Run DMZ

Former running blogger Dennis, who runs with the Greater Boston Track Club, e-mailed to let me know he was coming to town this weekend and wondered if I wanted to run with him one morning. So he and I joined my track club’s Saturday morning half marathon group for a run that starts and ends on Harbor Island. Dennis ran with the faster crowd, while I hung on to run with Amy, a member of the masters women team that I used to meet for afternoon lake runs a couple of years ago. We ended up taking a route along Shelter Island, an aquatic hamlet that’s best known among locals as home to Humphrey’s by the Bay concerts. Amy raved about a 5k that finishes here with a champagne brunch, so I think that’ll be the next race on my schedule. I ended up running 7 miles, maybe a little more – my watch battery died enroute – that morning, grateful the fog stuck around to help hide the humidity. We ended with crunches and planks and now I know for sure I need to ramp up the core strengthening. My bac

Tell me, what immediately comes to mind when you think of British singer Amy Winehouse? If you follow pop culture, you don't think runner, fitness, health, etc. No, you think crackhead . She's also apparently bulimic and racist and...you get the picture. Apparently a local running store doesn't. Under a tagline "Need for Speed" is a graphic that looks distinctly like Winehouse when she was saying "No, No, No" to Rehab and her drug-dealing husband wasn't behind bars. It's in the latest issue of a local publication that lists Southern Cal races and entry forms. Am I missing something?

I was excited to return to work this week because I was convinced all that campus walking and errand running and soccer-practice shuttling while on vacation would push me toward the top of our corporate competition . I averaged 7,000 steps per day while working a sedentary job, so surely I’d get a bump from being constantly on the go for a week. Unfortunately, only one day did I record a whopping 10,500 steps. The others ranged from 117 steps to 420. How can that happen, you might ask? Apparently my computerized pedometer malfunctioned during the trip. I talked to the company sponsoring the competition, and essentially I’m just SOOL. If that one typical vacation day is any indication, I would have soared to the top of the leader board, instead of being booted off it for good because it appears to the computer I’d done little for the week besides get out of bed to brush my teeth. The week deteriorating from there, but I’ll spare you the pity party. I don’t want to prove the computer

I wore my running shorts and shoes three times during my four-day vacation to Virginia. Not once did I actually run in them. Twice I was hopeful, and the third night I used the shorts for pajamas. By the morning of our return trip, I knew better than to make running plans with my sister again. I am not going to look on this run-less vacation as a series of failed attempts. Rather, the period was more like a sudden, short fallow season in which the body wasn’t so much inactive or dormant but taking a breather from the usual self-imposed stress. Our trip began with a drive up from Greensboro, N.C., that helped us acclimate to the scent of moist, fresh-tilled earth; leafy mountainsides still smothered in kudzu and Virginia creeper; and cruddy radio reception. Life has thrown my sister some serious curve balls in the past couple of years, and there are just so many times that someone who’s always ill prepared at the plate can strike out before being toss out of the game. Our first full

That's adjusting for the time difference. I tried in vain to embed the video. No can do. Here's where my husband and I and 65,000 others will be on Saturday. We're off to enjoy one of the most beautiful parts of the country. I'm hoping to finally master the video function on my camera. And stay away from a computer. And have an ice cream at Gilley's after a long stroll through downtown. And get up in time for my neice's soccer game. And really sell up the Tony Hawk shirts I got for my nephews. And have a heart-to-heart with my sister while running on the Huckleberry Trail. Which we may have to run twice because I also plan to eat too much good ol' fashioned Southern food.

When I was a new mom, I frequently was mistaken for the babysitter. Now everyone thinks I’m much older than I actually am. I’ve been getting invitations from older friends to join them for AARP functions. A kid at work once asked me what it was like to be a hippie in college and if I'd been to Woodstock. I also belong to a book club of women who are older than me and who I adore for their candor – the kind of forthrightness that is earned with age. I normally don’t mind being mistaken for “the older woman.” This morning, though, I really started to wonder if maybe I shouldn’t change some things about my appearance. I drove to Miramar Lake for a run and noticed most parking spots already taken. As I came out of the restroom, a woman I know from the track club asked if I was participating in the morning’s 5k race. I told her no, I didn’t even know there was a race. Lo and behold, it was a Senior Olympics competition! Then this afternoon I went to get new running shoes. I tried on

Time for some Friday fun. How does your term for a certain carbonated beverage stack up against this map? (Click on the picture for a bigger image.) [Map courtesty of Pop vs. Soda Web site]

Somehow we managed to travel more than 1,200 miles, hit almost every “big box store” in the Woodland-Davis-West Sacramento area and construct a bedroom’s worth of furniture in between. We got lost more than once. We were forced to find a different motel but still kept the Bakers-Square-on-a-Sunday-morning-whenever-we-visit tradition going. Yet I return to San Diego with less than 5 miles recorded on my computerized pedometer. Where did the time go? On the way home, we witnessed the immediate aftermath of a horrific car crash along a remote section of I-5. I couldn’t tell if the dust storm we went through was the result or cause of the collisions that no doubt included fatalities. The scene bothers me even now, almost a day later. One minute you’re headed to some place promising and the next your soul is sent somewhere else. There’s no chance to tell someone you’re sorry or you love them or even good-bye. Fortunately I got to tell my two college kids all three, this time without cryin