Seven miles

Today is the San Francisco Chronicle Marathon. For once, I thought of the marathon not as something to be avoided because it ties up traffic and who are all these crazy people running 26 miles anyway, but as something I'm going to do myself one day.

It was also the reason I did my group run on Saturday this week instead of Sunday as usual. Since the Chronicle Marathon also runs in Golden Gate Park, and many of our coaches were running in it, we were encouraged to do our group run at another time or place. The Saturday group was quite lively, especially with its ranks swollen by the extra Sunday runners. Our route was through the park, up Martin Luther King Drive, around Stowe Lake, and back. We ran either seven, seven-and-a-half, or eight miles, depending on whom you believe. (An observer told us that a volunteer accidentally sent us around the lake twice, adding either half a mile or a mile to our scheduled seven-mile run.) Whatever our actual mileage, we had a great time on our run, cheering and encouraging everyone we passed, whether they were part of the AIDS Marathon Training or not. Some of them cheered back. Others were merely perplexed.

This week we were encouraged to bring some sort of food to eat along the way, since our runs are getting long enough that maintaining blood sugar and energy levels begins to be a problem. I ate a pack of GU, which is basically a jelly-like hit of pure sugar, with a bit of caffeine added for good measure. I was not anticipating enjoying the stuff, but I found it strangely satisfying under the circumstances.