Cubs win! Cubs win!

The title of this one is for Bubba. Who knows what I was thinking when I got my prescription running glasses and turned instantly into a Harry Caray lookalike. When I don these glasses suddenly I find myself wanting to belt out a drunken rendition of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame."

I did my 10+ miler today and it went reasonably well. I haven't plotted it on MapMyRun yet, but I'm pretty sure it was close to 10.5. Ran out the BART path to the end, partly to find out what wildflowers do in the dead of winter. Turns out some of them, in this temperate climate, bloom (if only modestly).
Of course, it didn't feel like a winter's day. Brilliant sun, a mild breeze. And this after the freezing weather of 10 days ago. All went fairly well, although my right ankle is now sore and I'm not sure why. Friday night I did run in SF with my friend M, along the Embarcadero under a big moon, lights of the Bay Bridge twinkling as we cruised by. (Correction to the last post: M is training for Napa, not LA. How could I confuse them! It's her first marathon, and I'm excited on her behalf.)

Me, I feel faster and stronger than I did a year ago, which augers well for my training--if only I can keep from pounding myself into the ground. Today I took a 50-second walk break every 15 minutes and moved along at a respectable pace. The temptation is to push and push, but my brain tells me it is too early in the training cycle. Brain to body: hullllo.

My ankle could just be telling me I ran hard on concrete Friday and then instead of resting Saturday hiked around pretty strenuously with Z. For the first time since I moved to the Bay Area in 1980, I went to Alcatraz. It was my Christmas present from Z and was as much fun as I had hoped it would be. Definitely more fun for me than for Scarface, I'm sure. I was struck by how small the island is and how cramped the quarters. And the exercise yard--a postage stamp. Those once incarcerated here were human beings; I'm a human being. I can't say I know how they felt, but maybe I can imagine a little bit how such confinement might effect a fellow creature. Strikes me that "fun" might not be an appropriate adjective to use in the same paragraph with "Alcatraz." Here's the man who took me there. Now he's a guy who can be "fun." And on Saturday, tramping through the corridors of pain and up the hills to nowhere, oddly enough, he was.

Comments

Bob said…
Thanks for the dedication. That's a really nice picture of Mike, too.
Glad you guys finally got outside. Don't understand how you can be couch potatoes in such a climate. ;)
7:51 AM
Sunshine said…
Wildflowers are awesome... delicate, sometimes brilliant, precious.
7:01 PM
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