Girls Gone Wildwood

success! Last Thursday Susan sent me a text that Salt and Straw  had a new vegan flavor,  coconut mint chip whoopie pie . My first reaction was, "let's go". With the next obvious question being when? We both live close to different Salt and Straws, but I wanted to experience this new flavor together. The next time we were going to see each other was for our long run. Then like a light bulb going off over my head, I had the brilliant idea of running to Salt and Straw. The Salt and Straw in NW Portland is only a few miles away from Forest Park. And that is exactly what we did! selfie with Anna and Leslie, before we took off to Salt and Straw I met Susan at Salt and Straw Saturday morning, leaving my car there we drove her car to the trailhead at 53rd and Wildwood, where we met Anna and Leslie. We ran the first 10 miles of our 21 mile route with them. Then we ran 11 miles, mostly downhill to Salt and Straw. It started to rain a few mile...

A rainbow on the way to the start-- ending in Forest Park! Anna and Leslie have been training for the Alsea Half Marathon (and another, longer race after that for Leslie) and we finally joined up for a run. Since everyone wanted slightly different distances, I thought I'd come up with a route to loop all of us, so we'd have the most time running together. And on my first try, it worked out just about perfectly! Sloppy trails NW 53rd trailhead (ww 9.18) to  Maple Trail (ww 12.84)-- 3.66 mi Maple (ww 12.84) to Leif (6.44)-- 3.52 mi (7.18 total) Leif (6.44) to Saltzman (LE 6.2)-- .24 mi (7.42 total) Saltzman to WW (16.01)-- .5 mi (7.92 total) WW (16.01) to FL2 (ww 12.74)-- 3.27 mi (11.19 total) FL2 to Leif (3.71)-- .46 mi (11.65 total) Leif (3.71) to Alder (le 1.49)-- 2.22 mi (13.87 total) Alder to WW (9.4)-- .84 mi (14.71 total) Anna heads to NW 53rd trailhead for 15 miles Lots of lovely dog violets (and other spring flowers) in bloom WW ...

    Dan Savage   has a theory that every long-term relationship has a " price of admission " -- the things your partner does that drives you up the wall but is still worth it. Having a long-term commitment to ultra running is no different, there is stuff that happens that isn't great but you put up with it for the love of running. One of these things is an injury.  Recently I went on a work trip to   Berlin , where I ran 10 days in a row (excluding the 2 days I was stuck on a plane), and 2 of the runs were 20+ miles. I normally don't run more than 4-5 days a week with yoga and weight training on the non-running days. I knew it was stupid to run so many days in a row, but was stubborn I thought I had to workout everyday, which meant running. Halfway through my trip my left knee started to feel achy going down stairs and when I ran. But of course I kept running and running. I got home Friday afternoon and first thing Saturday morning I went for...

After spending more than a week in Germany, running everyday, and standing all day long at a conference, Ann returned home with pain in her left knee. I had spent the previous weekend in Indiana, without a long run, and was still battling an awful chest cold after two weeks. It was time for an (for me, yet another) "easy" long run. We needed time together, on the trails, but low on the climbing, downhill, and directions/turns. I dug this one up from the archives, and we didn't push ourselves on the hills. And we saw the first trillium of the year! Holman - ww: .76 ww - alder: 3.5 alder - leif: .84 leif - maple: 2.7 maple - leif : 2.73 leif - saltzman : .23 saltzman - ww: .50 ww - holman : 10 holman - 53rd : .76  total: 22.02

I spent the last week in Berlin for a work conference, of course I was going to run before work but I really wanted to make sure I got in a workout because I knew I was going to be drinking / trying a lot of German beers. I picked a hotel close to  Tiergarten rather than the conference center so I would have an interesting place to run every morning, rather than a treadmill or waiting on stop lights.  The Brandenburg Gate First of many Brauereien in Berlin Berlin Victory Column in the center of Tiergarten John and me in Tiergarten Tiergarten is around 520 acres located close to the  Brandenburg Gate . It has paved paths and trails for running. There are a lot of monuments located in the park, if it wasn't so cold every morning, I would of stopped and took pictures and read about the monuments. There are tons of ponds and different types of gardens. Everyday that I ran in the park I saw something new, which is pretty neat after runn...

When Susan and I ran Miwok last May, my sister, Gretchen, came out to help crew us and watch Susan’s son. At the time Gretchen was about to give up on her own running. After years of running half marathons, she ran her first full the year before. Unfortunately a falling-out with her running partner now made it tough for her to imagine running solo. But there was something about the whole Miwok experience that made Gretchen excited about running again, and by the end of the weekend she was on ultrasignup to find a good first 50k, and already had a coach in mind. girls gone first class (thanks to upgrades from Courtney) Fast forward 8 months. Susan and I found ourselves flying to Austin, TX to head to the Bandera 50k . But we weren’t the ones running the 50k-- Gretchen was. We were there to help crew and cheer Gretchen on-- oh and to run the 25k, because why not? Gretchen flew from Dallas to Austin; we met her at her gate, grabbed our rental car and headed off to Bandera, “T...