Running Ruminations

What a week. Unsurprisingly (and gratefully, TBH), as I expected, our school board unanimously agreed that all our elementary and middle school students would start the 20-21 year remotely. (The high schools in my community are in a separate school district). I think our board meeting was mid-last week, after I posted. 

Just a day or two later, Governor Newsom laid out his “pandemic plan” for schools reopening, which you can read here, but basically, around 80% of children in California will be beginning school remotely this year because, among other reasons, they live in COVID-heavy counties. (Related: today [July 22], California unenviably surpassed New York as having the most COVID cases.)  

My children don’t begin school until mid-August, yet I (and likely many others) am so glad that our district made their announcement early if for no other reason than so I can (mentally) plan. My privilege isn’t lost on me, that I won’t have to be juggling a demanding non-mom job while also being my children’s exclusive teacher, but hot damn, being my children’s primary teacher — 4th and kinder simultaneously — is daunting. I tell myself, and the district keeps assuring all of us, that fall will be better than spring, so I remain optimistic. 

There are so many unknowns to all of this; that’s the chorus of 2020 if there ever were one. 

Even though the pandemic has dominated much of our lives for the past twentyish weeks, life continues to move on, which can be both refreshing when it’s good or take-your-breath-away debilitating when it’s bad.

So much has happened in the past nearly five months, stuff that happens anyway, regardless of pandemic occurring: I’m talking people getting pregnant, people moving, people getting married, people having babies, people retiring or starting new jobs, students graduating, all that important life milestone stuff that usually brings with it some type of celebration or group gathering to acknowledge the significance.

All the shitty stuff in life has also continued, too, of course: people passing away (not necessarily from COVID, though that, too, has obviously happened), women having miscarriages, pets dying, people losing their jobs, couples divorcing, and so on. And added to all of this, of course, is the long-overdue racial reckoning that is finally beginning to permeate our societal and individual mentalities, thanks to the amplification of Black Lives Matter over the past few months.

It’s a lot.  

I can easily think of people who have experienced any of the aforementioned (and for some, more than a few, and some at the same time). Any therapist will remind us that to experience any of these life events can be traumatizing. To have more than one, and coupled with the fact that we’re living through a once-a-century pandemic where up is down and right is left and nothing and everything makes sense, surely will be traumatizing. 

Again: it’s a lot. 

Living through this historical period has reinforced to me the importance of checking-in on people whom I care about. It is so easy to get hyperfocused on the minutiae of our daily lives — even in our current brave new world, when so much is so different than usual — but I think it’s on each of us to check-in with each other. 

Obviously, if you’re going to ask how someone is — no, seriously, how that person really is — be prepared to listen. Don’t ask casually because you’ll get a casual answer, and it’s a waste of time, breath, and energy. 

We don’t have to have any answers for each other, but simply being there, being present, can make a huge difference. 

In this way, all of life’s usual excitements and heartaches have taken on an outsized influence right now because we’re experiencing all of them in the absence (or, at the very least, in a significantly modified presence) of our usual support structures. We can no longer simply rely on catching up with each other at school drop-off in the morning because for many of us, there is no drop-off. We can’t bullshit at our kids’ swim practice or at their meets or at our races or at work or whatever because that stuff isn’t occurring right now, or if it is, it’s meaningfully and vastly different than usual. 

It’s on all of us to make a bigger effort than we ever have before to make sure people we love, people in our communities, know that we care and that we are thinking of them. 

My point? Consider this a reminder to check-in on folks in your life whether you think they have their shit together or not. 

Take the time to send a quick message to the person who you think is fine just as you would for the person in your life who’s going through something right now. 

None of us have answers or know it all, but we’re all experiencing and living this right now. 

That can be (read: is) enough of a bridge to harbor a conversation and let people know that they’re in our thoughts. People should know that we care.

We owe it to them. 

On occupying time and settling mental unrest 

#hope5kchallenge update. How about a reprieve of encouragement?! With 15 days remaining in Hope’s Corner’s fundraiser, the 5×5 challenge has already raised over $4,400; when I wrote last week, they were at $1,700. Please consider supporting their efforts if you can. For a small, volunteer-run non-profit, $5k in donations can make a huge difference.  

Reading. So much good stuff lately. In addition to the anti-racism daily that I talked about last week, I recently finished this series from the NYT about biases women face. It’s enlightening (and infuriating), and I highly recommend it. A few days ago, I finished White Rage, and at the risk of sounding laconic here, holy. shit. It is so different from the other books that I’ve read recently — which isn’t a good/bad value statement — and with this being a presidential election year, this book takes on an incomparable urgency. This book absolutely blew me away (while also enraging and sickening me), but wow. Our country has to do better. We have to elect better. People’s lives literally depend on it. I wrote to the author to tell her that she knocked it out of the park with this book. 

Listening. I listened to several informative podcasts in the last week, some new and others a couple months old. A few Code Switch episodes were especially interesting, including “what’s in a ‘Karen,’” Storme DeLarverie, and HolyLand. WorkPlayLove also just posted a new episode, their first in over a month. Diane Nukuri on I’ll Have Another (and the IHA Patreon page) was also a fascinating listen. Some older Keeping Track episodes, about women in NCAA D1 coaching and about the two pregnant Trials runner, were also good listens. 

A bright spot in the pandemic. Yesterday a dear friend from college, Traci (who I talked into doing marathons with me with TNT way back in 2007 to honor her mom and my mom), got married near Mt. Hood in Oregon. The pandemic obviously threw a wrench in her wedding plans, so her wedding guests all over the country tuned into her livestream to see her and her partner tie the knot. It was beautiful to witness — I shamelessly cried just as I would if I were there in person! — and I convinced the fam to dress up to sit on the couch and watch the nuptials and pop some Martinelli’s afterward in our wedding china. 🙂 Congratulations, Traci and Kevin!!!!! 

Running. I keep on keeping on with the pandemic running streak, and most days, I’m gladly returning to ARP each morning to run and “escape,” if only for 90 minutes. It’s so pretty, and every time I go, I think of how lucky I am to have it so accessible. The folks at Big Sur announced a September month-long virtual challenge that I’m considering because I want to support their foundation, and earlier today, the ladies over at  run sheisbeautiful announced their three-part kids’ movement challenge that’ll launch at the end of August, just in time for school to begin. In non-COVID life, this week would have been Wharf to Wharf, so while I elected to not participate in it virtually this year, my kids are still partaking in the summer kids’ challenge and just got their medals the other day in the mail; it made their day. G’s 5k training is in its third week, and tonight she bumped up from 25 to 30 minutes for the first time. It’s fun, and it’s pretty sweet to have strangers see the three of us running together and hear them hollerin’ for the kids 🙂 

One more bright spot in the pandemic: Janet opening her clinic! Last thing for the week: I’m so, so happy and proud to share that Janet will be opening her own clinic very soon here in north San Jose! She’s a Doctor of Physical Therapy, fellow Wolfpack runner, and obviously a dear friend of mine and an amazing human being, and I’m so excited for her and proud of her for taking this amazing next step in her career. You can learn more at her post here. If you’re local to the Bay Area, look her up because the gal knows her stuff, and if you’re not local, no worries; she offers remote appointments as well.  

104 days (14 weeks, 6 days) until Election Day. 

Stay healthy and safe, take care of yourself and others if you can, and keep reading and listening… and cover that mug in public. xo 

I’m glad I don’t get paid to keep track of COVID-related life where I live because for as much as it seems things have slowed down, it seems like just as quickly, things can change, and then they can change again.

Case in point: last week, I talked about how SCC’s original proposal that they submitted to the state on 7/4 was denied, but then it was resubmitted and approved just a few days later, on 7/7. I guess the major modification was that the new application forbade indoor gatherings (initially, it said something like 20-person indoor gatherings was permissible, which was a bit discordant with reality, given that our case numbers were rising. In other words, why in the world would you want to have 20 people who don’t live with you in your house right now?!). 

Among other aspects, as I understand it, the 7/7 application stated that, for the first time since shelter-in-place began on 3/16, places like gyms, hair and nail salons, tattoo parlors, and the like would be allowed to open, beginning on Monday, 7/13. My family and I aren’t chomping at the bits to go patronize the aforementioned businesses, but I know many people are and want to keep all these (small, locally-owned) businesses afloat. That’s fair. Like I said last week, there seemed to me to be a disconnect between what our COVID numbers were doing — rising — and what our businesses and society were beginning to do — opening — so while I can’t and won’t claim a modicum of expertise on any of this, to me, it didn’t make sense to saunter back toward the good ol’ days.

Sure enough, on Monday at noon, Governor Newsom ordered statewide closures of all types of businesses, including the aforementioned, all bar/brewery/pub operations (indoors and out), and more because CA’s numbers are at their highest ever. So, in other words, here in SJ, a bunch of businesses opened for the first time in four months on Monday. And by today, Wednesday, they’re all closed again, indefinitely. No doubt the calculus behind the decision is multifaceted and warranted, but damn. (are you dizzy yet) 

We naturally can’t talk about business without also talking about (public) school. And of course, because I’m a parent to school-aged children, my mind’s been on school reopening in the next month; I say this knowing full well from the get-go that my family likely won’t be sending our children back to school for the foreseeable future. At our district’s town hall meeting last night, the superintendent revealed that the district, comprised of elementary and middle schools, is taking a phased-in approach to reopening, with 100% of students beginning the year with online learning. A possible hybrid, cohort structure for elementary schools won’t begin until late September, six weeks into the school year (sooner or later, depending on numbers), but regardless, families will be able to opt-in to 100% remote instruction if they choose. (This phased plan series is all subject to board approval, whose meeting is tonight, so I’m assuming that it passes. They’re also in the throes of figuring out a bazillion other details, like after-school rec and childcare programs, extracurriculars, daily free lunch dispersal, and literally probably a hundred more that aren’t occurring to me). 

Whew. It’s kinda wild how a public health emergency is simultaneously so personal and yet so global and how it’s not just a literal matter of life or death, though that obviously matters; I think what can be so paralyzing for so many of us is that the depths of the gray areas that our COVID-dominated lives are swimming in right now are effing brutal. The internet is awash with all types of color commentary about whether or how children should be returning to school this fall, with an inconceivable number of people basing their simple-as-pie reasoning on the claim that “it’s rare that kids get/die from COVID.” Cool, right? 

Everyone has numbers for everything to assert their expertise dominance (including good ol’ Betsy DV herself, the guardian angel of public education in this country … cough), and tons of families will be forced to choose between supporting their children’s at-home instruction for the foreseeable future or their career. Not and, or. And of course, our society being what it is, perhaps it’s no surprise here that women have been and will continue to bear the brunt of all of this, of being the career woman extraordinaire, mom of the year, and homeschool teacher of the century, despite balancing on a house of cards so precarious that a momentary exhalation will send the whole thing toppling, engulfed in flames so hot that no embers remain. 

There’s so much gray area here — despite the apparent million of armchair epidemiologists and public educator experts in the trenches of the internet — and damn. Families, I see you, feel you, and hear you. Families, with parents or caregivers whose employers will simply force them to figure it out between doing their jobs competently, mostly in the absence of childcare, and teaching their progeny everything that they would otherwise be getting from a vast support network at school, my heart goes out to you, and if I could hug you, I enthusiastically would. This is all maddening, scary, emotionally and psychologically whiplash-inducing, and so, so frustrating.     

Teachers, faculty, instructional aides, therapists of every ilk, support staff, the thousands of behinds-the-scenes people who make schools, colleges, and universities function day in and day out, I see you and feel you and hear you, too. This probably wasn’t what you had in mind in your five- (ten-, or twenty-) year plan for your career. 

Here I’d love to end with something more empowering and uplifting, a note on which I could end my weekly diatribe. All I can say is that we’re all in this together. If running has taught me absolutely nothing else, it’s that we must stay in the mile we’re in, and the only way out is through. All my love. 

On occupying time and settling mental unrest 

#Hope5kChallenge update: Hope’s Corner 5x5x5 fundraiser, which kicked off on July 5th, is off and running! Thank you for supporting this great cause. There are still 22 days left to donate, and as of press time, they’ve raised over $1,700 of their $5k goal. Let’s keep the momentum going!

Cooking with friends from afar: My dearest friends from undergrad live all over the place, so it’s rare that we are all able to get together to see each other. We’ve made the most of the bad ongoing situation that is COVID, and we all (with some of our progeny in tow!) took an online cooking class together over the weekend. It was really fun, and I’ve been eating the leftovers all week long. If you’re looking for a way to connect with your friends who don’t live near you, check it out. It was during our cooking class that C cut both girls’ hair by a couple inches each, haha. (They look wonderful, but I was surprised!). 

Listening: By now it’s an old episode, but the Keeping Track episode on Aliphine after she won the Trials was a welcome ray of sunshine from the torrent of bad news right now. The most recent KT episode about the Saucony president, Anne Cavassa, is also fantastic and a must-listen. Ali’s chat recently with the KT hosts was also a great listen, especially when the four of them talked about the recent KT episode about racing, running, and representation as it relates to the past several years’ worth of running magazines’ covers. Code Switch’s deep dive into qualified immunity is also a must-listen this week.   

Reading: The kids and I are almost through One Crazy Summer and Resist (both so good!). In the past week, I started White Rage, and it is so good (and informative, enlightening, maddening, saddening, all the emotions). Parts are admittedly really challenging to get through, but it’s so important to know as much as we can. Know better, do better, teach better. Related: props to Erica for alerting me about the anti-racist daily, a quick and informative daily email. I highly suggest you subscribe, especially if you want to grow in your antiracism commitment but don’t necessarily have a ton of time to read a full-length book right now.  

Running: We’re in the throes of week two of 5k training for my youngest, and it’s mostly a good time. It’s pretty hilarious, TBH. We’re doing the same plan that we did for A, which is a free one from Girls on the Run, and so far, we’ve done five 25-minute runs and each one is right around 1.5 miles. It’s pretty interesting to watch how fast she has taken to the predictability of it (“it’s Monday, which means we run tonight!” for example), which is part of the reason why I started “training” both kids during SIP. With new restrictions because of rising COVID numbers, swimming for both girls is delayed indefinitely again, so I foresee a lot of running in our future. Not a bad thing.    

Fifteen weeks, six days until election day (but who’s counting).

Take care, keep reading, and be well and safe this week. Wear a mask. xo