Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

Cinderella Mom

If you think Jesus would have come into your home that day and not issued a strong rebuke to the head of household, you are mistaken. These words of condemnation have been haunting me for days now. They aren’t all that different than the soundtrack I play in my head on an almost-daily basis. It’s…

Read More

This is 40

I am nesting. On Saturday I emptied the refrigerator. Last summer’s homemade pickles in their jars. The bread ends that seem to multiply on every shelf. The eggs. The milk. The fruit and veggies. All of it sat on the floor or the counter as I carefully removed the shelves and wiped them down with…

Read More

Beauty on the Backroads {or Why I Changed the Name of my Blog}

I’ve heard that life is like a highway. And it definitely seems like that sometimes. The pace of life swirls around me at dizzying speeds. We’re all so busy. In such a hurry. Always somewhere to be, something else to do. I’m a get-to-the-point, get-there-quick kind of girl. I don’t like to waste time on…

Read More

What is THAT smell?

Week 9, Day 2. 3 more miles. 37:28. An out-of-town hilly route. The fun thing about running is noticing what you don’t normally when you’re driving. Like the beautiful country homes near the creek. Bridges and underpasses.

And, today, smells.

Running through the underpass brought a whiff of something stale and moldy.

Past a machine shop of some kind where the odor was so strong I wanted to vomit. (That’s the smell of death, my husband informed me later.) OK. Should we call the police? There were definitely signs of life, but the smell … oh, I won’t soon forget it.

Manure. Myerstown often smells like manure because it’s surrounded by dairy and cattle farms. Today, though, I was sure I’d stepped in it. Nope, just in the air.

Everything’s sore today. One more training run before the big day on Saturday. Can’t believe the goal is so close. And we’re still standing. Still having fun.

This time next week

Week 9, Day 1. The beginning of the end. Or is it the beginning of the beginning? A tough 3 miles today. Mostly because it’s Saturday and we’re tired and 3 miles is a long way to run. My legs are still aching, but maybe that just means it was a good workout.

One week till 5K and I’m starting to think of logistics. Where will we park? How far is the beginning from the end? How early do we show up? Will it be feasible for the kids and their grandparents to see us at the end? What am I going to wear? Those are just today’s questions. But this time next week, none of those questions will matter. Barring any debilitating injury this week (Please, God, don’t let that happen!) I will have run a 5K. Our goal is 40 minutes. Today’s 3 mile run was 37:26, so it’s possible. Probable even. But the course is unfamiliar to us, so we’ll see how it goes.

I’m also looking ahead to what happens next. So, we’ve had this training plan to run a 5K. What do we do when the 5K is over to maintain or continue our training? It may have to be indoor and low-cost, so I’m open to suggestion if you have any. I don’t want to lose the winter and end up starting couch to 5K over again in the spring, but winter does pose its share of problems for fitness.

Three miles. I once thought it impossible, avoidable and miserable. I’m on the other side of that fence now. I think I might be on the verge of loving running. Who’d have thunk it?