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Breast Cancer - A Loving Fight

Reflections and Listening to the Voices in Your Head

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“Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.” ~ Winston Churchill

The other night I was driving home when my mother gave me a call.  She was lonely and wanted to have dinner.  This might sound trivial to some, but since my father passed,my mother has been a non-stop whirlwind of energy.  A breast cancer survivor, she has traveled the world (South Africa, Egypt, Germany, China (2x), Japan, India, Hungary, South America, Morocco, Russia, Yugoslavia, Kenya, Maldives, Seychelles, etc.).  We joke in my family that we need to put a tracer on my mother as you never know where she is and although I live within a mile of her home, getting her to find a date to babysit is not an easy task.  Playing Mah-Jong with her friends, seeing the latest movies, morning tai-chi, and such I have always afraid my mother never really stopped to mourn my father’s death.

When I picked her up she wasn’t her cheery self.  Her other two children were on vacation and my own family was on the East Coast visiting my in-laws.  We always hear about Fathers and sons, Fathers and daughters, and Mothers and daughters, but “Momma’s boys” has always had a bad connotation. I wouldn’t call myself a Momma’s boy.  We’ve always butted heads and being the eldest we graduated to a peer-to-peer relationship pretty quickly.  It was like having 3 adults in the house and my 2 younger siblings were the kids. 

Tonight was different.  My mom seemed lonely and tired.  She admitted that the cancer had given her the desire to do and see everything.  She admitted that she missed her family.  Most of all, she admitted that she was really missing my dad.  I realized that she just wanted to talk and I let her (by all means, not a normal interaction for me and my mom) She talked all through dinner about what she missed. I just listened and teared up.  Finally as we ate our fortune cookies, she apologized for talking all during dinner and asked me if I still missed my dad.

I had seen the above Nike commercial the day before.  It reminded me of my nightly running and how I process thoughts and ideas each night to clear my head.  According to the agency it is meant to reflect the community of survivors and people who follow Lance Armstong and encourage him on a daily basis through his trials and tribulations.  When I processed my mother’s question, I told her that amazingly, I think that while I will always miss my dad, that I am finished mourning him.  That said, I don’t think I ever have a run at night where some thought of my dad doesn’t enter and pass through my thoughts.

The question made me think about some of the thoughts rattling through my brain. I got to do so much with my dad, but there are so many things I didn’t do.  So my mom and I came up with a plan of 5 experiences I’d like to have with my children that my dad and I had done separately but never together:

1. Go to China & Tibet (visit Tiananmen Square and the Great Wall)

2. Hike to and visit Machu Picchu

3. Visit and play the Old Course at St. Andrews (walk across the Swilcan Bridge)

4. Spend a month in France and Italy driving the countrysides and eating great food. We’ll throw in a few museums and major cities along the way.

5. Watch a game from the bleachers at Wrigley Field and have a beer afterwards 

After coming up with the list, my mother was so excited.  The list combined some things that I wished I had done with my father and I learned from my mom about some things my dad had said he would have wanted to share with his children.  It was quite surprising to hear some of his thoughts that I had never heard before.  This is not a crazy list and there are many things on the list that are much more grand, but they are personal to me and personal to my dad.  My mom loved it and by the end she was so happy that she wants to come along!

I definitely need to listen to the voices in my head more often.

Travels: The Route 53

I did it – Goal!!

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“Running is a lot like life.  Only 10 percent of it is exciting.  90 percent of it is slog and drudge.”
          – Dave Bedford, English distance runner who occasionally put in 200 miles a week in training

GOOOOOOAALLLLL. Nah, this isn’t World Cup Soccer. 

Many of you have been asking about my crazy night time running regimen.  Well, I finally reached my goal to lose the 30 pounds I gained since I got married 16 years ago.  I’ve always said this training and running I’ve been doing wasn’t about me.  It isn’t.  It is about my wife, my mother,my mother-in-law, my aunts and my cousins who have all had breast cancer.   I run for these women and donate each year to the Carol Franc Buck Breast Care Center based upon the number of miles I run.  Well the weight loss and conditioning originally were just a side result of my runs, but when I found my cholesterol to be high, I turned it up a notch.  The picture below is the result.  The move from a 36 inch waist to 30 and the loss of 30 pounds and a well managed cholesterol level were my main targets.

No more Fat Pants

My recipe?

  • 20-30 miles of running a week
  • The ‘Lean Track” of P90X exercises twice a week
  • 8 classes of water a day
  • 1 cup of coffee a day
  • Oatmeal with coffee for breakfast 6 days a week
  • Removed all sodas from the house
Route 53 - Life is A Highway, Travels: The Route 53

Only in San Francisco – Bay to Breakers

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Most everyone is proud of where they are from and holds dear to them many memories. 

As a native San Franciscan, I know there are many traditions and memories that keep the natives coming home.  Some traditions are gone and no longer can be shared with my children Playland, Doggie Diner, etc..  And yet some other traditions are even better than the past. No matter what, being a native of wherever you are from, you need to embrace change and thus the San Francisco Bay to Breakers is one of those reflective of the culture of the city it represents and what makes San Francisco unique.

The Famous Pink Gorilla

In it’s 99th year, the Bay to Breakers has become known as many things: The Largest Road Race in the World, The San Francisco Fun Run, The Biggest party in Sneakers…. but attracts all types. Where else can you see World Record Kenyans, costumed avatar runners, Centipedes (runners tied together who need to run in a circle at every mile marker), people pushing kegs, and yes, runners au naturel.

I’ve run the race approximately 15 times, my first coming as a 10 year old the last almost 20 years ago, but I took my son out to watch this morning in the chilly damp air in Golden Gate Park for a good laugh, some world class athletics, and a preview of our first run next year to cement his stature as a “True Native San Franciscan”. The race grew to as many as 100,000 runners back on the 75th anniversary and there were around 60,000 registered runners (an estimated 15K “fun runners”. 

Make sure to set your plans for the 3rd Sunday in 2011 for the 100th running and look for registration details here: http://www.ingbaytobreakers.com/

Please see attached photos for some of this year’s costumed highlights.  Don’t worry, I have edited this for frontal nudity!

Bay to Breakers is a party

Below is a link to my Facebook page with all of my photos (yes, including the nude ones) of the top runners, fun runners, costumed runners, etc.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=175734&id=688067623&l=b8188088e8

Breast Cancer - A Loving Fight, Route 53 - Life is A Highway

Running for my Wife

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Bronze medalist Joannie Rochette

For all of the plans we’ve made,
There isn’t a flag I’d wave,
Don’t care if we bend,
I’d sink us to swim,
We’re marching on,

 – Marching On by One Republic

As I watched Olympic skater carry the Canadian flag  tonight the words to the One Republic song, Marching On, came to my mind.  The courage of the young lady from Canada who performed her best just days after her mother died captured the heart of the whole world.    Marching on…..  People ask how she did it.  When asked, she replied that she was able to get into a zone and for those few minutes on the ice her focus was on competition and not on her own personal grief.  For Joannie, it was her 3 minutes of outer body experience.  The focus and determination needed to compete consumed her.  The same was for Lindsay Vonn suffereing days earlier from a shin injury.  As soon as her run was completed, she collapsed.  These stories repeated themselves over and over again.  There was the story of the cross-country skier who pulled herself out of the hospital to compete and get a bronze medal only to collapse at the finish line and be taken back to the hospital.

With these stories, you  can very much understand where Joannie  is coming from.  Finding that place to escape has been what has helped my wife and I move on past her cancer.  Escaping the day to day worries and immersing ourselves in other tasks has driven us for the last 18 months.  Yes there still are the monthly shots, the black and blue marks, the pills, etc. which remind you every day.  Monthly I catch a glance at her abdomen which is bandaged from her monthly shot and am reminded of where we’ve been and how far we’ve come.

Tonight it hit me when I logged in and saw that I had reached 2500 miles.  That is 2500 miles I’ve run since my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer.  I’m not sure why, but I decided early on that this was going to be my own cause and I was going to use our pain and will to survive to drive my exercise.  I remember being so grateful to her doctors that I vowed to personally contribute $.50 for every mile I ran to the hospital’s foundation.  I didn’t want to be part of a large walkathon or other event for a national plan, but I needed to make this my own personal journey, my own run for my health and for my wife.   This battle with my wife’s cancer was personal although I valued the community of survivors who gave words of encouragement and wisdom.

I can’t remember half those miles run.  I was running numb and hiding from my pain and my fears.  I remember some of those nights right after her surgery when I would put her to sleep and then just go for a run fighting back the tears at first and then those fears turned into energy fueled by my passion to not feel sorry and to start wanting to make a difference.  I understand where Joannie Rochette was mentally when she skated this past week.  Her inner strength and will to do her best under such extreme scrutiny and pressure in the face of such heartache was fueled by her passion and her will.

When we finished a recent vacation with our kids to our favorite resort, the hotel staff told us how they missed us.  We missed them too.  We had gone almost every year until we were given my wife’s diagnosis.  Why hadn’t we returned earlier?  I guess we just weren’t ready to truly resume our lives in a care free manner.  It has taken us that long to feel like we can celebrate our opportunity to move on in life.  We almost wondered if we had waited too long.  We sat out on our lanai as our children slept at night and felt the sea breezes on our faces and asked that question.  It didn’t matter.  We were just happy to enjoy our wonderful spot again together.  It was good to be in our happy place.

Cancer sites can be a very great resource for community therapy.  In fact we have made so many friends and are especially grateful to a friend in Hawaii who showers us with gifts and has really truly helped my wife as a personal confidante on many recovery issues.  Other than that, though, there has been a separate private struggle to return to normalcy.  The struggle is to keep busy, do the things you love and get on with the things you always wanted to do, yet find the balance to give back and show your gratitude to those who helped along the way.  My personal donation of running for my own charity and benefit for my wife’s cancer is  not a poke against the Susan G. Komen walk or the Avon walk.  For me, my wife’s battle with cancer was a personal matter and I wanted to give it back  on my own time and my own terms and for my own personal battle with the pavement.

Breast Cancer - A Loving Fight, Route 53 - Life is A Highway

The New Decade: Looking Forward and Barely Over our Shoulder

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The slower we move the faster we die.   Make no mistake, moving is living.

– George Clooney, Up in the Air

It’s irnoic that line is the one that will be remembered most from the first big movie in 2010 or in this decade.  Maybe that is why I’m running so much these days.

The new decade is here and what a decade the last one was.  It is easy to look just back at 2009, but that would be a short-sighted and very depressing one.  Wrought with health issues and a world economic crisis, even looking back 2 years might not even be what we need to be able to look back on the past decade with perspective.  As I ran down 2009 through a series of runs through the Streets of San Francisco I tried to reflect a little on the past year, but kept pulling more memories out .  As I looked farther back, I began to realize that I didn’t just need resolutions for the coming year (don’t like resolutions anyway).  I needed to look ahead to the whole next decade!   I haven’t written in a bit just because I wasn’t sure as to what to say as the thoughts kept flooding in.  “Just put it to paper and let the rhythm flow without thinking” (to paraphrase the words of the lead character in Finding Forrester).  So as I put my running shoes and headphones on and listened to my new favorite song, Good Life by One Republic, what I saw was a past that is shaping our future in new ways and some that we could never have imagined.

There’s so much to think about when looking back and trying to eliminate the macro-factors of societal changes and focus on only the things you really can control.  For me it was about family, health, work, and friends.  How can I proactively move towards making sure I better control these issues in the new decade.

In order to look ahead at the next decade and what it should look like for me, I found myself back in time in 1999 as we were selling our house and i was getting back into the venture business.  Yeah, remember the Y2K craze and how much were were going to have to evolve when the computers came crashing down?  It was a whole cottage industry for a doom and gloom that never came.  We’re still here though.  I think I had 3 jobs this past decade and hopefully won’t do that much switching in the next decade.  I would never have expected in 1999 that I would end up doing what I do today, but my current job is one I’ve been at longer than any before.  Is this my legacy?

Personally in 1999 I was a new dad in San Francisco wondering how I could move to a bigger place in the suburbs.  Well we did do that, but we moved back to San Francisco.  Not before we became ice cream moguls leaving a mark with a franchise in Marin County as well as purchasing another one in San Francisco.  Anyway, now I’m a seasoned dad with a 10 year old and a 7 year old.  So what does that mean?  At the end of this decade I will just about be an empty nester as my two kids will hopefully be off to college.  It doesn’t leave much time for  me to think about how to afford their education and prepare for how I will prepare for my retirement if something like that would ever exist for me.  If I thought my children dominated my life this past decade it will surely be a decade of building what will be a lifelong relationship.  Maybe I shouldn’t even mention retirement as it won’t happen until after 2020 for sure.

The past decade also came with health issues as well.  Losing a parent (which I could have predicted as my dad was already in poor health) was hard to take but reminded me of how important a parent-child relationship is and how fortunate I was to have my children meet their grandfather and develop a deep relationship with my own mother.  Emotional preparation for the potential loss of another grandparent in this decade would be  something I could easily see in my future.  Cancer was something I never would have expected to be part of the last decade.  In fact it was a large part with my mother and then followed by my wife and friends.  Bad Health is never something you really plan or prepare for.  I don’t know how much the next decade will be interrupted by health issues but age will not come without some aches and pains for sure.  I have already started preparing myself.  The last two years of training have built my stamina to a high level.  I maybe not as strong or fast as I used to be, but if not getting sick at all for the past 18 months is any indication, I’ve definitely been fortunate in keeping healthy and maybe if I just keep moving…..

I don’t need to write much about friends and extended family and my expectations there given some recent posts, but this past decade has been about revitalizing past relationships.  I only expect that to continue.  It seems to be a natural processs as you get older and start to reminisce about times gone by.  These are the people who will remind you about your past someday so its probably good to keep them close so that they remember it accurately.  For sure their memories are already declining, not to mention their deteriorating eye sight.  It just makes me wondering as the baby boomers will be moving into their 50s and 60s, will those people still be wanting to deal with small screens on their cell phones and buttons that don’t work well with arthritic fingers?  Remember that this decade started with us using PDAs with a stylus.  Now we just push things around with our thumbs.  Will everything be voice-activated over the next decade?  Will we see the first wave of brain cancer resulting from overuse of cell phones?

We now have a black President.  Will the next decade bring a female President?  An Asian President?  A Hispanic President? A Gay one?  Maybe 2 of those.  We talk about national security as getting tighter given the terrorism that has started in the US.  Is it possible this could get worse?  Will the idea of being “green” work.  What would people have thought if you used that term back in 1999?  They would have thought you wanted to be a vegetarian and were giving up meat.  For me all of this just heightens the urgency to show my kids parts of the world that they might never ever get the chance to see or at least the way they could see it today.  The world is changing rapidly.  How fast?  The eco-system even in the SF Bay area was so drastic that one minute the sea lions that inhabit our piers had peaked at over 2 thousand last November yet today there are about 6.  The plankton and the water temperatures have caused them all to move to areas up North where they can find more herring.  A migration that grew over a 20 year period just disappeared in a matter of months.  Will Alaska still be cold in 2020?  Will there still be arctic glaciers?

As I continue my running regimen I’m not running from the past but running toward the future.  It isn’t necessarily a bright one or even a better decade than the past.  It will have its own challenges and we can only prepare ourselves for what will be more of the same yet with more intensity.  Of course, we have a chance to shape our own path by planning it before the future comes and dictates our actions.

Perhaps while this decade might not mark the beginning of a new millenium that it might end up being much more important than the past decade  This may be the decade where we take control of our destiny and start to dictate what history will be.  Maybe Live Strong won’t be an attitude for fighting cancer, but to beat Father Time and prevent him from catching us.

For me the answer is to not prepare for the end, but prepare for the future.  Don’t look back too far, but just remember to keep looking forward so that what you left behind stays there and what you want to take with you in the future moves with you.  For me that is simple. 10 years from now I want to be standing there proudly with my wife at my side as we watch our son thrive in college as he prepares for the real world and a career of his choosing and our daughter moves off to college strongly independent such that her parents will know that she is prepared for that next stage of her life.  Me? I’ll be cleaning out their bedrooms figuring out how I can convert their rooms into my own 3D home theater and 24 hr. fitness club.

Breast Cancer - A Loving Fight, Route 53 - Life is A Highway

A Warm San Francisco Holiday To All

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Happy Holidays
Happy Holidays

Happy Holidays Everyone,

Before everyone takes off on their vacations from their virtual world, I just thought I’d wish you all a very Merry Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwaanza, etc.  Please be safe if you are traveling this season!

As I pushed through the chilling temperatures and blustery winds of San Francisco during my run last night I kept reminding myself of those cold December nights I’ve spent in New York City, Chicago, and Pittsburgh.  Nothing will ever compare to those cold bitter nights when I wore long underwear under my wool suits and wondered why I left my “City by the Bay”. I do remember telling myself that I would remember those days so I would appreciate San Francisco that much more when I would eventually return.   Although cold, my run was dry and I ran down the festively lit shopping areas of Sacramento St, Fillmore St., California, and Clement St. distracting myself with the observations of the decorations people had in their windows.

While the glittery lights were dazzling and the quietness of the air still reminded me of how our economy is not quite back up to speed, the most warming images of my run were of the people. 

First, there was the elderly couple walking together with their arms around each other as they left their party at Spruce Restaurant (http://www.sprucesf.com). They stopped and kissed saying “I love you” and touching their foreheads together in the middle of the sidewalk as I dodged them.  It was a split second of our paths crossing but it was a beautiful image.

Second, there were the two inebriated young ladies in their short cocktail dresses stumbling out of the Elite Cafe (http://www.theelitecafe.com/) before crashing to the ground.  I say crashing because they fell backwards into me as I ran behind them.  Fortunately I caught one before she hit her head on one of the tables outside. They were inebriated because as the cabbie and I helped them to their feet, neither of them could pronounce their destination.  I laughed when she said they were going to New York.  A great guy, the cabbie, a little Frenchman in his beret and scruffy clothes had me and one of the waiters watch him as he helped one girl open her purse to find her address. She kissed his scruffy face as he pushed her back into the cab.  “Welcome to Christmas on the Barbary Coast”, he said as he tipped his cap to us while mentioning one of the many long-gone nicknames of San Francisco.  I think I ran a whole another mile before the whole incident washed behind me, turning towards home.  The cab driver reminded me of the kindness of people at this time of year.

As I passed by San Francisco’s only 24 hour Starbucks in Laurel Village (yes I love running by it at night just so that I can get a whiff of the caffeine aroma) a bunch of Fire Engine’s raced by me.  Looking for an alternate route, I followed their sirens.  A Portable Potty had been set ablaze nearby.  This has been the work of arsons as dozens have been set on fire over the last year.

Not wanting to end my run on a negative note, I continued on and started  to notice a pattern that is so familiar this time of year.  I had been seeing it over the a past week as cars and taxis pull up in front of homes and the dwellers come out to greet and hug a family member returning home.  The tears of joy and happiness really signify what this season is about and while the images weren’t exactly Norman Rockwell-esque, they told the story.  The story of family and friends coming together.  I even saw a soldier returning home a couple weeks ago in full gear as his mother screamed when she opened the door (adorned with a yellow ribbon).

All of these images (including the fiery portable toilet) told the story of 2009.  Maybe they weren’t my story, but they were nice ones.

2009 will be just that for me.  “A Nice One”.  I’ll definitely take that after 2008.  I needn’t look much further than 2008 to remember what was happening last year as my wife was recovering from her second surgery in 3 months and we scheduled ourselves for a very low key Christmas with only enough fanfare to keep our kid’s spirits high.  Just 365 days ago I sat by her bedside making sure she’d be okay just to get up and deal with Christmas.  While 2009 was no picnic, and we did deal with two more minor surgeries, life today compared to last year couldn’t be much better healthwise.

The holiday is often on its long tail as we’ve already had two family gatherings, a work party and a large bash at a friend’s home yet we are still 3 days shy of Christmas.  We still have two more family gatherings to go to.  Such is the life of the fragmented world and family.  As I sit here in my den, I know of local friends spending the holiday in Hawaii, Argentina, Spain, France, England, Italy & Brazil just to name those places not on this continent.  They all sound enticing…. the Champs Elysees on Christmas?  How magical does that sound!?

Well San Francisco is where we remain and where we will keep our hearts this Christmas!  No snow and no sand!  The image above is from  Sara Showalter, (www.sarashowalter.com) or @gidget on Twitter.  A great local artist, the image was used for our holiday card this year. If you are looking for an artist or photographer, I highly recommend her.  And the best thing about her?  She is a diehard San Francisco Giants fan!

Breast Cancer - A Loving Fight, Route 53 - Life is A Highway

What’s Up? How’s Your Wife?

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This is my most special place in all the world. Once a place touches you like this, the wind nevers blows so cold again. You feel for it, like it was your child.

– Moonlight Graham, Field of Dreams

Ah..what to write.  When I run each night, the mind swirls with this thick soup of thoughts.  Some people have writer’s block.  I have writer’s neurosis.  I wish you could see the list of half written blog entries that I have yet to complete.  You will, but hopefully they will still be relevant.  I guess tonight I will have to address some recent inquiries to my email……

Funny how I still occasionally get an email (this week I got two) which asked how my wife is and why I don’t write about cancer anymore in my blog.  The short answer is that this blog was never intended to be about my wife’s cancer.  It was just a continuation of my personal thoughts on life.  My public memoirs if you will.

The long answer is that I can say that I feel so lucky that my wife is doing great, gets monthly shots and takes daily pills to make sure the cancer does not come back.  We are just about at the one year mark of five years of Tamoxifin treatments (20% done is quite an achievement).  The monthly shots leave a nice black and blue mark on my wife’s abdomen, my wife’s surgical scars are starting to fade, and occasionally we talk about her side effects, but I take my cues from my wife for the most part.  She’s ready to move on.  That said, we don’t forget.  We don’t forget the fears, we don’t forget the worries, we don’t forget those nights without sleep, and we don’t forget the months of surgeries.  Reading some of the blogs and talking to those who have just been diagnosed or who have wives reminds us of where we were and how much our lives have changed.  

Breast cancer is now a large part of our lives so much so that we have to escape.  No breast cancer walks or runs for me.  My runs are my way of running in honor of my wife, mom, mom-in-law, cousins, aunts, and friends who have all been struck by breast cancer.  Every night when I run I am reminded of our fortunate results, my wife’s strength, and those others who we have met through our ordeal.  By the way, of all the above mentioned, only my mother was over 50 when first diagnosed.  Yes, this is in light of the new panel study which says that women should now wait til 50 before having mammograms.   It is really a shame that we are now trying to cut back on preventive medicine during a big time for research and discovery.  Now is not the time to cut back when we are making so much progress.

Yes, breast cancer as a topic is all around us now and we just can’t escape it so we relish those moments when it doesn’t remotely come close to infiltrating our conversations or thoughts.   It is like my friend who works with juvenile delinquents on a daily basis.  He has told me that because of his job he doesn’t want to have children of his own.  This week I met with a gentleman who has been waiting a month and his wife’s surgery is right after Thanksgiving.  I had met him a couple times, but this week he just broke down.  His fears and concerns finally overwhelmed his facade.  His worries about his wife, his kids, the mounting medical bills, and all the uncertainty surrounding the outcomes finally came to a head.  It just took me back a year and I relived it all in one hour.  That feeling of hopelessness hit me like a ton of bricks.  I broke down with this man I barely knew.  I couldn’t tell him things would be alright as I knew it wasn’t what I wanted to hear either.  I wanted a path.  I wanted a path out of the mess.  All I could tell him was to bury himself into caring for his wife.  Focus on the task at hand.

That night I ran a long run.  Couple that encounter with an incident earlier in the morning where I had a woman faint in the elevator bank in my office bulding.  It turns out she was having a heart attack.  All she kept saying was “my babies, my babies” . Her predicament had me distracted the rest of the day until I had my conversation with that breast cancer husband.  Both incidences had me reeling.  They reminded me of how fragile life is.  All I wanted that night was to be alone with my thoughts so I could just make sense of it all.

Well I hope that explains it all.  Thankful this Thanksgiving? Yep I sure will be.  Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Breast Cancer - A Loving Fight, Route 53 - Life is A Highway

Foghorns, 49ers, and Fall

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Life is a roller coaster ride
Time turns the wheel and love collides
Faith is believing you can close your eyes and touch the sky
So shine while you have the chance to shine
Laugh even when you want to cry
Hold on tight to what you feel inside and ride

– Lyrics to “The Ride” by Martina McBride
Kicking off a New Season in San Francisco
Kicking off a New Season in San Francisco

Today is officially the last day of summer and the first day of Fall.  A beautiful time for me and a wonderful time in San Francisco.  I believe if Mark Twain had stayed for the Fall, his famous quote would have read, “The coldest Winter I ever spent was the Summer I spent in San Francisco, but the warmth of its Fall Sunny Days and Foggy nights give the city it’s charm the makes it so beautiful.”

This is now the time to enjoy its 40 hills, its 49 square mile (some say its officially47) and some of its over 3000 wonderful restaurants.  Tourists are gone, the weather is at its best, and if you want to venture up to the Napa wine country, it is time to see the Fall crush of the grapes which many say is the best time to visit.

Someone asked me recently, “What is with the midnight runs?” They really aren’t at midnight, but I have to admit they are later than most people run.  They are also somewhat of a sore point with my wife as she doesn’t like my running in dark clothes with no identification on me.  The truth of the matter is that while I am running sparsely populated streets at night, I do run a pretty regular route, I run on sidewalks and even some of the parking valets around know my schedule well enough to tell me if I’m running late, early or slow.  Last night I was even able to tell the valets at Spruce Restaurant the score of the late night ESPN game.

Running the streets of San Francisco is where I do my best thinking.  Sometimes those nagging issues you’ve been dealing with for days or weeks just somehow find a solution at mile #2 when you’ve got that lactic acid building  in your leg, but you stretch it out running up the steep incline on Upper Fillmore imagining you are Rocky only to find Gino’s liquor store and the last patrons of Jackson Fillmore coming out of the trattoria with sated appetites instead of a big statue at the top of the stairs overlooking Philadelphia.

It is my favorite time to run in San Franciso.  The end of summer in San Francisco usually means our hottest days are coming.  It  means nights filled with low lying wispy fog that drenches your face during your runs.  It also means those deep fog horns blaring throughout the night.  During the day the fog blows out to sea and the days are filled with 80 degree weather. My dad used to call this fog, San Francisco’s natural air conditioner.  It is so refreshing and almost is like our Spring in many ways.  In fact with baseball season ending and football season beginning, it is like a whole new season, especially in San Francisco, home of the 5 time champion 49ers.  Growing up going to games with my dad it was the time of hope and new beginnings.  To me it still is that way.  Now it’s with my own son.

Running the streets of San Francisco, with foghorns blaring I just smile to myself thinking about the great time I had at the ballpark with my son earlier in the day, introducing him to the people who have sat around us in the same seats for 30 years.  The same people who gave me cookies and milk when I was his age now give them to my son.  My son has no clue how he’s just living my life from 30 years ago.  Cheering on the 49ers, high fiving strangers after a great play and eating terrible food that give you a stomach ache when you get home.   It’s a cyclical pattern in life and yet it is a new beginning.

I can look back 30 years, but these days while I celebrate a year since my wife’s breast cancer surgery, I also look back a year when I was playing nurse to my recovering wife.  It still isn’t over with her pending surgery coming.  This will again hopefully be the last surgery for a while.  This is one cycle I don’t want to have repeat itself.  A year can make a huge difference both good and bad.  There is no doubt in my mind that my wife and I are stronger than we were before.

So back to my running, I’m not an extremely spiritual person as  I’ll go to church for special occasions, but running has been my place of worship and my confessional.  Each run is my own search for the truth.  I don’t run with others, justw ith my thoughts.  It is where I ask myself if I truly believe. It is where I push myself and question my actions and where I look for the answer to many of life’s questions.  It is my solitude that allow me to begin a new day every day with renewed energy.  There is a running commercial where the person has to get through that first mile before they reach that special runner’s place.  Yes, that the runner’s high.   It is true for me like many.  I feel better after an exhausting run that before I left.  San Francisco has a part in that.  It is that friend that is with me on every run.  Its streets are the paths in life that I go over time and again.  Yes Fall is here in San Francisco and my motivation is higher than ever.

Breast Cancer - A Loving Fight, Route 53 - Life is A Highway

Out of the Fog

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San Francisco is the longest lasting love affair of my life. Her beauty inspires me anew each day and I am very thankful to be able to live here on the edge of the continent in what I feel is the heart of the world. ~Nicole ,sfheart.com

The last couple of weeks have been a bit nutty from me.  I think  it all started with my annual check -up ( I got a clean bill of health by the way) but as soon as it was over, I got sick.  I had a rash, a hacking cough, a fever….no it wasn’t “swine flu” although I had just taken a flight from Los Angeles to San Francisco where I was about the only person not returning from Spring Break in Mexico.  In the end I think it was just the winding down from all the stress of making sure that I was healthy for my check-up that my body just relaxed and broke down.  The stress had been hitting me hard and now it was just taking over my body in its weakened state.

Today, after two weeks, I felt like something came over me. I wasn’t sure.  My wife went in for her 5 month appt for her study and was given the approval for more medication to lessen some of the side effects.  A relief for her too I guess.  She still wants to revisit her physician and see if he can make a few more corrections.  These days, these decisions I leave to her.  She wants to remove me from the clinical aspects of our marriage.  In her view it is like my not telling her what hue of lipstick or what pair of shoes to wear.   We then proceeded to make summer plans and take care of the millions of little things that have been bothering us.  The Comcast cable issue, summer camps for kids, and all those little things we’ve been meaning to coordinate around the house, but just haven’t asked each other to help.

Then despite working late, skipping lunch, having a late dinner, and barely getting home in time to tuck my kids into bed, I had that burst of energy.  I still have been coughing and I just knew I  had to get out and run.  I needed to have a healing run.  In fact I had a major coughing fit just as I put on my shoes.  I was dreading this run.  While recuperating from this cold I joked with my wife that we really were getting old.  I now had more medications on my bathroom counter than I can remember ever having.  I joked with my wife that i need one of those daily pill boxes that my mom has.

It was a beautiful foggy night that San Francisco is so well known for.  The damp mist on my face was so refreshing.  I ran further than I had on any run this year and I set personal bests this year for the mile, 3k and 5k distances.  It was truly amazing that despite my sickened state that my body could perform so well.  It had to be that home-cooked weather. The damp streets from the fog, along with the blurry street lights created a dreamlike feel as I ran up and down the hills.  It felt so good and all my thoughts raced in and out of my head.  By the time I completed my circle back home I could have gone longer but it was already midnight.  I felt stronger at the end of the run that I did at the beginning.  My cough is suddenly gone and I don’t feel any shortness of breath.

It is amazing how much I needed this run.  Not just for the energy, but mostly for my mindset.  I think the San Francisco weather is like that comfort food for me.  It’s healing effects on this native son are like my fountain of youth!   I felt like Tony Bennett was singing to me as I glided through the streets, window shopping and gathering in the view of the fingers of fog as they reached under the Golden Gate Bridge and curled their way across the bay.  It was like a lullaby that your mom sings to you when you can’t sleep.  Sometimes it is the power of the soul to heal.  The power of the mind helps rejuvenate your passion and your spirit.  Those comfortable surroundings which lessen our worries are better than all the medicines that can be prescribed.

Speaking of sleep, I better get some.  Long day tomorrow.

Route 53 - Life is A Highway

Rhythm and Passion

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If there is no passion in your life, then have you really lived? Find your passion, whatever it may be. Become it, and let it become you and you will find great things happen FOR you, TO you and BECAUSE of you. ~ T-Alan Armstrong, Author

I started writing this in my small free time the other day as I flew between San Francisco and Los Angeles.  As usual for me I got myself engaged and absorbed in a conversation with a young couple telling me about the wonderful 5 days they had just spent in Mexico visiting some fascinating places so I am finishing this blog entry at home .  It sure beat sitting there in my cramped seat with my computer open for an hour.  Sometimes no matter how hard we try we get caught forgetting to look around, observe, learn, listen, absorb and act in a way that shows we respect and enjoy the life we have. 

This young couple had a passion in their voice as they talked about their vacation.  It hit home with the topic of this post that I had been thinking about.  Lately as I have been running at night I’ve come across a greater understanding of what motivates me and keeps me motivated.  I’ve always been passionate about wanting certain things in my life, but at the same time I can get myself into a rhythm in life that can get me into a bit of a daze.  Rhythms can be good, but they can also lull us to sleep.  I suddenly woke up this week and realized it got away from me.  I hadn’t been collecting my thoughts, I had been ignoring what was important to me, and I wasn’t enjoying myself.  Stress can do that and when you are just rolling along you sometimes need to hit a bump in the road to wake you from your slumber before you drive off the road.  Albeit, paying property taxes, filing income taxes, preparing for a presentation this past week and for next week  can be distracting and took me away from my ability to focus on life’s pleasures and little things.

I’ve been getting asked recently about my running and odd hours.  It is true I don’t sleep much.  I find that the it isn’t about how much I sleep, but the consistency of my hours.  Sleeping more will throw me into as much of a funk as sleeping less.  If 5 hours is all I need, then if I train my body that way, I can function very easily on 5 hours.  Even the other morning I had the oddest exerience as I woke up on my own at 3:30am without the help of an alarm.  I opened my eyes and heard nothing.  I sat there for 5 minutes staring at the ceiling and didn’t even hear a car go by or even the hum of a refrigerator, heater, etc.  For a second I almost thought I was dead.  More like dead tired as I somehow made my way to the airport for a 6am flight.  But that is how life goes these days.  My body is on automatic.  I can make my body run 5 miles and it monitors its own pace 9 minute mile followed by 8:30 minute mile, followed by 8 min. followed by another 8 and then a 7:30 pace.  At first I used to look at my iPod to monitor and now I can just run and my body goes on autopilot.  Some people might look at my time and wonder why I always start slow and speed up.  I think it has always been my running style to start early at a moderate pace and develop a rhythm and build endurance or power.  I was always the way I ran when younger and I find that is what I do in my everyday life with work, problem solving, playing with my kids, etc.  Its about getting into a state of mind that you can be happy with and not have to think about.  Establish a pace and then power through my tasks with endurance.When I ran in school I used to start off near the back and then slowly pass the runners as the race wore on.

For me when I develop a pattern or rhythm with your life, the rest can come easier.  That is where the passion comes in.  For me my running is now no longer something I have to think about.  When I run all I think about is what I want to do and what I need out of life.  Yes, what are my passions.  What am I running to and what am I running from on my nightly jaunts are my passions in life: my wife, my family, and yes, sometimes even my work thoughts and ideas can come freely.  I run from my work politics and crazy commute drivers and I run to my wife and children as well as the freedom to observe things, gather lifes lessons and share in many of life’s pleasures

My wife has needed some cheering lately and I’ve been knocking myself out trying to keep her happy, keep the kids distracted and staying in rhythm.  Part of that lulling rhythm I had fallen into was that is okay.  I think physically she is okay.  She is not necessarily pleased with the outcome from a cosmetic view.  I don’t think many people look at their bodies after surgery and can ever be totally pleased.  It will never be exactly the same.  Of course, she’s happy that the cancer is gone.  We all are. 

Tomorrow is a new day, the weekend, a chance to keep the rhythm and pursue our passions.

And with that I am off to another run tonight.  I will run to my passions and run away from the distractions of life that keep me away from those passions.  The song at the top of this entry is part of my mantra right now and one of the songs I listen to when running with my iPod.