Girls Gone Wildwood

After my sore hamstrings turned into a cramping pain that curtailed our run the previous weekend, I spent the whole week gingerly trying to run-- and failing. So I did yoga, and stretched, and tried to improve my home office setup for ergonomics.  When it came time for our long weekend run, I wanted the possibility of doing the whole thing, without being forced to limp 5 miles back to the car (again). So I made a route starting at  Springville , using the branches of Firelane 7 to loop around and never get too far away from our trailhead start. As a bonus, it added up to a perfect 23 miles-- Ann's lucky number! And it did turn out to be lucky. I felt good the whole time and was able to run all of it.  Start at Springville Spr to WW (22.45) (stay left)-- .33 WW (22.45) to FL 10 (ww 25.43)-- 2.98 (3.31) FL 10 to Leif/Canon-- 1.9 (5.21) Leif (11.17) to Springville (le 9.37)-- 1.8 (7.01) Springville (le 9.37) to WW (22.45)-- .38 (7.39) WW(22.45) to ...

Only the 3rd salamander I've seen in Forest Park It's that time of year again-- when we grow tired of our usual, old routes in Forest Park and look at the All Trails Challenge  for some inspiration. We like to start with the north end of the park, and check off all the nastiest firelanes first. So this time I decided to knock out Firelanes 15 and 12. I made the route, then we decided to adjust the distance by starting at Springville rather than the original at Germantown. I think this turned out much nicer-- although to our surprise Springville trailhead was just as crowded as Germantown. Route: Start at Springville trailhead off Skyline FL7 - Ridge-- .38 Ridge - WW-- .44 Ridge WW to Newberry (ww 30.16)-- 9.48 Newberry (ww 30.16) to FL15 (ww 28.63)-- 1.53  FL15- Kielhorn-- .32 Kielhorn out & back-- .36 FL15 to Skyline-- .65  FL15 back to FL12-- 1.34 FL12 down to Creston St-- 1 FL12 to BPA-- 1.51  ...

Most of our recent runs have started at one of the trailheads on NW 53rd, which is convenient since it is close to my house and cuts down on travel time and gives us more time to run. This week I decided to start our route from the Springville trailhead, to give us a change of scenery.  Mt. Hood from Firelane 7A Right off the bat we took a wrong turn going down Springville instead of Firelane 7, once we hit Wildwood we decided to head to Firelane 7A and readjust the route at the end. We headed down 7A to Leif, but it wasn't obvious where 7A continued on the other side of Leif. We ran back and forth on Leif looking for the trail and finally decided to head down what appeared to be an overgrown trail without a trail sign. The trail ran parallel  with wire gate for while, making us feel like we were in the tv show Lost. We got some good views of Portland and Mt. Hood, it wasn't until we made it to the end of the trail that we knew we were on the right trail, onl...

Mud, lots of it Ann got back from a work trip to China on Saturday morning, so we ran on Sunday. Bob joined us with a 9 mile loop, after which we continued for another 14 miles. I tried out my new Hoka Stinsons for the first time, christening them in some good mud. They were great-- a very similar feel to my usual Brooks Pure Grit and not too squishy as I had feared. Ann and Bob, glowing It wasn't too rainy while we were running, but everything was sodden from hard rain the night before, and some of the creeks were higher than we could remember seeing them. It's always fascinating to see the trails we know so change with the seasons and weather. Group selfie before Bob splits off This was a nice loop-- nothing too mean after missing Ann for a long week! High water on the closed part of Maple Trail And here's how we crossed it: https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=f6eJKAGCFdQ Start at Springville Bob ~9 mile loop: Springville to Trillium-- .13 mi T...

On Wednesday (December 10) I got a text from Caleb: "What runs do you have coming up in the next several days? Thinking of doing all of wildwood this weekend." Ann and I had just run all of Wildwood ( and then some ) two weeks previous for our birthdays, but how could I resist? One of the powerlines down on Newberry Rd We planned to run from the north, Newberry end, with Ann & I ending up Birch (Wildwood mile marker 7 1/2) for a nice 23 miler. I picked up Caleb and his friend Billy at the log-lined parking lot next to the zoo, at the south end of Wildwood. We drove to Ann's house, where her husband drove and dropped us off at Newberry. The other side of the downed powerline-- notice the rope tying it to the tree at top right There had been strong winds the past few days, and we were awestruck by the damage there on Newberry-- huge downed tree limbs and power lines. It was time to start the journey. Caleb hadn't run the distance in a long time, and...

Our first sun break 23 and some change was the subject of my email to Susan with our route for Saturday, but given how much the weather changed on Saturday I thought it was an appropriate title for this blog post too. The run started out overcast and as we ran down BPA Road we got into a fog cloud, which stuck with us all the way to the top of Springville. As we ran down Hardesty the sun started to peak in between the fog and the trees. Over the course of the rest of the run we got rain, full sun and more fog, the only thing missing to complete an Oregon winter was snow. The start of the run at the top of BPA road 6 miles later at the top of Springville the fog had settled in The route was as varied as the weather, we were never on one section of trail more than 5 miles. Lots of ups and down in between Wildwood and Leif Erickson but nothing too daunting. I love when we have routes where we don't spend a big stretch of it on Wildwood at one time, mentally...

Missing mile marker on the tree - sort of like our diet on the detox Ok, running on empty might be a bit of an exaggeration, but it sure felt like it. Susan and I decided in the middle of one of our highest mile weeks (~70 miles) to start a 10 day detox. We decided to try Dr. Mark Hyman's The Blood Sugar Solution 10-Day Detox because it had excellent options for vegans and vegetarians . In a nutshell you cut out sugar, grains, caffeine, alcohol, dairy and gluten. There wasn't any real reason I/we needed to do a detox, we have had several friends do similar detoxes and post about awesome they felt, so I was really just curious how I would feel. None of our friends who did similar detoxes run the amount of miles we do, so I wasn't sure what we would do about food for our 23 mile run on Saturday. The first 2 days of the detox we were both hungry and a little irritable, Saturday was day 3 of the detox, I was hoping my energy level would be up by then. Back to our food d...

"We are going to meet at FL1 on hwy 30 behind la quinta" began the subject line of Ann's email. I'm not sure why, but I wasn't surprised. I had suspected we would start from that odd trailhead in its junky, industrial location. Hidden behind a hotel you wouldn't want to visit and starting with a concrete Jersey barrier, you would never know it's there-- and you certainly wouldn't be tempted to follow the gravelly path-- unless you had taken it before. Mt Hood and the sun rising as we start to climb FL1 We must have talked about the one time we ran it-- with Willie McBride of Animal Athletics, during their  Mountain Goat Hill Running series  (which, by the way, was fantastic)-- during our long run the previous weekend. Once stirred awake, the memory of that long, rambling, rarely-traveled trail could not be dismissed. Sure, it's a climb, but most of it is rolling and runnable, and it's just so different from other fire lanes and most ...