Making friends with the neighborhood run

As much as I prefer driving somewhere cool to run, lately I’ve been thinking that if I want to embrace a more sustainable lifestyle, I need to develop a better attitude about the neighborhood route.

Step One: Making up a list of what I hate vs. what I tolerate about simply running down the road.

 So it turns out there’s only one thing I really hate about running in our neighborhood, and several things I actually like. Apparently my irritation about the one bad thing — navigating a short stretch of a sometimes busy highway to get to some fairly bucolic roads — was just making more noise in my head than my more muted appreciation of the good things.

With that in mind, lately I’ve been taking more neighborhood runs – which doesn’t take much, because there have sometimes been entire months when I’d run anywhere but here — and trying to dwell on the positives:

• The almost uninhabited 1-mile gravel road that’s not only kind of scenic, but a great spot for timed mile repeats. (Which is something I’ve never done but might try, especially since Ben’s gotten interested in doing those for cross country and baseball.)
• The cushy pea gravel that lines the shoulders of the blacktop on the next road over.
• Speaking of the next road over, I used to hate crossing the railroad tracks there because you can’t see over the top and I used to worry that my younger male redneck cousins might come blasting over like the “Dukes of Hazard” at any moment. (At least one of those guys still dangles a set of metallic bull testicles from the hitch of his pickup, but I think they‘ve all three mellowed enough that I no longer need to fear for my life.) With that particular worry out of the way, I’ve gotten to kind of like it when a train comes along to race me down the road.
• The fact that there are more horses and goats than dogs along this route.
• All the connections to my past and present, from my cousins who live in my grandparents’ old farmhouse to the neighborhood stables where Rowan has done so much riding over the years.
•  The incentive to stretch out this route, making it more meaningful and more of a challenge at the same time. If I keep going past the stables and hang a right I could add a couple more miles running to the old cemetery where my great-great grandfather, the Civil War soldier, is buried.
• Finally, and this ought to be the best reason of all, I don’t need to drive anywhere to make this run. It takes less time, doesn’t cost anything, and doesn’t pollute the environment.