Lisa Carroll

We met Lucy, the constant motion 4 year old Bernie on the Bayview trail in Joaquin Miller Park.  Que cute.

Long distance running is a solitary endeavor.  It challenges an individual to gently over time test one’s physical, mental and emotional limits.  And then it challenges one to push beyond and find new limits. This multi-tiered task is at the core of my personal paradigm of how the world works and what makes us human.  But we can not always do it alone.  In fact, being social creatures we need the encouragement and attendance of others.  I have spent the majority of this training period running alone but this week have had the pleasure to run with my running partner, Dee Williams, visiting Oakland  from Singapore.  Dee is a natural runner with great strength, endurance and best of all humor.  The miles tick by as I find new lung capacity limits while laughing and running at the same time.  With the first stride to the last, running with Dee is always easier and always brings the world in as we are both rather friendly runners inclined toward striking up little chats with others runners, walkers, cyclists and the ocassional dog.   Today we did 18.3 miles in 85-90 degree heat, soaked in sweat and caked in a fine layer of Oakland’s finest dust in prep for Mongolia.  It is one of my hopes to have a partnership of running spanning many more decades with this great runner and friend.

Back in the Bay Area on my Redwood Regional trails: East Ridge out and back 8 miler this morning under the eternal blue sky of California.

a run in the Sierra’s last week near Alpine Lake.

I read that in Mongolia to speak of death or even blood is taboo.  There is a cultural preference toward the positive.  It makes me think that the culture I come from, both the Boston Irish and the American, is rather morose.  We obsess over what is sad and horrible.  Just yesterday, on my 18 mile run, right around mile 3 there was a dead fawn on the side of the road.  I assumed it had been hit by a car.  As I came upon it I saw a large round bullet hole in it’s neck.  I immediately thought, how senseless and wasteful to shoot a fawn and leave it by the side of the road.  It made me wonder, do some people feel such a lack of powerlessness in their lives that they in the moment suddenly act for the sake of action itself and in this case the action of destruction?  And then I wondered, by now somewhere on mile 5 or so, why do I run?  Am I acting out my own sense of powerlessness in a  way?  Do I run because I know that I can?  Because on a fundamental level running is a very basic act of human expression, I have legs, muscles, lungs therefor I run?  Is running an avoidance of other actions I am afraid to confront or annoyed to have to confront, the ultimate procrastination ruse?  Up until yesterday’s 18 miles I have been proud of my running and thankful that I can still manage it at age 40.  I’ve always thought that running has been a good thing for me because it does the obvious thing of keeping me physically fit which helps keep me mentally fit which must help me to be a better version of me and this can only be good for the rest of you, right?

In Mongolia, people consider God to be the “Eternal Blue Sky”. 

There is a point to point 6 mile run starting at my doorstep, winding up Old Tunnel Road to end at the gates of Sibley Volcanic Preserve.  It’s a perfect 12 mile out and back b/c the first half is all uphill with the reward being twofold, reaching the ridgeline and entering the forestland.  On this particular day about 10 days ago I decided to enjoy a few extra miles by making my way down Skyline Rd. to Huckleberry Trail.  In the first quarter of this appoximately 1.5 mile long extent of ridge trail you come across the steps which will be forever ingrained in me as the Steppes of Oakland thanks to the book I’m reading about Genghis Khan by Jack Weatherford.  In fact, it would be more appropriate to liken the rolling grassy hills of Briones Regional Park to the Steppes of Mongolia.

Steppes of Briones?  Steppes of the East Bay?  Okay.  It is official excitement-ramping-up time.

view of Oakland from half way up Old Tunnel Rd.

http://www.cedarhousesporthotel.com/ and stay at this amazing place.  can’t say enough about the good people we met running this new Truckee, CA hotel.