Running Commentary

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.

Every day I my hip feels a bit better (about time, too, says the grouch within). Here's a poster that stared me in the face Saturday when I ventured out on my bike to the local Trader Joe's , a round-trip journey of about six miles. I related to the poster's sentiment. Friday was my first bike ride--a very tentative double circuit around the block. The actual riding is a piece o' cake--I've been logging bike miles at the gym for a week or two with only mild pain. Getting on and off my trusty bike (on left) has been a whole 'nuther story. My habit has always been to mount by standing on my left leg and swinging my right leg back and up, over the saddle and into the pedal clip in one rather elegant and swashbuckling motion. Problem is, the left leg bone is connected to the left hip bone, the one that is bruised and cranky. This means my new way to get on is to concentrate on centering my body weight over my left foot and then sneak my right foot up that left leg ...

I rejoined the gym a couple of weeks ago (“rejoined” means I last belonged about four years ago—maybe longer) and am doing my best to go regularly so I don’t feel as if I’ve wasted my money. Now that for the time being I’m not spending time running early in the morning (insert frowny face here), it is easier than it was before to carve out some gym time in my schedule. This morning I went there loaded for bear and probably overdid it a bit. I started off walking up the stairs to the aerobic machines. Stairs seem to be the last frontier with this injury—raising my left leg and then loading it with my body weight is a real challenge. I give my performance this morning a B-minus. Once I ascended, I walked 10 minutes on the treadmill to warm up, traveling an impressive 0.3 mile. I even supported most of my weight on my arms and took a small jog, just to try and remember what it feels like to run. I probably jogged 30 paces, twice, before realizing it wasn’t that great an idea. Then I went ...

Lap swim begins at 6 a.m. Re: My injured hip. I’ve gone from philosophical and accepting to (almost) screamingly impatient. Can’t say what brought on the attitude change—could have to do with how smug I’ve been about having already worked through my denial and anger. They are both back with a vengeance. I suspect it’s because now, four weeks and a day after my crash-and-burn that sent me to the ER, I am very close to fully ambulatory. I’ve rejoined the gym and have been riding the stationary bike. My new hero, Jamie the physical therapist, has prescribed some exercises that make me feel studly. She is enthusiastic and kind and encourages me in my healing. Flip-flops and a crumpled towel. Hmm. Someone's been swimming — and she left her cane behind! This morning I’m pretty sure I overdid it. To start, I went swimming (left my cane hanging in the locker room). I managed to stay with it for a lucky 13 minutes. Could have gone longer but I wanted to maintain my self-image as a prudent ...

What does an injured runner consume in the morning? This delicious smorgasbord of meds, of course. And coffee. I’m exaggerating, actually. I threw the codeine container into the picture for the effect, even though I only had to take codeine twice before deciding it made me feel even more fuzzy-minded than usual. Quick update on what condition my condition is in: I’m still in more pain than I’d like, but it diminishes slightly by the day. Tomorrow I go to physical therapy. My attitude is improving a bit, especially because Z is recovering apace from his surgical adventure, albeit in small increments. One reason I took the above photo was to provide myself with an entry into the subject of food, a topic I promised a few weeks (or months) back to talk about in this blog. When I got hurt, more than two weeks ago, I was worried that because I’ve become used to eating a lot to fuel my running, I would continue on that course and soon balloon to the size of a Chevrolet. What a relief—so far t...

This is the foliage outside the orthopedics dept. at Kaiser Oakland. My exercise for this day was hopping and slopping along on my crutches from the car to this office for a total of three-and-a-half blocks. I can't report my runs to you, since for the time being I have none, but I can tell you what things are like here in the waiting lane. Mainly, they are slo-o-o-w. My walk to this office took 15 minutes. What I find odd is that being on the DL is not as terrible as I thought it would be. Slowing down has given me (admittedly by force) the gift of paying more attention to where I am and what I'm doing. My short walk netted me two handsome, burly construction guys who left what they were doing to make sure I made my way safely across a busy street. It also paid off in sights (of people and things) and smells (of spring's burgeoning greenery) that I might not have heeded had I been moving faster. I'm not trying to say I like being hurt. Fact: I hate it. But as the wise ...

Adventures in medical matters update: Z is scheduled to come home tomorrow and Danny Mo and I are very happy about that. His home care at my hands may be less than perfect, however, since I fell on my already bruised hip Monday and smacked it so badly that I had to go the the ER. I fell right on my own front steps and would herein like to recognize my dear neighbor, Dr. Ben, veterinarian and outstanding human being, who came to my rescue. He and his wife, J., were so very kind--Ben drove me to the ER and simply wouldn't let me send him away. It was 2 a.m. when he finally went home. After prodding, poking, X-raying, and CAT-scanning me, the docs declared I have no broken bones. They gave my own set of nifty crutches, so I'm limping around like Chester. Insert kudos here to my caring friend R., who picked me up from Kaiser in the morning, brought me home, and even stayed for a bowl of Miniwheats while I adjusted to having four feet instead of two (see portrait of my new feet, bel...