Road Hazards

While on vacation in Maryland last month I set a couple of goals. These consisted of the following: That I wouldn't 1/ get bombed every night and that I would: 2/ go running to keep up on the marathon training schedule. With my family, sticking to #1 was going to be challenging and #2 was going to prove to be nearly impossible. But I was ready to give it a go.

So one morning early in the trip, when I wasn't feeling so great after failing miserably from sticking to goal #1 but somewhat still determined to stay on schedule, I headed out to go for a run. Where my sister lives, the country roads are quite narrow

- there really isn't a shoulder (nevermind a bike lane), so she suggested I run down a side road close by. I still had to take the main road in order to get there - about .3 miles in the danger zone. And, as my luck would have it, I heard the sound of hooves on the pavement not long after I took off on my little adventure.

It was the dreaded Amish buggy that I had the good fortune to hear heading my way. Not one, but three. They seemed just as shocked to see a crazy woman running down the road as I was to see three buggies full of people dressed in Amish attire being pulled in horse carts. I waved, they waved (at least they were friendly about it) and luckily, I got out of the way - long enough to take a picture. They don't quite like it when you take their photograph, so I had to be stealthy about it. Nothing says stealthy like standing in the middle of the road like a dingbat with a camera in your hand. I don't think they spotted what I was doing and if they did, they don't really have a 'reverse' gear to flip a quick u-turn to run me over, now do they?

After avoiding being trampled by the convoy, I made it to the road and started my own trot when obstacle #2 started to take effect. The weather on the east coast is much more humid than it is here on the west coast, so by the time I even got a short distance into the run I was already drenched with sweat and felt like I had gone further than a few hundred yards. The air is thick and hot making running that much more difficult and had me wishing for air conditioning, not to mention a nice, cold beer.

Down the road and back was only a mile each way, but that was quite enough. As I was running along I took in the sights & smells - like people outside shooting archery (sight you don't see everyday) and horse doo (smells from the Amish). At the end of the road there was even a hill I had to try to navigate -- down and back up, which with the heat was a challenge. The bugs were about as big as my head and felt compelled to dive bomb me as I ran, probably due to my lovely smell by that point. You think they'd follow the horses, but no such luck. Maybe I smelled like a horse, who knows.

The rest of my vacation was quite a bust, for running anyway. I did manage to drink my way through quite a few states, saw Elvis, caught a never ending cold and am now back attempting yet again to get back into the groove of training for the Santa Rosa marathon. Minor setback but I expect to make a complete recovery and get back to it.