Sunset 8:25 pm: In search of one last blush

It was something the female Dawn Jogger (now one-half of the Two Gimps) took for granted, she thought today, on the evening before she goes under the knife to repair all-things-gone-wrong with her Achilles tendon (but thankfully not a dreaded rupture).

For over 25 years, she's risen at dawn and jogged. Never very fast (8.5 minutes a mile may have been her best and that is oh-so-slow) and never very far (13 miles the longest at a jogging pace but one walk that ended at mile 20). It was the predictability that soothed the soul. She recalls only one long stretch that kept her on the sidelines - a bout of plantar fascitis that began when the Giants played their first World Series game since 1989 (that would be 2002) and extended to after Valentines Day the following year. It seemed like a long time - but it ended.

Earlier this year something more long-lasting occurred. She started feeling a pinch of pain on the right side of her left foot sometime in March. It was a morning "gotcha" that disappeared as she jogged. But it got worse. It started cropping up - and enduring - at anytime during her morning outing. She thought, "If it's still there when I get back from France, I'll do something about it." And yep, it was still there.

So she made an appointment with the "go-to-guy" sports podiatrist. Diagnosis: "Severe tendon deterioration and partial tear." Explorations into alternatives to surgery proved elusive. So tomorrow is the day.

Maybe the biggest surprise to the female DJ is that she's actually survived and adjusted to what she still refers to as the "dreaded elliptical." It's not as awful as she imagined but, at the same time, she thinks she discovered listening to books on tape "in the nick of time." The stories mask the boredom of the workout task.

There is no doubt that, in her mind, it's still "bye-bye gym" in an instant and back out in the fresh air that's dawn.

So what to do about a blog devoted to two Dawn Joggers that ran at dawn, reduced to one Dawn Jogger (following the male DJ's glioma diagnosis in October 2006), reduced to zero?

A more community-minded blog, In Menlo, has proved to be a diversion - and one with intriguing possibilities. But it's observational in even a more detached way than the female DJ's musings. Might something more personal emerge? Or more esoteric?

Future unknown. But the end of First Blush. If only the sun had managed a spectacular sunset this evening...