Girls Gone Wildwood

Elk Mountain Summit, no view Our first day off to run in 2018 (Wednesday, 4 April), and I was thrilled. While on a family hike a month or two ago, I noticed a trail sign with some good distances on it. I looked them up when I got home, and discovered the Tarbell Trail-- a 24.75 mile loop in southwest Washington in the Silver Star Mountain and Grouse Mountain area. After lots of research, I was excited to have planned our first adventure since it's usually Ann who does the work. Well now we know why that's the case. After a bunch of rescheduling, we finally settled on Wednesday, 4 April for our run. On Tuesday, Ann called the ranger station and was told that part of the trail was closed for logging and that there was also snow. Last-minute back-up plan: the Wilson River trail. It's a 22 mile point-to-point trail that's safe from snow, we've only run it twice, and it's been three years since we did the whole thing .

See that tiny rainbow, and where it ends? Ann & I have run the Columbia Gorge half marathon since its start in 2009. Every year there's terrible weather up til the start (and sometimes for the first few miles). But every year it clears up and we thank our lucky stars for the beauty of the course and the fun of running fast (for us) through the colorful, autumnal landscape. More rainbows and autumn color In 2011 we finally dropped under two hours, and every year since we've improved by a little bit. This year I wasn't sure if we would be any faster. Although we had been doing a speed workout once a week for months, we stopped after our race at the beginning of September and haven't been back since. And I forgot my watch to time our splits. Our friend Sally joined us-- her first-ever race! She was nervous, but when she runs with us on the trails she often pushes the pace. My dad also came out for the race (his fourth time, I think) from the east coast, w...

We're tapering for our big run around Mt Hood. This week we had 13 miles on the schedule: just enough to be a long run, but not enough to be quite satisfying. We planned to run it on Friday afternoon  to have the rest of the weekend free. Then a friend of ours was going to join us, for the longest run he'd ever done. We joked about doing hill repeats except for the fact that he would be there. Then he bailed, and I was stuck with the thought of hills . To make up for the shorter distance, I planned a route to hit all the big hills, especially Pittock Mansion. And that's how our 13 mile taper run turned into a harder workout than the previous week's 22 miler. Up again. And again. And again! Holman- WW (5.93): .76mi WW (5.93) to Pittock (ww 3.84): 2.09mi (2.85 total) Pittock (ww 3.84) to Wild Cherry (ww 7.88): 4.04mi (6.89 total) Wild Cherry (ww 7.88) to Leif (.31): .56mi ( 7.45 total) Leif (.31) to Alder (le 1.49): 1.18mi (8.63 total) Alder (le 1.49) to ...