Girls Gone Wildwood

Dinosaurs make the best cheerleaders The Chuckanut 50k is one of the classics of trail ultrarunning. Year after year, people ask us if we've run it and our curiosity finally piqued. The timing has been difficult as we've always had other races; the two previous year's we've run  Peterson   Ridge  40 miler, and before that it was our cyclone-enhanced Tarawera race in New Zealand. This year is also Chuckanut's 25th anniversary, a milestone we seem to enjoy since we ran  Miwok  on its 20th and Hood to Coast on its 25th. At the start

Susan planned out our long runs leading up to the Chuckanut 50k  and for some reason she put a 30 mile run on the calendar 12 days before the race. I would never do anything like that before a race. 

Full disclosure: I love olives in general and have gone through nearly a dozen Oloves packs during the course of my running career. When I am at REI (which is not very often), I almost always pick up a package or two of Oloves. They're shelf-stable, convenient, and delicious. They have four flavors, and I enjoy them all. I think lemon & rosemary is my favorite because it's delightfully piquant, and although I love the spicy flavors, you don't always want spice or garlic on a runner's stomach. You know what I mean. Olives make for a great running food. They're savory, salty, and juicy, not messy or crumbly, and easy to eat. In fact, I would bring olives more often if I could find a good way to carry them, so they don't leak juice or go bad. Oloves solves those problems and provides a great portion size. Unfortunately they also cost more than I'm willing to spend on a regular basis... at least at full retail. For some reason I've never purchase...

Go Umami baked tofu I was at a different grocery store from my usual, and saw these Go Umami tofu sticks in the refrigerated section. I was excited at the prospect of a savory protein-- baked tofu meant for immediate consumption, rather than to be used in cooking. There were three flavors available, so I bought one of each. I brought two on a snowy run, and we shared them to try both. The packages weren't too hard to open (a plus with cold, stiff fingers, and something that's been an issue with some other, similarly-wrapped products) and the tofu was firm but juicy with a good, firm texture. The flavor, however, was too bland for me. I couldn't taste much difference between the two; couldn't taste much at all, to be honest. Ann liked them a bit more than me. Based on their relatively short shelf life (the best-by date was within a week of purchase) and limited availability, I likely won't buy these again. Primal Strips are a much better option-- they don...

I started with an old 24 mile route , knowing it would be easy to add 2 miles on somewhere. I thought a little loop out along Wildwood on the way back down Saltzman would be perfect, but it only added 1/3 of a mile... or more than 3. Ann suggested adding the Dogwood-Kiel loop, which sounded perfect.

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...

After sliding around on icy trails during the last ice storm in Portland, I decided it was time to invest in some Yaktrax. I did a little Googling to figure out the best pair to buy for trail running and I came across NANOSpikes by Kahtoola . A lot of reviews said the coil/spring system of the Yaktrax  didn't actually work that well for running especially on the ice, this didn't seem to be the case with the NANOSpikes, so I bought a pair.  This Saturday we got 0.5 inches of snow, which turned to ice by Sunday morning. Since our street was covered in ice I wasn't going anywhere for awhile, I decided to give the NANOSpikes a try.