Running Commentary

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 t...

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 d...

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 o...

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.

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 a...

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 ste...

...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 . T...

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 he...

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...

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 ...

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 ou...

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 ...

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-es...

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 ...

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 ca...

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 ...