Monday, March 17, 2014

E.A.T.T. On the Roads: Why You Should Runcation in the Bay Area

My Mac's SD card reader has a tiny pebble jammed inside of it! Alas, I cannot transfer my high-res images of food onto the computer just yet. What's a food blog without high-res pictures of food? Not E.A.T.T., that's for sure.

In the meantime, here is something else I am in love with.


See Reason #1 in my list below.

Friends, I have a confession to make. As much as "stylish exercise" makes me cringe (more on that later), there is maybe one health/fitness plan I would be willing to posterchild for. Like, write the brochure, make catchy commercials, print T-shirts for...and that's resolving to runcation in the Bay Area. I'm slapping a big fat E.A.T.T. copyright on that previous sentence because I'm convinced it could be the next big thing. 

Here is my rudimentary sales pitch:

Love to run but hate black ice? Think you might be the next Usain Bolt but haven't been motivated to train? Do you like food and the beach a lot more than you like treadmills?

RUNCATION IN THE BAY! 


A few quick reasons why, last night, I had to physically bar myself from doing yet another casual-turned-long run by packing away my shoes and putting on jeans:

Or why, on a more serious note, the Bay Area can help you learn self-love.

1) It's gasp-out-loud beautiful. One of the primary reasons I've decided to delay or entirely overturn a decision to move out here, despite my obvious infatuation with San Francisco: I'm quite honestly afraid I would get used to its beauty. I don't ever want to be the 9-5 (or 6, 7, 8) zombie who shuffles from her office to the BART train too exhausted or mind crawling with to-dos to appreciate--no, really revel--the fact that she gets to live in a place that shuts up and robs the oxygen from visitors who summit the Twin Peaks and catch glimpse of the city on a fog-less day. This city, the Pacific Ocean, the houses on precarious hills and the way it's all folded neatly into a 7x7 mile square waiting to be traversed on foot...it really takes your breath away. 

The gradual uphill in the second mile of the Across the Bay 12k from East Fort Baker to Fisherman's Wharf.

It also gets hard to breathe because these hills are no joke. But then you crest a hill and suddenly you're flying. There is no weight, no drag, no hesitation.* 

Except if you're ascending Mount Sutro. In that case, you might have to walk. 

*You can dramatically pinwheel your arms as I like to do but keep your hips directly under you. Be kind to your knees! You only get two of them. Here is a helpful article on how to run downhill. 



2) You get to chase things worth chasing. And you can run away from them, too. Geographically speaking, San Francisco is a thumbs up in water.

Thumbs up if you love SF!! I do. I also love Marin, north of SF, which is where I am now. I also think I will love Oakland. I better love Oakland in the East Bay, because I have to endure 13.1 miles of it. 

According to my map, the body of water to its left is the Gulf of Farallones. What? Much more romantic to call it the Pacific Ocean. I can't figure out how to overlay a map scale on that, but you can definitely get from the tree-sign "Golden Gate Park" up to North Beach in an hour at a jogging pace. Along the way, you will pass through a rose garden (yes, worth chasing), naked people in the Castro (probably not worth chasing), and, if you're lucky, short lines at Chinatown bakeries (definitely worth chasing). You can route yourself south a ways through the Mission, where the street murals and even the buildings themselves will blow your mind. 

The Women's Building in the Mission before it got tarp-ed up for a renovation.

The thing is, San Francisco is small. For me, it's like getting eighteen places for the price of one. One minute you're heaving up a hill whose grade you didn't think would allow for residences to be safely constructed on it...and then: ocean.

On easy run days, I would leave my apartment with a singular goal: chase the ocean. If I timed it just right, I could edit that goal for the route back to "chase the sunset." In line with reason #1, the ample availability of these two things always worth chasing make running in the Bay easier, more satisfying, and more memorable than anywhere else. If you make it out here, don't miss out on the opportunity to run across the Golden Gate Bridge. I won't give you the full details on how to get there. It's pretty hard to miss.

I will, however, remind you that for everything worth chasing in San Francisco, there is one HUGE thing you can always run AWAY from. Again, if you time it just right, you'll find yourself on the Golden Gate Bridge between 4 and 6pm, ideally on the West Sidewalk where the drop view across the ocean is especially magnificent and where the sun's setting will offset the infamous drop in temperatures around that time. On the bridge, cars will be at a rush hour standstill. Drivers will be irate. And you will be flying past them. 

Always run away from traffic. Never hesitate to feel awesome for moving your legs and saving the planet from its fossil-fuel depletion and human destruction. 
Chased the setting sun and ended up here. Why can't they all end like this?

3) You are the norm, not the exception. Some people love to run long distances because it makes them feel "bad ass." Some people thrive on the awe their exceptional feats of endurance invokes in others. I am not one of those people. I definitely was a few years ago, when I first started marathon training and knew in my ever-hungrier gut that it did look pretty cool on paper. But then I moved out here and proudly set an alarm for 5am, tucked my mid-run gummy bears into a jacket pocket before bed, and happily fell asleep knowing I would be able to check a BIG thing off my list before much of the rest of the city had woken up.

Boy was I wrong. That morning, the one I'd carefully selected to kick off a series of weekly long runs in the city, I felt for the first time what it was like to silently and inconspicuously overlap rituals with hundreds of my now role models. I now know that I prefer to live and run among people who have a different conception of what's at stake when it comes to running. For the majority of early-morning, after-work, and even late-evening runners in the Bay Area, what's at stake doesn't seem to be their hot bods or drive to be exceptional in any way. All you have to do is study a few of their gaits, their facial expressions, and their propensity to travel in pairs--couples, old friends, father and daughter--to be convinced that they run for their hearts, for a mental break in their days, and for one another. 

Women of all sizes pausing to cup a hand over wrists, check the time, and double-back on their paths, presumably to make it home to their jobs and their children on time. The man in his seventies with a back so bowed one might mistake him for a pedestrian reaching for something on the sidewalk and stuck in the pose, but running shirtless, his protruding vertebrae glinting with a sheen of morning sweat and a determined grimace I hope one day to master. The grimace of someone untouched by pain, age, and mental exertion. 

We ran at the same hour on three separate occasions, and the last time I saw him, he was wearing a pale yellow Ralph Lauren polo--the kind you would expect a dad to sport in Cape Cod--stained with what looked like car grease and ketchup, a faded Miami Dolphins visor, and a garish pair of poinsettia-red knee socks. A veritable rainbow of a man pummeling through crosswalks at a thankfully traffic-free hour. 

I caught up with him, just enough to make out the details of his outfit, and noticed his pace had slowed significantly. I got excited then, thinking I would finally get to strike up a conversation or make some flippant comment about the beautiful morning.

Instead, he reached inside his red sock and yanked out a vibrating flip phone and put it up his visor-ed head.

"Call me back later," he said firmly. "I'm on a run."

He took off. I never saw him again.


Another perk of running being such a norm here: dogs are used to it. On most beaches and trails, owners are allowed to have their dogs on "voice control," which basically means you get to play with dogs whenever you need a break. This friendly man even lent me and a friend his huskies for half an hour when it became evident that we were obsessed with them, and that they desperately wanted the exercise. We promised to run back with them, and it was chill. 
4) You will be humbled. People like poinsettia-sock-man are definitely noteworthy, but people who kick your ass who you would have never expected could kick your ass are not. Noteworthy that is. They are everywhere. That tiny Asian woman who you could have sworn served you shrimp dumplings at lunch? Leaving you in her dim-sum-dust. The sprightly woman in lavender who just solidly overtook you with her jogging stroller? Yeah, SHE HAD THAT BABY. 

Seeing so many runners diligently practicing self-care humbles me in a multitude of ways, some which are difficult to articulate. I am humbled knowing these women, on whom so many small people depend, might never "have it all" but look as if they do as they zip through Chrissy Field. I am humbled when I see a sweaty runner board the public bus with me at the marina and discreetly don his food service work uniform in the back. I am incredibly humbled when I see entire families of four or five running together in Golden Gate Park on Saturday morning, because I grew up thinking quality "family time" was forever scarce or costly, and frequently cumbersome. 


5) You will learn to be self-congratulatory again. 

I promise this doesn't contradict the previous reason. This is perhaps a more personal motivation, but running in any new place guarantees the very concept of newness. You get to break in a new route. You get to reach a worthy destination you might have only seen in pictures. And you do it all. by. yourself.

In San Francisco, because seemingly everyone runs or jogs (more "serious" runners are adamant about this dichotomy between runners and joggers, but whatever, good for both groups I say) and there's a foot race somewhere in the Bay Area every weekend, you learn very quickly how to pat yourself on the back after conquering a hilly route or making it all the way to the ocean.

And this back-patting might not seem like a big deal to some of you, but I moved here after a draining and self-defeating year at Yale, where you can always do more, work harder, stay up later, and eat less. It was a combination of the competitive atmosphere, my perfectionism, and my shitty attitude about things that finally broke me, but sweating out my self-doubt slowly revived the Cathy who could be satisfied with herself. Be OK with where she was in life. Be proud of herself.

That's huge. People spend their savings on counseling, life coaches, self-help books, and a whole plethora of satisfaction-seeking tools that I know are useful and at times life-saving. But those tools failed me. And I'm going to call out runners here: if race fees are so ridiculous, why do we continue to race for validation? If I could afford to run races that cost upwards of $100 to collect "swag" and clock an official personal record, I would. But when I took my leave of absence and moved to San Francisco, I definitely did NOT have those options. 

My Timex watch and I got by just fine. After acknowledging that my hardest race was the one against my insecurities and self-doubt, I was all the more motivated. Still in the thick of that one. Check back later.


6) You will be hungry. Do I even need to elaborate?





Thanks for reading!

Stay tuned for tips on where to stay, the best running routes, and...of course, the food I'm eating for sustenance while here. I promise the food posts are coming once I get the PICTURES on my computer. Today!


Happy bellies and happy running,

-C

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Think I've got it wrong? Where would you rather run? TELL ME.


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