Run DMZ

I may have mentioned the second half of 2019 was all about novelty races for me. My schedule and training limited my distances, but there are plenty of offbeat 5ks and 10ks here in my hometown of San Diego that I hadn't tried.  One of the big ones was the annual Santa Run in downtown Pacific Beach this past weekend. Just blocks from the Crystal Pier and boardwalk, this is truly a race for anyone and everyone. I walked it with my nephew and a friend and always had plenty of company because this race is big, as in 4000+ participants, all dressed in similar Santa Claus costumes. Getting there: Locals know it can be hard to find parking in PB, especially on weekends. Throw in road closures for the race and subsequent holiday parade and, well, welcome to San Diego. We assumed I'd be circling for on-street parking at least a half mile away on some side street. Then I turned the corner and found a spot one block from the start and finish on Garnet and Cass! Now, if y...

Every year I attend a cybersecurity conference that this year was held at a resort at the Walt Disney World in Orlando and included a 5k fun run. When I hear “fun run,” I think more of the all-comers races of old, where you show up at a certain time and place and everyone runs a course. Very loose and freewheeling and free. When I went to register and discovered this fun run was $30 and included a technical T-shirt, branded water bottle and plastic bag, course marshals, official start and finish line, professional timing and post-race medals and certificates, I was impressed. They even had awards for the top three male and female finishers.  It was exceptionally hot in Orlando (though nothing like the heat and fires back home in California right now). The inaugural race drew about 70 participants and began at 6 a.m. (which felt like 3 a.m. to me) with 77 degrees and 100% humidity. It was still pitch black, but it’s Disney, so there were employees sprucing up the ground...

About a year ago I set up a Pinterest board for all of the road races I wanted to try this year, if only for the novelty. The first one I pinned was the Surfing Madonna Low Tide Run in Encinitas. Billed as the Guinness World Record Holder for Largest Low Tide Beach Run, I knew it would be a crowd pleaser and I was right. What I didn't anticipate (and neither did other newcomers) was that low tide yesterday fell at 1:30 p.m., so the 10k/12k began at 1:30 and our race, the 5k, at 1:45. Most people run mornings, mid-day or evenings, so the unusual time fit the unusual course. But it made for some odd meal planning and also for hot conditions. Getting There: The race begins and ends at Moonlight Beach, which is one of the bigger public beaches in the area. If you're going to drive to the race, get there early. Parking in nearby lots and streets is typically packed on Saturdays anyway, and yesterday was perfect beach weather (low 80s) so plenty of non-runners were there too....

In 2010, social scientists asked some 340,000 people in 72 countries to rate their happiness using a 0 to 10 scale over a series of questions. The charted results of that seminal study resembled a U-curve, indicating people generally were happy in their 20s and 30s and then start to hit rough times in their late 30s/early 40s, reaching a low point in their early 50s before bouncing back up around 55 and beyond. One theory for the mid-life dip is that we realize, to paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, we’ve gone from being a man or woman with a future to a man or woman with a past. Certain achievements are cut off—like running a Fortune 500 company after toiling away as a mid-level manager or running a sub-3-hour marathon after decades as a mid-packer. We also start to suffer the unintended consequences of earlier lifestyle choices: having too much house; addictions; divorce or desertion; diabetes from a poor diet; arthritis from too many miles run on roads; etc. By the study...

Here’s the thing about running through the decades: The injuries pile up. In the early years, it’s from being too ambitious and overtraining. In the latter years, it’s from being too ambitious and tripping. And with either age group, freak accidents seem to happen only after officially signing up for a race. I’d no sooner accepted the online waiver and punched in my credit card data when I was felled by a wayward bougainvillea stalk. These beautiful plants (ours is the size and shape of a tree, but I think they are technically a shrub) need to be periodically trimmed, and sometimes the landscapers you hire don’t pick up every stalk. And these stalks have “prickers” – big ones, too. And one such thorn stuck in my foot after I stepped on it because I wasn’t paying close attention to my surroundings. I didn’t think anything of it, other than “ouch.” I was wearing thin summer flats and the plant pierced the pleather and lodged into the outside of my left foot. I pulled it ...

A SDSU basketball game halftime performance by Heartlight, the intra-city dance program my nephew did last year. Hi mom was with us in the audience, just so you know things do get better with time. It’s been a year exactly since I walked into a fifth-grade class, outwardly smiling and inwardly tormented. I was there to drop off the new student, my nephew whom I would now be raising. I knew right away he did not belong here, this child who had been orphaned and who could neither read nor write. His poor speech and facial birth defects let everyone know immediately he was different. We’d arrived in San Diego just a week prior after an Oregon family court judge finally took up my petition to move back to California. That request was challenged by his birth mother, who also happens to be my youngest sister. I always thought of myself as an upstanding citizen, but that day in court I realized that my inexperience with legal proceedings handicapped me. My sister knew how to gain t...

It says everything that when I told people I was attending this year’s Comic-Con, they responded with something along the lines of “Oh, San Diego has one too?!” My response was always, “Actually, San Diego is where it all began. All the others are knock-offs.” That’s not to say that the other Comic-Cons aren’t excellent events in their own rights, but they aren’t like the one that’s descended on downtown San Diego for 50 years now. Comic-Con is huge, not just for comics and pop culture fans, but for the entire region’s economy. It draws 135,000 people from 80 countries who spend $88 million directly and $149 million altogether. It’s such a financial force that we’ve had voter drives to start referendums on a San Diego Convention Center expansion solely to keep the conference from moving north.  One look at downtown last week, and it is easy to see why a bigger venue might do. But we San Diegans are grateful to the founders and organization leaders for keeping Comic-Co...