Running Commentary

Here's a pre-race Melissa O., LMJS member and Oakland Running Festival pacer coordinator extraordinaire. Loved her outfit! So I ran the Oakland Marathon. From where I sit now, two days out, I'm glad I did. From where I sat yesterday? Not so glad. I'll get this out of the way early here: I ran my worst marathon time ever. I had to run-walk a lot of the way. I'm not proud of my time. But I am proud that I pushed through and finished. My cold did not substantially abate, but I toed the starting line because I'd said I would--and at least my cold hadn't gotten much worse. The starting line. In many ways the race was a magical experience. It started with the weather clearing up for the first time in two weeks. It continued when I met my new friend M at the start and was able to run with her a lot of the way. Seeing Oakland (and seeing Oakland and seeing Oakland and seeing Oakland) on foot was a treat. My friend M, looking strong as she chugs up the first big hill. Th...

Here's a photo I took last week of the sky in San Francisco. I'm posting it today partly to illustrate the kind of lovely skies we've been seeing this month because of all the storms--a more normal cloudy Bay Area sky is slate gray and unbroken. I'm also posting it because it's all I have right now. No images from last-minute runs, because there have been no last-minute runs, unless you want to count 1.5 miles last Tuesday on the elliptical machine. (I'm counting it. I'll take what I can get.) There have been no runs because I've been trying to rest. I have a cold. The time I haven't been resting has been taken up with praying. Praying it's not really a cold, praying it will go away, praying for a message from the universe saying, "Yes! You should run! You'll run a PR!" The universe has been discouragingly silent. It has been hard to read recent emails from members of the LMJS marathon training group who are having to drop out of t...

Sometimes when I've done a number of runs without blogging in between them, I'm left with a phone-camera full of photos and nowhere to put them. I'm currently wrestling with my Flickr account to let me in, but I don't think anyone really goes there anyway, so I don't care that much whether I post there. Anyway. I have done five good runs since the last time I wrote here. One was the marathon training group's final long run before the race, a 20-miler that covered a lot of the marathon course. The two after that took place in Phoenix, when I was there for Spring Training (go A's)--a couple of 4-milers. After that came a 12-miler down by the Berkeley marina, a run in which I did some run-walking and had a surprisingly great time. The final run was this last Saturday. It was an 8-miler with the marathon training group, a careening, sloppy rain-fest that, oddly enough, was enjoyed by all (including me). Here are some brilliant runners, members of the Oakland ...

Not thinking about pain in the abstract right now, thinking about pain in the lower left quadrant of my body. I just did 13 miles along the Ohlone Greenway, having wimped out yesterday and not done the scheduled 12 with the training group, which went to Walnut Creek. On my run today I was specifically thinking of pain and how I relate it to the wise words of running guru George Sheehan , who said more than once that we are all an experiment of one. Well for a while today, I was a darned painful experiment. Around mile 2, my left knee hurt. By mile 4 the pain had migrated to my left quad. By mile 5 my left piriformis muscle was on fire. By mile 7 the pain had traveled across my glute and settled in the left bursa , the site of my original injury. By mile 8 I had decided to change my plan to run the Oakland Marathon into a plan to run the Oakland Half Marathon. As soon as I decided this--Yes! That's it! I'll do it!--as if on cue, all the pain left my body. The final 5 miles of ...

Today was slated to be a 20-miler for the marathon training group. I paced some half marathoners and one intrepid full marathoner. I say intrepid because anyone who came out today was intrepid. Overnight the forecast went from a 25 percent chance of rain to the reality of a steady downpour. I only made it 14.25 miles ( only ), but at the relatively slow pace of my gutsy group that meant being out there for more than three hours. My hip let me know it's still an issue, but I was able to persevere. I know I am not alone in my aches and pains. At this point in training for a long race, runners with no pain are probably not running enough! Every single person who came out in the rain today is my hero. In some odd way, for me (and possible for others?) it was even fun. Yes, cold, yes, wet. Bring it on--I'm alive! We ran on the SF Bay Trail, from Emeryville to Berkeley to Albany to El Cerrito and back. There's only one real hill on the course, so here's the view from its mo...

Because I'm scheduled to do a long run this weekend and will most likely be brain dead for days afterward, I wanted to do a rather scatter-gun post while I'm still a little better than a typing monkey. A scatter-gun post is one that's lucky if it nails anything other than hot air. Or you could call it an omnibus--a vehicle for anything that wants to jump aboard. One guaranteed running-related item is that I didn't run at all last weekend. Still, Saturday and Sunday had much to do with running: Along with a number of other LMJS folks, I took a two-day coaching certification class. The food was great! (Oh, yeah, I think I'm supposed to report on the class here.) The best thing I can say is that I was exposed to a large amount of very useful information about the best ways to train and about how a good coach can impart this information to others. A 100-question test along with certifications in CPR and First Aid stand between me and my coaching certification, but I...

The day. I have been reluctant to write about the Kaiser Half Marathon, which I ran last Sunday. Although my experience was positive, there's an undercurrent of sadness in my race-day reflections because while I was still out on the Great Highway, a runner who had just crossed the finish line collapsed and died. Deaths at races, like deaths at many other kinds of events, are rare--but they do occur. For me, learning of this particular death felt like a splash of ink hitting the sky-blue bucket of the day. I traveled to SF with Lucretia (l.) and Kate (r.). They wowed me with their times--especially Kate, who scored a medal by finishing second in her (and my!) age group. That was more than 45 minutes before I crossed the finish line. (These girls rock.) We toed the start line at 8 a.m. Well, that's a figure of speech. For me, it actually means that I milled around some 200 yards behind the start line along with thousands of other enthusiastic but not-too-fast runners and then, ...

Saturday was a long run for the Oakland Running Festival training group--a 16-plus miler along an old train corridor known as the Iron Horse Trail . I have a special affection for the Iron Horse, having been an RTC member for more years than I care to or dare to count. It was the longest run we've done to date. Its relatively flat topography was for me a mixed blessing--no quad-killing hills, but also no variation in the landing angle of my repetitive footfalls (repetitive to the tune of some 90 per minute--for about 180 minutes). My hips and knees complained, but they lived. I paced the 11:30-12:00-minute milers training for the half marathon, which was inspirational and fun. I love to see new runners making and honoring a difficult training commitment. However, they were scheduled to run 8 miles total, so they turned around at the 4.5-mile mark--leaving me with only 11.5 more to run to make my 16. Because we were the caboose of the running groups, I was suddenly alone on the tr...

The above title refers to my recent rediscovery of the secret of life: SLEEP. I say rediscovery because periodically I accidentally sleep enough and realize how happy it makes me--good natured, even. My current appreciation of slumber started week before last, when I did only one mid-week run and a little swimming and devoted the remaining early-morning hours to sleeping. To my surprise, suddenly my appetite was sharper, my job less onerous, my spouse even handsomer than usual! All this happiness made me greedy for more happiness, so I've continued the practice of getting enough sleep right up through this week. Wow. All this is not to say I've been a total slug. I met at my overpriced gym with a trainer for a free assessment and then again for a 50-minute customized workout. Whew--hard. Who knew I could do a plank (with leg lifts!) on an instability ball for a whole minute (that may not be the exact name for the ball, but I call 'em as I experience 'em). I have also sw...

Short update: Saturday's training run was steep but--for me anyway--less debilitating than the run last week. (I know, we hope for a higher recommendation than "less debilitating than a killer run," but sometimes "not awful" has to suffice). The run, which fell a little more than a mile short of the 10 miles it was billed at, followed part of the actual Oakland Marathon course. We went from College Avenue up, up, up. If you've ever been in the Oakland flatlands on a moonless night and seen the illuminated Mormon temple hanging high up in the hills, well, that tells you just how up, up, up we went. Here's the temple, unilluminated but still up, up, up there. Then we went down, down, down, and I finished with only a bruised toenail or two and a gimpy quad muscle to show for it. Today, I actually felt pretty human, especially after sleeping ten hours last night. I wanted to move a little but not a lot. The answer? Going to the tennis court with a racquet a...

...so I did. This was this morning, at 7:09. The sun was finally coming up, after I'd been running for more than an hour. I skipped the track workout last night because I was still sore from Saturday's hilly fun (see previous post), so I felt I had to get out this morning. I did my version of a tempo run--a 1.5-mile warm-up, a 20-minute steady run at a pace between my 10-K and marathon paces, followed by a 1.5-mile cool-down (also known as getting home again). Gee. That description makes it sound like the run was scientific, cut-and-dried, efficient, productive. I suppose it could have been, might have been one of those things. The loose-cannon factor in that "tempo" formula is what's called "perceived effort." Some days my ostensible 10-K pace feels like the speed of a Nascar contender, while other days it feels like the speed of the loser in a turtle race. I check my Garmin periodically to make sure I'm on-pace, and I can only call my consistency ...

Yesterday the marathon training group did a long run along the Carquinez Strait , on the east side of Martinez--along the bluffs above the invisible water (fog, y'know). Whew. In the past when I've trained for a marathon on my own, I've never done long runs two weeks in a row. But now I'm trying to be flexible and to believe that makers of this training schedule have designed a workable program, one in which doing 15 miles on the heels of doing 12 is fine. Crunch time--where the rubber soles met the road. It was a hard run (did I already say that?). The fog never lifted, and a cold wind was blowing by the time I turned around at 7.5-plus miles on this out-and-back course. The "plus" was a little extra I had to tack on in order to find a secluded spot to, uh, heed the call of nature. Now I'm sure you've never done that. Might have been hallucinating on the return portion of the run. My left hip was sore, as was my left knee--this left-side vulnerability...

I have wanted to post--no disenchantment with blogging here--but somehow I just haven't made it to this space in a while. Since CIM I have done many runs, even a 5-mile fun run / race on New Year's Day. I've remained healthy enough, although it's about that new twinge I've been getting on the inside of my right knee -- Anyway. The most shocking thing to me is that I just haven't been taking many phone photos on my runs. I'm sure that's mostly because I've done so much running with my fellow club members and team members, and when these people are running they tend to keep on running, not stopping the way I often do to take some quirky picture. Between track most Tuesday nights and the LMJS training group Saturday mornings, for the time being I'm running in a lot of company. (The training group is in preparation for the Oakland Marathon, at the end of March.) Consistently running with other people is a new experience for me, and I'm finding th...

Christmas around the corner. Lots of rain here. It is cold. Nose-biting cold. But the photo to the left puts the whole Berkeley winter weather thing in perspective. I took this picture about five minutes ago--it's what I see out my window as I sit at the computer. The rose is smooshed up against the glass. Roses love rain, even cold rain, and when rain beats down they get giddy and leggy and happy to bloom. I've had weather luck in my running since CIM--have managed to slip between the raindrops, so to speak, for every run except one, which I used the treadmill for (see my last post). Here's another rain-related image, taken last week as I was logging some early morning miles. Not very wintry by Christmas-carol standards (no building a snowman in this meadow), but lovely nonetheless--a burst of winter color: a cushiony underfoot mosaic for a passing runner to appreciate. Saturday I ran with the Oakland Marathon training group I'm in. I was amazed and pleased to do ten...

Not long after completing CIM, I pretty much told the story of my marathon in pictures via Flickr . I've been slammed at work and busy trying to return to an even keel after the emotional highs and lows brought on by the long race and by the season in general. I am so very happy to have run the marathon, even though my time was less than stellar. My feet and calves cramped up toward the end, but I hobbled on in. I was 34th out of 43 in my age group. I'm proud to say that the 1st place runner is my friend, fellow team member, and also the kind person who drove me to Sacramento for the race. She's an inspiration! Recovery has been a challenge. I've gone from feeling euphoric to feeling older than mud and back again to being high. Because I'm a glutton for the agony of distance running, I am training for the Oakland Marathon, which is in late March. Last year I did the Oakland Half Marathon and loved it. Anyway, last Saturday I went on a group training run but only ...

A week ago Sunday I did my last long run before CIM . Afterward, I looked at the little map the run created in my Garmin Forerunner 205 and then I looked at the photos I took along the way, and it struck me that the whole thing was like some geography-based board game that takes the runner-player through many hazards in assorted different lands. It had rained the night before, so the first part of the game-board road map, the Bay Trail heading south from Berkeley, was lined with puddles. On the way back from Emeryville, not so m uch. I headed back to Berkeley, where the next segment of the game map had me dropping by the house to pick up the insoles for my running shoes. I had run seven miles before I realized I had inexplicably left them lying on top of the dryer. By the time I went through the front door, I was at mile 12. Surprisingly, I felt no ill effects then, or even the day after, from having run without that extra padding under my feet. Maybe the new less-is-more-in-the-...