Running on the Coast: HMB International Marathon

by Whitney Merrill

Pillar Point Harbor, the starting point of the Half Moon Bay International Marathon. Photos: Whitney Merrill.

September 2011— 
It’s 5 p.m. on a Tuesday afternoon on Purissima Street in downtown Half Moon Bay, and Amy Rhodes and Dr. Humphrey Lu are stretching out in front of Lu’s pediatrics office, preparing for their weekly coastal run together. Normally the talk would involve the weather, and catching up on the news, but with the Half Moon Bay International Marathon just weeks away the focus is on the upcoming race and their preparation for it.

Rhodes says, “We met each other through Team in Training and found out that we run at the same pace. When I brought my kids for their doctor’s appointment with Dr. Lu, we ended up talking as much about running as the kids, so we decided — fewer kids’ appointments, more running appointments. Having a running partner really helps; when you make a commitment to run with someone else you’re more likely to keep it.”

Lu says, “For the marathon, I’m doing the 5K, supporting Amy, and prepping for theSan Jose Rock ’n’ Roll half-marathon the week following. The last five to six miles are extremely tough so it’s really nice to have someone cheer you on. I could talk to you about running a long time. I know it’s important to exercise but I didn’t really start to enjoy it until I started  Team in Training
for a marathon — it changed my life. I love the discipline, bonding with people on the team, suffering together! It really empowers you to finish a marathon; it makes you feel that you can do anything.”

Amy Rhodes and Dr. Humphrey Lu in training on the California Coastal Trail at the end of Kelly Street, Half Moon Bay.

There are four options to participate in the Half Moon Bay event: full marathon, half-marathon, 10K event, and 5K family fun run, which has no entry fee. The marathon starts from Pillar Point Harbor and heads north along the harbor out to Mavericks around Foo Rock, up the bluff and out to and around the Montara lighthouse before returning back to the harbor. It then continues south along the coastal trail with the 5K and 10K turnarounds at Miramar and Dunes beaches, respectively. The full marathon continues on around the Ritz-Carlton in Half Moon Bay before returning back to the finish line at Pillar Point Harbor.

Lu and Rhodes head out for their training run of eight miles by turning down Kelly Street and heading out on the California Coastal Trail along the bluffs of Poplar Beach, where they enter the southern leg of the marathon. The full marathon will be USA Track & Field-certified, and will therefore be recognized by the Boston Marathon and other events which require qualification on a certified course. The entire marathon follows the coastline, allowing the runners to experience beautiful views. It is also run during our wonderful fall coastal weather season, virtually guaranteeing sun combined with ideal running temperatures in the 50s and 60s. Sam’s Chowder House is the founding sponsor and it will have the ChowderMobile at the finish line area.

This year the marathon is going green and working with the Council for Responsible Sport to seek gold certification. Included in the green plan are the following suggestions that runners and spectators can follow:

• BYOB: Bringing your own water bottle will greatly reduce the number of paper cups used out on the course. Each aid station along the course will feature a BYOB station with pitchers of water to refill your bottle.

Map showing northern turn-around at Point Montara Lighthouse in Montara and the southern turn-around at the Ritz-Carlton in Half Moon Bay. Map and further details can be found at http://halfmoonbayim.org/course/.

• Recycle: The goal is to have less than one pound of landfill waste per athlete. To make this happen, the race will provide recycling bins for bottles, cans, plastic and cardboard — so please use them!

• Carpool: If you have friends who are running the race, please share a ride. You can meet new runners by signing up for Pickup Pal on the marathon’s website.

Rhodes and Lu continue along the California Coastal Trail to the Ritz for their final training loop. From up on the trail you can hear the seagulls, smell the sea breezes and see the surfers riding the waves below. It is truly a wonderful place to run, and to be inspired at the same time. Lu sums it up well, saying, “The great part about running on the coast is that: 1) The weather is much cooler and more ideal than over the hill, 2) You can’t beat running on the coastal trail, especially running on the bluff and looking out over the ocean, 3) It’s nice to see people you know and to feel that you’re part of the community. … I think it’s great to see your doctor running — not just having him tell you to exercise but actually doing it. You have to lead by example.”

Road along Miramar Beach part of the marathon route.

The marathon comes to the coast on Sept. 25, 2011; the full marathon starts at 7 a.m. Hope to see you there!

Coastviews Magazine Article Link

The Starfish Journey

Cape Cod Starfish - Eastham, MA

I returned to writing after what seemed like a short break for traveling and found that over three months had passed.  Like a Vision Quest, a Walkabout or even a Sabbatical, I define a Starfish Journey as an adventure where you take a a significant amount of time to expand your consciousness and spread yourself out before returning home to your new found center.  One of the differences of a Starfish Journey is that it is a water journey, requiring that you don't venture too far onto land and away from your tide pool of spiritual nourishment.

My journey took me to several countries and oceanside locales, some that I had visited before and some that were new. Capetown, Las Vegas, Barcelona, Tunisa, Rome, Florence, Cannes & Cape Cod - some were warm and inviting and some brought back memories of fear and loss.  Visiting them all in this lifetime in a compressed period of time via airplanes, ships and cars was my expansion.  Coming back to the tide pools of my youth on Cape Cod was my rejuvenation.  Experiencing it all together with my wife & son in love, joy and happiness was my centering.

What I also re-learned for myself is that no matter how far we go away, we always return in some way.  Whether it be external or internal experiences, life is more like a circle or a spiral than a straight line.  However, It is the journeying outward that can assist us in orienting to the center of our personal universe.  Like an astral body that is drawn back down to earth by gravity each time, sometimes you have to take the leap to feel the pull.

I encourage you all to try a Starfish Journey for your next expansion adventure - I try and take one every several years.  It does not necessarily have to be far ranging or diverse - time, water, open eyes and an open heart are all that is required.  Just remember to come back to your tidepool! :)

All the Best,
Whitney
© 2011 All Rights Reserved, Whitney Merrill

"Wherever you go, there you are." - Anonymous (or The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai, 1984)

Summer Cover

I had one of my Half Moon Bay pictures featured on the cover of Coastviews Magazine this month - very psyched! Hope that you're enjoying your summer as much as we are! :)

All the Best,
Whitney

© 2011 All rights reserved, Whitney Merrill

LOA for Today:

Cape of Good Hope - Capetown S. Africa

"In order to help someone who's in a very different vibrational frequency, you've got to adjust your vibrational frequency so that they can hear you. And if we were standing in your physical shoes, we would not adjust our vibrational frequency down—ever. We would not introduce more resistance in our vibration for any reason whatsoever, because disconnecting yourself from resources does not give them more to eat."

--- Abraham
exerpted from a Workshop based on the Book Law of Attraction

Best of BLOG: Praise as a Paddle

(Best Of BLOG: re-posted from the Energetic Incubator)

As with water flowing downstream, we can choose to flow in the shadow of the rocks or sparkle lightly upon the surface.  We can look downstream (to see where we are going) and upstream (to see where we have been), but to maneuver yourself in this flow it is sometimes necessary to 'dip your paddle' in the water where you are right now.  How you do this can make all the difference in steering you away from obstacles and keeping you flowing easily along your journey.

Communicating praise to others is one of the best methods for guiding your 'paddle' to assist you in your course adjustments.  By 'pinging' others with praise, we learn exactly where we are, where we have been and where we are going through the process of validation.  What we are saying with praise is "I like this about you", "There is a part of me that aligns positively with that part of you" and "We are flowing in the clear water together in this regard."  Conversely, criticism says the opposite and ultimately serves to slow our journey and muddy the waters, making it difficult to navigate or stay on the surface.

At first we may make 'tentative' strokes or perhaps even 'over adjust' with our praise, but as with anything practice and repetition can assist us in developing mastery and eventually navigating by 'auto-pilot'.  A daily suggested practice is to praise 3 people: one in your present, one from your 'past' and one from your 'future', where 'past' and 'future' refer to people that are floating either upstream of downstream of you right now.  Examples of 'past' might be a former boss, co-worker, mentor or friend who you still admire but are not actively communicating with right now.  'Future' might be someone you just newly met who inspired or excited you.  And 'Present' could be your spouse/significant other, close family member/friend or just someone that you see each day at the coffee shop.

In praising, simply find one thing that you like, respect or notice as positive about that person and communicate that to them.  Start with 3 people and then continue the practice each day, observing how you are flowing along your journey.  Are you flowing on the surface or under the rocks?  You choose.

All the Best,
Whitney
© 2010 All rights reserved, Whitney Merrill 

'Praise is like sunlight to the human spirit, we cannot flower and grow without it.' - Jesse Lair

Solar Eclipse at Midnight

This shot was taken in Tromsø, Norway at midnight May 31 by Rhys Jones.

During the Arctic summer, the sun dips low on the horizon but never sets. That means a solar eclipse is theoretically possible at any time. But this week's eclipse was the first visible from Scandinavia since 2000, and the deepest since 1985. The next one won't be for another 73 years.

  - from Wired (via NPR)

Spirtual Turning Points

Coastviews Magazine Article
Victoria Marina-Tompkins: Guiding people through the major life transitions

by Whitney Merrill

Victoria Marina-Tompkins, photo courtesy of Paula Kirkland.

June 2011 — Victoria Marina-Tompkins has written and published a new book entitled Spiritual Turning Points: A Metaphysical Perspective of the Seven Life Transitions. A longtime Coastside resident known for her deep wisdom and compassionate nature, she has an active private practice at the Flight of the Hawk Center for Contemporary Shamanism in Half Moon Bay. She sat down with me recently in her El Granada home to share some of her personal story and her purpose for writing the book.

Marina-Tompkins was born and raised in the Bay Area where at the age of 8 she started her musical training on the violin, later majoring in music performance and psychology at Cal State East Bay in Hayward. She began her professional music career when she was 19, working at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco; her first show was Two Gentlemen of Verona: A Rock Musical. She went on to do a wide range of work, playing for commercials, movie soundtracks and the symphony — and with Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Sammy Davis Jr. and many others.

Marina-Tompkins said, “I loved making music in my 20s. I met my husband — a jazz sax musician — and was living the creative life.” During this time she had a son and studied Orff Music for Children at the University of California, Santa Cruz, which opened her eyes to tribal-based rhythms and drumming, improvisation, and world music. “People think that being a professional musician is glamorous, but it’s very repetitive,” she said. Orff Music “felt more rich, and I saw that all children are innately musical. You just have to give them the ability to express that.” In 1985 she created Tunes for Tots, a music school for children based on the Orff-Schulwerk method of teaching.

Alaska represents the mysterious passageway of death through which we all must pass. Photo courtesy of Victoria Marina-Tompkins.

During this time Marina-Tompkins also began her study of shamanism with Michael Harner and Angeles Arrien — and her study of women’s spirituality with Karen Vogel and Hallie Austen Iglehart. She said, “Growing up, I was interested in spiritual matters, and explored tarot as a teenager. I was always interested in what we can’t see but that we intuitively know is there.” She began to make a transition, changing her focus from music to spirituality. She said: “It was my experience as a musician that helped me to understand that there is something greater than yourself, higher than high. You get out of your little self, into your bigger self, connect to the Tao. Connecting with spirit seemed very natural.”

While Marina-Tompkins had taught music to children for years, the move to teaching shamanism was a critical turning point in her career. Linda Yule, her friend and a psychotherapist, suggested they conduct a class — and they did, and the students liked it. “At that time, no one was teaching shamanism on the coast,” Marina-Tompkins said.

The iris represents the True Self as it prepares to unfold after the internal work at mid-life. Photo courtesy of Victoria Marina-Tompkins.

That class led her to found the Flight of the Hawk Center for Contemporary Shamanism in Half Moon Bay where she taught programs in cross-cultural shamanism and developed a private practice in intuitive counseling. Marina-Tompkins describes her approach this way: “I like combining astrology, esoteric studies, and spirituality, grounded by shamanism that is very earthy.”
Through her years of working directly with people in her practice, she “saw that there were very natural transitional periods. Many times we react with fear when we come to a point like that and fall into resignation or depression. I learned that these were opportunities and that we live a lot of lives in one life. Part of my belief system is that we have the opportunity to choose from fear or from love. We may get stuck in old patterns but we always have the opportunity to choose every day. When you look at the little choices as practice … the big choices are easier.”

Marina-Tompkins’ book focuses on the seven major transitions of life, from birth to death, and provides specific guidance and examples of how to make these transitions in a positive way, to live a truly powerful life. Readers can learn about the 2 year old, realizing that the tantrum is the child trying to create self identity. Or that teenagers choose their self-defense mechanisms in response to expanding this identity, and that we address identity issues again in mid-life as we seek the emergence of the True Personality and engage in our


Life Tasks. And throughout, the book is filled with people’s stories.
Marina-Tompkins said: “I could not have written this book until I did. I needed 20-plus years of stories, otherwise the ideas are abstract.” She continued: “Illustrating the seven transitions through people’s lives makes the concepts more tangible. Storytelling is healing. We heal through sharing our stories and listening to the stories of others. We see the common threads that run through all of our lives.”
Marina-Tompkins said that she had three primary reasons for writing the book: “To bring together my life work, to give back what I learned, and to be of service … to help other people. Indigenous people say your only responsibility in life is to bring forward your gifts. … Maybe my contribution is the combination of all three.”

Her book can be found on the Coastside at Ocean Books on Main Street and at Harbor Books in the Shoppes at Harbor Village. It is also available online through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and iBooks for Apple. Formats are hardcover, paperback, and e-book. She is currently teaching workshops, performing radio interviews, and continuing her private practice with clients worldwide.

Coastviews Magazine Article Link