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Showing posts from 2019

December adventure: Tilly Jane

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For our December adventure run, we opted for snowshoes instead of running shoes. I gave Susan 2 options: Tilly Jane or Barlow Pass . She asked which route was harder, I said Tilly Jane, so that is what we did.  Tilly Jane Tilly Jane is an old A-frame hut that was built in the late 1930’s by the Civilian Conservation Corp, to support Mt. Hood climbing parties. The cabin can sleep 20 people and now can be rented on  recreation.gov . It is about 2.7 mile (one way) and 1900' elevation gain hike from the trailhead, you also have the option to continue on to Cloud Cap Inn . The route is challenging as a short day hike, but add snow and snowshoes and you have quite a workout.     Unfortunately the trail didn't have as much snow as we would have liked and we ended up carrying our snowshoes half the way up.  As we got closer to the top we did need our snowshoes and  definitely  needed them on the way down because of all the icy patches.  We need more snow

Type 2 Fun on 1

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The top of Firelane 1 For our last long run of the year we decided to incorporate the  Wy'east Wolfpack's Fun on 1 challenge.  The TL;DR is you need to do an out and back on Firelane 1, post some evidence on social media and profit (possibly win a prize).   Since running up and down Firelane isn't hard enough, I decided we needed to run to Pittock first and end with a little climb up Alder. All in all not a bad route to end a fabulous year of trail running.  The bottom of Firelane 1 Route :  Wildwood/53rd - Pittock: 5.45 Pittock - Wild Cherry: 4.53 Wild Cherry - Leif: .56 Leif -  Firelane 1  2.7 (down) Firelane 1- St Helens Rd.: 1.43 (all the way up) FL 1 - to gate: 2.29 FL 1 - Leif: .78 Leif - Alder: 1.54 Alder - WW: .84 WW - 53rd/car: .22 total: 20.34 

Put a Santa hat on it 🎅🏽

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After 15 drenched miles, we donned our festive hats Our friends at Wy'east Wolfpack have been hosting a Santa Hat run in Northwest Portland for the last 5 years and for some reason or the other we have had to miss it. Since we missed it again this year, we decided to do it the following weekend on our own after our long run in Forest Park.  Early edgeworthia-- what season is it?!? We parked our cars at Wallace Park, the start of the Santa Hat route, and had my husband dropped us off at the Birch trailhead on NW 53rd. We zigzagged our way through Forest Park for 15 miles in the pouring rain. We exited the park at the Thurman trailhead and to be honest running another 6 miles on the pavement in the rain did not excited me. But as soon as we got to my car and changed into our Santa / Christmas gear my Grinch attitude went away.   Photo opp at Jamison Square It was hard not to smile while running with a dog in an elf hat. The amount of people we passed that smiled s

Annual Birthday Wildwood End-to-End

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It's that time of year again! With our birthdays only 6 days apart, there's no better way to celebrate than running our website-namesake trail from one end to the other, for a grand total of about 30 1/4 miles. With Thanksgiving so late this year and our long runs not really cutting it, distance-wise, we postponed til Friday, 13 December for a lucky day-off adventure. And we were rewarded with surprisingly good weather, few people on the trail, and a great day spent together with our favorite Dog Gone Wild, Cedar! This year's start: Newberry (thanks, John, for dropping us off!) Cedar enjoying trail freedom Bright mushrooms Our first time on the new bridge over Burnside St Cedar is a free elf, Harry Potter! Fancy, new-to-us Wildwood signs marking road crossings in the southern section And that's a wrap-- ending at the zoo 

36 hours in Edinburgh

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Earlier this year I got accepted to speak at a conference in London and when I bought my tickets I decided to fly in the weekend before. I originally thought I would fly to Switzerland and go running in the Alps, but didn't really think about the fact that a lot of the trails would be covered in snow in mid November. Once I realized this, I started looking for trail races in the UK. I found a half marathon an hour outside of Edinburgh called the Glentress Winter Half Marathon . The race was the morning after I arrived, I figured if I could run 62 miles on a few hours of sleep I could probably run 13. The caveat was I would have to drive from Edinburgh to the race, I have driven in some pretty crazy places but always on the left side of the car, I was nervous about driving on the other side of the car & road.  Edinburgh Castle I decided to pick up the car next to my hotel versus at the airport, since I would only have to drive a mile after 15 hours of fly. I deci

Tofurky Trot 2019

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It was a beautiful sunny morning to get out and stretch our legs before settling into the cooking and feasting marathon that defines Thanksgiving Day, here in the US. Ann dug up our route from  5 years ago , which made for a mellow (FLAT) run. I can't wait for our longest run in ages this Sunday: 24 miles. We've put off our annual birthday Wildwood End-to-End for an extra two weeks so we can work back up to the distance. With all of our travel, family events, etc, we haven't gotten in the mileage to make it enjoyable. It's nice that doing our own self-supported run like this means that we can change things around to make it right for us. Happy Thanksgiving to all-- to the many things we have to be grateful for, the miles, the trails, and the delicious food that awaits us later today!

Running for the sake of running

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running selfie with Cedar It is so easy to get caught up in how many miles you are running each week or your strava stats, especially when you are training for a race. I spent the better part of this year training for the Waldo 100k in August. I really loved pushing myself outside of my comfort zone training for Waldo and feeling myself get stronger. Susan and I were so happy that we completed a 100k, which we had not done in 4 years. After the race a took a full week off of running to let my body recover and I thought I would be so excited to get back on the trails without having the pressure to train for the race. But that actually wasn't the case, I didn't feel like something was missing, I just didn't feel excited about running. I was doing it because it was part of my daily routine and I am afraid not to do it because it so much of who I am. hanging out in the van ready for a run Honestly it wasn't until 2 weeks ago (it is now mid October) that I st

Badger Creek Wilderness loop

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Cedar and Mt Hood-- bff Back in July, we scheduled a Sunday run in Badger Creek Wilderness to pre-fatigue us for our long, day-off run the next Friday ( Timberline Trail around Mt Hood !). We started at Gumjuwac trailhead right on Highway 35, with a big climb up to the saddle and Lookout Mountain.  Even though it was a perfect hiking weekend in summer, we only saw a handful of people—most of them at the top of Lookout, since there’s a nearby trailhead you can drive to for a nice three mile loop. It really feels like wilderness on the far side of Mt Hood.

July adventure run: Mt Hood circumnavigation on the Timberline Trail

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Bald Mountain: perhaps the best viewpoint of Mt Hood on the whole Timberline Trail We timed our July day-off adventure to be the longest training run, four weeks before for our biggest race of the year, Waldo 100k. For a 40+ mile run, it's hard to beat the Timberline Trail loop around Mt Hood. Our last time on this route was four years ago, in 2015. Since then the infamous Eliot washout-- which was technically closed-- has been rerouted further down the mountain, adding a bit of distance and safety. We were excited to see the changes.

Girls Gone Pasadena: Part Two

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At the Topanga trailhead This is part 2 of 2. If you haven't read Part One , please click through. For Saturday, our second day, we wanted to run in the Santa Monica Mountains with a view of the coast. We used the Trail Run Project app again to find a good start at the East Topanga Fire Road Trailhead, with a 4.8 mile point-to-point and 1,200 ft of elevation gain. Then we added a little out-and-back to the Parker Mesa overlook along the way, since that was said to be the best viewpoint.

Waldo 100k

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coming down from Fuji  photo credit Teri Smith The last few years we have DNF'd or cut short runs longer that 40 miles for various reasons, but mostly mental toughness. Despite these set backs we knew we had it in us to run > 40 miles, so when the lottery for the Waldo 100k we signed up. There was a part of me that knew that we wouldn't get in since we signed up using the buddy system. To be honest, I was ok if we didn't get it, because I could still say, "well at least we tried."  Well of course we got in. Which meant that my family and I had to shift our trip to Iceland by a week, oops. It also meant I needed to do some mental toughness training and we needed to push ourselves more than we had the last few years, since Waldo was mostly over 5000 feet and was a tough course. I decided to hire a coach, Yassine of Wyeast Wolfpack . In the past, Susan and I had trained with a coach together, but this time I need to work on my mental toughness and focus on