I have increased, these days, the distance I have been running in a week. I had been for some months covering about four and a half to six miles in a week, spread out over three or four runs: my usual route is two and a half kilometers almost exactly. Within ten meters or so, anyway. I plotted a longer route a couple weeks ago, adding some miles through the streets of Hercules, the next town north: every second or third run now is 5K.
This morning was my third such run. To be honest, I stopped at around the 4.5K mark: my right calf was cramping up a bit, and I wanted to make sure I wasn’t reinjuring it. Ten years ago I started running around Lake Merritt in downtown Oakland, overextended myself, and spent several months nursing a strained right ankle. A bad ankle seriously cut into my hiking during my first extended desert trip, five weeks in the Mojave in Fall 1997: it was, to strain a metaphor as well, a pain in the ass. I run with the fear in the back of my mind that a second injury would bring my new lifestyle to a halt. If I twinge, I stop to check it out.
But the cramp ebbed with a little walking. I returned after three minutes or so to the spot where I’d stopped, took a deep breath, and ran the remainder of the five kilometers.
I always return to the place where I stopped. It feels like honesty with myself. When I first started running again this year I set myself a goal of about a mile, and I ran that distance, though it took I think two stops and returns to the stopping point. Within two weeks I was running the 2.5 K distance, sometimes adding another 500 yards up the 90-foot hill my house sits on. That was winter, and I weighed somewhere near 230 pounds. 190 is easier on the knees. And 190 I have been for weeks, and it was time to click past another ratchet in the exercise arms race: a somewhat lighter, somewhat better-conditioned body takes less energy to move, and hence fewer calories. So two weeks ago I plotted a five kay route through Hercules.
Hercules is an interesting change. Pinole has maintained a small-town feeling, wiith odd older houses and a distinct commcercial district. Hercules barely existed until the 1970s, and is a typical sprawly suburb in many ways. I stand out a bit running there, head covered in a strange tie-dyed bandana, sweat dripping off my unwaxed chest hair. But people smile and wave.
There is a hill along my route, a trifling one to a runner in any kind of shape, but I am proud of tackling it. From sea level to a hundred feet in four blocks is more gain than I could have handled until recently. I expected to stop partway up on my first attempt, but somehow didn’t. Perhaps it’s all the charging up steep Diablo switchbacks that did it. The hill seemed altogether unsteep by comparison. On that first run, it wasn’t until the 4K mark that I stopped, right at the lagoon behind the levee along the bayshore tracks. I walked, returned, and ran again. On my second attempt I ran the 5K without stopping.
Back home that day and dripping I was suddenly curious. I had been told the track around Lake Merritt was 5K, but suddenly wondered how true that was. I fired up Google Earth and measured. Not quite. Four point eight or so. Two hundred meters is not a distance you would notice so much if you’d just run three miles, but still: I had just run farther without stopping than I had in my life, and with a hill added besides. A measly victory to some perhaps, but it is mine and I will take it.
This morning I was still a bit worn from Saturday’s hike, and I’d run 2.5K on Sunday just to unknot the tendons. I set out with the promise that I could stop at 2.5K, which on this new route puts me fairly close to home, three or four blocks: the route doubles back through Hercules and back toward the bay and then away from the bay again. For some reason I did not stop, but ran on past the old paddock and into the curving streets, lawn sprinkler runoff striping the sidewalks.
Posted by: Chris Clarke
Categories:
Hiking
Send to Del.icio.us; Digg; Ma.gnolia; Reddit; Spurl; Newsvine; StumbleUpon
Login or Register to save this post as a favorite or email it to a friend.
