I’ve been creating slideshow sets to display on this website for several years, and I now have a total about 30. My most recent ones were titled “Running” (I, II, and III). I had a lot of  photos to choose from, because competing in footraces has been a hobby of ours for a long time.

Mostly we just do it on our own, but we’ve also had the pleasure of running with various members of our family from time to time. Example races with family participation include Big Bunny (sponsored by the city of Cupertino every year at Easter), Dirty Legs (a trail run in thick fog that we ran with the Livengoods), and Goldy’s Run (one we did some years ago at the University of Minnesota with the Blomquists).

(The featured image, above, shows our family running “team” in the 2017 Summer Scamper at Stanford.)

In the late 70s and early 80s we ran with our kids in the Cupertino foothills at a weekly event called “Fun Run.”

Also in the 80s, I ran in an event called the Corporate Cup as a member of the IBM running team.

Over the years, we’ve developed some running friendships, especially among fellow-competitors in our generation.

I labeled my running slides by year and event, and I was surprised to find that there were NO pictures at all from the 1990s. (As an aside, we DID continue to run – but not in any races.) In trying to figure out why, I reviewed other pictures I had from that era.  It would seem that when other events like births, graduations, weddings, business pressures and travel, serious illnesses, and deaths reach a critical mass, there is no time left for footraces.

I’m happy to say that we started competing again in about 2000, and we’re still doing it. I’m especially looking forward to beating other female octogenarians as the COVID-19 threat lessens and crowd-oriented events come back later this year.