the Bird in Hand 1/2 Marathon - unofficial version

Officially, the Bird in Hand 1/2 marathon was held on September 8th.  I was registered to run with Kseniya but because my friend Enid died, I cancelled my trip.   Kseniya and her friend actually ran the race, through scenic Amish country in humid, rural hilly Pennsylvania. 

This is what the route looked like on the official race day.  You gotta give the Amish women and men credit for running in dresses and long pants.

Another view of race day - they did have cloud cover but it was very humid

Kseniya at the end of the race - looking beautiful and not at all tired

When I visited her in PA last week, Kseniya asked me if I wanted to run the route of this 1/2 marathon.  This sounded like a good idea even though it meant driving about an hour to Bird in Hand.  She had written down the route and we decided to go for it.    We didn't get started till about 1230 and it was a warm day with little cloud cover - but not as warm and humid as the original race day.   I am usually a morning runner so starting a run after noon was a little weird.

We parked our car amidst tourist buses at a souvenir store.  It seemed weird to me that people would take buses to gawk at other people who were just living a different life style.   But the Amish people seemed to take it in stride and even capitalize on this - they offered horse and buggy tours of the countryside and sold t-shirts and baked goods.  We were getting our own on foot tour.  With our water bottles full of coconut water we headed down the road.  Kseniya also made some healthy snacks involving chia seeds and chocolate chips among other "good for you" things.

A lot of the terrain looked like the above picture. It was so peaceful...we hardly saw any cars - just a few horse and buggies.  It was green and beautiful. 

There were a lot of small school houses along the way.  Children dressed in long dresses or black pants and suspenders played baseball on the playgrounds - maybe it was recess.   I didn't take any pictures of the schools - somehow that didn't seem right.  I think I was remembering the incident of someone killing a bunch of kids in an Amish school in this area a few years back.  Kseniya and I discussed how amazing it was that the Amish community and the families involved forgave the killer and actually reached out to the family of the killer.   Forgiveness in a situation like this seems almost impossible...but better than holding a grudge which would just use up more negative energy and not bring anyone back.  I think the Amish are an amazing people.

One thing that amazed me was the massive laundry hanging out  I also hang my clothes on the line when weather permits, but the Amish have a system of pullies and the clothes hang high above the ground where they can really catch the wind.

In this picture there were deer behind this fence - maybe pets?  They were pretty tame

Here's one of the deer....I thought it was a dog at first.

This part of the country did not seem to suffer as much from the drought as the midwest.  The corn was about 8 feet tall and the gardens were beautiful.  We saw a lot of big ripe red tomatoes that we were tempted to "borrow" but we didn't.

Reminded me of "Field of dreams"  If you build it, they will come. Certainly plenty of room for a baseball field out here.

 The Amish lifestyle seems kind of appealing in many ways.  The simple life and doing things the old ways is not so bad I bet, but no doubt hard work.   The fields are plowed with old fashioned horse pulled plows like the one below.   For some reason, they ride bicycles without pedals. It seems the bicycles have been modified to operate like scooters.  Maybe it is because they don't want to use anything mechanical.  As Kseniya and I ran along amidst the horses and carriages, I felt like we were somehow one with the environment.  We were only using leg power.  I am not sure if they would have approved of our running attire - but they probably are used to all of the tourists and how they dress.

Horse pulled plow

In all of our run, we saw very few people outside.  We did see a lot of animals and a chicken that had escaped.  Kseniya was going to put it back behind the fence.  Even though we had chickens when I was a kid I did not know the proper way to pick one up, I was afraid she would get pecked or pooped on.  So we said "goodbye and good luck" and ran on.

The escaped chicken

We were running low on energy and liquids so we stopped by a car inspection place to ask for some water.  In this area everyone is not Amish or Mennonite so some people do have cars and are in need of such places. The gentleman was so kind and also offered us candy.  He seemed really surprised that we were running. There are a lot of bicyclists going through the area but we only saw a few.   The water was nice and cold and revived us for the remaining four miles or so we had yet to go.  Every now and then we got a nice breeze and some cloud cover but mostly we were hot.

This was where we stopped for water .

A cemetery for the Meyer family....everyone in this large cemetery was related and it dated back to the 1700's

We were almost to the end when we got to this dirt road.

 We finished and got to our car, stinky and sweaty but glad we had done it.  I felt grateful to be able to run with my daughter in such beautiful country - and that my legs could carry me through.  Oh I was sore.  But nothing that a nice cold beer and a little food didn't fix.

I realized that it wasn't always important to run an organized race.  Sometimes recreating one is more fun and less stressful.  Taking time for pictures and looking at the scenery wasn't something we might have done in a race.    Who needs a medal and a t-shirt? 

I thought of this bible verse:

I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all.

Time is probably the most important thing we have and the one thing that we all share in equal amounts.  It's how we choose to spend it that is different.  And it is what matters the most.