Miles is miles, right?

I got ahead of my running routine before my surgery on August 12th by running every day for much of the latter part of July and all of early August including on the morning of surgery.  My discipline is that I run five times a week, no matter how far, and that's what forces me to keep my hand in the game.  (Three miles done in the early morning, now bring on the surgeon at 7 a.m.!)

I felt I was in a good place on the day I had the double procedure, with a good running base, working on strength training even, and then, well, I walked six blocks the next day, for a few blocks the day after that, then two miles a day on the third day through seventh day before I was able to shuffle a mile on the eighth day, slowly and laboriously, with two walk breaks.  (Walking three blocks to get coffee, and three blocks back, the day after surgery and discovering it was a long way!)

I was on my way!  I took the ninth day off then ran, if you want to call a shambling gait running, a mile the next day, did my "long" run of two miles the next day and finished off the week with two slow slogs of a mile and a half.  (Back from my "long" run of two miles.)

The next week of running went better with four days of two plus miles each day plus, after a bad day where I felt pain and went to bed, a "long" run of three miles to the Metro Station a mile away along decently lighted streets after I woke up at 4 a.m. with the extra mile burned off in the the well lighted parking garage.  My belly button hernia repair is healed and gave me no trouble after a few days but the abdominal surgical repair has taken longer than I anticipated to heal and still gives me trouble sometimes, which limits my length and pace of runs considerably and has forced me to put off notions of resuming my strength training for the foreseeable term.  (Back after the next week's "long" run of three miles!)

Running will do that for you

It's another sweltering July in DC; running on the Mall during the noon hour leaves me literally reeling from the soupy heat by the fifth mile. This morning I got up a 4:30 A.M. to run 5 1/2 miles and although it went better, still for an hour afterwards I left behind little pools of sweat wherever I paused for moment.

But I'm glad to be back to running, although my troublesome ankle is still giving me trouble despite the cortisone shot a few months ago. I guess its effect is wearing off, leaving me with only the surgical option if my chronic tendinitis disables my running again.

This week I finally hit 20 miles, running my new-normal four times a week (I used to run five times a week). Although I am much slower than I used to be, running 10:10 miles now instead of 8:50s, and my conditioning (endurance) still sucks, miles is miles as I tell my running buddy at work as we jog down the Mall getting passed by everybody.

Next week I'll be in Minnesota attending a grave side service for my uncle who passed away a few months back, and I'm sure the many cousins who will be present will be checking each other out to see how we're all weathering our fifties. Fortunately I'm not as roly-poly as I was at the beginning of the year, as I have dropped 26 pounds in the last 13 weeks thanks to my return to running.

In Atlanta

"Sir, that run is for the morning."

"What do you mean, the morning? I'm doing it now."

"But it's 8 p.m. You can't do that run now."

"Why not?"

"Sir, that's a morning run."

"I won't get lost in the dark. There's only one turn."

"Umm. . . . it's not safe."

"Oh."

"It's a morning run."

"Okay."

I had this conversation with the front desk clerk at the Ritz-Carleton Hotel in Atlanta early last week when I arrived on business at 8 p.m. Since I was leaving at 7 o'clock the next morning, I asked the clerk if she could suggest a 3-mile run I might do.

She showed me a route on a downtown map that took me from Peachtree Street, where the Ritz is, over to Centennial Park and back. Basically the directions were to run down the street, make a left, and then come back. Then this very nice clerk in effect forbade me to do it when I said I was going to do the run immediately.

I knew whereof she spoke. I have stayed on Peachtree Street in downtown Atlanta before, a few years ago. As in many American cities, the homeless are everywhere.

Homeless people don't bother me. But it is not safe to run in the dark in an unfamiliar area with no good alternative route in mind should problems develop.

So I went at 5:30 in the morning instead.

It was a memorable run. There is no better way to see a new city than to run in its downtown when there is no traffic on the streets to slow you down.

It was dark, and cool. Peachtree Street was well lit, and I ran from the Ritz past the Westin to International Boulevard, where I turned left and ran down a hill. Atlanta is hilly. (Right: Down a hill from Peachtree Street in Atlanta you come across Centennial Park in the bottom of a hollow.)

I passed well-lit hotels and empty parking lots. I ran by a tiny park where stood a bronze statue of a man extending his open arms in greeting, and stopped momentarily to shake his right hand.

Lights blazed all around me as I came into the square occupied by Centennial Olympic Park, commemorating Atlanta's hosting of the 1996 Olympics. It's an odd shaped park, sort of like a big checkmark plunked down upon the downtown streets that border on the Georgia Aquarium, the Coke Pavilion and Georgia State University.

I ran into the park and stood briefly in the middle of it, looking up all around me at the sea of lights I was at the bottom of. Tall buildings past the expanse of the park surrounded me, and on all sides of the park there were tall, lit columns on its borders.

Circling the outside of the park, I ran by a few homeless people on the move in the chill of the early morning air. The sky was starting to brighten with dawn as two runners went by me at a brisk clip. As sometimes happens when serious male runners pass by each other, neither runner acknowledged my presence as they ran right past me.

Having completed my trip around the circumference of the park, I eschewed running up International Boulevard again and struck off into the maze of tiny streets that slants off the park at a diagonal. I figured I'd hit Peachtree Street eventually.

I ran by a small theater on Luckie Street, then a 24-hour diner. Yes! I had brought some money.

Inside was the entire on-duty contingent of the Georgia State Campus Police apparently, taking advantage of the restaurant's warmth on a cold morning, and its ambiance. Dispensing coffee and easy banter was a stunning redhead, who poured me a cup to go.

Slowed by my sloshing, capped container, I loped easily to Woodruff Park on Peachtree Street, near where a Marta stop is. I slowed to a walk and perambulated around that park. Regaining Peachtree Street from Peachtree Center Avenue, which involved climbing another hill, I came back into the Ritz lobby feeling great after a 40-minute jog.

The rest of the day was anticlimactic after this delightful run. At 7 a.m. I drove up to Dawsonville (apparently the birthplace of NASCAR) for a deposition, and then returned to the Atlanta airport for a flight home. Dawsonville is in the mountains of northern Georgia so the car trip was pretty, but the running trip through Centennial Park in the early morning was magical.

I just wish my RBF friend Akshaye in Atlanta could have done the run with me. Next time when I have more time!

BBB

Tuesday night was the half-marathon group's Bridges, Beer & Burritos run, minus the beer and burritos this week because nobody had time to go for social hour afterwards. Usually Emily, at least, is good for this part but she couldn't come this week.

The BBB is a mid-week four and a half mile evening run created by Rachel for the HM Program. It leaves at 7:15 every Tuesday evening from Iwo Jima and runs past Arlington Cemetery, across Memorial Bridge, past the Kennedy Center, along the Georgetown waterfront, over Key Bridge and back into Rosslyn. Then, usually, it's off to Chipolte for a Dos Equis and burrito. Come join us sometime.

I wanted a good, hard run because recently I have been accommodating back-of-the-packers in training runs, which I am happy to do, but I had a hankering to air it out. When I arrived, there were four trainees and two other coaches, Katie and John, so with such a favorable pupil to coach ratio, I felt free to do my own thing . K was there, who I knew had run sub-eights in the Turkey Trot 5-miler I recently worked the finish line at, by finishing that race in 39 minutes. So I said Let's Go to her and off we went at a good clip ahead of everyone else.

It felt great, rapidly traversing those big chunks of waterside real estate with reflections of the bright multi-colored holiday lights often dancing off the waters of the Potomac alongside or underneath us. K was game, breathing hard as we went but never falling off the swift pace. She said she was glad I came because usually she runs alone ahead of the pack. We were back at Iwo in 37 minutes (8:14), panting and sweating but feeling fulfilled. The rest of the group came up a few minutes later.

A good, hard run by gorgeous scenery with good friends is great for the soul.

"Stop!"

"Sir! Sir!"

If there is one thing I know, it is to not stop to speak with a cop who is calling out to you unless you have to. It's never a good thing.

I had run across the street down by the National Theatre on a stale yellow light. I managed to get one foot into the intersection before it turned red and I made a mad dash to get across, causing the cars waiting to go on green to have to pause to allow me to get all the way across on foot. But don't runners always have the right of way?

It was dark, and I was runnning from work to the Watergate to join up with a weekly evening Mall run. We were going to do seven and I didn't want to be late and miss them.

I had noticed a cop in the intersection as I crossed, and a squad car blocking the road leading to the National Theatre. The shouts for me to stop began as soon as I made it across, on red.

Uh-oh, I thought, here's my first jay-walking summons coming up.

But that was only if I stopped. I hadn't made eye contact with anybody. How did I know who they were shouting at? Ignorance is bliss, right?

I kept going without looking back, a little quicker now. I wasn't running towards any police that I could see. I figured the cop behind me was on foot, directing traffic, and wouldn't run after a runner. I wanted to get to the end of the block and vanish.

"Hey you! Stop!"

Pretty insistent. Clearly I hadn't done anything they could shoot at me for.

"Sir! Stop!"

The voice wasn't receding. It was coming after me. Alright, they were serious.

I stopped and turned. It was a female cop coming, on a bicycle. She skidded to a stop beside me.

"You speaking to me?" I inquired, in my best Alan Ladd imitation. I wanted to dispel any notion the policewoman might have of scienter.

"Yes! I told you to stop."

"I'm sorry. I didn't know." For once I wished I had headphones so I could really claim that I was oblivious to the command to halt.

"Street's closed. You'll have to go around."

Ah, no ticket. Must be a White House function. I ran off in the pointed direction immediately, before the conversation had a chance to develop further. Like I have said before, DC cops are wise enough not to uselessly ask runners to show an I.D.

Later I was relating this story to the small group of runners as we looped around behind the Capitol in the dark. "Closest I ever came to a jay-walking ticket," I said.

Another runner tossed off a comment that gave me real pause for reflection. "Probably closest you ever came to getting tasered, too."

I hadn't thought of that. That cop could have been priming that pump, charging that conduit, as she pedaled furiously after me. 1,000 volts of stored electricity just for me. It's a brave new world alright.

Don't tase me, Sis. Owww!


What did I do?

Yes Virginia, there is a New Mexico

After arriving in Santa Fe last Monday, I relaxed on my sister's back porch until she got home from work.

She took me out to dinner where I saw her son and grandaughter for the first time in several years.

After dinner, I went out with her husband to run around on the hillside she lives on in the dark. He does this all the time apparently. We're both wearing headlamps. His is bigger than mine. Believe me, I can assure you that size does matter.

This is the hillside we scrambled around for an hour Monday night. I stepped out my sister's back door and shot this the next morning.

Then I went downtown to the Plaza. Santa Fe was a colonial capital before any settlers arrived at Jamestown. The Native Americans have been selling their wares here for hundreds of years.

Oh, yes, it started snowing. I was driving back to Denver the next day.

Running on Sun Mountain

In the light cast out by my flickering headlamp, I could see S's breath coming out in silver plumes about his head. I wanted to keep right on his heels because his lamp was more powerful than mine. In its illumination I could survey the depressions and obstacles which lay under two inches of powdery snow on the narrow mountain trail better than in mine.

I was trail running at night! On the slope of a hillside at 7200 feet. Snow was falling.

Santa Fe lay below us in a spherical orange glow. I paused once to drink in the splendor of the view and to calm my ragged breathing. Although I had run on trails a few times before, and even on a steep incline once, I had never done it at altitude, in the snow or at night.

S, who lives in Santa Fe on Sun Mountain, which is a popular daytime hiking destination, can run trails merely by walking out his back door. He runs trails at night, on hour-long runs. I had taken him out to run my "neighborhood mile" when he visited me years before, and now he was returning the favor by taking me out to run his trail.

Since the snow was powdery and unblemished except for some animal tracks, it wasn't too slippery. We had to take care not to trip on the innumerable granite rocks, with their sharp edges, which littered the hillside and trails under the snow. We also had to watch for above ground hazards such as waist-level cactus and the face-level branches of spruces. I had already poked my thigh on the sharp point of a yucca plant. (Left: Running into a yucca plant in the dark hurts!)

S was leading at a modest trot. He was forging a path by running along a slight concave concourse which wove between close-in pine trees, where snow had settled onto the trail differently than upon the surrounding hillside.

Running under a canopy of short evergreens in the deep darkness of the hillside, a blackness tempered by the brilliant shine of the stars overhead and the glow from the city lights below, was both liberating and exhilarating. The funk I was in from my fourth day in a row of driving for hours in wretched snowy conditions with low visibility, over mountain passes on snowpacked roads, fell away. I became suffused with the joy of physical performance applied to a heretofore untried strenuous challenge.

Two miles out we paused in a slight clearing just before the last row of trees lining the back quadrangle of St. John's College, which lay on the other side of Sun Mountain. We had skirted around the base of the small mountain along its slope in 23 minutes. We headed back, following our tracks in the snow. Halfway back, as I grew tired from my extreme exertions in the snow and cold, I paid the price of vanity for my supposed physical ability to do this novel and difficult task. I tripped or slipped and fell heavily upon the trail, banging my left knee upon a rock under the snow.

S hovered over me protectively while I applied a snow pack to my injured knee for a few minutes, and then we walked it in from there. We arrived back at S's and my sister's house at just over an hour's total time. This was a magical run unlike any other that I have ever done.