Running Ruminations

SJ had a ton of rain last week that resulted in power outages in some places (including in our parts), lots of downed trees, and in ARP anyway, a metamorphosis of the usually bone-dry Penitencia creek into a veritable river, replete with a current and everything. I stopped mid-run to document the novelty of it all (videos! photos!) and even went so far to show my kids my footage during breakfast, as though it were breaking news.  

Growing up and living the first thirty years of my life in the midwest usually means that I kinda shrug off the experience of precipitation, of any sort, falling from the sky. I think after living here for a little more seven years, I have finally begun to appreciate and maybe even look forward to the infrequent change, the novelty that comes from buckets’ worth of atmospheric river rainfall. I didn’t know what an atmospheric river was before a couple years ago, either; midwest friends, here’s your primer. I know these atmospheric rivers can also bring a shit-ton of destruction — look no further than highway 1 for proof — but fortunately, at least around these parts, I think they were far less devastating.  

Otherwise, the new month hasn’t brought with it much in terms of noticeable pandemic change, at least to us. Sometime last week, Gov. Newsom lifted the regional stay-at-home orders, even though SCC remains in the purple category, almost all schools are exclusively virtual, that sort of thing. I’ve gleaned from social media that outdoor dining can reopen, as can hair salons and tattoo parlors, and I think maybe zoos and outdoor museums with diminished capacity, but it’s not much beyond that. Our day-to-day isn’t much different than before. It’s just another month. 

In non-pandemic life, this time of year is always hoppin’ because it’s Girl Scout cookie season, which usually means that almost every single weekend between early February and mid-March, A and her troop sisters (and their parents and I) devote several hours each weekend outside various banks and grocery stores to fundraise for her troop, in addition to walking the neighborhood, going to workplaces, the whole shebang. It’s an awesome experience — so good for bonding with troop sister friends, instrumental for their budding entrepreneurial skills, and pretty incomparable in terms of people skills-building for grade-school kids, among other stuff — so it’s a (completely understandable) drag that we can’t do anything in person this year because of COVID-19. Everything screeched to a halt last year, right at the final weekend of the 2020 cookie sale, when COVID first emerged here, so it’s somewhat unbelievable that nearly a year later, at the beginning of a *new* cookie season, we’re right where we left off last year.  

The girls have such inspiring attitudes about it though and are still determined to do everything they can, which is cool. I know there’s all this talk that “kids are so resilient” and everything, so much so that it sometimes feels like it has become a pandemic platitude, but dang. We ought to give kids more credit. They’ll figure stuff out, if given the chance. They’re doing the best they can, given the circumstances, and I’m so proud of them. 

In addition to being the GS cookie time of year, this weekend is often like the unofficial beginning to spring marathon training, beginning with my favorite local race, RunLocal’s Race to the Row 8k. I haven’t run the race in a couple years — last year, I was at a swim meet in Tracy all weekend, if memory serves — but the race and the distance are among my favs. 

Seeing flashback pictures is bittersweet — oh look, yet another thing we can’t do this year because of this pandemic! — but I’m stoked that RunLocal has made lemonade over the past year by throwing their efforts into various virtual races and challenges, my favorite being last year’s California Coast 500. Earlier this week, I finished RunLocal’s San Jose 408k challenge, where the mileage you run between January 1 – May 2 lights up a neighborhood map of San Jose, and you aim to complete the entire map, 408 kilometers (253.5 miles), before May. I really enjoyed getting the emails saying “congrats! You’ve unlocked [neighborhood name here],” which went on to list more information about the particular ‘hood, such as what it’s known for historically/politically/culturally as well as RunLocal staff’s fav establishments there. And for someone like me, who hasn’t lived here my whole life or for very long, it was a very fun way to learn a lot more about a lot of different neighborhoods, some to which I’m pretty certain I’ve not traveled often, if ever. 

And of course, I’d be remiss if I failed to mention that this is also the time of year that I was reminded three years ago that bizarre and strange things happen every single day; tomorrow (February 4), three years ago, out of left field, I had a subarachnoid hemorrhagic stroke at the ripe age of 34 because… because weird stuff happens sometimes.  

It still blows my mind that I walked away from that seemingly random event unscathed and with no long-term (or even short-term) deficits because damn: thinking about what could have been gets rather humbling — and harrowing — pretty fast. 

And here’s where it gets really scary: add COVID-19 to the mix of sometimes inexplicable events happen to people — and that so many people who have/had COVID-19 go on to have strokes, often because there is a “bodywide increase in blood clot formation” (src)– and … it’s breathtaking. 

Strokes are bad enough on their own, but to have a stroke after having COVID? 

COVID is terrible by itself, but to endure (or be killed/severely injured by) a stroke afterward? 

How can such a terrible trauma get much worse?

I worry about a million things related to COVID, — everything that we know and don’t know about the virus, of course — but some of my worries stem from my experience as a very healthy, “normal” person who had a freak health emergency that could have fundamentally changed the course of my life (or ended it). 

When I see the COVID stats in SCC (103k cases; 1,474 deaths) or in the US (26.6 million cases; 451k deaths) or the world (103 million cases; 2.24 million deaths), I often wonder about all the other people who have died — or whose health has suffered a life-threatening malady, like a stroke or heart attack — who simply weren’t able to get top-notch medical care because of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

All this bad stuff that unfortunately happens every day doesn’t magically go away when medical practitioners also have to deal with an airborne, respiratory pandemic. I think it will be a very long time before we know the scope of harm and death COVID-19 has wrought. Thinking of the magnitude of the loss of life and the degree of injury, compounded by COVID-19, just … sucks. If you want a solid way to feel powerless, that’s one way to go.   

But! But! Here, allow me to add that rather going down that route of powerlessness and existential crisis, rather than fixating on everything that this time of year doesn’t **yet** have in the 2021 iteration for you — and for me, fixating on the fact that it was at this time of year three years ago that a freak, bad thing happened to me — fixate on what you **do** have and what you **can** do. I implore my daughters (and myself) to do much the same. Easier said than done, for sure.

Try desperately to stay in the right here, right now, and be grateful, and do what you can to help move us all forward. Wear the damn mask (correctly); give space; don’t needlessly endanger yourself or other people. 

It is so easy to fall into existential crisis mode, feeling completely helpless and aimless and powerless. At least for me, the self-care helps tremendously — namely, running as much as feels right, eating healthily more often than not, aiming for at least seven hours of sleep a night, and minimizing social media consumption — as does asking for help. Aiming for pandemic fine levels is noble. Acknowledge that some days are peaks, while others are valleys. Remembering that this is all short-term helps me, too. 

Be and stay well and safe. xo