Monday, August 04, 2008

Serendipitous Run

I went on a late afternoon run as kind of one of those errand runs. I was going to stop by the local running shop to see the owner and say hi and unfortunately bye for now. She's closing shop after many years at this location. I'd buy everything from her (and I used to) but I get stuff from my hubby who works in the runnin' biz. I feel a little bad about that, but it's just personal circumstances.

The Store -
Runner's Feet

As I was running to the store I ran into (almost literally) one of my old running pals. It looks like he's coaching the local high school kids, which is awesome. I then ran into the store's owner a few blocks away from the store as she was waiting to cross the street.

We walked to the store together as Frank the Coach went to the high school across the street to continue his coaching duties. We caught up on our lives, talked about our kids and how we manage to juggle everything. She now lives out in Turlock where she has another store and she loves it there. The commute has become too crazy for her to do the several times a week she's been doing it (about 4 hours one way!).

And with the closing of Runners' Feet there will be no more local running stores in the area AT ALL. The closest, non-chain stores are in Menlo Park or in SF. Running stores can be such the backbone of a running community, a wonderful gathering spot, the place to meet old and new friends. There's one less piece of community here in my hometown of Burlingame, no more touchstone for us runners. The feeling of community has long been eroding here though, really since the late 80's when mall-style stores started moving into the downtown area and housing prices started to skyrocket. I really can't say that things have improved with the gentrification, it's more like a whole new group of people moved in that I don't have anything in common with, so I feel like someone took my hometown in the middle of the night and replaced it with something else.

But with my visit at the store I found out that there still is a group that meets at the track on Tuesday evenings and at least one of my old friends will be there tomorrow night. So Hubby gets to pick up the kids tomorrow and I'll get to do some reconnecting and maybe some planning of great group trail runs!

So after my short little visit at the store I continued on my run. I'd planned a short run in lieu of a very long run tomorrow but I ended up doing an hour because I felt so good! I felt a little more at home, more at home than I've felt in my neighborhood in a while.

Tomorrow I think I'll do a trail run in the morning at Edgewood and then the track workout in the evening. I will go easy on the track workout since I haven't done a really speedy speed workout in forever and I'll have worked out in the morning already. But there is method to my madness - First - I'm working up to an ultra so I'm in need of miles, miles, miles. Secondly - I've found that running cures my allergies and Zyrtec is just not cuttin' it anymore. So I'll run in the morning for some relief and then more in the evening for more relief. Strange but true. It's a great excuse to bug out for a run. :)

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