The Monday Morning Marin Run Club: Or Reverse-Engineering Joy
I should have known I’d see her.
It happened like clockwork — all but a statistical lock, just like every other time I find myself running or hiking through that little nook of the Marin Headlands. As I jogged down the red clay trail, shoes crunching in the gravel, not 50 feet ahead of me I saw the Tennessee Valley Bobcat, head buried in the impossibly green grass, hunting for breakfast.
A week earlier — almost to the minute — I’d bounded down another red clay trail in the Headlands, sprinting toward South Rodeo Beach, simply the best beach that no one seems to know about, much less visit. Starting the night before and continuing that morning on my drive up to the trailhead, I’d been workshopping an idea: The Monday Morning Marin Run Club.
It’s self-explanatory. The name says it all. Every Monday morning I’m going to wake up early (I already do that anyway) and go for a trail run in Marin. The logic is easy enough to follow. There are few things I enjoy more than running out on a trail. While I’m out there — and once I’m done — almost without fail, I feel, well, joy.
So, why not reverse engineer that joy into the start of my week? Schedule it on my Google Calendar, so to speak.
That first stormy Monday morning, as I neared the end of the trail, I looked to my left and realized I was right on the edge of the cliff, a hundred-foot drop down to the beach where the roiling green waves crashed — eternally — against the teeth of the rocks. Looking out to Tennessee Point, which juts out into the Pacific, I shouted to no one but myself, with a few extra expletives mixed in: “I love this shit.”