Running Commentary

First, the looking up part. You may remember the bare neighborhood tree I photographed and was talking to in late winter (yes, for those of you new to this blog, I talk to trees--plenty of time here for you to move on to a different site), telling it not to panic because its leaves would be coming soon. If you're with me this far, you may also remember that I took another picture of it on the morning I congratulated it on having some lacy young leaves on its recently barren branches.  Here's picture number three--taken on my 4.25-miler early this morning. The lace has turned to a blanket of green, and the tree stands tall and proud. Summer is almost here! Now, about the looking down. I can't explain why I love what I see beneath my feet, but love it I often do. I go for days, weeks, even, not looking down, so that when I do it's like seeing a secret world, but a secret world that has been there in plain sight all along. (Do click on this one to enlarge.)  

Minor insight today.  I went for a swim, the first in a couple of weeks. I went to my overpriced gym early in the workday--around 11:20--on the theory that I might beat the noontime crowd and thus get a lane in the warm pool rather than the cold. Oops. Turned out that Thursday is tot-lesson day in the warm pool, meaning that today two of the five lanes were blocked off. The remaining three were in use, so it was the cold pool or no pool. I'm not clear on the exact temperature of the two pools, but they're only about four degrees apart. That being so, it's remarkable how much colder the cold pool feels. I've been in it before, three times, maybe, and every time have spent every moment that my goggles rose above the water line watching for someone to leave the warm pool so I could sprint over and take the lane they were vacating.  Today I decided to go into be-here-now mode and just swim where I was, with the emphasis on "swim" rather than "focus on the

No, "Quick One" is not a self-reference. It is a description of this post. I've been absent from this space for what feels like a long time. Partly that's because I've been scattering my attention in many different ways, such scattering which is not conducive to coherent blogging. And it's partly because Blogger has changed its format (new! improved! annoying!), and the last time I tried to post all I could get was a mysterious error message that appeared after what I typed faded in and out like something out of Ghost-Busters. Anyway. Just to report--yes, I'm still a bit injured, and yes, I'm still run/walking. But I'm in what feels like a stable place with the running. As long as I can continue the way I am, I'm okay. I'm not moving fast but do seem able to move far. Run/walking 8 miles doesn't seem to disrupt the infrastructure (hips, glutes, back, et al) any more than run/walking 3 miles. So I'm seriously considering participat

I had it on my schedule to run this morning but knew by the time I went to bed last night it wasn't going to happen. Did an 8-mile run-walk Sunday and my piriformis was telling me a-a-a-all about it. Tomorrow I see Dr. Jess at 9 a.m., and I'll do a short run before I head over there.  On my recent runs near to and far from home, I've realized I am still besotted with trees. We'll see how long it lasts. If I'm lucky, for the rest of my life.   On my Sunday run, because the BART tracks path is blocked off for BART seismic work, I ran on the street rather than under the railway. Imagine my surprise when I passed these huge beauties, towering over the track! I've only been running beneath them for, oh, maybe 30 years. I just haven't noticed how big they've gotten. Lovely! So this morning I slept in a bit and went on in to work. I've had it in my mind for a few weeks to try a tai chi class at the gym, and today seemed like it might be a good