Running
I set out to build a career-oriented website but realized the picture would be incomplete without highlighting my “career” as a runner. I’m not a professional or elite-level runner, but I’m as passionate about running as about anything in my portfolio. Over the past 15-plus years, running has become as much a part of my life as eating, sleeping and nurturing my family. Running helps me get closer to being the person I want to be; it is my friend, therapist, cheerleader, bartender and spiritual guide.
Over the past year, running also became my travel guide. In 2010, during our family’s year of round-the-world travel, I was interviewed by RunAbroad.com and described how running inspires and enhances travel (read the interview here).
I became a runner on the first Monday of March 1994. I was 24, a graduate student living in Berkeley, and inspired by watching two friends cross the finish line of the Napa Marathon the day before. That morning, I fastened the Velcro flaps on my ankle-high Reeboks aerobics shoes and vowed to go at least as far as the farthest I had jogged before: one-and-a-half miles. (At various points during high school and college, I’d go to the track as part of a short-lived diet plan and run four to six laps—never more, and never enjoying it.) I picked a point 1.5 miles from home, figuring I could make it there and walk home leisurely, and then began a shuffling jog on the sidewalk.
Overdressed in baggy sweatpants and struggling to catch my breath, I almost stopped a few blocks from my front door. I don’t know what kept me going—surely it had to do with seeing all those people in Napa radiate joy after completing 26.2 miles—but I jogged to the turnaround point and decided to try running home at least part of the way. Block by block, I kept going until I reached home and felt flush with strength and pride for having run 3 miles, more than ever before. I coached myself in the months that followed with a dog-eared secondhand copy of Jeff Galloway’s Book on Running, and one year later, in March of 1995, I returned to Napa to run my first marathon. My goal was to run the whole thing—no walking breaks—and finish under 4 hours. I did it in 3:56. I have run more than 30 marathons since, with a personal best of 3:05:53.
I hope my story inspires other beginners to try running and to stick with it. Read more about the highs and occasional lows of running on my blog.