Every key I stroke reminds me of my hatred for running.

See, the palm of my right hand has a scrap, one one would get when they’re falling to the ground and use their hands to prevent themselves from falling face first.

Obviously, that’s what happened to me this morning. Luckily, it happened at 5:15 a.m., so there was no one there to record the event and I wasn’t close enough to the restaurant parking lot to warrant an ambulance chasing attorney to be interested in representing me.

No, I just tripped attempting to lift my legs back onto the sidewalk that was blocked off due to construction. Construction! Construction that’s been going on for what feels like more than a month.

And for what exactly? What exactly are they constructing on the corner of a sidewalk behind a restaurant on a hidden road that few people know about and even less use?

I know they haven’t done anything because this construction has been an inpeedment in the route I’ve been running recently. I think it’s important, if you hate running, to have a good route.

I can’t run on a treadmill. I need nature and outside when I’m doing what I hate. Because when you’re outside, you can take knowledge in when something is coming up, like the end of the run.

When I was a college freshman, the route the Army ROTC soldiers made us run was basically up Commonwealth Ave from Kennmore Sqaure to the BU Bridge.

The summer before I went to college, I knew I was going to be running ROTC, so I started running around my home town. But honestly, I never found a good route. I was going up big hills early and didn’t take advantage of the park right in front of my house.

Either way, that version of me running lasted a semester. After that, I still ran, but there was something else sporting involved. A lot of sprints up and down the basketball court have to count for something right?

But distance running, running for the sake of running, I didn’t return to that until I reached Atlanta. Recently laid off and collecting unemployment are fun ways to spend time, but it leaves a lot of free time. I chose to spend some of that running.

That first route was a good one, but it lacked sidewalks. When you’re running, unless you’re on a trail or in a horror film, sidewalks are your feet’s best friends. OK, probably not, but it’s great to run not having to worry about a car coming fast behind you.

That was the big issue with my birthday 5K for a couple of years. I would leave the house and run to my daughter’s elementary school. It’s about a mile away and to complete the loops, you have to run down a busy two-lane road with no sidewalks.

The only saving grace was the time I choose to run; early in the morning means few people and even fewer cars on the road. But my new route doesn’t have that worry.

It’s a sidewalk dominated route, starting with a gradual decline before slowly rising in elevation before hitting a traffic-heavy street with commerce on either side of the road. There’s a construction sign blocking the sidewalk here as well, but there’s also grass to allow pedestrians to walk around.

Where the cones and sign and upheaved earth have destroyed the corner of the sidewalk behind the restauraant’s parking lot, there is no grass. There is only a street one must enter into, then return back over the curb to get back to the sidewalk.

I stand on my soap box and point to this blight for the mothers pushing their babies in strollers, diaper bag handing from the handles with a sippy cup and some snacks in a plastic bag in the cup holders by the brake.

She is just trying to get her baby outside to enjoy the day, enjoy nature and the commercial aspects of the main road moments from their townhome. All she wants is to provide for her child and give it something it can remember in its old age…

I’m also speaking for the guy who tripped over the curb and scrapped his palm, tearing skin off below his knee and upset that there wasn’t a band-aid big enough to cover the entire wound and that’s the truth.