Sarah Crane used to get up before the sun, in the hours when she said skunks and newspaper delivery people were the only others on the roads, and run.
She ran every day, training for a half-marathon, but also trying to change the way she looked. Too thick in the legs and butt. Running 40 to 60 miles a week was the way she tried to lose that size.
Then her husband, Mark, as husbands seemingly often do, brought her whole approach to a screaming and heartbreaking halt. He said her butt and legs weren't looking any thinner. Right up there on the list of what not to say to a woman.
But he also suggested she try something different: Get into a gym and hire a trainer to help her develop an exercise routine that would get her the look she wanted. She did.
That was almost six years ago. She hasn't come out since. You could say Sarah Crane lives in the gym.
She dedicated herself to the sport of bodybuilding and became a personal trainer. In November, she even left her job as a dental assistant to open her own gym, Lifetime Fitness Center in Nashua, and now works over 40 hours a week with clients.
Crane, 38, recently finished sixth at the World Natural Bodybuilding Federation's Pro Natural American Bodybuilding Championships and is now training for the Pro Natural International Championships, Sept. 22, in Kansas City.
Crane grew up in Wisconsin, a farm girl who lived an active outdoors life. She ran track in high school and did gymnastics, but never thought about going to a gym.
"I felt you didn't need a gym to be in shape," Crane said.
And then came her husband's blunt assessment of her training. She realized she needed help.
She joined a local gym and her son Matthew started to come along. They learned from trainers that good health wasn't just about trying to burn fat on a treadmill, but also about healthy eating and proper exercise.
She says she is actually eating more than she used to -- up to six meals a day -- but has cut out processed food. A typical meal is a small piece of chicken, a handful of green beans and a sweet potato.
As the lifestyle changes took hold, her body began looking the way she always wanted it to.
It was Matthew, then 16, who wanted to enter a bodybuilding show, but he wanted his mother to do it, as well. She agreed.
She won that first show in 2004 (the first of three shows she has won), earning her pro card in the World Natural Bodybuilding Federation, an organization that tries to weed out competitors who use performance-enhancing drugs like steroids by requiring all entrants to take a polygraph test and certain ones to take a urine test.
The money isn't much (top prize at last month's event was $600) but Crane said she doesn't do it for the money.
The challenge for her is to sculpt her body and then show it off on stage, especially during the short routine done to music.
"I never knew how much I like to entertain," Crane said. "I love doing the routine. To hear the audience go crazy is incredible. It makes you keep going. It seems like a lot of work for just 60 seconds, but I love getting up there."
A lot more, it seems, than getting up in the early morning to run with the skunks and newspaper boys.