Girls Gone Wildwood

Susan has been gone the last 2 weekends and for whatever reason I find it hard mentally to run more than 3 hours by myself. Physically I know I can, because I do it almost every weekend with Susan but I have a real mental block doing long runs solo. Some would say forcing myself to do this is good mental toughness training and I don't disagree and I have done it plenty of times. But after 2+ years of covid, 4 years of Trump, and all the other awful things that have been going on in the world recently, I don't feel like I need more mental toughness training. So I have broken my long weekend run into 2 medium size runs on Saturday and Sunday. Only running a few hours on both days still gives me the better part of both days to do non-running things. I have also been able to avoid a lot of the crowds since I start super early and end when most people are starting their runs. Though when I have looked on the blog for routes we don't have a lot of routes that are less than 15 mil...

Ann recently reminisced about our 21-miler to Salt & Straw  last year, and we decided to recreate it. We met up with Anna and Leslie for the first ~12 mile loop, then took off for the ice cream shop. I added a mile to the first part, and because Lower Macleay is currently closed, we ran down Aspen and some neighborhood stairs, through the neighborhood to Salt & Straw. It wasn't as hot as last weekend, but the cold treats were still deliciously welcome. Ladies on the trail

Susan and her family went to Seattle for the long Memorial Day weekend, which left me contemplating how many solo miles I wanted to log over the weekend. For whatever reason 20+ miles solo is really mentally challenging for me, it is more getting myself out the door than anything else. Once I am running, I am fine but I seem to find all sorts of ridiclious things to keep me from reaching the trailhead. We call this 'fucking around on purpose' or FAOP for short.  Thursday Susan told me that she would have time to run ~10 miles on Friday morning before they left for Seattle. I was elated, not only would I get to have some time on the trails with Susan, but I could shorten my solo run the next day since I was going to put in extra miles on Friday.  I planned a route where we would run up to the Pittock Mansion first thing in the morning and hopefully get a good view of the city waking up. The weather didn't have the same plans, so instead we got an over ca...