Running the Dipsea Race at 91

Truth be told, I didn’t do that well. I finished, but 12 minutes slower than last year. Going up the (680) steps it felt like a bear had jumped on my back. I had to stop and rest maybe a dozen times before reaching the top.

I screwed up in multiple ways this year. Didn’t run (well, walk) the steps as I’d said I would before the race, didn’t run the course 3 times before the race (as was my usual training practice), didn’t suss out shortcuts, carried phone (dumb!), had to stop a bunch of times to retie slipping-down shorts, plus my planets were just not aligned.

“Was the comin’ down worth the goin’ up?” (with apologies to Kris Kristofferson)

But the glass half-full: fans cut me a lot of slack. Vibes on the grass were great.

My son Evan (running it first time since age 11) slowed down to finish with me.

When I got down to the finishing stretch, I had a small cheering section.

Video by Chelsea Maissen-Kahn

I quickly forgot the agony (anaerobic distress) with all the good vibes after finishing. People were kind. It seems all I have to do is finish to get accolades. Here’s a post-race article by Sophia Grace Carter in the Point Reyes Light:: https://www.ptreyeslight.com/news/how-to-run-the-dipsea-at-91/

The town of Mill Valley is electric on the morning of the race, quite different from the usual mellow laid-back (you might say elitist) vibes. 1500 lean, athletic runners, pacing, stretching, chatting, drinking coffee, along with the excitement of each group charging down the street each minute.

I get cut a lot of slack due to age; it’s one of the few advantages of reaching ancient age. People don’t expect much.

Gay Talese famously said: “You figure, what can they do to me now? At 82, you can do anything or say anything you want — you’re bulletproof.…”

Here’s a post I did a few years ago (my most popular of all 140+ posts):

For some reason, the exhaustion didn’t kick in for several days. But in San Francisco last Thursday, I felt drained, depleted, sore. I slept a lot over the weekend and am now dealing with a sore knee — which I plan to get checked out.

The reason I quit running 17 years ago was that an orthopedic surgeon told me that I had about 30% of the meniscus remaining in my left knee.

Since I wanted to keep walking until I was 100, I gave up the Dipsea.

If I had understood that the meniscus is a shock absorber between the two major bones of the knee — the femur and tibia – and that jarring from downhill running can damage it, I would’ve saved my fast downhill running for races.

As it was, once I learned a couple of secrets for fast downhills, I gleefully charged every downhill in practice as well as in races. And truth be told for a second time here, I was a show-off downhill runner; every time there was someone watching, I’d gun it. (As Lee Marvin said in The Wild One , (“…the shame of it all.”)

But like an old racehorse missing the track, as well as encouragement from my Pelican Inn Track Club running pals, I decided to run again last year, and it worked out OK.

But now I’m curious. Is the reason there are so few 80-year-olds, and no 90-year-olds except for Jack Kirk (the “Dipsea Demon”) and me to run the race? Maybe I’ve used up my nine lives of running and need to hang it up. I hope not, but we’ll see.

If you want to know more (well, just about everything) regarding the race, this is the bible:

https://bit.ly/dipsearace