Rekindling my relationship with running

To bring anything less than my A-game doesn't come naturally. Whatever the rules, I'm down 110%, and the rules of racing are easy - just go faster. Doing something for fun, for pleasure, and with no intent of being the best? That isn't exactly my strong point. I've been hoping to work on that as I establish a new relationship with my old sport, running. We're rekindling things after a couple of decades off, and I'm trying not to fall into the old patterns that left me injured and heartbroken when I had to walk away after freshman year in college. 

The bulk of my runs involve mornings with Lily along the Bay. Though I did dabble with treadmills starting after the biking accident kept me off the pole for a few months in 2022, my first outdoor run in well over a decade came during a gap mid-fertility treatment late last summer while chewing on some tough decisions. The strict warning against any running during treatment gave it a forbidden allure. We definitely made the right call to push through the final cycles last fall, but somehow the running bug stuck. Fully unburdened from medical constraints, 2025 is becoming my year of seeing just how far my legs can take me.

Bay to Breakers was the perfect opportunity for me to test out my new relationship to running: a chance to dress up, to be silly, to not run my fastest, and to be present with friends and a wider city full of folks weird enough to be up before 7 on a Sunday morning in their finest costumes (or lack thereof) to join a moving party. There were dancing penguins protesting tariffs, packs of feuding red-clad cardinals and white-clad popes, human car washes where you could get spritzed and bubbled, and so much wonderful chaos. I was running in neon yellow fishnets, a sparkly pink tutu and a neuron tee, some weird hybrid of Barbie and a scientist: 5-year-old me would be so proud. 38-year-old me enjoyed every moment.

Only the 8th time the race came around since my move to the Bay and I can finally ran it. Not sure why I didn't jump on this bandwagon sooner.

My curiosity over just what my aging body isn't yet too old to do kept me from walking the "race". Before last Sunday, I hadn't run 12km non-stop since high school cross country! And, since last Sunday, I cranked it up a notch and ran a full 10 miles with coworkers just three days later at a sub-10-minute/mile pace. And still no cramps or next-day aches. How much further can I go? (As I said, slippery slope over here.)

Getting a taste for distance: Bay to Breakers stood as my new distance record for all of 3 days until I ran 10.12 miles at a 9:57/mile pace with some coworkers this week.

I'm trying to make sure I run playfully, adventurously, as a way to build new relationships, so as to not create yet another space where I have to perform at risk of letting myself down. This isn't even my main sport: you can still find me climbing silks and flipping around the trapeze most weekends now that that, too, is no longer verboten.

No more fertility treatments means I am back to circus full force, now also featuring trapeze!

It's pleasantly unexpected to discover new skills and strengths hidden inside me after a year of having it hammered into me that I was rapidly rounding the corner on my expiration date. I'm not sure quite what this relationship with running is turning into, but right now the goal is "go as fast and as far as is fun." So far so good.

Human connections in a digital world

I've been a bit of a recluse online, retreating into my own blog, a sort of long-form journal that's technically public but no one really cares to view (and I don't care to promote). I see it as a glorified photo album and my own personal pensieve, for the Harry Potter fans out there. I do deeply value this medium. Every time I switch to a new blog, I convert the old one into a physical book, and when I most need it, I sit down and literally flip through the life I've led. I get visual and written reminders of the journey that's gotten me where I am, and the person I was along the way. But it's all about me.

Like most early millennials, I was thrilled to get my .edu email address that opened up access to the world of Facebook, a social media platform for connecting with my friends as we took our first steps into the shallow end of adulthood and started learning to swim. I loved posting silly thoughts and photos, commenting on my friends updates, and learning about the milestones and accomplishments of the people I loved (or loved to hate). But over the years, as the platform became crowded, as the algorithm evolved to pull us into camps and push us towards extremism, the once joyful digital town square turned dark. I stopped engaging, and didn't quite know where to turn.

On Nico's encouragement, now that I'm a runner (I guess), I joined Strava. It's a platform to share your workouts and accomplishments. It's mostly centered around GPS-tracked activities like bike rides and runs but I'm stretching its limits by folding in my circus work. And I kind of love it: suddenly, I'm sharing things; I'm getting kudos; I'm seeing and celebrating all the awesome things my friends are doing! It's a wonderful reminder of the early innocence of social media. And I'm realizing how much I've missed those human connections, something that Strava can't really solve: Foremost among Strava's shortcomings is that hardly everyone is on it: I've only got about 10 friends there.

Through Strava, I've been rediscovering the joys of simpler social media. And I'm not sure how to feel about it.

Like a coin running ever tightening circles around a funnel, I'm feeling my excitement over this new platform drawing me to the inevitable conclusion that it's time I crawl back to social media. But I also hate social media, enough that I'm writing this whole blog post. I hate the posturing. I hate the performative nature. And I hate being a product consumed by some amorphous tech giant munching data that I haven't even knowingly generated. I don't like the machines knowing me better than I know myself. (Rich coming from a person literally designing tech to read straight from your brain, I know.)

In the best of worlds, social media can be a beautiful way to extend contact with loved ones. It can also drive extremism, FOMO, and a complete conviction that everyone else is happy and definitely knows what they're doing and is living a life according to plan without any hiccups or detours. There isn't really a clear answer, though in the absence of moral imperative, pursuing happiness is probably right. I am just surprised this is the route it's taking me, and unsure how to take the next step.

In a post-pandemic/Trump 2.0 era, as someone who's officially no longer young, as someone who plans to soon have responsibility over the lives of one or more tiny human beings, what even is the right way to engage with social media? What do I share? What do people care to know? I don't have the answers. Sometimes being human is just so exhausting.

Operation Surprise!

For the first time in over a decade together, I successfully surprised Nicolas! Admittedly, I hadn't necessarily been trying beforehand. Nonetheless, I—we—pulled it off without a hitch. After Nicolas had rejected all my suggestions for bigger birthday plans, he'd agreed to go to his favorite pasta place, Passione Emporio, an unassuming Italian restaurant in an industrial part of southwest Berkeley. Upon bemoaning to Tatiana my inability to do anything more special for his birthday, she hatched a plan. What if our whole extended Bridgewater crew—our family here in California—made a surprise appearance at the dinner? One quick group chat later and the plan was on. I made the reservation and Nico was none the wiser of the headcount.

Despite us walking past the window revealing all our friends, and even walking past a friend awkwardly hiding her face at the register as we entered the restaurant, Nicolas did not suspect a thing. Our crew erupted in a cheer of "surprise!" that filled the room, and surprised he was. Although, being Nico, there wasn't really much of a reaction. He immediately went into hanging-with-friends mode as though this had been the plan all along.

Surprise! Nico's unexpected birthday party. 

The years of chugging away and connecting with humans along our journey has really gotten us a lovely and supportive community. Sometimes it feels scary to imagine leaving it all in a few years to start fresh again. But that's not a today problem. Today, there aren't really any problems in our little universe—a weird thing to acknowledge when it feels like the world around us is burning. As guilty as I feel admitting it, for us, these are the good times.