Girls Gone Wildwood

A year ago I signed up for the first Portland Rock and Roll half marathon, the price was cheap and I wouldn't have to travel for the run. 3 months ago the route was announced, it was going to be in SE Portland, running right in front of my house and pretty close to Susan's. I was excited. Fast forward a year, I am much more into trail running than road running. I find out Susan is going to be out of town race weekend, I have never run a race by myself. The closest I have come is a 5k last year I ran with Oscar the dog. It isn't that I can't run by myself, I am just afraid I will get bored. John, Chris and Karrla were all suppose to be out of town; I normally can count on them to cheer me on. Then I get a notice from the race saying I cannot park in front of my house (are you kidding me??)! Courtney even said to me, "let me get this straight, you are paying for the benefit of running in front of your house and not being able to park there?"

This was the longest run we had done in quite a while, maybe even since our Wildwood end-to-end. It was a warmer day than usual, with sunshine peeking through the trees-- an absolutely gorgeous day and a fantastic run. We broke it up into two loops: about 10 1/2 miles and less than 8, and while it was tough to finish up Firelane 7 on the first loop, knowing we'd be back to that long uphill again, it really didn't feel like a greater distance. We enjoyed getting to the downhill end of Springville for the first time-- it's a short ways off Leif but we've never bothered to venture down before. It's tough to bomb straight down the hill, knowing you'll just have to turn around and come back up, especially since we've done some really long ones like BPA (ugh!), Tolinda and Linton. The downhill/east end of Springville Rd trail Park at Springville trailhead FL 7 to Hardesty (.08mi) Hardesty to WW 21.67 (.21mi)-- .29 total WW 21.67 to FL 5 (WW 16.69) (

Running on a Friday! It's a rare thing, but sometimes we end up running on a day other than Saturday. I took the day off to go to the coast for the weekend, so we snuck a shorter run in before I left. To make it even easier on ourselves, we went with our favorite loop for when we don't feel like coming up with something fancy. The Leif Erickson trailhead at Thurman is probably the closest to our homes, and the loop's a no-brainer. Our two favorites Leif 0- 4.20 to Maple: 4.20   Maple to WW: .82 WW 12.75- 6.43 Aspen: 6.32 Aspen to road: .23 road to car: .50 Total: 12.07 miles We were excited to see these lovely new detailed maps of the park