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Twenty-five days and 5,9217.7 miles later, my cross-country road trip is now complete, and I’m back to writing to you from my dining room table in New Jersey. Driving to and from California with my dog, I logged a lot of hours behind the wheel but made plenty of photo-worthy stops: I rode a shuttle to the top of St. Louis’ Gateway Arch, ate BBQ in Kansas City, walked on the Badwater Basin in Death Valley and hugged Donald Duck.
I also ran in a few spots along the way, and when I saw something out of the ordinary, I posted a picture of it to my Instagram and Twitter accounts using the #seenomyrun hashtag.
I haven’t been able to pinpoint when the hashtag became a thing, but I’ve been using it for at least four years. It’s a way to show off cool things I see when I run at home, but also to share what I see as a running tourist. Examples from this trip: a creepy looking Bob’s Big Boy in Lancaster, Ohio; a shuttlecock on the lawn of the Nelson-Atkinson Museum of Art in Kansas City; a dinosaur using a bone as a cane at a mini golf course in Topeka, Kan.; and the most beautiful dog park I’ve ever seen in Durango, Colo. (yes, that’s my dog in the picture).
Running on vacation can be tough work, especially if you’re driving five to 12 hours a day, as I did. But I tried to fit in some exercise every other day, and to see if I could find something that might be mundane to the folks who live there, but special to me.
I don’t have any hard and fast rules about taking photos on a run, except to make sure that I’m in a safe spot to stop (i.e., don’t stop in the middle of the road, and don’t obstruct other runners who may be out that day). If I like it, I stop, take a picture and move on. I also won’t stop if I’m doing any kind of speedwork because that defeats the point of the speedwork, but I didn’t do any of that on my trip.
What have you #seenonyourrun? Let me know — I’m on Twitter @byjenamiller.
My runs on the road weren’t serious — more like “lollygagging,” as my kindergarten teacher Sister Damien would call it. That changes now that I’m back and training for the New York City Marathon begins. Anyone else just starting? Let me know.
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