on moving.