I'll just never learn.

Observe, if you will, the red-turning-blue bruising on my left ankle. This is what happens when you take a tumble off a sidewalk during a half marathon, which is what I did yesterday.

I had run up the monster hill that is 132nd in Kirkland. We were in the Bridle Trails neighborhood, and I could see the 7-mile marker up ahead. I was running on the sidewalk (first mistake), and I glanced at my watch. I noticed that I was running about 2 minutes faster than my PR time, and I started fantasizing about the finish. I wasn't watching where I was going and I missed the sidewalk as we crossed the street.

I felt and heard my ankle crack as I came down on my left foot. The runners and race monitors groaned collectively. A guy came over and asked, "Do you need a medic?" I was still surfing waves of pain, so I shook my head and said "I don't know."

The medics were coming anyway. Two guys raced over to me and had me sit on the curb, all the while talking to me in soothing tones. I took off my shoe and they iced the foot, then wrapped it in a compression bandage. I watched people racing past and figured I wasn't going to finish this one. My parents, who had never seen me race, were at the finish line with Steve and Bini. I swore under my breath.

"Do you want me to call someone for you?" asked one of the medics, the one with a beard. I didn't know yet.

"What happened?" asked the other, cuter medic. (You're never too injured to notice these things.)

"I was flying along, making good time, and I missed the sidewalk," I said.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," he replied.

"It happens," I shrugged, trying to sound matter-of-fact. In truth, I felt disappointed and angry at myself.

They helped me stand up and I stood, then walked on the ankle. Surprisingly, it felt OK. "I wonder if I could finish?" I asked.

They suggested I run a bit to test it out, which I did. "It feels OK," I told them. "I'm going to try it."

"Are you sure? We're the last medics on the course," said bearded guy.

"Yeah -- there's people all along the course. Someone will help." I was desperate to get going, to not lose my nerve.

The medics must have known better than to argue with a crazy runner. "OK, but you're not running for time," they warned.

"Right. I'm just running to finish." I thanked them and jogged off. The course was now downhill, and I was drafting off momentum and adrenaline. I'd lost about 10 minutes, but I was going to tough it out. I wasn't going to quit. I'm an athlete.

These were the mantras that kept running through my head as I ran miles 7 through 13.1. I kept checking in with my ankle, trying to gauge the pain level. It was always manageable, and I called on different body parts to pick up the slack. I ran softer on my feet, asking my knees to absorb more of the impact.

At mile 11.5, my knees started to protest. I popped an Aleve and willed my body to hang in there for just a few more minutes. I'd come this far -- I wasn't going to stop. I tried to pick up my pace, if for no other reason than that if I went faster, I'd be done faster (this is how a crazy runner thinks). My official time was 2:19, about 12 minutes off what I'd predicted before my fall. I saw my parents, my son and Steve and the first thing I said was: "I took a tumble."

As the day went on, my ankle swelled up and up and up. It was fascinating to watch, but also scary. All of my other running-related injuries -- hip bursitis, plantar fasciitis, piriformis syndrome, strained Achilles -- had been invisible to me. I could feel them, but I couldn't see them. But my ankle was turning red and purple and blue, a Technicolor testament to how far I'd pushed myself in order to finish the race. Had I done permanent damage? Had I broken something? How would I care for my active toddler?

Today, my podiatrist took some X-rays and assured me that I haven't broken any bones. He also said that running on my ankle probably didn't worsen the injury (although it worsened the swelling). But it's amazing to me that I just lose my common sense when I'm running. So many of my injuries have occurred when I pushed through pain. What is it going to take for me to finally listen to my body?

The "S" word

Stretching. It's kind of like flossing, isn't it? You know you should do it, and you'll do it, dutifully, but it's not the main course. It's the clean up. And if you're like me, you rush through it.

Don't.

Stretching after exercise -- cardiovascular and strength training -- is really important. Some say that stretching helps move lactic acid out of your muscles, which prevents soreness. That's never been scientifically proven. But what's clear is that stretching improves flexibility, in your muscles but also in your joints. Flexibility improves your range of motion. In other words, the more limber you are, the more mobile you are.

Some sports medicine experts say you should stretch out for 15-20 minutes after a tough workout. These people must not have jobs or kids or laundry to fold. I'm lucky if I can do between 5 and 10 minutes, but I always stretch after running. I've had too many injuries to mess with the formula.

Here's my routine, cribbed from "The Runner's World Guide to Injury Prevention:"

• Calf stretch: Stand in front of a wall and place both hand on it for support. Take a step back with your left leg and extend it straight. Lean toward the wall so that you feel the stretch, but don't let your ankle collapse. Keep your foot flat on the floor. If your heel wants to come up, take a step in. Then, bend your left leg at the knee, slightly. You'll feel a different and deeper stretch. Hold each stretch for at least 30 seconds and switch legs.
• Hamstring stretch: Rest your heel on a surface about a foot off the floor, but lower than your hips. (A step is perfect, if you're at the gym, a stair is good if you're outside.) Bend the knee slightly and hinge forward at the hips until you feel a stretch in your hamstrings. Hold for at least 30 seconds, switch legs.
• Quadriceps: Stand straight, with your hand on a wall or something sturdy for balance. Bend your left leg and grab your foot, pulling it toward your butt until you feel a stretch along the front of your thigh. Do not arch your back. Hold, switch legs, etc.
• Hip flexor stretch: Stand straight, with a hand on a wall or a chair. Step your left leg forward about two feet, and scootch your right leg behind you so that you're on your toe and your thigh is right under your hip. You should feel a stretch in the front of the right hip. Now, keeping your torso straight, bend both legs. You should feel a deeper stretch along the front of your right hip. Hold, switch legs.
• Glute and hip stretch: This is the one I NEVER skip, because I've had so many hip problems. Lay on your back, on a mat or carpet. Bend your left knee toward your chest and then fan it out to the left, grasping your left foot with your hands. Bring your right knee up until it bisects your left ankle, and then hold that stretch. You can loop your hands around the back of your right leg for extra leverage. Hold this sucker for awhile.

The illiotibial band is connective tissue that runs along the outside of your leg. It's not a muscle, but it definitely can be the cause of knee and hip problems, so it's important to loosen this sucker up if you're feeling tightness in that area.

I've never had success with any of the IT band stretches prescribed to me - it's a hard region to target. So I've got one of those foam roller thingies and I'll position it under my hip right where my leg meets it, and roll it up and down, along the side, to my knee. I warn you, it hurts like a bitch. But it helps.

Another approach is to take a tennis ball and stand next to a wall. Wedge the tennis ball between a tight spot on your hip or glute and the wall, and roll it around. Ouch. But it's like self-massage, and it can be very helpful.

I'll write more this week about other, non-stretching ways to relieve soreness. I got a very weird tip from a massage therapist yesterday. Stay tuned.

Anatomy of a long run

6:30 - Wake up, reluctantly, to my child yelling "Mama! Mama!" Stand up, and ow. Who whacked my left calf with a crowbar?

7:00 - Coffee. The first of two giant mugs.

7:15 - Second of two giant mugs.

8:45 - Bundle up Bini and Dad, who are going to play outside. "We'll be back at 11," says Steve. "I'll be running," I say.

9:00 - Sit in front of computer. Read news. Look at weather report. It's raining.

9:30 - Google "sore calf."

10:00 - Laundry.

10:15 - Two tablespoons of peanut butter. Because, eventually, I'll go running and will need the protein.

10:30 - Read newspaper.

11:00 - Steve and Bini come home. I'm still in my pajamas. Steve looks quizzically at me, but doesn't say anything.

11:20 - Eat 3 Shot Blocks and a handful of pecans. Dress in running clothes. Load last week's "This American Life" onto iPod. Fill water bottle. Take ibuprofen.

11:35 - Start running. Painfully.

11:40 - Calf is OK, but man, the bottoms of my feet feel like orange pulp.

11:50 - Thank God for Ira Glass. The podcast, about guns and gun owners, is interesting enough to distract me from my sore feet.

12:00 - Well, almost interesting enough.

12:15 - Run into Heather, one of my mom's group running buddies, and her cute little girl.

12:25 - Five-mile mark. I stop, eat the remaining 3 Shot Blocks. Along the path there's one of those mega-church places. A few people look at me as I jog past. I think they're judging me.

12:30 - Switch to music. Feeling good.

12:40 - Jeff Buckley song triggers fond memories. Reminisce.

12:50 - I have to work hard to keep my pace at 11:45. I keep wanting to run faster, but the training plan says to go slow, or else. But at this rate, it'll be dinner time before I eat lunch.

1:10 - Sky is darkening, and I'm listening to "Digital," by Joy Division. Feel rebellious.

1:20 - Done. Hobble through the back gate, through the yard and into the house. I catch sight of myself in the hall mirror. Yikes.

Ode to running buddies

I was always a solitary runner. I started out alone, with just the company of my mix tape. Yes, I'm old enough to have made mix tapes, and young enough to remember that one of them had "Just Like Paradise" by David Lee Roth on it.

At my university, people seemed to fall into two camps: Very fit, and not at all fit. The people I saw running around campus looked like Olympians or something, and I was most certainly not. I was overweight and didn't know how to breathe and I had to stop all the time, and I was embarrassed that I was so bad at running. Back then I didn't like to be bad at anything or admit that I might not know how to do something. So, I trudged along, alone with my tunes.

And that sort of became my template. I really needed my music to run. Sometimes I was in a U2 mood, and one tape, post-college, had nothing but the grunge stuff of the day, like "Rusty Cage" (man, what a good running song), "Would?" by Alice in Chains and "Chloe Dancer" by Mother Love Bone. I could listen to that song over and over, putting one foot in front of the other and marinating in my early-20s angst.

For a long time, my music and my thoughts were my running buddies -- even when I got faster. So when a colleague, Rachel Charlton, asked if I wanted to run with her after work along the Berkeley waterfront, I was a little hesitant. I mean, what if she were super fast and she had to slow down for me? But it was great to have someone to run with, and as far as I know, we were at roughly the same pace.

Running with someone is a pretty intimate thing. Rachel and I talked about all kinds of stuff -- our husbands, our college years, our families, our co-workers. She got sick on a long run not too far from my house once, and she called me. I came right out to get her. We were running buddies, after all. We traveled to Santa Cruz to run a race together. When she crossed the finish line at her first marathon, I was there to cheer her on, though she was babbling incoherently and saying things like "I'll never do that again!" (I think she did, though.)

I was content to go back to my solo running when Steve and I moved up to Redmond. I was miserable in the gray chill of the Pacific Northwest, as anyone who ever asked "How are you?" found out pretty quick. I was constantly in a foul mood, and I wanted to be alone. So when my new friend Robyn suggested we run together, again, I was hesitant. I was a "serious runner" at this point, and I wasn't sure I wanted to sacrifice one of my runs for the sake of a budding friendship. What if she was really slow?

Uh, no. Robyn wasn't able to do the mileage that I could initially, but man, she was fast. And she was a great talker -- there's nothing more awkward than running with someone you hardly know and having nothing to talk about. She told me about her job, regaled me with funny L.A. anecdotes and stories of her childhood in St. Louis.

When I could catch my breath (seriously, she's like a gazelle, that one), I'd tell her about how hard it had been to move, to leave my friends and family, but also knowing that we needed a change. I confided in her about all kinds of things -- our struggles to have a family, my painful fight with my longtime best friend and my first marriage. We ran on the Sammamish River Trail, in the Redmond Watershed and raced in Bellingham and Seattle. She became one of my best friends, and I have running to thank for it.

When Robyn moved to Atlanta, I mourned the loss of my running buddy. But rather than go back to solo running, I started getting together with a group of women on Wednesday nights, and then Jennifer, a new friend (and Robyn's former boss, oddly) on Friday mornings. I still like to run alone sometimes, with my podcasts and my remixes for company. But I'm a busy working mom, and socializing while exercising is right up my multi-tasking alley. Plus, there's nothing quite like a friendship forged during heavy breathing, pre-dawn rain showers or a summer sunset. Sometimes, those are the friendships that go the distance.

Ouch.

For all my flowery language about running, there are days when it sucks. Like today.

My cats decided to have a tussle on my bed this morning, 30 minutes before my alarm was due to go off. So, there's no going back to sleep at this point. I'd taken cold medicine last night to try and ward off the plague, so I was all cotton-headed and cross. But I fed the fighting cats, put on my running gear and set off.

The first mile is always a good indication of what you're dealing with, and it was not pleasant. My calves were whiny and my feet were tender. I must have looked like a little old lady out there today, plodding along listening to "This American Life" on my iPod. Thankfully, Dan Savage was on the tail end of this one. He advocates yelling at your kids. I like Dan Savage.

I don't like this predicament I'm in with my training, though. I have plantar fasciitis, which sounds really sketchy but is actually just sore arches in my feet. Not just -- it sidelines NBA stars and stuff -- but I've been dealing with this stupid injury for 10 years. The only solution is to stop running, which I'm not going to do. So I have orthotics in my shoes, I dutifully do my stretches and when my feet start feeling tender, I roll 'em on a frozen orange juice can.

The problem is that I've got 13 more miles to run this week. That's the training plan. I like plans. I feel rudderless without some sort of overarching agenda in my life, even if it is just a computer-generated 18-week half-marathon training plan. But I'm feeling a little tired and achy today. Am I on the cusp of a bigger injury? Or just feeling off today?

This is the hedging game that every athlete plays with herself. "Can I push this one more day? Two more days?" And every time I push it, I get hurt. To wit: Last year, after my personal record-setting half marathon, I kept going with my marathon training and tore my hip labrum. In retrospect, this was really stupid. But running, for all the good it does for my brain, body and soul, is also a form of addiction.

Will I take tomorrow off? Probably not. I'll just run very, very slowly -- and hope my body cooperates.

Fitting it all in

As a response to my buddy Bridget's comment, I'm going to write a bit about fitting everything in. Basically, it's not always possible.

For instance, I didn't work out today, because our nanny has the flu, and my husband, Steve, stayed home with our son. That means I'm on duty in the morning and in the evening. We have an elliptical machine in front of a little television, which is awesome. I use it all the time. In fact, I watched the entire library of "The Shield," "The Wire" and a season of "Breaking Bad" while pedaling in place. I have weights, a Bosu and a yoga ball. But tonight, after getting my son down for bed, instead of hopping on for a level 12 hill workout with the third episode of "Glee," I had to edit a story and drink a glass of wine. Well, probably not that last part. Did I mention I'm also eating ice cream?

It's not always possible to fit it all in. My life is scheduled to the hilt, and when you have a kid, you have to be willing to chuck your plans if he or she gets sick, or was up half the night with nightmares, or you've got a bout of insomnia that came out of nowhere. It sucks. I get grouchy about it. But luckily, I have an awesome spouse who knows that if I don't get to work out at least five days a week, I'm as ill-tempered as Dick Cheney.

But other than having a piece of exercise equipment in my home and a fantastic husband, I also have to be willing to go for a run whenever I can. That means rousing before the sun rises and strapping on a headlamp and a blinking vest so distracted drivers don't mow me down on the parkway. That means keeping a packed gym bag in my car, just in case I only have an hour for a workout. That means being inflexible when people try to encroach upon my workout time.

That's a hard one, I know. I'm a mom, and a pleaser by nature. I can totally see how moms fall into the trap of putting themselves last. I spend all day pining for my son. Choosing to do a run after work instead of spending that time with him feels selfish.

But is it? Your child needs to see that you take care of yourself -- that you shower, you exercise, you eat a balanced diet. Modeling is the most powerful way to parent. And I'm taking that to heart.

I remember reading something totally asinine that our former president said (and no, I'm not just saying this because I'm a Democrat). He was profiled in "Runner's World" back when he was still in the White House. When asked about making time to exercise, he said: "If the President of the United States can make the time, anyone can."

Please. When was the last time the president had to stand in line at the post office? Or call and set up a babysitter for Saturday night? Or stay on hold for 15 minutes with his insurance company? Making time for exercise is HARD. I know it is. So I get up early, I make deals with my husband and I just make it happen.

I'm a slow runner ...

... but a determined one. I've been running for almost 20 years, and I started, basically, because it was the cheapest way I could think of to shed the 50 pounds I'd gained in the dorms at UC Davis. I remember chugging along Sycamore Lane toward campus, past all the college-named streets: Wake Forest, Cornell, Villanova, Radcliffe. I didn't know whether to breathe through my nose or my mouth, and my lungs were on fire most of the time. I'd have to stop every few minutes and catch my breath. But I'd do 2 miles, three or four times a week.

I did take off the weight -- though it took me almost two years and cutting back on Taco Bell. But weight control isn't the only reason I run. I run now because I'm a runner. Running is like prayer for me. My mind is calm, my body's working and I feel completely, totally free.

I should mention, since my high school friends will never let me forget, that I was the girl in P.E. class who always had a reason why I shouldn't run laps around the soccer field or the pond at the park near campus. I had cramps, or I had a bum knee. I don't really know why I hated running all that much. Actually, I think I do. It's because I was slow.

When I was living in San Francisco, I consulted with a running coach. I'd been running for a dozen years at that point, and raced in a few 5Ks. I never seemed to get any faster, and it was frustrating. In my world, if you worked hard at something, you got better -- simple as that. But I was running and running and running, and not getting any faster.

This running coach met me at the fabled Kezar Stadium, where the Haight-Ashbury melts into the Inner Sunset. She had me run 2 miles as fast as I could, and she videotaped me. I remember running as fast as I could that day, but when I looked at the tape later, it looked like I was sort of shuffling around the track.

"You have a short, choppy stride," she wrote in my assessment, but that I should try to build up my speed first and then work on lengthening my stride. She also diagnosed my hips as "hypermobile," and suggested Pilates to strengthen my core. The coach also recommended that I join her early-morning track workouts, with an all-female running group called the Iguanas.

The Iguanas bill themselves as a fun, non-competitive group of women who like to run and train together. But the Iguanas workouts kicked my ass. I was always the last woman running, or second to last. And that kind of sucked, so I stopped going. But I never stopped running.

I've run in Spain, Italy, South Africa, Costa Rica and Ethiopia. I've run in Denver, in Boston, in St. Petersberg, Fla., and along the shores of Lake Michigan. I've run four half-marathons, a dozen 10Ks and countless 5Ks. I'd like to run a marathon. Maybe someday.

I call myself a writer -- and, indeed, I write and edit for a living -- but I haven't written much in my off hours. I can come up with all kinds of reasons why: I'm busy. I have a son now. There's dog hair to be Dustbusted. I write for a living -- why do it when I don't have to? But the bottom line is that writing is as much a part of me as running is. And if writing about my other passion can stoke some sort of fire, so much the better.

I call this blog "Short Stride" after the assessment given to me by that running coach in San Francisco. I'm not a great runner -- I'm probably not even a good one. But I love doing it, and I love spreading the gospel of feet-on-pavement.

Enjoy.