Angels and the Rodeo Beach 50K
A widely reported study released last September showed that 55 percent of Americans believe in angels. I took that as another sign of our country’s slide toward anti-intellectual lunacy. Even as a churchgoer, I believe in angels as allegory, not as actual messengers of the divine. But I’ve spent the last couple of days thinking […]
Len Goldman’s Lessons for Running Strong No Matter What Your Age
When I’m 64 . . . When I look ahead to turning 40 in 2009 and wonder how much my speed and strength might decline with age, I take heart in the examples set by older runners such as Len Goldman, 64, a fixture in the Oakland and Piedmont running scene. One might never guess […]
Olympic Marathoner Magdalena Lewy Boulet Reflects On A Year of Highs and Lows
This past year, I was captivated and inspired by Oakland’s running hero, Magdalena Lewy Boulet, as she boldly — and unexpectedly — finished second at the Olympic Women’s Marathon Trials in Boston last April, earning a spot on the team, and then suffered a heartbreaker in Beijing. Last night, I joined a couple dozen women […]
The Toughest 20 Minutes
On Thanksgiving morning, as I prepared to race the 3-mile Piedmont Turkey Trot through our community’s hilly neighborhood streets, I asked myself, “Why do I put myself through this?” I have a love-hate feeling toward the 5K, tipping toward the negative now that I’ve become more of a long-distance trail runner. But what I dread […]
Dueling on Diablo
On Sunday, November 2, I was in the middle of a 10K race on Mount Diablo that felt like a nightmare. My feet were weighed down, I kept slipping and almost falling, and I was reduced to running in slow motion as though sloshing through waist-high water. The nightmare’s monster had a three-letter name: MUD. […]