Monochromatic Outlook

Gor­geous weath­er out there today. Lots of peo­ple run­ning. Read­ing Born to Run is a great inspiration—it almost makes me wish I had it as an audiobook.

Today I def­i­nite­ly felt my legs protest­ing much more than they did on Sat­ur­day, but by the time I got to the far side of the ball­park I start­ed to feel like I could just keep going. I think turn­ing around at that point was a good call, espe­cial­ly as I did take … Read the rest

This end­ed up being a few walks, or a long walk with sev­er­al stops along the way.

First was dis­cov­er­ing that there is a Philz Cof­fee at Fourth and Berry Streets. I used to get cof­fee from the orig­i­nal Philz on 24^th Street back when I used to hang out in the Mis­sion more than I do now. Now there are sev­er­al through­out the Bay Area and while the atmos­phere of the new ones can’t com­pete with the orig­i­nal, the … Read the rest

I had a lit­tle trou­ble get­ting the GPS to con­nect to satel­lites on this run, so the path starts in a park­ing lot where I stopped to get unob­struct­ed access to the sky. Once it con­nect­ed I start­ed going again. I’m just con­sid­er­ing the third of a mile I ran before that a warmup that does­n’t make it onto the log. It was most­ly down­hill anyway.

I used to dis­like start­ing a run down­hill and then com­ing back uphill at … Read the rest

This was a nice day for a walk out to meet a friend, then con­tin­ue on a walk out to Six­teenth Street, over to Ter­ry François and to Illi­nois Street, a return path I used to do fre­quent­ly back when I lived over on 22^nd Street.

At 22^nd Street we took a brief tour of the grad­u­ate stu­dios of my old school, SFAI. The stu­dio setups were a bit maze­like and I’m def­i­nite­ly glad to rent my own … Read the rest

The start­ing point for this walk is not correct—the GPS did­n’t find enough satel­lites quick­ly enough and I end­ed up not start­ing track­ing until I was a lit­tle ways up the 20^th Street bridge.

I think I nev­er got good satel­lite lock today—look how errat­ic the path is. This is clear­ly not an accu­rate reflec­tion of the walk, but it’s close enough. Prob­a­bly the delayed start off­sets the dis­tance added by the vari­ance from the actu­al walk.… Read the rest

I thought I could beat the rain and make a quick trip over to Sun­dance for some morn­ing cof­fee. Turns out the rain was com­ing in faster than I’d antic­i­pat­ed. It start­ed com­ing down just after I’d crossed back over the 20^th Street bridge. I got pret­ty well soaked. It wait­ed until I was about a block away from home before real­ly com­ing down hard but I walked the last two-thirds of a mile or more in mod­er­ate rainfall.… Read the rest

It was fool­ish to tack­le a sev­en-mile course for what was pret­ty much my first run of the year, but it was great to get out and run. I took lots of walkbreaks—something I would­n’t ever have done a few years ago. But a few years ago I was­n’t over 200 pounds and a few years ago was before I broke my foot. At this point, just get­ting out there is a victory.

That is itself a strong argu­ment that … Read the rest