Running Commentary

Sunday morning before most of the world was yet awake, I had a great 7-mile run out the Ohlone Greenway and back. This was after last week's big rain and before this week's, so the sky was clear. As soon as the sun peeked over the hill, the birds started in with their chirping and the fog rolled in just as if it wasn't October. I ran out almost to Stockton Street, stopping when I got to a set of three low-set bars that were saying to me, "Drop and give us 20!" So I did. Five push-ups on the lowest bar, five on the middle, and ten on the high. Puff, puff, I gotta tell ya. That was my turnaround point, so I backtracked and made a stop at some low-rising parallel bars that I'd never noticed before. The parallel-bar experience for me in the past has generally been fraught with terror (What if I get out in the middle and my arms give way? What if I lurch so hard I lurch right off the bars? ). But that's because the set I've used before is ver-r-r-ry tall, s...

Wanted to check in on a day full of events (including postseason baseball games--too much fun). Here's a quiz: What's notable about October 11, 2009? a. It would have been my dad's 102nd birthday. b. It is the six-month anniversary of the fall that put me out of commission for three months. c. It is the day I ran the Primo's half marathon in Danville. d. All of the the above. And the answer is--ta da!--d., All of the above. So it's a special day. Here's my daddy posing with my mother's daddy. The time was about 1934, when RAH would have been 26 or 27. A pair of handsome fellas. I wish I had a portrait-quality photo of me at the starting line in Danville, but hey, it was dark when Z took this. The race started at 7:15, so it was barely light even when the starting gun went off. Things were a little fuzzy, so I guess this picture is appropriate. The run went very well. My energy stayed high. I wasn't fast, but really the point today was to ascertain wheth...

I set out to do the LMJS 15K at Lake Merritt last Sunday. It was a freakishly hot day, so after two laps around the lake I gave it up and settled for a 10K. Picture me running across this finish line, a bit more "finished" than I'd planned on being. Still, I was pleased to be running hard and have suffered no noticeable after-effects. Even when I threw in the towel, the infrastructure (muscles and bones) still felt strong--but lightheadedness and mild mental confusion gave me the message that I was overheating. (No smart-aleck questions about and how was the latter any different from my normal state.) I am registered to run a half marathon Oct. 11 and hoping to get cooler weather that day. In other news, Z and I went to our new gym together this morning early. It was the first time we've gone to the gym together in years--maybe three or four years, even. It felt great to see him working out and looking so healthy. He had open-heart surgery in April and has recover...

10.62 -- Number of miles run (per MapMyRun) 16 -- Number of Miniwheat biscuits consumed for pre-run breakfast 3 -- Number of red lights waited for 159 -- Number of days since hip injury 5.5 -- Number of backyards along trail being eaten alive by morning glories 2 -- Number of couples arguing as they walked along 1 -- Number of chocolate Clif Shots slurped on run 12 -- Number of dogs being walked 4 -- Number of songs playing in my head at various times 10 -- Number on a scale of 1 to 10 representing my happiness over being healed

Puddles on the path! I was awakened at 4 am when the bedroom was lit up with a flash of bright white. No, it wasn't aliens come to take me away. But it was something almost as unusual in these parts--a thunderstorm. We have gone so many consecutive days (weeks, no, months!) without rain that in my sleepy stupor I had trouble grasping what was going on. Then I started to worry about the stuff we have lying around in the backyard, a byproduct of our efforts to straighten out the garage--but when I considered running out to battle the rain in the pitch dark wearing my sensible flannel nightie, suddenly I became rational. Which is to say, I went back to sleep. I had it on my schedule to do a longish run early, so when I awoke again at 6 am and it was raining only gently, I suited up, stuck a Clif Shot in my pocket, and headed out the door anyway. The morning turned out to be quite mild and only a little wet. I did a good, leisurely seven-and-a-half miler out the Ohlone Greenway. Didn...

Just a brief post today. I'm home from Idaho and busy already with too much work and its corollary, not enough time. Anyway. I ran the Pocatello 10K and was thrilled to find I felt pretty strong. Of course, I was so thrilled that I ran for three days in a row immediately after that and came home from the trip pretty trashed. I took a couple of days off from running and then went out yesterday morning for a happy four-miler. Below is my photo from that run. I feel blessed that I am in heel-and-toe mode again--it was five months ago today that I fell and hurt my hip. I did take some phone photos on my trip. Have posted most of them on my Flickr page , which I hope you'll go to if you're interested. My preference is to post my running photos in this blog but I find that I take so many that sorting and uploading the appropriate ones gets to be a chore. Keep on breathing, y'all.

My brain on noise--actually, my camera phone's view from inside the car wash. You can almost see the noise in there, no? I have come across a couple of books lately that seem relevant to my mental meanderings as recorded in this blog. The first is Listening Below the Noise , by Anne LeClaire, a woman who some twenty years ago decided to observe one day of silence per week. Since she made that decision, she has never spoken a word on a Monday. Her account of the experience is compelling and thought provoking. (Silence is on my mind today, particularly because as I type I am distracted by loud gospel music coming over the fence from the yard adjacent to mine in the back. I've turned on my own noise-- a CD of collected piano concertos-- to combat the outside noise. Don't know whether this makes things better or worse.) Although I doubt I would duplicate LeClaire's experience, I freely admit that the notion of a silent day attracts me. I am not someone who listens to music...

Because it's slow at work and I'm between freelance projects, I did a lot of Web surfing today. Found myself wondering what it would be like to blog five days a week, like one of my favorite bloggers , or even every day like some blogs I've visited. Confession: I signed up for Twitter but never tweet. Even that seems to someone like me that it requires the revelation of TMI. Imagine if I blogged nonstop! It would be, like, Ran today. Ran today. Didn't run today. Shoulder hurt. Swam today. Did nothing today. Hip hurt. Ran anyway. Sunny this morning. Ran today. And so on. But then I run across some everyday blogs by people that are actually interesting. Compelling, even. Still, the notion of nonstop writing is in my mind akin to the notion of stream-of-consciousness talking. Interesting to the talker, but.... In other snooze, I took a few phone pics when I ran in Reno last weekend. This lovely mosaic is at the (surprise!) rose garden . And this line drawing etched into co...

Peace I ask of thee, oh river Peace, peace peace When I learn to live serenely Cares will cease From the hills I gather courage Visions of the days to be Strength to lead and faith to follow All are given unto me Peace I ask of thee, oh river Peace, peace peace -- Song for Girl Scouts, learned at Camp Wasiu circa 1955

The sun has indeed been out the last two mornings I've run early--Friday and today. In the Bay Area, a clear sky can only mean one thing: Summer's almost over. Around here, summer = fog and fog = summer. This is an ordinary BART support pillar, but wait--that's early morning sunlight painting its flat surfaces a pale gold. All hail the sun! This morning not only was the sun shining, the moon was hanging around too. And flowers preened in the clean white dawn. My running life has resumed, I'm glad to say. I'm a little slower; the runs are a little shorter. But I'm out there, and for that profoundly grateful. For the time being I'm going with a weekly schedule that includes two street runs, two workouts at the gym (which include short treadmill runs), and one swim. Two plus two plus one equals five, so that leaves two days when I rest. Usually they're work days, meaning I walk briskly those days (and every work day) for at least 2.5 miles. On swim days I ...

...and up is down. As I recover from my hip injury (Fifteen weeks! It's taken fifteen freaking weeks!) I find myself favoring my entire left leg from waist to toenails. Well fine, you say. But by being so out of balance I seem to have tweaked my right hamstring. So when I went for a run (!) this morning I couldn't decide which body part to baby. I decided to be a LION and baby neither. I actually had a fine run. Five miles. Even two weeks ago that distance seemed like an impossible dream. In other news, I swore I wasn't going to blog again until I finished the freelance editing job I'm working on. But my flip-phone photos are piling up and crying out to go for a cruise in the ether. So here are a few from July. I'm closing that folder and starting on August (the above is the first and only one for August, so far). . On July 19, I ran from the chicken... ...to the graffiti and back, a distance of about two miles. Woo woo! On July 22 Boomer , my favorite nephew, blew ...

Gets a drink, of course. I was a little surprised to see this one at the swimming pool the other day, but she seemed to be doing well for a fish (a mammal, really) out of water. I was swimming because my recovery from my hip injury has slowed to a crawl, or a breast stroke, I guess you could say. As of a few weeks ago I was about 90% healed, and that's where I'm stuck. It's frustrating to be able to do everything without pain except run. I can bike, I can swim, I can walk, I can lift weights, I can even (carefully) carry my bike up the front porch steps--which was the act that got me into this mess in the first place. But when I run, even gently, even on the treadmill where I can unload my legs a bit by holding the bar with my hands, my hip hurts. My quad hurts. My knee hurts. Not unbearably but enough to interfere with the activity. Yes, I am having some cheese with my whine today. As in, cheese whiz, I'm sure sick of this. Full confession--I don't go back to the d...

Laurabel Neville Hume—January 19, 1911 to July 7, 2005 Yesterday all day I kept having the urge to pick up the phone and call my mother. This morning I realized why I had her on my mind. Miss you, Ma.

Actually, it was a mild and foggy morning. You went for your first run from the house since your near-mortal hip injury and became giddy as your feet carried you through the familiar blocks. In your giddiness you envisioned writing a blog post that was in its subtle (?) way more about writing than about running. You were thinking about New York Times best-selling author Steve Friedman , who wrote an article on Suzi Cope for the current issue of Runner's World . You admired his intent, which was to present a moving story in a dramatic way, but you found yourself questioning his chosen vehicle for achieving that. It takes guts, you brooded, to write an entire narrative article in the second person. As someone who just yesterday wrote an entire blog post in the third person, you had a sharpened appreciation for the pitfalls of deviating from the literary norm. During the night after your rogue post you had tossed and turned, wrapping the sweat-soaked sheets around your tortured form....

...when she can't run much and then gets further sidelined by a nasty summer cold? Ans: She goes to LA to see the kids, and goes with them to a ball game (Angels won). She goes for a walk while she's down south and enjoys seeing the ubiquitous jacarandas weep their purple flowers all over the ground. She talks to the animals. She walks a lot. In the country... ...and in the city. Finally, she agrees to go geocaching with Z, who obligingly poses with the fishes. She even spots the cache before he does and only gloats a teeny bit . (Tomorrow, she's going for a run for sure, no matter what. She even promises never to talk about herself in the third person again. For Rickey Henderson it's okay, but she's no Rickey.)

The title could refer to this on-the-fly post (except for the "sweet" part, mebbe), but really I am describing the run I went on this morning at 6 a.m. It's no secret to anyone even slightly acquainted with me that I'm very sick of my hip injury, which as a matter of fact is 11 weeks old this very day. I've whined a lot. I have continued to work out in various ways, some of them painful and none of them noticeably effective. So this morning I tried again. I was out on the section of the Ohlone Greenway that runs under the BART tracks for about an hour (rode my bike down there so I could keep my tender self off the pavement). Of that hour, I trotted along for some 26 minutes, meaning that even if I have lost so much speed that I'm only running 13-minute miles, I still ran two miles. And now, at 1:20 in the afternoon, I feel good. As in, I'm pain-free. I know better now than to think I'm fully back, but I am letting myself believe that I'm closer to ...

And a fine one it is. I'm supposed to be proofreading a book on rental forms, but instead have been shuffling around the house, whistling Mozart, watching the A's on TV, making a tunafish sandwich for lunch and sharing it with Danny Mo, the king of all cats. Z has taken a part-time job, which keeps him out of the house Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. It is just about the perfect activity for this rehabilitating period in his life, and we're glad that the opportunity popped up for him when he needed it. But I miss sharing my Sunday with him! Meanwhile, the sliding door in the kitchen is open and a summer breeze is dancing in and out. Summer breeze, makes me feel fine, Blowing through the jasmine of my mind. [Insert a nod of thanks and a smile here for Seals and Croft.] So what have I been doing? Running. Why else would I be so giddy? Believe me when I say I'll never take mobility for granted again. Maybe if I promise that, fate will refrain from throwing me onto the...

Having a gimpy hinge, as I currently do, makes a person place the feet carefully while walking. (Helps prevent stumbling.) In my case this diligence has resulted in looking at the ground a lot more than usual. Periodically in this blog I have published some ground shots (sky shots too, but that’s a different subject). So here are two more. I've been passing this one daily for a while. It makes me smile. This one does too; it's one in a series of chalk drawings that mirror the fauna along the sidewalk on Acton Street.