Walking

Every year on a Sunday in mid August, I head to Point Loma at around 5:30 AM, along with 5,000 other runners I don’t know. It’s an emotional hour or so as I watch the sun come up over San Diego and wait for the start of the AFC Half Marathon. In a way it’s my own personal Thanksgiving and a moment for reflection. I am grateful that I am still breathing, and I am healthy enough to be able to run a half marathon. But this year will be a little different.

Turning 51 has been brutal. A large variety of injuries has derailed my summer routine of gleeful training for AFC. This year I will not get that exhausting, painfull buzz of finishing the long hot run across San Diego, up Heartbreak hill and into Balboa Park. In years past, if I had a severe injury I would just skip the race. But the thought of putting Laura on the bus to the start by herself and then watching all the runners go by the hotel a few hours latter is something I did not want to do.

Well this year I know I can’t run 13 miles, but I can still walk. So I decided I would go to the start and walk back to the hotel. The race goes right by the Sheraton on Harbor Island, which is about half way through the race. I can walk 6 miles, right?

To get ready for this altered version of AFC I started walking. But out of habit, I walked the same routes that I would normally run. It became so depressing I had a hard time getting myself out the door. It just reminded me that I was not running. But then, one Saturday I needed to return a book to the library, and I decided to walk. It was fantastic. I have probably driven those 2.3 miles (I Googled mapped it) past the library a hundred times, but I never saw a fraction of what I saw on that hot summer day. It was an adventure. It made me feel young again. As a boy in LA we walked everywhere, over the First street Bridge to downtown, through the railroad yards, up to Hollenbeck Park. Things that you kind of, sort of see as you zoom by at 40, alright 50, miles per hour are in focus; you experience them. Even when I run on the streets my focus is still inward, my thoughts are elsewhere. This feels completely real.

This year as the gun goes off at 7 AM on August 17th, and I get to share that uniquely personal joy with 5,000 fellow travelers; I am excited about my walk back to the hotel. I have run this race about 20 times, and now I will get to see it, and feel it in a different way. And I am still breathing.