A few Sundays ago, I finished the Oakland Half Marathon. I was and continue to be absolutely elated.
My journey back to running began a few months ago when one of my best friends suggested that we run a half-marathon together. I said “yes” in an effort to escape from an anxious funk. It was a commonplace funk that has been called a lot of things over the last two years: languishing, demoralization, burnout, resignation. Whatever it was, the manifestation was a cynical disposition, an itch that turned into scarred scratches extending down my legs, and an inability to do anything other than obligingly work. My physical body and emotional state worsened due to the significant guilt I felt for being anxious despite all my privileges – a job, a steady income, a partner, no children. I picked up running again in an attempt to exit the funk cycle in and to do so with a great friend by my side.
Externally, my adopted home – Oakland, California – was experiencing its own version of a depressive itch. From March 2020 onward, the city itself languished. Beloved businesses folded, office workers fled the uptown and downtown corridors, windows were boarded up ceasing to let that wonderful Oakland warmth into their now abandoned buildings. Among the people that remain, I feel a sense of malaise and fatigue – perhaps a mere projection of how I still occasionally feel.
Despite all that, my friend and I ran each weekend for months, lengthening the number of miles and increasing the pace with each route. By the time we ran the half-marathon, we knew we would finish. What I did not know was how incredibly emotional I would feel running this race. I did not train for being overwhlemed with emotions from running through Oakland specifically and mere days after the lifting of the indoor mask mandates in California.
The race began at Lake Merritt, a lagoon that feels like Oakland’s central artery – the city streets branching off in every cardinal direction from the Lake’s paved paths. It was a beautiful clear morning with crisp air from rain that had fallen the day prior. At 9:00 AM, we started running.
Around the lake going east, the race looped into Oaklandʻs Little Saigon, right at 7th and International Boulevard. Like several other Asian enclaves, Oaklandʻs Little Saigon has had to contend with its own hardships. This includes a toxic mix of contending with ever thinning small business margins from COVID and being scapegoated (sometimes violently) for the virus. Standing in front of a park, a small group of cheering Vietnamese people propped up a sign that read “Welcome to Oakland’s Little Saigon”. A young black woman with a microphone welcomed us with, “Donʻt just run through here – visit us.” My favorite Vietnamese restaurant Danang Quan was still open and still operating despite it all. After 2 years of processing the wave of anti-Asian hate and the implications of the pandemic on my community, I quietly began to cry.
God damn it, I thought. I’m already fucking dehydrated with miles to go. And it’s fucking hot.
On 19th Street and Thomas L. Berkeley Way, I was suddenly met by a crowd of people yelling and screaming with signs like “If Trump can run, so can you.” It was surreal. I could see their faces. I could see strangers no longer fearing the proximity that had to one another. I could see their excitement. I then realized that it was the first time in more than 2 years of seeing a crowd of mask-less people shouting not in pain, or sorrow, or injustice, but with joy. That sound of bells, and clapping, and encouragement – it was electric.
The race took runners up Broadway Avenue, near the neighborhood where I recently purchased a house. One of the last stops in race was Oakland Technical High School. As challenging as COVID has been for all students, some of the hardest hits have taken place in the Oakland Unified School District. There have been budget deficits, school closures, mass protest by students for safer COVID conditions, and general trauma that seeps into school grounds from more than a year of remote learning. For the Oakland Tech students, there was another layer of hardship. Last year, students staged a walkout to protest sexual misconduct and the lack of accountability from the school’s administration. As I ran around Oakland Tech, a small group of high school students handed me water. It was the Sunday of their last day on Spring Break and they were giving water to adults like me – adults that either though ignorance or lack of will, did little to protect them. I welcomed the water, but couldn’t believe that they were helping us with elation.
All I could say was thank you.
From mile 11, my last wave of emotions came over me. Not only was I almost finished with the race, but I began to feel something that I had not felt in many years – runnerʻs high. After many attempts at running, only to be interrupted by e-mails, text messages, and my own dopamine-motivated habits of stopping to scroll through social media, my attempts at reaching a “flow” have been dismal. But here, running downhill towards lower elevation on Broadway, listening not to a podcast or a music, but just the sights and sounds of the Oakland, I felt it. I didn’t feel pain, didn’t feel hard breathing. I felt my entire body working together to enjoy something. And all the reasons I started running more than a decade ago – to think about writing in that state of flow – happened.
From mile 11, I flew – flew through uptown composing language to the section you read above about Little Saigon. I zipped then downtown, reflecting on the crowd at 19th and Thomas L. Berkeley Way. Then, I saw the lake and thought of all the ways to end this very piece. I finished the race and, just a few hours later, started writing this piece.
No single marathon or half-marathon will truly soothe what has been inflicted not just on Oakland, but the country at-large. This piece of writing will not follow the narrative arch of resolved, triumphant endings. Amid the joy, there was also a lot of pain. It was my own physical pain, but also the lingering symbols of Oakland’s trauma. The occasional bits of broken glass crunching under my running shoe. Blue and yellow Ukrainian flags flying on porches. Passing the now-closed Luka’s, an uptown Oakland restaurant that felt like home. The emptiness of Chinatown on a Sunday morning. The encampments that our route tried to avoid in vain – an impossible task in some parts of the city.
All of the aforementioned pain existed. But, for a rare moment, I was able to feel something other than that funk, that itch, that anxiety. There were splices of happiness, of being with others, of joyful solidarity.
I had finished 13.1 miles with a cycle of a different kind – a renewed feeling of excitement that I would run and write again.