Running Commentary

Those of us born into Western culture experience the passage of time as linear, and are comfortable saying "time moves on." I do know I have trouble conceiving of time as existing in any other configuration, Einstein (a Westerner remarkably free of Western ways of thinking) notwithstanding. So I say, time has moved on since I last posted. And then I say, "Have I?" The answer, sadly, is, "not much." My race is a week from yesterday. I haven't run since a week ago yesterday, having been stricken by consecutive viruses, which gleefully turned most of my normal body functions upside down and sideways. Well, I'm crying uncle and saying I'm through with being sick. So this morning I headed out the door for a wobbly 3.25. I'm in Westbrook, Connecticut, right now for the celebration of my mother-in-law's 90th birthday. Most days (including yesterday, when we all went to a 5-hour-long St. Paddy's Day party), she has more energy than I...

I wasn't sure how my run would go this morning, what with having a slight cold (along with everyone else in the household, including my little grandson), but I did manage 12 miles--my longest run in some time. I'll tell you straight off that I set my Garmin to beep every half mile, and every time it did I walked for 30 steps. Even with that my pace was 11:55, which would send me home happy if I could maintain it during the Oakland Half, where I'll be on March 24. My left hip/piriformis/glute/flexor chain was barking a bit by the final mile, but up to that point did well. I really think that continued strengthening, stretching, and foam rolling over the next month will allow me to run this thing without dying from it.   My previous post featured snow in Idaho. Here we have "snow" in LA -- courtesy of blossoming trees, which sprinkle local lawns and streets with their fragrant petals. Ah, winter! The weather was cool and clear, and the sun was up within ...

"There" was Pocatello for my sis's birthday, and "here" is LA, where I continue to hang out and to run. Pocatello on Groundhog's Day was cold, but not as cold as it had been the week before--thanks, heaven, for small favors. It's fun for a California gal to run by some snow. Confession: I wore long johns under my running pants. Also donned a 10+ year-old watch cap that made me look like an aging cat burglar. LA has been a bit chilly, but only a sissy who'd never been to Idaho in February would complain.  Dawn is earlier in SoCal these days. The light can be lovely. I do love a trail that winds into wilderness, but I also cop to relishing a gritty urban run. I've scheduled myself a 12-miler for this Sunday, and am already plotting out which hostile streets it will conquer. Ps. Check out my new template. Try clicking "Flipcard"! Just trying to prove, after a hundred or so years of the same bl...

Had a successful "long" run this morning, an experience I wasn't sure I could count on given the state of my left calf. A couple of nights ago I was awakened by a major-league cramp in that calf, a cramp knotted so hard that all I could do was gasp in pain and let it take its own sweet time to ease up. It did, but since then the area has been painful to the touch and the soreness has slowed down my usually energetic daily walks. But faint heart never won fair lady, er, I mean faint heart never propelled a fair lady out the door to run, so this morning I suited up and headed out an hour before dawn to begin what was scheduled to be a 10-miler. Picture me: It's dark. It's pitch dark. The falling rain is light but steady. There are puddles, puddles that reflect the red, green, and yellow of stoplights--and also the soles of my Sauconys as I every now and then go airborne in a vain attempt to keep my feet dry. I'm at mile 6 or so, and slightly lost--I think...

That's me. Not running as I'd like to be running (fast! free! gloriously!), but running, nevertheless. It's been a while since I caught up in this space, so here I am, committed to doing that--even if my post is short and slightly south of the apex on the sweetness meter. I am continuing to train for the Oakland half, which is March 24. My running is almost exclusively in LA, where most days you'll find me still doing the granny-nanny two-step. My hip/piriformis/SI joint/name your hip pain here is still with me, but treatment by a chiropractic wizard plus some determined stretching and strengthening on my part have kept me on the roads. Do we love it that the days are getting longer, even though it's still January? One reason to run early is to experience the wonder of a.m. light. Nothing sweeter to a morning person like me. This morning it was 8 miles (two weeks ago I did 10, then last week 6.25), most of it along Wilshire Boulevard in the predawn darknes...

Just about every week I'm still getting out one weekend morning to practice the old left-right via walking/running, and calling it my "long run." In that spirit, I'm trying to extend both the running portion of the outing and also to increase the speed to accomplish the transition from "short jog." Yesterday, Sunday, I covered 7 miles with relatively little pain in the posterior (both the figurative and the actual kind). My overall pace was under 13 minutes per mile, which in my mind is more like running than it is like walking. Oh, who cares! Well, I seem to--insert smiley face here if you're the whimsical type. At more or less the beginning of my run (sounds better than "at a point not quite to the middle but not in the first mile, either"), I went onto the grounds at the VA Center. It was still quite dark, but I easily found a small rehabilitative exercise center in an open courtyard, which I'd remembered coming upon a few years ...

That I haven't posted in a while doesn't mean I haven't been working at getting back to running. I have!  In the month and two days since my last post I have progressed from walking a minute/jogging a minute to walking a minute/almost running three or more minutes. It's been slow progress, but I've focused on paying attention to pain when it starts and then backing off, that is, walking and stretching, until the pain subsides.  I've also been religious about stretching and doing strengthening exercises, recognizing that this last return to the DL was largely precipitated by my slacking off on the stretch-and-strength component of staying active.  Last but not least, I've found a wonderful sports chiropractor in LA (where I am still living these days) who is skilled in ART and is also infectiously upbeat about exercise and about life in general. I told her I have run nine marathons since the month before my 50th birthday and would like to make it ten--...

My friend L, who is a certified Chi Running instructor, is fond of saying "baby steps," a reminder to work up to your running goal gradually rather than getting excited and trying to achieve it in one day. Well, I was certainly in baby step mode this morning, when I went for my first run/walk in a week. My goal is the Oakland Running Festival Half Marathon, coming up in March. Rather that obsess over how impossible it would be for me to even think about a half right now, I'm focusing instead on making a new start, a start that may or may not take me to Oakland in good shape. The point is not ORF or bust--the point is, what I did today was a success; I think I'll do it again soon. Today? One minute walking, one minute jogging. One minute walking, one minute jogging. Etcetera. I stayed out there for 2.5 miles, in the course of which I made it over to and around the park and back with no significant pain. I've been know to write and/or talk about my path in li...

Went for a run-walk yesterday. I'm becoming familiar enough with my new surroundings to identify some running routes that could become faves, not to mention finding the best routes for crossing the Mississippi-River-sized boulevards of Wilshire, Santa Monica, Westwood, and Sepulveda.  Yesterday I made my second daylight foray into Westwood Park (I've been by it several times before in the dark and found it not so inviting). It's a fairly small park, but getting to it plus running around it plus running back is good for almost three miles. Especially like the wall with words and illustrations from The Carrot Seed , a book I remember from my childhood. It's a fine read, with its themes of faith and optimism and its illustrations both chunky and charming. Can't wait to take Calvin to the park and read this wall with him! My run would have been more edifying if my right ankle hadn't started hurting for no apparent reason. After 34-plus years of running, I...

Took a brief trip to Berkeley. It was great to be home, even for a few days. I ran twice, both mornings in weather some 15 degrees cooler than what I've been experiencing here in the land of LA. My running is only so-so these days. It's disappointing that I am not officially injured and yet am not able to run consistently without pain. My piriformis and gluteus medius evidently didn't take kindly to my runs above UCLA on Sunset or to the blinding speeds I reached at the UCLA track. Go figure.  So I've been run-walking, sometimes up to the gym near campus and sometimes just around, trying to keep my spirits and my heart rate both up. My son the doctor took me to a UCLA longevity conference today, and in all four of the sessions we attended I heard experts on healthy aging hammer away at exercise, exercise, exercise. I also heard them describe strength training as vital for the elderly, so I figured make the gym a destination a couple of times a week is a good idea. ...

Back in Berkeley for a few days. Have been spending a lot of time in LA with my beautiful grandson. It's nice to be here. These days I seem to be semi-injured (piriformis/glute medius/IT band again), but am getting out for some jog-walking as often as I can. My goal is to run, or jog, or jog-walk--to perambulate periodically for a substantial chunk of time in some way--for the rest of my life.  I've run in Berkeley and Albany so many times over the years that I feel I could do it in the dark. Wait a minute, that's exactly what I did on Sunday!  October sunrise over the Albany BART tracks.  

Sunrise over Drake Field. Picture me here. Left, right, left, right, etc. Have been trying, for the most part successfully, to do a track workout once a week. I run to the UCLA track and do the workout Karen Andrews sends around for the LMJS track session that she leads every Tuesday evening in Oakland. It's not the same as being there, but it does make me feel a bit connected to something familiar. In addition to the track work, I run a couple of sets of stairs. Currently I do two sets--am looking to add on more. To step it up, to coin a phrase. These steps have a fairly short rise. Perfect for running, and many people do. Including me!

Saw these flowers after my run this morning as I stretched against my neighbor's retaining wall. These are the flowers (I don't know what they're called) I recently heard a friend describe as "ordinary," meaning they are available at every nursery and supermarket in town. Yet I love them--their brightness and their, well, their cleverness at holding two flowers while being only one. I realize that seeing them is one of the everyday pleasures I get by running in Berkeley, where I've been living and running for more that thirty years. Simple pleasures like seeing these little blossoms are what I'm fearing losing these days. Recently I've been out of town a lot--first to Idaho to visit my sis and see the sights, then to LA to stay with my new grandson and, oh yeah, his parents, too. The prospect of doing a lot more of this kind of travel is exciting but also very scary. If I spend a month in LA, will there be flowers? Will there be friends? Will ther...

I was here. It's been so long since I posted that there's no point in trying to summarize much more than my last run, which was yesterday. The morning was warm, even before the sun rose up like a Fresnel spot (Tinseltown metaphor there). I didn't bring my foam roller on this trip, but even without any daily holy rolling, my cranky hip/It/etc. are feeling okay.  Also I was here. Funny, that's about it. Yesterday, the day of my UCLA run, was also my 66th birthday. I felt soooo blessed to be mindlessly knocking off 4.25 miles before breakfast. I am not fast. I am not particularly buffed. Nevertheless, I am a runner and have been one for 34 years.  When I was younger--in my 40s, maybe?--I would spend some time on my birthday reviewing the previous year and looking ahead to the year to come. What had been the high and low points from the just-passed 365 days? And what would I like to see take place in the 365 ahead? But now, it's just, beautiful day...

Rampaging runners all finished and fled, a Lake Merritt goose takes a gander at this salubrious scene. (Click to enlarge.) Ran my first Fourth Sunday Run of the year! The infrastructure held--my irritating IT band and pernicious piriformis (not to mention my clamoring calf) all decided to behave. It was a warm, breezy day. The turnout was great--and all the components of the race functioned in concert and functioned well. I am so impressed and encouraged by the way LMJS has grown and thrived since the days I was much more active member.  A sunny day, a good run, and an almond butter and blueberry jam sandwich on a whole wheat bagel are sure-fire ingredients for a dreamy Sunday. I find the funnies are icing on the cake. Not to mix my metaphors, much . 

Maybe I should add some hygenic people food to my diet. Today was a run day. If all I did was post in this space on every day I ran, I'd write a lot more than I do. I could just say, today I ran.  Today I ran. I left the house about 5:45 am and did what I've come to call the EMX run, that is, the Elaine Merrill Express run. (Be it known that any context in which I pair me and the concept of speed is highly suspect. Which is to say, usually the pairing is done with gentle or not-so-gentle irony.) It's an expressway, an out-and-back along Ninth Street, because it's long and straight and gives me the opportunity to shake off a bit of the rust and go a little faster than usual. Today I did 3 x 3 minutes at approximately my 10K pace and then 2 x 6 minutes just a hair slower than that. All this with the intention of running the LMJS Fourth Sunday Run 5K this weekend without beating myself into the ground.  I might or might not have learned my lesson last month w...

Many days have come and gone since I last posted, but today is what I have, so today is what I'll write about. Funny thing about today--it seems to need context, which consists of days that are gone and days yet to come. Hmmm. Anyway! During some of those gone days I've had good runs and bad. In the most recent days I've felt mentally strong but physically out of sorts. I ran Friday and cut my planned 4.5 miler to 3 miles because I was running like a triceratops who laces up its Sauconys and sets out to run gracefully. So this morning, still feeling somewhat less than fabulous, I set out around 6 o'clock to run as far as I felt like running. That was my stated purpose--in contrast to my usual obsessively set specific mileage goal. Today I had 8.0 in the back of my mind, but veered homeward early and then stopped when my watch said 5.25. It wasn't a great run, but t wasn't terrible. My feet, which for reasons unknown have been hot and aching lately, behaved. ...

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...