A Friendly Plea the Day After the SF Marathon

Until last week, Maya was always a super pooper, in the most literal use of the term. Yet I'm learning more and more every day to expect twists and turns in parenting a newborn. Luckily, we took one of those turns headed in a good direction this morning when woke up to a happy baby with a full diaper after a few days' worth of rice cereal constipation. Maya's done great thus far with the "solid" food. Until this morning though, she'd not done so great with the "solids" on the other end of the spectrum. I'm maybe overstating the extent of her intestinal back-up, but if you'd smelled some of yesterday's toxic plumes you would have been worried as well. So after spending a few days anxiously interpreting every fart and red-faced grimace, we can now get back to our regularly scheduled lives. I'm sure that's what the teenage Maya would have rather I'd done without going so fully into the past paragraph.

Yet as life now returns to normal with the poopgates once again open, I'd like to switch gears entirely and make a friendly plea to anyone reading on behalf of 826 Valencia and the expanding group of 826s popping up all over the country. If you're not familiar with what 826 means or does, I'll get back to that a bit later in this posting. But the pivot point for bringing this up was the running of the San Francisco Marathon yesterday, of which I ran the first half in hopes of bringing some attention in a very small sense to the work of the 826s. But as far as the Race went, the course through the City was advertised as being in itself inspiring. For those of you that can picture the layout of the City - Start down by the Ferry Building, run along the Waterfront past the Marina to Golden Gate Bridge, cross and come back over the Bridge, continue along the Sea Cliff side of the Presidio and down toward Golden Gate Park. The first half ended in the Park, but the full marathon folks continued on to eventually go down Haight Street, through the Mission and back toward Mission Bay to return to the Start/Finish in front of the Ferry Building. Sounds lovely, doesn't it? Except that for reasons only assumed to do with not screwing up pre-7am traffic (composed of priests, ravers and newspaper delivery people), the Start began at 5am, which meant myself and 15,000 or so other maniacs rolled out of bed around 3am. Because of poor public transportation planning on my part, I ended up needing to drive downtown. I drove through the Tenderloin, noting the darkly-dressed denizens wandering about in a form of wobbly unison. Only a few blocks further toward Union Square, the streetwalkers morphed into little pockets of overly perky runners jauntily carrying their Starbucks cups and plastic bags full of gel packs and water bottles. Most were wearing brightly colored race clothing, the occasional plastic garbage bag to keep off the misty fog, and mostly brand-new shoes. I'll leave it up to you to decide who looks more deranged walking the sketchy downtown streets at 4:15.

I parked, got stretched amid the swirling mass of humanity along the Embarcadero, and eventually got onto the Course around 5:30 when just the first hint of daylight began to rise over the East Bay. As we made our way past Fisherman's Wharf and along Marina Green, the sun came up. Somewhere. But in San Francisco, the extra light only allowed a better view of how completely fogged in the Bay was. What was meant to be the visual highlight - crossing the Golden Gate Bridge - was underwhelming. You couldn't even see the Towers of the Bridge through the tepid soup as you crossed under them. It felt more like I was running through a movie set in 19th Century London than toward Marin. Coming back across the Bridge, the wind hit me with a startlingly icy surge that went straight to my colon. Those are the moments that make any sane person wonder quietly, "just why the #*&! am I doing this?" With years of self-control under my belt, I kept it together and eventually made it through to Golden Gate Park and the finish. Nowhere near a stunning time - 2:12. But I finished with no injuries and had plenty to ponder along the way of what was a largely enjoyable jaunt.

Certain vignettes always stick in my mind beyond the few hours of shared effort with thousands of strangers, such as how you begin to look for and fixate on certain faceless folks in the midst of the pack. I even named a few. There was the Thong Lady - a very saucy stripper-type woman wearing white hot pants and an easily discernible dark thong underneath. I don't know about you, but the thought of running any distance more than a few blocks in a thong ain't my idea of a fun run. And then there was Hairy Neck - a totally fit 40ish man with an immaculately shaved head atop the hairest neck and shoulders this side of "BJ and The Bear." I kept thinking that if he so obviously took the time to shave his head, why not add a few strokes and loose the thicket sticking out of your tank top? But then again, I suppose you will always have the question of where to stop the tapering and you might end up losing complete control somewhere mid-chest. See, these are the thoughts that keep you going through a long run. And then there's the chatty folks that are always lurking amidst the sane folks around you. As with most situations, the weather is the easiest avenue for chafeless bonding. My favorite of this class of runner was a guy I named Big Tex 'cause he was maybe 5' tall (wearing lifts), but fit as a freaky-four-foot fiddle and sportin' the twangiest Texas lilt in the field. His ice-breaker with me was "Y'all got some weather out here." I believe my response was somewhere in the neighborhood of "yes, we do." From there it only got more compelling, as I'm sure you can guess.

Much more importantly, races like this one are both outright and incidentally inspiring. Folks with drive - both in terms of their physical and philanthropic endeavors - were everywhere in the field yesterday. And as with many marathons, the San Francisco Marathon increasingly offers non-profits and charitable organizations the organized chance to fundraise based on the efforts of the runners. Since I've done work with 826 Valencia and I could think of no other organization whose mission I agree with more, I hooked up with the handful of other staff and volunteers from 826 that formed a "Booty Team" - meant to remind people of the Pirate Store aesthetics of 826 Valencia, not the other obvious use of the name. 826 Valencia started here in San Francisco a few years ago with the mission of helping kids improve their writing while offering a wide-array of tutoring and creatively expansive activities. The environment that has been created at 826 Valencia is so impressive that an expansion is underway to like-minded cities around the country (NYC and LA are open, Chicago, Seattle and Ann Arbor are in the process of doing so). But as with any worthy cause, 826 relies on the generosity of people, whether in terms of time or donations. In that light, I ask that if you can help them and see the poetry in what is going on in the 826s, please go to my website for donating through the SF Marathon. Or let me know if you'd prefer an emailed form for you to fill out and mail with a donation to 826. As with all such organizations, they will reply with their utmost appreciation and the documentation you need for tax-deductible filing. If you have ANY questions about any of this please let me know.

So yesterday's run is done and I'm feeling inspired for what's next. I'll be prepping to do a full marathon in the nearish future, I'll be continuing to work with 826 in the Fall, and there's lots else on the plate for the weeks and months ahead. Thanks for reading. You're the reason I do this, after all.