Running Ruminations

Any concerns I had about distance learning quickly went out the window last week as I turned my attention eastward in utter fear of the possibility that the enormous SCU Lightning Complex — the second largest fire in California state history, as of today — was going to encroach on east San Jose and force us to evacuate. Fortunately, that hasn’t happened — a big fortunately — but now, even after nearly a week and a half, the fires are still burning and are 20 percent contained. 

With the CZU Lightning Complex in San Mateo and Santa Cruz Counties, I think more than 70,000 people have evacuated, and tons of people have lost their homes (or are at risk). Up north, in the Napa and Sonoma area, the LNU Lightning Complex — the third largest fire in state history — has also forced many people to evacuate and has been responsible for several people’s deaths. The air quality in the Bay Area and throughout northern CA was the worst in the world for several days last week, and it was only since yesterday, Monday, that I began to see pockets of AQI <100 air (yesterday in the 70s and this morning in the low 50s) and that the all-enveloping “campfire smell” permeating the air began to dissipate a bit. 

In the almost-seven years that we’ve lived here, these fires, by far, have felt the most threatening to us. With the Camp Fire a couple years ago (the largest in state history), it was far enough away (~100+ miles) that we never thought it could come to us, but it was nonetheless bad enough that the smoke fouled our air for days, to the tune of extracurriculars being cancelled, outdoor recess being cancelled, races being cancelled, and the like.

In the past week, the SCU Lightning Complex has reminded us that simply by virtue of living in this fine state, we’re all vulnerable to fire-related disasters. 

Staying abreast of the fire updates meant that I’ve used Twitter more in the past five days than I have in the past four years, and that a group of neighbor friends and I were texting fast and furious about potential evacuation plans, our interpretations of the latest fire updates on Twitter and facebook, and our anxieties and fears in navigating everything as we tried to figure out whether we were all freaking out too much about nothing or not freaking out enough. My phone was basically glued to my hand for the better part of a week. A couple things here: first, I’m grateful for my neighbors and that we live in a fantastic little community. Second, Twitter remains an impressive timesuck. 

Perhaps it’s no surprise that all the feelings of desperation and helplessness that I’ve felt in the past 24 weeks jumped even more so in the past week. I mean, a pandemic is bad enough, but now we’re layering fire-related issues on top of it? The pandemic has forced us all inside, except that we can go outside, provided we do it safely, donning masks and staying physically separated from others … but then the state’s on fire, and people’s homes are in danger, forcing them to leave … but if you have nowhere to go, or no one to whom you can turn, you have to make the gut-wrenching decision wherein you weigh your immediate health safety (by vacating the fire) with that of your long-term (possibly contracting COVID-19 from strangers at evacuation centers) … oh, and right, many schools in the area began their new academic year in the past week, so all of this is occurring to that backdrop … and it’s just a lot. 

It’s a lot to process, it’s a lot to be sad about, and it’s a lot to feel helpless over. 

So what’s a person to do? 

My take: aside from financially supporting individuals or donating to vetted organizations that are fulfilling people’s immediate needs, the best, most long-term decision that we can make is to vote. 

Vote for people who give a damn, for people who may not be able to, say, actually prevent lightning from striking (as it was the thousands of lightning strikes that set off all these fire complexes up and down the state), but people who will vote in ways that will help ensure the health and longevity of our planet. 

We have the power to vote for people who will create a government that doesn’t fail us when a pandemic happens, for people who will no longer turn the other cheek when yet another Black, indigenous, or person of color’s quality of life is so profoundly worse than that of his or her white counterpart, simply because the BIPOC person had the misfortune to be born in a “worse-off” ZIP code.

We can vote for people who care, who know better, and who can make better happen.

I know this is a running blog, and you’re not here to read my political ramblings, but here’s the thing: the personal is political, always, and I think this year has finally awakened the masses to this point. Surely we all miss something from our precious “previous lives” that we held just five months ago: going to friends’ homes, hugging people, going grocery shopping, running in huge training groups or lining up at a race on an autumnal Saturday morning with a thousand-plus of your new best friends. 

Even the mundane shit has taken on an air of nostalgia by now. And to my earlier points about the fires here, about distance learning or what your kids’ education is going to look like this fall (or more broadly, this academic year), and about the profound differences in quality of life standards for BIPOC individuals compared to that of their white peers: it. all. boils. down. to. politics.   

Everyone is going through something right now, and admittedly, some people are going through more than others. That sucks, and it’s a terrible reality. 

The past four years, and specifically, the past 24 weeks, have exposed such profound misgivings about the current administration in ways that are so fundamentally transparent that to deny seeing them is less a matter of ignorance and more a matter of delusion. 

I cannot fathom what could possibly be going through people’s heads on November 3 this year if they continue to vote for more of the same. Here is the point in my blog when I’d say that if you hold different beliefs than mine — which is great! — I’d welcome you to come on a long run with me so we can talk about it, but alas. Our current reality precludes it. 

Please stay safe with the ongoing fires, local friends, and please don’t hesitate to reach out if my family and I can help you with anything. And as always, all my love to other parents who are holding up the ship in this weird-ass time, as well as all the medical professionals, educators, and all essential personnel for all their thankless labor right now. I genuinely look forward to the day when your workload diminishes. xo

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On occupying time and settling mental unrest

Reading. Motherhood So White was awesome. I finished it after last week’s entry, and like I said before, it’s eye-opening. Sorta related: I saw something in the past week that said that Netflix was bringing the show Sister Sister on soon. I would love to re-watch that show (for the first time in 20+ years…) knowing what I know now from reading MSW. Queued up now for me is Eloquent Rage. 

Listening. Simply because I only ran about 10 minutes a day for most of last week, I haven’t listened to much. However, the most recent SWAP podcast talks a lot about PM 2.5, which is particularly timely for those of us whose air has been affected by smoke in the past week. Otherwise, I haven’t listened to a thing. (Again, the backlog grows). 

Running. It has been over a week since my kids have played, ran, or biked outside due to the poor AQI score, and understandably, they are getting pretty restless indoors. In the interim, they’ve been doing yoga and some HIIT-type stuff, but “it’s not the same,” which I understand. Once we’re in the clear, we’ll resume G’s 5k training, right around week 8 of her 10-week program, if I recall correctly. 

My running dropped off precipitously last week as well, which was predictable, given the poor AQ and my not willing to drive elsewhere to run and not having access to a treadmill. I will be the first to admit that it made me a little antsy and likely irritable — I really look forward to my run time every day and the feeling of accomplishment I have afterward — but I tried to redirect my feelings and put everything into perspective. I may be pissed or feeling unsettled because I didn’t have my outlet (for as long as I like to have) for most of last week, but my family is safe and my home is still standing. A lot of people can’t say the same.    

More fun virtual running that’s not necessarily racing unless you want it to be. Last week I talked about Oiselle’s Womxn Run the Vote Relay that’ll be taking place at the end of September, and this week, I learned about a couple additional virtual races that sound awesome. The lovely folks at Run She is Beautiful have partnered with a Santa Cruz-based, 100% volunteer-led organization, Finding Sophia, to host the Santa Cruz Stronger Together 5k or Community Workout this week. It’s only a six-day long fundraiser, but it’s fulfilling a timely need: “to support individuals and families whose lives have been displaced by the CZU Lightning Complex fires.” It sounds awesome, and I’m planning on participating and supporting.

Another fun virtual challenge for a good cause I learned about in the last week is the Running for Office Virtual Challenge. It’s aiming to “[mobilize] the electorate to #exercisetovote for the 20 days leading up to the 2020 election,” and it sounds awesome. There are three challenges — with the culmination being a 2 mile time trial — and part of each entry fee will be “donated directly to America Votes to protect every American’s right to vote and help advance progressive policies across the US.” Count me in!!!!!!! 

And last one that I can’t remember whether I’ve talked about or not already: the Big Sur Marathon Foundation’s Big Surreal throughout the month of September. I signed up for this one already, since I was originally planning to race Big Sur in April, and I think this month-long challenge will be a blast (provided our AQ improves). In case you haven’t figured it out, I’m not really into virtual “racing,” so to speak, but I do want to continue to support races and organizations in this weird year we’re in simply because I want them to survive. Plus, if races couple with a cause that I believe in, it’s a no-brainer. 

69 days (9 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 

For a really long time this past spring, when it came time to envision what the 2020-21 school-year would look like, I couldn’t see beyond a mental wall. The likelihood of still having distance learning was unfathomable yet completely predictable, if that makes any sense at all, and for every hypothetical example that I could envision of what “normal” would look like, I could easily rattle off a litany of reasons why hell would first freeze over before we’d be seeing “normal” again anytime soon. 

And yet here we are, at the beginning of the 2020-21 school-year, where fourth grade takes place in my girls’ shared bedroom upstairs and I’m shoulder-to-shoulder with my kindergartner at the kitchen table, where she’s learning excellent sightwords like mute and virtual meeting and distance education as a five year-old while also learning the usual kindergarten-y things, like being a good listener, following directions, and reading and writing. 

Let it be said that teachers, educators, and administrators everywhere right now surely must be racking up all types of sainthood points for their herculean efforts to make education work in the midst of a pandemic. This probably wasn’t what they had in mind when they envisioned their career in 2020, and yet here we are. There isn’t enough praise for them and what they’re doing. We need to say this loud, and clearly, and often. 

We are only a few days in so far, but for us, for my kids, it feels pretty good. The district has organized the kids’ days into “learning blocks” of varying lengths, and there are strict sign-on/sign-off times each day, too, lending a lot more structure than what we had in the spring. My 4th grader is self-sufficient and manages her day without a lot of overhead on my part, but my kinder daughter understandably needs more assistance, so that means I’m getting a kindergarten education at the ripe age of 36. Without question, if I had a non-mom job, there’d be no way that this could happen because she needs so much more hands-on help. (And just for fun, imagine teaching a bunch of 5 and 6 year-old kindergartners over Zoom. Just imagine).  

Before the kids sign-off, the teachers communicate what the kids should be working on and what they should finish by the time they sign back on. The district calls it “synchronous” and “asynchronous” learning, and so far, it seems to be working. Of course, the asynchronous stuff is easier to come by for my older daughter; for my K girl, it’s in those three hours of time that I’m constantly redirecting and helping her satisfy everything her teacher has laid out for her to do because she thinks when the screen is down, it’s play time, not more school time. Again: this would be damn near impossible if I had a non-mom job to do and non-mom responsibilities. And, bless her soul, my K daughter has made it abundantly clear — just as she had when COVID forced her out of her beloved preschool — that she much prefers her non-Mommy teacher, thank you very much. It’s challenging (and hilariously humbling), but she (we) are doing just fine. 

But since it’s the year 2020 and up is down and right is left and One Big Thing isn’t enough to deal with, much of California (including here) is in the throes of a triple-digit heatwave for going on a week now. Because it’s so hot, PG&E has been cutting people’s power to lessen the strain on the grid, so let that sink in: it’s triple digits outside (and has been for the past ~week and looks to be quite warm for the foreseeable future), school’s back in online session, and some people — through no fault of their own — are having their power cut. 

(ICYMI, you can’t do online school very well when you don’t have power. You also can’t WFH well when you lack power). 

Oh! And yea, like the aforementioned it’s 2020 and One Thing Is Never Enough reminds us, added to the laundry list of a pandemic that’s 23-weeks strong now, distance education, triple-digit heatwave, and cut power, is the inconvenient reality that the bananas-bonkers thunder-and-lightning (but no/very little rain) storm that we had on early Sunday morning has sparked over thirty fires in northern California alone, with much of it barely contained. 

I don’t recall ever having fires this close to us since moving here – the SCU Lightning Complex Fire is on the east side of Mount Hamilton, which ain’t all that far from us – and since yesterday, the air quality has been very poor and seemingly worsening. (You can’t *not* smell it. People’s cars are getting covered in ash and soot, and when you go outside, the foothills to the east are barely visible, and it smells like you’re swimming in an enormous campfire). At the moment, the closest-to-us border of the mandatory evacuation zone is 1.6 miles away — thank you, running route, for knowing that distance to the tenth of a mile — which is a bit too close for comfort. Right now, we don’t have to evacuate, but even the prospect of it makes my mind absolutely go into a fucking tailspin.  

So: pandemic. Societal-wide racial reckoning. Distance education. Triple-digit heatwave. Cut power. Poor air quality. The state’s on freaking fire. Maybe — hopefully not — we’ll have to evacuate.  

Is this the part of the story where we all wake up tomorrow with tails or something equally bizarre? Or are we just living in the here hold my beer meme, while we think that things can’t go any more sideways than they already have?

It can be incredibly challenging to try to find the silver linings, to focus on the positive, when it feels like everything is effed right now. So many of us (raises hand) prefer to feel as though we have some semblance of control and agency over our lives, yet right now, it sorta feels like we’re getting served a heaping serving of humble pie as we realize that we’re along for the ride, just like anyone else. You want control?! I’ll show you CONTROL!!! 

It’s mind-boggling that just a few short days ago, on one of the triple-digit days in SJ, the family and I escaped to Skylark Ranch, one of the GS properties near the coast, where the weather was nearly 30 degrees cooler (!). We were the only ones on site, and the air couldn’t have been crisper or the sky bluer. It was a great little escape from the heat and from humanity for a few hours, and the kids had a blast hiking on the trails and sprinting through the open fields. As of 5pm tonight, GS communicated that it has since evacuated Skylark, as well as two other properties on the Peninsula, because they’re dangerously close to the CZU Lightning Complex Fires. 

(There are so many individual fires right now, situated pretty close to each other, that instead of naming all of them individually, they getting categorized together. A group of fires is a complex. It has nothing to do with an apartment complex or anything like that [although from that wild lightning on Sunday morning, a condo HOA less than a quarter-mile from home got struck by lightning. Yeah. :/) 

This year is weird. A pandemic has forced most of us to work and go to school at home, and one of our only reprieves through all of this was spending time outside, provided we do it safely. Now, a series of fires — over 300, according to Governor Newsom — are threatening our outdoors, the very sanctuary that lets us get away from screens, breathe fresh air, and at least momentarily forget about the gravity of the times we’re in. Tons of people have already been evacuated from their homes, and I cannot imagine the litany of decisions that evacuees must be confronting right now.  

And this is all to say nothing of everything that’s happening politically right now! How many crises can we manage simultaneously before everything (everyone) falls apart!?!

It’s not my intention to be such an alarmist as I talk about changes from one week to the next in these COVID times here in my tiny corner of the internet, so I apologize. It’s reasonable to expect that at any given time, everybody is going through something or has something burdensome on his/her plate. It’s just that this year has been exponentially and profoundly more challenging for so many people than usual, and it’s heartbreaking (and infuriating, and so many other emotions!) to witness and experience. 

I so wish that I could do something or say something — anything — to help because inevitably I’m at a loss in the conversation when we just kinda acknowledge yeah, this shit’s bad and just getting worse, isn’t it?! My family and I have fortunately (and luckily) been spared the worst of this year so far, but that absence doesn’t allay the injusticeS, plural, that so many people are experiencing this year. 

So look at this, another entry in this weekly COVID journal — where I used to write about running and racing and training — where after more than 1,000 words, all I can say is yeah. This is hard, and my soul hurts for so many right now. 

Local friends, please stay safe, heed the warnings and take them seriously, and take care of yourself and your loved ones. Sending love and please drop me a line if we can help you at all xx

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On occupying time and settling mental unrest

Reading. I’m in the throes of Motherhood So White, and it’s fascinating. I don’t recall where I initially heard about this book, but I’m glad I procured it from the library’s digital reserves because it talks about motherhood and parenting from a completely different lens than anything I’ve ever read before. Admittedly, I know next-to-nothing about adoption, fostering children, or Black adoption (the author’s words), so reading her memoir has opened my eyes in ways few (if any) parenting books have before. I’d highly recommend it to anyone, regardless if you consider yourself a parent or caregiver. 

Listening. I go through lulls with podcasts, and I’m in one of them, where I’m downloading a bunch of content that I’d like to listen to but then just haven’t been feeling it in the past couple weeks. Most of my most recent runs have been with my kids or with Janet, and in the few times I’ve been solo, I don’t recall listening to much recently (aside from a couple SWAP podcasts). My backlog is getting embarrassing. 

Running. All good here. I enjoyed the past two stepback weeks (~45 miles/week) and have begun adjusting my schedule to squeezing in an hour or so before coming home to get the girls up and ready for distance learning. On Saturday, Janet and I learned that ARP was closed due to the high temps and the high fire risk, and they weren’t playing around: every fence that could be gated closed was, and the city even put a huge digital board up that said something to the effect of “park is closed,” / “minimum fine $1,000,” / “it is not worth it,” all in caps. It has been closed since Saturday, and with the weather and fire risk being what it is, I can’t imagine it opening anytime in the next week or so. 

Otherwise, to help with motivation (and because it’s an excellent cause that I’d like to support), some friends and I joined Oiselle’s Womxn Run the Vote online relay that’ll be taking place at the end of September. It’ll be fun, educational, and a cool way to keep motivation up right now. LMK if you want to join our team! 

Racing? Ha – remember when all I wrote about was my training and racing? Of course, everything is cancelled or postponed due to COVID, and I’m not at all expecting to be able to race anytime for the rest of the year. That said, however, I am registered for CIM in December because I had deferred my ‘19 race entry to this year, before COVID completely changed everything. CIM has a “worry free” registration policy this year, but it’s mind-blowing to me that the race hasn’t already made the official call to cancel this year’s race and defer all racers to sometime between 2021-2023, their choice. 

Just this week, CIM sent a survey about all the modifications that they could, theoretically, perhaps, make in an effort make the race safer, such as limiting or restricting spectators on the course, minimizing the expo, eliminating much of the finish line festivities, having runners start on a more rolling start (and possibly in the dark) than usual, running the race wearing a mask, not having much or any on-course fluids and nutrition, and the like. I have no insider knowledge here, but it seems preposterous that the race is even considering making modifications (on a grand degree! Big, big changes that’d carry with them tons of logistics and certainly costs!) instead of just bagging it early. It’s a nice gesture to the running community, but the efforts seem misplaced right now. At the risk of sounding crotchety or curmudgeonly, there is bigger and more important stuff going on — both on a global and on a local level — in 2020 than a marathon, even one that’s as revered as CIM. It just doesn’t seem right to me.   

76 days (10 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