I’ve got this road race coming up at the end of August. It seemed like a good idea when I registered and paid the pretty hefty fee months ago. But now August is sneaking up on me and I’ve been away from home for weeks at a time not training.

Oh, I took running clothes with me wherever I went. I’m sure they were quite comfortable sitting nice and secure inside my luggage.

Meanwhile, I need to get back on track. I’ve given myself permission to walk as much of the ten mile race as I need to. I’ve never run the whole thing, and I’ve run this race a bunch of times over the years. But still it would be nice to finish in a reasonable time. At least within the same day. Walking is sooooo slow!

A running friend and I are planning on doing the race together, at least part of it. Funny, we are both worrying about whether or not we can stick with each other. She’s training by running 4 minutes, walking 1 minute. I’m training by running a quarter mile, walking a quarter mile.

I think my run portion likely is about 4 minutes, though I’m not sure. It’s a proven fact that it is impossible to do math in your head while you’re running and this morning I was trying to divide my average time into quarters to get some idea of my pace. I definitely know that my walk portion is way longer than her one minute walk break.

Today I did six miles, at my favorite park, trying to get a feeling for my speed, or lack of it. I tried to find the stopwatch on my phone app, but realized pretty quickly that I can’t actually see my phone apps without my glasses. So I don’t know if I’ll be able to stick with Betty at our race, but I’ll work between now and then to run her style, 4 minutes of running, one minute of walking.

We’ll see how it goes.

Meanwhile, here’s a montage of pretty things I saw on this morning’s run/walk.

So…how does all of this fit Trent’s weekly smile? Well, it felt great to be back at my favorite park, one where I used to run long every Saturday with a multitude of running friends. Lots of beautiful things to see, so I took photos during my quarter mile walks.

During one of those walk breaks a beautiful doe stood just behind a bush, she stared at me, I stared at her. Would have been an amazing photograph, but my phone didn’t have enough storage to take one more image. So she and I just watched each other for a long time. Made my mile 5 extra long, but extra special. So it all balances out.

I think I was smiling the whole six miles. In fact I was so happy to get the six miles done that I pulled into a cupcake place on the way home and bought a lovely lemon creme cupcake.

No I did not!! But I did look longingly at the cupcake place as I drove past. Hope the thought of a lemon cupcake made you smile!

But really, please write a post about what you’ve smiled about this week and link to Trent’s blog. He’ll recap all the smiles next Monday. It’s always good to begin Monday with a bunch of smiles!

Can’t wait to see yours!