Running in a Small Town

As you probably have gathered from reading this blog, I'm from a small town, a very small town. The current population is around 2,500, and it's getting smaller every day.

We have two gas stations, one grocery store, a Subway, a Dairy Queen and the finest bakery in all of southwest Minnesota, if not the state. We have a Red Rooster, where my parents took my sister and me almost daily for breakfast during grade school.

My graduation class had 100 students. It was a big class. About 500 students attend the high school, grades 7 through 12.

While I haven't lived there in eight years, I go back frequently. I recently spent two weeks there, and I did a fair amount of running and thinking about small-town running.

You know you're a small-town runner when...

1.  It takes you less than 40 minutes to run around your entire town.
2. A significant chunk of your run is spent on a U.S. highway.
3. You share the road with tractors, trailers and semi-trucks.
4. You hesitate to wear only a sports bra because it's likely a teacher, your 70-year-old former neighbor or the old men who told you when you were a little girl that your finger will fall off like theirs did if you pick your nose will see you. But it's hot, so you do it anyway (wear only the sports bra, that is).
5. Your story about running a marathon for charity makes the front page of a newspaper.
6. You have a 14-miler on the schedule, and the most logical route is running to another town and back home
7. The closest thing to a running club is the high school cross-country team.

Do you live in a small town? If so, what do you think is unique to small-town running?