Submission guidelines:
- Email running photographs for consideration to ohtheplacestorun@gmail.com
- Include the location of the photo (i.e., city; state; nation)
- Share a brief description of the photo (e.g., the place, the run, the people, etc.)
- Categories include: nature (beautiful scenery); roadside attractions (interesting things); humor (funny things); friends/people (running buddies); and travel (pics taken on runs while traveling)
- You retain all rights to your photograph and will receive photo credit when posted on Oh, the Places to Run! (note: if you want to promote your personal social media account or running club, please share that information)
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I wish I could remember.
There are certain things I do recall. Like joining my wife for a super slow 5k jog in Westlake Village way back in 2010 after I had taken a couple of decades off from running. And my subsequent decision to purchase a cheap pair of running shoes and try running again, knowing it wouldn’t last. And my surprise and excitement later that it did.
And I also remember that someone shared the Nike Run Club app with me even though I never used GPS. And then the app itself remembers that it was July 2, 2013, when I first used it, jogging 1.27 miles with my wife on Malibu Road, which led to thousands and thousands of miles shared with that app over the past twelve years.
But what I don’t remember is the first time I decided to add a picture as a memory of one of my runs. I wish I remembered. Because that changed my life.
I am not a world-class photographer. And I am not a world-class runner. But what I have become is someone with a habit of going out into the world with open eyes, searching for the beauty that is everywhere once you start looking. I want to capture that beauty when I run. To remember.
I have a lot of running pictures now. A lot. And not to brag, but some of them are actually pretty good (if you take enough pictures, you get lucky every now and then). I have shared many running pictures on my social media accounts over the years, and periodically friends have encouraged me to collect them in a book—and I might do that someday. But today I have a different plan.
Today, I am launching a new Facebook page and an Instagram page titled, “Oh, the Places to Run!” (Imagine Humans of New York but for running places.) It will start small, I’m sure, sort of like my running habit, but I hope that it will grow to change the lives of other people, too.
My habit began in Malibu, California, and many said that I would struggle to find beautiful photo material once I moved away from breathtaking ocean and mountain scenery, and I took that as a personal challenge. I soon discovered that my suspicion was correct: There is beauty to be discovered everywhere. At least that’s what I discovered living in urban Tennessee, and then rural Illinois, and now rural Wisconsin—and actually everywhere I have traveled along the way.
I will keep taking pictures and sharing them on my new pages, and I hope you all will add the new pages to your algorithms and follow, like, share, and comment along the way. But my dream is much bigger. I hope that past, present, and future runners will share their favorite running place photos with me, too, and that these pages become places where everyone can discover that there is beauty everywhere when we have eyes to see.
So please click on the following links and follow along on Facebook and/or Instagram if you would be so kind. And, if you are willing to share some of your own running photos for consideration, submission guidelines are at the top of this blog post.
As Dr. Seuss famously wrote: “You’re off to great places! Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting…so get on your way!”
Let’s go!
Starting to Look Up 