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Finally!

Finally!

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If last week’s entry read like something twinged with equal parts trepidation, sadness, anger, and happiness, simultaneously, that’s about what life during this weird-ass and tragic time in history feels like most days. The suffering that humanity is enduring right now, both locally, here, in SCC, as well as abroad, is immense. Needless to say, it completely overshadows any minute inconvenience or annoyance my family, friends, or I may be experiencing because we know how incredibly fortunate we are. At the same time, when life affords you an opportunity to glimpse or experience “the way things were,” even for a short period, sometimes I feel guilty to know that the moment isn’t necessarily open to all. 

After a pretty heavy week last week — with the first day of school, and all the fears (and excitement) that comes with it, in addition to the big stories in the national and international news — I figure it’s time to temper ze blog with a little happiness, a nice reminder that sometimes, an occasional reminder that not all is doom and gloom. We (I) may need these periodic attitude shifts more than we (I) may realize. 

(TBCFH: this is something I have struggled with during the pandemic. Does writing or talking about stuff that matters to you, but is fairly irrelevant in the grand scheme of the mess of life during the pandemic, even make sense? Who TF cares, right? Personally, my family and I have been fine thus far, all things considered, but I know so many who haven’t, and my heart hurts for them. My heart hurts for the thousands and millions of people whom I don’t personally know whose lives have been upended because of this virus. My life, my family’s life, has definitely changed during the course of the pandemic, and [or “yet,” or “but,” or “or” … I think the contraction is operative here, and they all work equally well!] we still have a lot to be happy, and to feel grateful, about).

I got a reminder about this over the weekend. Following Saturday morning’s long run, on Sunday morning, I was up bright and early, yet again, but this time not to run but to instead volunteer! 

For! 

A! 

Local! 

Live! 

In-person! 

Road! 

Race!

In!

San Jose! 

The obnoxious exclamation marks are entirely appropriate because they begin to adequately convey my glee at doing something I love for the first time in a very, very long time. 

Sunday morning’s Bloom Energy Stars and Strides 5k/10k Run was an inaugural race to benefit the Valley Medical Center Foundation. Situated in downtown San Jose, with race day logistics and execution handled by our favs at Run Local, the race brought together over 1,500 registrants across three races (5k, 10k, kids’ race, with runners and walkers in each) and over 1,000 participants to the streets of downtown come 8am. 

Did I mention that it was the first (local) (road) race in San Jose since the pandemic shut everything down?

A small handful of my Wolfpack teammates and I helped out as course marshals on Sunday morning, and Mark and I hung out around the mile 3 marker, which meant we got to see all the runners at least twice: on their way out, shortly after the starting line; on their way back (5k runners heading for home and 10k runners about to split); and one last time (10k runners on their way home). At one point, we were responsible for telling the 5k/10k runners to split at the appropriate time (and to take the correct direction), but fortunately, it was fairly straightforward because the runners’ bibs were color-coded to their distance. 

I remembered to bring cowbells with me on Sunday morning, making the whole shebang more fun (and much louder). I’m glad I didn’t lose my voice or blister my knuckles from my vigorous ringing efforts. 

all matchy-matchy with Lisa and Mark

It made for a fun morning! Protip: don’t ask course marshals questions in the minutes preceding a race about things like about where bib pickup is (near the starting line?), or where people can street park (no idea, but the cop over there said they’re not enforcing neighborhood permits because of COVID, so…), or anything that’s not directly related to literally the ground we are standing on because that’s likely the beginning and end of our knowledge related to the race. Plan better, people! 

Anyway. It’s always so fun to spectate (or run) at local races, particularly small ones, because it’s pretty easy to run into people you know from the running community. A handful of my Wolfpack teammates raced or fun-ran it, as well as some other folks I know from the Run Local ambassadors or Bay Area Running Crew. It was like a small-scale reunion, and we all know that mid-run hugs (especially ones that haven’t happened in 18+ months!) can’t be beat. 🙂 

franddz!!!!!!!

I think the next race I’ll volunteer at with the team isn’t until early October, for the SJ RNR half marathon, so lmk if you’re running it, and I’ll be sure to hoot and holler for you. It’s usually fairly massive in size, and last I heard, they were planning on a full-scale, “normal” race production, but like anything else during COVID and delta-dominated life, I suppose time will tell.   

COVID, week 5 & predicting the future?

COVID, week 5 & predicting the future?

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Life sure has been weird since the initial announcements on Friday, March 13, and even though in the grand scheme of things, today is not that much later — it’s April 15 — all I can think is that time is going both really fast and really slowly simultaneously. It makes me think of having a newborn, except it’s like we’re all newborns, and we’re all caring for newborns. It’s disorienting. 

Two recent developments, closely related, worth discussing come to mind right now: Governor Newsom’s conference yesterday and the recent announcement of a rescheduled race date for Big Sur. The tl;dr version of Newsom’s address is that everyone wants to have a date on the calendar when life will go back to normal (or normal-ish), but alas, this virus doesn’t play nicely like that. No one knows because none of us can foretell the future, much to our chagrin. 

why are you even here reading this? — the signs are getting sassy. #seenonmyrun

At the conclusion of his address, a reporter asked about big public gatherings– 49ers games, parades, whatever– and Newsom remarked that having anything like that is basically inconceivable until there’s a vaccine and herd immunity. I think it’s the answer that everyone rationally knows but no one wants to hear because we know that that stuff takes time, a lot of time, and no one wants to give any more of their lives, livelihood, the whole gamut to this pandemic than they already have. Let’s use a running metaphor here and say that the road ahead of us is long, quite long indeed. 

Just a day before Gov. Newsom’s address came Big Sur’s announcement of a rescheduled BSIM date, November 15, 2020, over the same weekend as the regularly-scheduled Monterey Bay Half Marathon, with the half occurring on Saturday and the marathon (and several other distances that are usually part of marathon weekend) happening on Sunday. Runners’ registrations will default to the November 2020 race date, but we can instead elect to register for the 2021 edition (in April) or the 2022 edition (also in April) at 60% of race cost. Alternately, we can decide not to run it at all, anytime, and use the registration as a charitable donation to the BS foundation that runs the race. In a moment in time where so few of us have options, the BS race team is giving runners many options, and that is impressive and commendable. 

Here’s the thing. As much as I’d love to run this race — and I’ve tried for many years, unsuccessfully, to enter it via the lottery and finally got in this year — right now it is unfathomable to me that it’ll go on in November. 

BSIM is a huge event, in terms of participant numbers, in a relatively small location, and thinking about those realities against the current reality where we find ourselves — where we’re being instructed to maintain a six-foot physical distance between ourselves and strangers at all times, where we’re really not supposed to be galavanting around in public or hell, where we’re not even supposed to be spending time with people with whom we don’t reside — having a large-scale race (or rather, several large-scale races) over a single weekend in seven months is inconceivable to me right now. 

I would love to be wrong about this, and I remain optimistic that the best in the world will create something that will protect all of humanity against this nefarious enemy that has upended everyone’s lives, but we can’t be naiive. This stuff takes time. In the grand scheme of thing, seven months is nothing. 

Let’s also talk about the (financial and otherwise) risk that the BS organizers are taking with moving the marathon (and marathon weekend races) to November. In one of the posts I linked to a few weeks ago, from a RD about cancelling races, they talked about the huge financial risks that the BS board (who also run the Monterey Bay Half Marathon) took by allowing the 2018 MBHM entrants to register for the 2019, 2020, or 2021 race since the ‘18 iteration was cancelled, literally the day before race day, due to the poor air quality from the horrific Camp Fire ~100 miles north of Monterey. It was a terrible fire, among the worst in California history, responsible for tons of deaths and destruction and event cancellations up and down California. 

With BSIM now slated for November, the same organizers may find themselves in the same dilemma in November — in the midst of a pandemic AND in fire season — and with several events that routinely draw in thousands of runners from all over the world and country. I cannot imagine the decision-making processes, logistics, and the enormous financial ramifications involved in possibly moving thousands of runners, over several different races, again this year to a future year (or years, plural). 

Again: that the board is even trying is laudable in my book. We’ll see what happens. Your thoughts? 

On occupying time and settling mental unrest:     

  • Watching: Trolls World Tour three times this past weekend, since we rented it on Friday night for 48 hours. Let me know what you think (and tell me what you make of the plot compared to Frozen 2)! 
  • Celebrating: Easter over the weekend with the family, though not in any religious sense. The kids were completely amped about it, which was sweet to see.  
  • Running: Daily, #lonewolf (or sometimes with the girls), however I want and typically not more than 8-10 miles, usually on fairly hilly or rolling routes that I can easily create out my door. I developed an unintentional run streak since 3/9, so I imagine that I’ll keep it up because … why not? 
the green is gorgeous right now
  • Cooking: I had a lot of leftovers in the past week but also created some vegetarian marathon bolognese (excellent taco fillings!) and the superfoods soup from the Run Fast Cook Fast Eat Slow cookbooks. I’ve made the soup twice now and haven’t been impressed with it, which is odd because it’s fairly idiot-proof. 
  • Reading: Still going strong on Hitchhiker’s Guide (albeit slowly) and in the last week I finished Mitch Albom’s Finding Chika and started Gavin Edwards’ Kindness and Wonder about Mr. Rogers. Chika was predictably depressing– I’m not sure why I decided to read this now– and so far, learning about Mr. Rogers has been a bit of a palate-cleanser to life. 
  • Listening: the second episode of the Growth Equation podcast was pretty interesting, especially since I knew nothing about Sabrina Ionescu. Highly recommended.  

Stay safe, and be well.  xo