The day before Thanksgiving, I stepped onto the sidewalk in front of our house and inhaled deeply. The air smelled moist and felt cool from a light rain. Leaves from the elm plastered the ground, newly fallen during the early hours of a developing storm. My lungs expanded with the vapor of a cleansing mist.
I broke into a run. Not a careful warmup jog, but a bounding, springy run.
Two days earlier, when I exited the house and breathed deeply, my lungs burned as if recovering from a chest cold, reminiscent of that first cigarette the morning after an excessive night out during college. The sun looked like an orange ball. The views to the west toward the bay, and to the east toward the hills, dissolved into dirty-white haze.
It was Monday, November 19, Day 10 of a smoke-filled sky, and I wore a mask, the kind with a round filter in front that was supposed to keep out 95 percent of the fine particulate matter threatening everyone’s respiratory systems and polluting all of Northern California due to the devastating fire. I hiked up our neighborhood hillside, making a few half-hearted attempts to run a quarter mile before giving up and walking in the toxic fog. My eyes burned, my nose ran incessantly—it took too much effort to remove the mask to wipe it—and I breathed heavily, feeling borderline suffocation while inhaling carbon dioxide trapped from exhalation.
I felt desperate to get outside to exercise. I had purchased a day pass at a local gym twice in the past week for two hour-long treadmill runs, and I had done step-ups, squats, jump roping and other exercises inside our house, but I hungered to move my legs a couple of miles up this hill.
Instead of strength and satisfaction, however, I felt weakness from inhibited breath and sadness from the enormity of this catastrophe that burned so many lives and homes, and from the sinking feeling that our planet is irrevocably damaged. Fires last December nearly destroyed my Southern California hometown. Fires last summer in Colorado turned the sky orange and obscured the mountains. And now this, the new norm.
The cleansing rain and cool winds finally returned, and the view of San Francisco’s skyline sparkled across the bay.
I pondered how at the beginning of this month, running felt uninspired and uncomfortable, and I had declared I don’t love running right now. I had wanted to take a break. But not this kind of forced break, so suddenly and for such horrible reasons.
So I bounded out the door on that beautiful Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, and had my first truly good run in weeks, maybe in a couple of months. My legs felt refreshed, and the achy stiff areas felt close to normal. I zoomed around the neighborhood.
After 45 minutes, I looked at my watch and thought, Only five miles? It felt farther. The blood flow enlivened my lungs and legs, sweat dampened my skin, and I felt so good—but so tired! Since October 1, I have completed only two runs longer than 10 miles. My endurance had evaporated.
Saturday should be interesting, I thought.
Saturday, November 24, was the Quad Dipsea, the 28.4-mile trail race that stands in a class of its own for difficulty and odd distance. It’s four times the storied Dipsea race from Mill Valley to Stinson. The fastest runners barely manage a sub-10-minute-mile average pace, given the hiking necessitated by hundreds and hundreds of treacherous, slippery steps built into the rocky, rooted hillside. The route presents 9200 feet of climbing and an equal amount of descent.
The Quad Dipsea’s map and elevation profile.
I did the Quad once before, in 2016, when I was in better shape from running Western States that year. I broke 6 hours and finished 5th female on that year’s rain-soaked slippery course. How would I fare this year, undertrained and several pounds heavier? Could I break 6.5 hours; could I even finish? The uncertainty felt exciting and liberating. I didn’t care. I just wanted to try to go the distance, to be a solid mid-packer, to see old friends, to run and be a runner.
The gathering at Old Mill Park in Mill Valley had the vibe of a festival. I lost track of the number of people who said hello, and my brain scrambled to remember names and faces. I have felt so out of the loop, isolated, here in our local community of Piedmont since returning from an extended period in Colorado, and out of touch with the Northern California running scene.
I hugged Clare, whom I hadn’t seen since she heroically crewed me at Ouray, and I decided I’d run for her today, since she couldn’t run due to injury. She showed up to volunteer. And I’d run for The Rocket, who also showed up to volunteer, since our runs together are on hiatus due to his injury. I’d run for everyone who lost everything two weeks ago.
I stood at the start thinking, This is going to be really hard.
The sound and movement of the other runners swept me along. After the first mile, Scotty Mills from San Diego, the legendary ultrarunner I profiled last year, surprised me by running by my side and making small talk. Repeatedly, people struck up conversations along the way. “This is Sarah,” one guy named Greg told another guy near us, “she gave me advice about States when we ran Woodside together.” I did?
Other trail users stepped aside for us runners, and for the most part they looked bemused, not annoyed. Instead of thinking a phrase that too often goes through my head while driving freeways and scrolling Facebook, “People can be such assholes,” I thought, “People can be so nice.”
Runners approaching the high point on the course. Photo by Todd Glieden
How the redwood forest looked and felt along the Quad Dipsea course. Photo by Jenni Miller
More than a run, the Quad Dipsea reminded me that this—this sport that went from hobby to lifestyle and social network—is what I do, and that my body still has the wherewithal, and that each of us on the trail is so fortunate to get to do it.
I still got it, I thought as I finished the second lap and headed up the Mill Valley steps to begin the journey to Stinson Beach again.
This really hurts, I thought at the end of the third lap, leaving Stinson Beach and heading up the hill for the final journey back to Mill Valley, knees achy, toes bruised, quads twinging. I pushed through the ache and fatigue toward a finish that would be 19 minutes slower than my 2016 self, not bad, under the circumstances.
Runners heading up some of the many stairs on the return from Stinson Beach. Photo by Jenny Lockwood
A snapshot of me around Mile 22, on the fourth and final lap, by Dwight Brown.
I breathed deeply and looked at the sky, so blue and vast above the ocean.
To breathe deeply, to see the horizon clearly, to talk to old friends, to move your legs up and down a mountain—how marvelous and precious this life on earth is, the more imperiled it becomes.
The San Francisco Bay as seen from the Dipsea Trail last Saturday. Photo by Jenni Miller
Nicely done . . . and good job for a solid race effort! I must admit it makes me a little homesick, and also wondering what kind of mean S.O.B. would design a course like that?
What a lovely post. Glad to learn that both you and the landscape are getting back to normal. Hoping to see your rain turn into our snow!