Running Ruminations

Time often feels so weird and messed up during this COVID-induced shelter-in-place, and this past week was no exception: last week feels like it was last year. It’s disorienting and super mind-boggling. 

At any rate, the next school-year is fast approaching these days, though we still don’t know many of the details about what the day-to-day will look like or anything super granular. My incoming kinder has her assessment in a few days, which makes sense and doesn’t make sense simultaneously — how is my baby entering kindergarten? and how in the world do you get a bunch of kindergartners to “do school” online every day?! — but I guess time will tell. 

I can’t recall much changing since last week around here in the past week (or week-ish), perhaps with the exception that California has passed the unenviable mark of having more than half a million COVID cases. I think I read that Florida also just surpassed that 500,000 mark, and that’s all before school begins in earnest everywhere in the next few weeks. Schools and colleges/universities opening for the academic year– however that looks, wherever you are — could potentially add another profound dimension to this ongoing pandemic, and shit, you want to talk about mind-boggling? Read people’s social media posts about what their kids’ schools (or colleges or universities) are doing for 20-21 and the decisions that families are making for their kids right now. 

As humans, at least from everything that I’ve ever read on the subject of motivation, habit-building, culture-creating, training and mastery (related to sports or otherwise), I think everything I’ve read strongly suggests that we humans are no less than utterly terrible when it comes to navigating the unknown. We think we behave better than we actually do; we think we partake in less-risky behaviors than we actually do; and most of the time, it seems like we tend to believe that the worst of the worst, the really incredible stuff, won’t ever happen to us just… because it won’t. We are creatures of habit, we thrive on our routines, and not knowing answers or even probable answers to our dilemmas tends to unnerve us.

Of course, when you’re living (and working, and raising a family, and trying to have a normalish life, and so on and so on) through a pandemic, it feels like we’ve been treading water in the unknown –the very place that few of us operate well in!– for over five months now. The minutiae of otherwise normal, every-day life, like going to the grocery store, spending time with friends, attending school, or participating in activities of any shape or manifestation, suddenly now feel like they arrive equipped with a heavy, smothering calculus as to how and whether we should partake (and of course, that’s all in relation to what your local rules and restrictions allow or forbid). 

When you’re living in a pandemic, and you’re making upwards of 35,000 decisions a day, it can be altogether suffocating when it feels like all.of.them could potentially be life-or-death. 

COVID fatigue is real and profound, man, and it’s also really, really important to recognize it and act (or reframe our actions) accordingly. We can’t wish away this pandemic, though #45 (perhaps unsurprisingly) thinks that we can.   

Living and making decisions in the many-shades-of-gray world that we’re in right now can be hard and exhausting. Despite when I complain about 20+ person parties at the beach, or how I think that people who don’t wear masks on narrow trails at ARP are telling all of us to GFY, I tell myself that it’s important to focus (or at the very least, hope) that most people are doing the right thing. 

Maybe not though; instead, maybe this is a textbook case of toxic positivity. 

I guess just like anything else related to all of this, time will tell. le sigh

I see you, and I feel you. Sending love. Hang in there.

On occupying time and settling mental unrest 

#hope5kchallenge update. Ah, a wonderful reprieve of lovely news for a change! Today (August 5th) is the last day to donate to Hope’s Corner 5x5x5 fundraising challenge, and I’m so happy to see that not only have they surpassed their original $5,000 goal, they’re now at over $11,000! That’s so awesome! Thank you to everyone who has supported their efforts, and if you haven’t yet logged your 5k goal, it’s not too late to post it and donate here. Thanks again for your support. 

 

Reading. Admittedly, in these last couple weeks before school begins, the kids and I have slowed down a bit on our reading (and staying up too late at night), so our reading has slowed down some. Since last week, I finished The Hate U Give and started Such a Fun Age. The Hate U Give was everything that I said last week — intense, heartbreaking, good, and so important — and I’m *almost* tempted to watch the movie portrayal for comparison. (I generally do one or the other — movie or book — but never both. I may make an exception). Such a Fun Age so far is riveting and also terrible in its own rite, though I’m not very far into it yet. I heard a CodeSwitch podcast that talked about it, so I’m looking forward to reading more.  

Listening. I think I must have taken a break from podcasts in the last week because my history indicates I’ve only listened to Emily Halnon on Ali on the Run, talking about her California-to-Washington FKT attempt. (It’s a great episode though). 

Running. The whole running world collectively seemed to lose its ever-loving-mind when Garmin got hacked a couple weeks ago, and things seem to be slowly coming online from the outage. Sometime in the last couple days, I finished a virtual challenge I started on June 8, RunLocal’s CaliforniaCoast 500. My kids were always super excited to look at the race maps with me and see “where” I was in California at any given time and to compare how I fared against other runners overall, other women, or other women in my AG. It’s kinda fun to think that I virtually ran 500 miles from early June to early August, from LA to SF. 🙂  

The kids’ running is going pretty well, too, and the little one has posted two 2-mile runs already this week (and with minimal complaining, which is a major win in my book!). I think we’re in week 5 of the 10 week 5k training plan. Both girls will be participating in runshe.is.beautiful’s kids’ movement challenge this fall, and between that and the 5k training, I think they’ll be pretty content for a while. Just like anything, some days are easier than others in getting them out and running, but 99% of the time, they’re elated to have gone for a run when it’s all said and done.  

And a friendly reminder: Janet’s clinic has its virtual open house on Saturday! I’m so excited for her to open her business and am all about spreading the love. 🙂

90 days (12 weeks, 6 days) until Election Day. 

Stay healthy and safe, take care of yourself and others if you can, and keep reading and listening. xo 

It’s hard to believe that in just a few short days, we’ll be turning the page on the month of July and that soon enough, this weird, non-traditional pandemic summer will be behind us. The start of the different, right-is-left, down-is-up school-year is fast approaching, too, as July settles in our rearview mirror, and so many immediate questions are still flying around with how the year is going to look and work, and that’s to say nothing of all the questions of the long-term ramifications of this upcoming school-year. 

We all want answers to all our questions, no matter how mundane, and not being able to get them — or better, not being able to look to recent history or comparable circumstances to give us an educated guess about potential answers — is super disorienting. 

That said, what continues to baffle me is how many people seem to not give a shit or somehow think that the few things that we absolutely do know about this virus — about washing our hands well and often (obviously not a practice that’s restricted to COVID), about not touching our faces (same), and about the minimal-inconvenience but maximum-impact-conferring importance of wearing masks in public — simply don’t apply to them. What? 

Of the innumerous aspects of this disease that we do not know or over which we have absolutely no control, it is literally — and I mean that — unfathomable to me that, twenty+ weeks into this mess, there are still some people who choose to ignore the precious few guidelines that we know, definitively, can lessen the severity or duration of this pandemic. 

It’s like the ultimate gofuckyourself to the rest of us. 

Here’s an illustrative example. Last week, the kids and I went to the beach twice, once on Monday afternoon, when it was pretty overcast and sparsely populated, and again on Friday afternoon, when the weather was sunnier and it was busier but still with ample space to distance ourselves from the other beachgoers. (Local friends, I’m talking about Rio del Mar). On Friday, I noticed a pretty good-sized group next to us (easily twenty+ feet away), and I counted over twenty-four people–twenty-four!!–none of whom were wearing masks or physically distancing. The group looked like it was comprised of several families, there to celebrate a child’s birthday (replete with birthday cake, snacks, and everything), and when they weren’t out in the sunshine, they all congregated under the cluster of canopies they had positioned together. Twenty-plus people. On top of each other. Sharing food, utensils, whatever. In a freaking pandemic. 

I will be the first to admit that I am not an expert on any of this, but what the hell. As of last week Friday, Santa Cruz County wasn’t on the state of California’s watch list (though nearly all of the Bay Area counties were and still are), so I initially chided myself for being so judgy and told myself that simply maybe the same rules didn’t apply. (By Monday of this week, Santa Cruz County joined the state’s watch list). Here in SCC, we’re advised to not congregate in sizeable groups (even outside) and to always don masks when we can’t maintain that magic six-foot physical radius, but who knows? Maybe forty miles to the south, in Santa Cruz County, those same rules were somehow inapplicable. Maybe this huge group of families is actually one enormous family that owns a mansion in the hills somewhere, and they all live together, and it’s really NBD if they’re all together on a public beach because they’ve been all together since the get-go on all of this. I mean, what do I know? Nothing.

Just the same, when I’m running and I see huge groups of hikers in ARP or cyclists on White Road — and especially when none or few of them are wearing masks — all I can envision is that they’re all essentially telling the rest of us, those of us following the rules and significantly altering our personal choices and our lifestyles in the name of public health and because it is the non-asshole right thing to do, that somehow our health or our families’ health is somehow not as important as their own. 

Again, it’s like the ultimate gofuckyourself. 

At this point in the pandemic, these people can’t claim ignorance to justify their actions. They know; they simply don’t give a damn. 

How selfish can you be? Oh, wait, this country is predicated on the idea of selfishness and exceptionalism. Our potential limits are endless here. 

It can be really frustrating — and disheartening — to see that there are still so many people who aren’t taking this pandemic seriously and who are choosing to opt-out of caring about it. That life right now must be grand. Please, enlighten me what life is like when you only care about your own.  

Whether based in actual fact or hopeful delusion, I remind myself (and my children) that people do, in fact, have a capacity for change, and that even if they initially felt or did one way/thing about something before, it doesn’t mean that they’ll be locked into it forever. (Case in point: most of us weren’t wearing masks in January or even March, but many of us started to when we learned how important it was). 

My sincerest hope is that slowly but surely — though if it were up to me, change would happen overnight — people everywhere in this country, regardless of political identity or affiliation, will have their come-to-Jesus moment with this virus. The tragedy is that hundreds, thousands, or millions more people will get sick, if not also die, before this awakening takes place. 

Maybe for those most staunchly in the “COVID-is-a-hoax” camp, it’ll take them or their loved ones getting sick before they see the light — which, again, would be tragic and completely, utterly avoidable and unnecessary. 

I think it will take a lot for the tide to change and unify here — the least of which being real, actual leadership and people’s belief and trust in real-life, actual science — but like so much in life, it starts with the individual, at home, in conversations that we have, and in behaviors that we model. 

The personal is political, yes, always, and as it pertains to COVID, the personal will kill us all if we don’t think bigger. 

On occupying time and settling mental unrest 

#hope5kchallenge update. Hope’s Corner is in its final days of its 5x5x5 fundraising challenge, and I’m so happy to update that have surpassed their $5,000 goal! Thank you to everyone who has supported their efforts, and if you haven’t yet logged your 5k goal, it’s not too late to post it and donate here. Thanks again for your support. 

Reading. It looks like last week was all about finishing books, since the kids and I finished Resist one night and then One Crazy Summer the next and began Walk Two Moons immediately after. After I finished White Rage, I began The Hate U Give, which I had heard about for years but never picked up, probably because I thought the YA designation made it somehow less appealing (shame on me). Needless to say, it’s heartbreaking and terrible but so very important.  

Listening. Late last week, I learned that local SJ runner Bertrand, whom I knew from Represent Running, began a podcast, so I dove right in and listened to his interviews with JT Service (of RunLocal fame), Becky Hernandez (one of the first runners I met when I moved here, thanks to TSFM ambassador program), and the one with Bertrand, himself, being interviewed by his co-host whose name completely escapes me and I can’t find online (I’m sorry!!). They’re super fun to listen to, and I think it’s especially fun to listen to interviews when I know the interviewers (or interviewees). This week’s SWAP podcast was also good, and just yesterday, I caught-up on the BIPOC runner safety pod on Rambling Runner, which was solid. I’m partial here because I adore and appreciate Connie. (Strange irony to be listening to a runner safety podcast on the run and get the annoying experience of dealing with a creepyass guy, whom I’m pretty sure followed me, but that’s another story for another day. I’m fine).  

Running. Last week was a big running week for me, with something like 73 miles and over 5,600 feet of elevation, and I even ran a proper long run (15) for the first time since March. I don’t really have much of an explanation for any of it, aside from just that it felt good and it felt like the right thing to do, so I just went with it. G has handled the bump up to 30’ runs well, and she enjoys calling the shots for our music selection (or not) on our thrice-weekly runs. Earlier this week, A also swam for the first time since March, some OWS in SF near Ghiradelli Square, and I can only imagine how excited she must have felt to be in her happy place, doing her happy thing, for the first time in four months.   

97 days (13 weeks, 6 days) until Election Day. 

Stay healthy and safe, take care of yourself and others if you can, and keep reading and listening. xo