Pioneers remembered

Obituaries marking the passing of runner and entrepreneur Jeff Galloway reminded me again of how much I owe to the generation of accomplished athletes, who, in the 1970s, popularized road and trail running for the untalented masses. That includes me.

Galloway promoted a run-a-little, walk-a-little system for enabling us to complete races and distances we never might have imagined. I never took to his system, preferring to develop a long, slow, distance habit of running that enhanced my fitness. But people like Galloway and Dr. Joan Ullyot made it acceptable for we, the slow pokes, to stumble out there in a way that had been unimaginable before. Movement was no longer confined to "real" athletes; it was encouraged for everyone.

I observe the trend they started is still with us, because I see it outside my San Francisco front window. Before the pandemic, I was the very rare older person who ventured for a trot on the local Mission city streets, usually at dawn. Reduced traffic during the shutdown months brought out a new generation of runners; many are still continuing an urban running practice today.

For the last few years, infirmities have reduced me to long, slow walking using trekking poles, but I still keep up the regularity I long ago learned from the first running boom. Twenty to twenty-five miles a week, however slow and whether I like it or sometimes not. 

I remain grateful to the generation pioneering mass athletic participation of whom Galloway was an important leader!

A different kind of woman

Caster Semenya knows who she is. She's had it with authorities, especially white and European ones, telling her they know her better than she does herself. She tells it like it is for her in The Race to Be Myself: A Memoir.

I love this book. I recommend it unreservedly, especially in the audio version, some of which Semenya performs herself.

She sets up her story like this:

I am Mokgadi Caster Semenya. I am one of the greatest track and field athletes to ever run the 800-m distance. I've won two Olympic gold medals and three world championships ...

... I have what is called a difference in sex development (DSD), an umbrella term that refers to the generic conditions where an embryo in a different way to the hormones that spark the development of internal and external sexual organs. To put it simply, on the outside I am female, I have a vagina, but I do not have a uterus. ... I can't biologically contribute to making new life.

I did not know any of this about my body until soon after August 2009, when I won the gold medal in the 800-m race at the World Championships in Berlin, Germany. I was only eighteen years old and had been subjected to invasive and humiliating gender confirmation tests without my consent just prior to the race. What followed was a media firestorm that continues to this day. ...

... I am a tall, dark-skinned, African woman with well-defined muscles, a deep voice, and not a lot up on top. I know I look like a man. I know I sound like a man and maybe even walk like a man and dress like one, too. But I'm not a man. ... I'm a different kind of woman, I know. But I'm still a woman. ...

I accept and love myself just the way I am. I always have and I always will. God made me. I am fortunate to have had a family who never tried to change me, and a country that wrapped its arms around me and fought for my right to run. ...

... I am a proud South African woman born in a tiny village to people who loved me.They have survived more humiliations than I could possibly know. It is from them that I know about maintaining dignity in the face of oppression. It is my hope that by telling my truth, I inspire others to be unafraid, to love and accept themselves. May this story contribute to a more tolerant world for us all.

Semenya's birth village is in Limpopo, the northernmost province of South Africa. Though the nation boasts gleaming modern cities like Cape Town and Pretoria, agricultural villages in the countryside -- African villages in the racial frame of that nation -- don't even show up on Google maps. It was a long time before Semenya was pulled into the multi-racial, multi-class modernity of South Africa upon leaving the hinterland to take up an athletic scholarship to the University of Pretoria.

It wasn't until she started winning international races that the International Amateur Athletic Federation (now World Athletics) began to get hot and bothered about her gender. And it seems fair to say, then the shit hit the fan. She was tested and barred from competition unless she took testosterone blocking drugs that made her ill. The basis in science for requiring the drug regimen was poorly documented and eventually tossed out by courts. Meanwhile, she strove to stay sane and train hard amidst the dissonance of strangers questioning who she knew herself to be.

... Gender is a simple thing in my part of the world. Mostly people are born boys, or they are born girls. There is also what in our Pedi language we call lahara matana -- a person born with two genders, meaning they are born with both a penis and a vagina. In my culture, these people are not assigned a gender. They are allowed to live their lives and decide which gender is dominant in their soul. They go about their business and everyone is supposed to mind theirs. I have heard that in rich countries doctors can "fix" a child born like this. But how can you "fix" something if you don't know what a child will want to be? We don't believe in surgical intervention on infants for such a thing.

No one ever told me specifically about lahara matanas. I just knew there were people like this when I was growing up. And I wasn't one of them. I was born a girl, and I have never felt confused by that because there is nothing confusing about having a vagina, even if my mannerisms and interests were considered boyish. ...

I knew growing up there were other girls like me, meaning girls who didn't sprout breasts, who had deep voices, or girls who were not into girl things. I grew up with some of them, played soccer with them. They were around, just like I was around. ...

... My family accepted me the way I was, but it didn't mean they didn't deal with comments about my looks and behavior. But my actual gender has never been a thing to be questioned, much less tested. That's the thing people didn't seem to understand -- it was one thing to talk about how I behaved, how I looked on the outside -- my clothes, my voice, my musculature -- but questioning someone's gender, discussing it in public ... that was unheard of in my culture. ...

The gender issue became a difficult one for the politicians in my country. Everyone seemed to support me and my right to run. They saw me as an innocent Black child caught in a terrible situation. For us, it became more than about gender, it became about race. It became about White people coming and telling us Africans what we were and what we were not based on our looks -- the same categorizations and violations of human rights that were happening during apartheid. I became a symbol of how Black people had been violated and exploited throughout history. Would this be happening to a White European teenage girl? When did "rumors" become an official accusation that had to be investigated? My blood and urine had been tested dozens of times by ASA [Athletics South Africa] and the IAAF [International Amateur Athletic Federation] ...

Mostly Semenya's attitude in this book is simple amazement at the stupidity of people questioning her gender -- and proud fury as she asserts herself. She has no time for other women competitors who she thinks don't have it in them to work as hard as she does.

I remember reading how women were barred from running in the early days of organized sports because men thought their body parts would fall out and that it was "unseemly" for women to sweat in public. Well, look closely at professional women's races. Most of us run, cross the line, congratulate each other, and go on with the rest of our business. ... If you are an elite athlete and you really can't breathe and you fall down when you're done with a race, train harder.

I read this book from a stance of awareness that all world class athletes are freaks of nature.  It's just that sometimes we can't see quite how. Human diversity is enormous and a very few people can turn their biological divergence from the mean into athletic success -- such success only comes if they train to their limits and beyond. The best are disciplined freaks. The Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps has some of the largest hands you'll ever see. Brock Purdy apparently has a preternatural ability to see around him and remain decisive when facing being beat to a pulp. They are different, but they wouldn't achieve the athletic successes they have without brutal hard work.

I love the dedication of Caster Semenya's memoir. It seems about right to me:

For those who are born different
and feel they don't belong in this world,
it is because you were brought here
to help create a new one.

Thanks, Mokgadi Caster Semenya!

When the turkey won the day ...

On this day, so lethal to turkeys, it seems right to raise up a brave (and irritable) turkey which achieved its purpose.

Some years ago, while running in Marin County, I intruded on this fellow's territory. Presumably there was a turkey hen and little ones somewhere near by.

I had bare legs. A feinted kick and fast departure seemed smart and off I sprinted. Score one for daddy turkey!

• • •

We have much to be thankful for. In two high profile murders of Black men, in the past year the apparatus of law has been able to take notice of the crimes. And Joe Biden, not Donald Trump, is president. Let us give thanks for living to fight another day ...

A "Slow Street" in the Mission during shelter-in-place

I've been using our designated street where traffic is mildly discouraged on some morning runs. There are these warning signs on Shotwell between 14th and Cesar Chavez.

There's been talk of adding 20th Street from Valencia to Potrero to the program, but nothing yet.

I can't say that this "slowing" makes much difference. After all, there's an open cross street at each block. Running the full length of the designated stretch requires no less situational awareness than running the bike lanes on Valencia. And I'm slow all the time.

Running at sunrise is what makes this possible, before there is active traffic. Traffic does seem still to be reduced. There's more than a month ago, but still not the full weekday volume of an open San Francisco. And the air remains a little clearer.

But we all chafe at our limitations.

Who feels welcome on public lands?

Runner and advocate Faith E. Briggs used to run through the streets of Brooklyn every morning. Now, she’s running 150 miles through three U.S. National Monuments ... She's claiming what's ours and therefore hers.

National Monuments say "what do we care about." ... Being a 'public land owner' gives me a huge sense of responsibility.

This is beautiful and makes the trail runner in me totally jealous.

Dispatch from the dawn in the closed-down Mission

Unexpectedly, our present "shelter in place" condition has revived my jogging practice. I'm out most mornings at 6:30am, loping a slow 5K that includes long stretches in the bike lanes on Valencia Street.

I'm not alone out there. There's a much younger and more ambitious runner in a bright orange jacket who passes me each day around my first mile mark, off to I know not where. I see the beginnings of a line of younger folks just forming outside Ritual Coffee Roasters. At the door of Mission Pet Hospital, there is almost always someone carrying an animal in a carrier -- I guess they open at 7am? A few cyclists ride by.

All the way along Valencia, people sleep in doorways; as the season has turned warmer, the street feels slightly more hospitable for the cardboard and blanket set. I see people I recognize from among the unhoused community around St. John the Evangelist -- a woman pushing her ever-present shopping basket; a fellow wearing the protective gear of a manual laborer. We say hello sometimes. "Yes, we're still alright."

Today my routine was interrupted as I passed a tent on the sidewalk only half a block from the police station. A female voice was screaming "Get off of me!" The tent lurched a bit. There seemed to be people behind it, against a storefront. Another passersby did his best to look away.

I did something I've never done before -- called 911. "This sounds like an assault is going on ... it's right down the block from the station ..."

I have to give it to the SFPD, even if they did race up in squad cars -- they responded fast. I heard one of them say ... "Oh, it's her." They were unafraid and approached casually, wearing their masks, not escalating the situation. The young cop detailed to deal with the caller (me) explained, "We know them." I hope so if these folks were regulars on that block.

Nothing terrible happened. I left. The cops left. The tent on the sidewalk was still there when I ran by 15 minutes later. Presumably it's occupants were still there.

Maybe an occasion of domestic violence was interrupted. Maybe I over-reacted. I'll be out again tomorrow; so will most of the others. The city doesn't seem to be getting anywhere with its proclaimed intent to house people in vacant hotels during this crisis. Get on it!

Saturday scenes: the coons are back in Golden Gate Park

The animal looked a bit like that rock, but I noticed movement as I ran toward him.

He noticed me as I approached.

As I rounded a curve, I saw there were more. Perhaps a family? Perhaps the first raccoon was a sentry?

The galumphing runner signaled time to beat it out of sight.

Some made for cover under the bridge while others knew they could easily outrun me.

I haven't seen this many raccoons in the park for awhile. Some years ago I encountered a group near this same spot on the trail around Chain of Lakes Drive. I later read that Animal Control had captured that batch; apparently they are hell on pet dogs. As far as I'm concerned, I'd say leave them be.

Does it really require closing a mountain peak to monitor storms and rainfall?

The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission thinks so. I run on this rocky outcropping -- Montara Mountain which sits between Pacifica and Half Moon Bay -- as often as once a week. It's rugged and often nearly empty of recreational users. But city bureaucrats have decided they have to close the top -- because, well, I guess the decaying communication towers weren't enough unsightly litter. Seriously now, must they close off yet more wild land that is only lighted used?

This is an agency with an imperial attitude about the watersheds it "protects." For decades, it has made the ridgeline fire road west of Crystal Springs Reservoir off limits. Meanwhile San Mateo County has no qualms about its heavily used Sawyer Camp Trail on the east side where a determined polluter could probably toss a stone into the water. But hey, SFPUC closes its side to all but its own employees, some of whom get to live in this lovely wild area. (I went on a legal, supervised hike there once during which the water guys tracked us in a pickup.)

Please sign this petition asking the SFPUC to find other options than closing off the North Peak of the mountain.

Saturday scenery: the avenue of the pink sweet peas

'Tis the season when stands of wild sweet peas line the Old Pedro Mountain Road on the flank of Montara Mountain.

The higher reaches are too exposed to wind and fog to support the plants, but the old crumbling roadway admits enough sun to make a perfect environment for these flowers.

In a couple of weeks, they'll be gone for the year.

Saturday scenes and scenery: Lake Merced

Most weeks for many years, I have run the 4.5 mile perimeter loop around Lake Merced in San Francisco's southwest corner at least once. The circuit is truly my home turf. I've been nodding to familiar groups of walkers and runners there for decades.

But the lake is also part of one of San Francisco's 596 precincts, so a couple of weeks ago I walked the periphery, photographing familiar scenes.

The lake is bounded by three well-used golf courses. Here's Park and Rec's description.

Lake Merced, a large freshwater lake in San Francisco’s southwestern corner, is the heart of a 614-acre park that is popular with boaters, hikers, bicyclists, and birdwatchers. ...

Lake Merced is a major water, recreational, and natural resource for the City and County of San Francisco and the surrounding area. It is also an important stop for migratory birds on the Pacific Flyway. More than half of the park is managed by the Recreation and Parks Department’s Natural Areas Program, which works to restore and protect habitat for birds and other wildlife, as well as to maintain and improve trails.

Originally inhabited by the Ohlone people, the land around Lake Merced was a ranch during the era of Mexican rule. ... The lake has supplied water to the City since the late 1860s.

The west end includes a fenced off police shooting range hidden by trees and marsh.

There are always runners.

And there are usually high school and club boaters ...

... sometimes working their hearts out.

No one was fishing on this visit, as I happened to walk the week before the annual stocking.

The lake could be called well used, but I suspect that few residents of the city's eastern side get out there.

Saturday scenery: Reno is beautiful

Amidst the intensity and anxiety of a political campaign, it was easy to forget this truth about our surroundings.

Until the last three hectic weeks, E.P. and I ran laps around this lovely human-made pond, saying good morning to the resident egrets.

The pond is a hidden gem.

On 90+F degree days in September, it was hard to credit the posted warnings to "stay off the ice." But by the end of campaign season, mornings were in the 20s. And the pond was still lovely.

Saturday scenery: Huffacker Park views

Just a few miles from where we're staying in Reno, there are a couple of high desert hummocks encircled by a gravel-covered trail.

South Reno is sprawl-land: office parks, malls, warehouses and new housing developments. And all around, desert vistas and a big sky.

In the middle distance, that's the GSR (Grand Sierra Resort), one of Reno's two unionized hotels/casinos.

Anyone who wants to come visit and walk precincts for a better Nevada U.S. Senator and Governor for working people and the country, give me a holler.

Athletes who speak up for justice and liberation

Jelani Cobb reflects sensibly in the New Yorker on Nike's advertising decision to highlight Colin Kaepernick. He gives the monster athletic goods company credit for taking a (calculated) risk:

Nike gambled that a greater portion of the world understands where Kaepernick is coming from.

The communities that drive our understanding that Black Lives Matter will determine whether that gamble is a good one. I bet yes.

Cobb's article reminds us that Nike's original "Just Do It" campaign which launched in 1988 highlighted

... Walt Stack, an eighty-year-old man, ebulliently trotting across the Golden Gate Bridge as part of his daily seventeen-mile run. “People ask me how I keep my teeth from chattering in the wintertime,” Stack says. “I leave them in my locker.”

Cobb's article neglects that Walt Stack and Kap are figures who have something deep in common. These are two exceptional athletes. But also, they are both exemplary justice heroes.

Walt Stack worked as a construction worker, a hod carrier who lifted bricks all his working life, a loyal union activist, and a convinced socialist who stood against big employers who exploited their workers. He was an evangelist for amateur running, especially for women who, back in the day, weren't expected to go out and "just do it." In their own ways and times, both these fighters were about breaking the rules to construct a new and better world. Let's honor Kap as a hero for our times; Walt Stack too is worthy of our respect.

Friday cat blogging

We had just unwrapped our new quilt made from some of my old running race t-shirt collection -- Morty approved and settled in.

The quilt was created by Too Cool T-Shirt Quilts if you are wondering. They were great to work with; unlike me, they knew what they were doing.

For my running friends ... a Senate candidate from our tribe

Beto O’Rourke is running to replace Ted Cruz. Literally. ...

... O’Rourke explains to me the origins of this novel campaign event, which has him running several miles under the Texas sun, stopping in the middle to take questions and lingering at the end to pose for selfies. “Some sadistic member of our team,” he recalls, “was like, ‘So we’re doing like six town halls a day in six different counties. We’re driving hundreds of miles every day, we’re visiting all 254 counties. What more could we do? Ah, get up earlier and have running town halls.’”

Politico

O’Rourke is a plausible challenger in a Texas perhaps not quite ready to turn purple, but inching toward a multi-party future in which ethnic, economic, and political diversity makes it more like other prosperous areas of the country.

The Politico story is fun and includes a much better video of Beto running which I didn't embed because I didn't trust it would play on this blog. Enjoy.

Running wear and tear tangent

I use my feet hard. I'm prone to nasty seasons of plantar fasciitis. I'm also prone to black toenails from the pounding. My feet have grown to a men's size 12 after more than 30 years of fairly diligent running. Finding shoes that don't hurt and possibly help is a challenge. Two years ago, I chanced upon a shoe that served as well as anything I've ever worn, the first iteration of the HokaOneOne Challenger. Since shoes routinely are "improved" every year, ceasing to fit, I snapped up four pairs. Last week I sadly retired pair Number III (shown on the left) and broke out Number IV, the last.

Number III had nearly 500 miles on it. I flatten a shoe; the trails have done a job on the tread.

Now I'll have search for a modern replacement. First stop will be the Challenger's fourth iteration, but I won't be surprised if a few false attempts deposit me with a different shoe company. Shoe obsolescence is infuriating. Just when someone builds a good one, it disappears.

Goodbye 2017; goodbye Fred Downing

From Fred Downing, I learned that nothing can be cooked properly if it doesn't begin with onions and peppers. I learned that bad puns charmed some people, even if not me. I learned to set up a rudimentary shelter in the rain, dig latrines, chop wood, light fires, hike up mountains --- and, most of all, to organize others to perform these anachronistic skills efficiently enough so they enjoyed the experience. Whatever success I've had as a political and community organizer began with those lessons.

All that was a very long time ago, five decades in fact. Fred died this year at age 100.

He was a New Englander, at various times an executive of the Maine State Employees Association and director of the Vermont Civil Service. He served in the Navy during World War II, emerging a Lieutenant Commander. He was a guidance counselor in several Maine high schools and taught generations of young women at summer camps to live in the outdoors. For several memorable years in the late '60s, he dragged groups of us along on his quest to hike to all the 4000 foot high summits in New Hampshire; some of those were undistinguished little peaks, but I don't remember resenting his obsession. New things to see!

After retirement, Fred needed an outlet, so for seven years he created a program in computer literacy for inmates of the Kennebec County Jail. He took us to visit one time; this was truly Maine, the only jail I've ever seen with no visible black inmates.

After the death of his wife Judy Downing, Fred lived on for 12 years near his daughter in Pittsburgh, PA. He was an enthusiastic tour guide of his adopted home town. In the photo, that's Fred at age 97 pointing out the sights from the city's Mount Washington overlook.

On a visit some years back, I pointed out to him that I was approaching retirement age myself. He was almost indignant: "So what do you want to do with the rest of your life?" The end of particular jobs had never slowed him and he saw no reason it should slow me. Why I might have 30 or so more good years ...

As often before, he'd jarred my thinking. I blurted what came immediately to the top of my mind, "Go outside."

I've done a few other things and intend to do more, but ever since I've made sure to "go outside," whether running ultra-marathon distances, hiking in bucket list places, or walking the pilgrimage, the Camino de Santiago.

Thanks Fred, for all I learned from you. Through whatever pain came, you demonstrated how to live well.

I didn't need this

It's time to start trying to get in shape again after months of travel and too little exercise. So I headed off this week to run over the delightful little mountain just south of San Francisco: 5 or more trail miles and 1000 vertical feet. It's a pretty isolated place; often I don't see anyone else on my usual circuit.

So I encounter this posted by the parks department:

Apparently this guy has been molesting women who run these trails. Two attacks were reported in October and November. There's no indication the authorities have caught the perp.

Yes, I decided to run my usual circuit anyway. And all was well. But I am mightily annoyed that I have to carry this anxiety. I am not willing to let this guy keep me away from one of my favorite routes. So far, he's done nothing worse than grope; my calculation would almost certainly be different if he'd been violent. Am I crazy?

Saturday scenes: that was fun

Yesterday I ran 41 miles in 12 hours at the Pacific Coast Trail 12-Hour Run at Crissy Field adjacent to the Bay with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background. That's 60 laps around a 1K course. I found the "squirrel cage" experience much less tedious than I'd feared. Park improvement projects forced substitution of this route around a (beautifully situated) parking lot for the planned course around a lagoon.

I think of the five months I trained for this as my birthday present as I approach 70. EP has been wonderfully supportive of this madness and faithfully crewed in cold, dark and gale-force winds, taking a few laps with me yesterday.

Saturday scenery: on the run

On a surprisingly hot day, the shoreline of the bay is lovely.

That's the San Mateo-Hayward bridge in the distance. Yes, it is a good five+ miles long.

The trail on top of Pulgas Ridge has dried out. I have seen a coyote here once, but the other day only a large rabbit.

California is seldom this green.

The road goes on and on ...