Unconditional Love of Running

April 2, 2015-

The Unconditional Love of Running taught to me by my best friends!

As many of you already know……my best and favorite running partners are my dogs. I came to love running for fun at an early age right on…..at the time (as I kid, I knew of the simple art of running, I never put a time on my running, I never tried to place in my age group, I never put any conditions on my running). Over the years yeah, I must admit I came to love placing in my age group, one time coming in third overall female, back in 2010 achieving the Most Improved Runner award in GLIRC (ok, most improved is a little different I think but I’ll get back to that one). Since then I took a step back and learned from my best friends, the late and great Skyler, Sandy, Candycane (my hilly Vermont runners as well- yes, we ran a hilly 10k all together- in fact the only group of 4 running the race!) and now Scout……Back to my point, I decided I wanted to run to improve myself inside and out, the only condition if this indeed counts as a condition, is to improve myself within no time limits, etc…..I just want to put one foot in front of the other and go. Not only that but I want to do so along with my best friends. Most recently that happens to be Scout. But every time I step out the door from this point on, I want to enjoy every step along my path. And to pay attention to the deer crossing our path, the rustle of the leaves under our feet/ paws, the snow falling in our eyes, the sun beating down on our face, the gentle breeze that cools our run, the sand that squishes between our toes as we run along the shore, chasing after the dog ahead of us together (whether at the Doggy Dash or on a training

run, letting my best friend say hi- yes, sniff the dog’s butt, talking to others nicely along the route, and just getting out there and taking every breathe with a smile, as some people haven’t always had the oppourtunity to do ( I am thinking of a true story on taterunning.com I just read). Taking photos along the way again of my journey and blogging about my day’s journey on one of my blogs on www.pamelaschmidlin.com or www.doggonehealthychoices.com.

To often in life we put conditions on everything we do, everyone, every animal, everything! And this causes STRESS in our lives! Think about it our animal companions are of course stressed as stress is a part of life but the amount of stress they hold compared to us, I mean we can learn something from them no?!!??......

So from this point on, I vow to try my best to live the lesson I was taught by all my animal companions: to love unconditionally! Now this is for myself as well as most humans a difficult task to accomplish on a daily basis but I will be giving it a shot. And that will include:

THE UNCONDITIONAL LOVE OF RUNNING!

This is not to say that every so often I will not time my mile, or try to do a race in given time, I mean come on I am still human! But it does mean PURE SIMPLE ENJOYMENT of the sport will be back in my life from this point on!

By george I think Pam has finally got it!,
Scout and Pam