Girls Gone Wildwood

  We have posted a lot of 18+ mile running routes in Forest Park but during the week I typically only have an hour a day to run, so I thought it would be fun to post some of my shorter running routes as well. 5.47 miles 544 feet of elevation gain  Strava Route   My go to ~5 mile loop in Forest Park is one I call the Birch Lollipop. Within 5.4 miles you get a nice loop between Wildwood and Leif with Birch being “lollipop stick”.  This route starts and ends at the Birch Trailhead, which is the first trailhead on NW 53rd Drive when coming from NW Cornell Road. To start head down Birch for ~.25 miles and turn left on Wildwood. You will continue on Wildwood for 2 miles, passing Wild Cherry where you will return from, Dogwood and the NW 53rd trailhead. About ~.25 miles after the NW 53rd trailhead you turn right on Alder.  Alder is one of my favorite trails between Wildwood and Leif Erikson, it’s a nice gradual descent (.84 miles) into a gully surrounded by the trail’s namesake trees. Before

At the start of Trans Gran Canaria in our Orcas Island 50k shirts are only 2 in person races of 202. This is always my favorite post of the year to write, because we get to reflect back on the year and all the awesome things we have done and accomplished. Well 2020 has been quite a different year, and this could be quite a different year-end post where we focus on all the things we weren't able to do: travel, races, family visits, etc. But instead we are going to focus on the things we were able to do, and the creative ways we were able to find joy in a shitshow of a year.  We were fortunate that our A race of the year was  Trans Gran Canaria 65k, which took place the first week of March. So we were able to travel to Europe and run before the lockdowns started... well technically the lockdowns started while we were in Europe, which added to our race anxiety.  Despite not posting much on the blog the last few months, we have been running a lot. I think that, like the rest of the wor