A post for a rainy day in late September

It feels like Autumn. What’s good about Autumn?

• Making s’mores with Sweetie over the wood stove outside by the deck. Bonus: using Nutella instead of solid chocolate, for improved texture. Double-bonus: the firewood is the broken-up pieces of an old shipping palette that’s been taking up room in my garage for seven years. (Please don’t tell me I’m going to die from inhaling burning palette fumes. I don’t want to know.)
• Only 8 days and 14 hours until the Portland Marathon! Sure, I’ve had most of these “taper tantrums” already, but overall I’m just excited.
• Eating at Alba Osteria tonight, with MiPL. Yay! Yum! Yay!

Trail Run to Pittock Mansion

Instead of running from Portland Running Company’s Beaverton store as usual Monday evening, the little group met near the Portland Zoo and the start of the Wildwood Trail. Rather than taking the Wildwood’s long loop over toward the Japanese and Rose Gardens, we cut the loop off by taking the Magnolia Trail as a shortcut, then continued on the Wildwood up to Pittock Mansion and back. (See the map of the arboretum.) I’ve tried to run up to Pittock once before, and didn’t quite make it without walking, so I was interested to see if I could run all the way up this time. I did! On the way there, I stuck with the slower group in the back to save my energy until we reached the steep part, then when they slowed to a walk (one of the group had done very little hill work) I went on ahead and reached the top strong. How does my Oregon Trail Runs book describe this sort of thing? “Searing cardio workout”, I think — sounds about right. It was the kind of workout where you start to take notice of just how loudly you are breathing.

Coming back down, I decided to keep up with the faster runners. I’m still a complete maniac when it comes to running down a steep trail — I love the thrill. It’s like a roller-coaster ride. Without the safety systems. I caught up to Tim, our group’s ultra-marathoner, who can run circles around me in general. On this particular downhill, though, I could keep up pretty well. After the run, I got a big compliment from him: “I thought I ran crazy downhill. You run crazy downhill!” After the big initial downhill, there was an uphill bit (more searing), another nice downhill (whee!), a short but steep uphill on the Magnolia Trail shortcut (enough with the searing already!), and then a fairly easy slope down back to the start.

We waited for the slower group to finish up — we’d been promised snacks and freebies! They didn’t show up. After a few more minutes, they still didn’t show up. I asked Tim if he had his phone on him — the run leader, in the slower group, had mentioned that she would call Tim if there was trouble. He went and got it from his car: three missed calls from her! They had missed the shortcut turnoff and were making their way around the much longer Wildwood loop; they were still 3/4 of a mile out, picking their way through the rapidly falling darkness. But they didn’t need rescue. After another 10 minutes of starting-to-get-really-cold, they made it.

We all got Montrail T-shirts and some throw-away gloves, and three of us (including me) won some coupons to send away for a pair of Montrail running sandals: cool! The group leader decided to run the drawing for those by picking a number between one and thirty and having the six of us call out our guesses; the closest won. “Uh,” I said, “you do know that gives whoever goes last an advantage?”

“It does?” I seemed to be the only one who had studied any game theory, or had an intuitive grasp of these things in the group. Oh well. For the first round, I was going second. The first person picked 28, I think. Yeah, 28. I rolled my eyes (I couldn’t help it! But it was dark and maybe nobody noticed) and picked 15, which ended up winning.

Outrunning the shin splits

Saturday’s run was a mere seven miles, down to the waterfront and the east-side esplanade. I had planned on taking it easy since I was still having mild shin splints. Then coach JR started talking.

“During our taper, we can reduce our frequency, volume, or intensity. We can reduce our overall volume by 50% and maintain our fitness. But if we reduce our intensity, our fitness level plummets.”

Hmm. I did not know that. Maybe my plan to take it easy had its downsides. JR went on to say we should run the first mile slow, the next five at marathon pace, and the last as a cool-down.  So: marathon pace, 9:06.

During the first few minutes, my shins were tweaking quite a bit. But it felt like I was running really slowly. When I looked down at my watch, I was really surprised to find we were on a 9:30 pace or so for the first half mile. After the first mile was done, the coach leading the pack picked it up a little more, and my legs really stopped hurting.

I’ve heard other people say they sometimes have fewer shin splints if they run fast rather than slow. I’ve never experienced that myself, up until now, but I think that might have been what happened Saturday. I put in 9:15, 8:58, 8:30, and 8:15 miles and was feeling just fine. I finished up with something near 9:00, and a 9:45 cool-down.

Running hard had another benefit: I felt a lot better mentally the rest of the day. My legs have been fine since (I even spent an afternoon walking around IKEA). I keep telling Sweetie that I’m not going to be feeling Saturday’s run catch up to me until Monday, though. It’s probably true.

Leg Report

I’m feeling a bit better, leg-wise. I overdid it enough shortly after the 22-miler that I got some mild shin splints, but I’m pretty sure these are a-couple-of-days-rest type shin splints, not the two-weeks-off ones I’ve dealt with before. (Famous last words? Hope not. ) I’m not walking around with a limp, there’s no sharp pain, I can just feel it mildly. I should be taking more time to ice the legs; I’ve seen how much that can help.

Two weeks two days until the marathon! I’m going to have butterflies. I already am starting to have butterflies!

I need more rest

The three miles I ran during lunch today? Hurt. Painful calves. Time to take an extra day off — no more running until Saturday’s seven-miler.

Running after the last long run before the marathon

The first minute or two of running last night were painful — I’m still feeling Saturday’s 22-miler — but after that it felt pretty good. I ran 5.1 miles with the Portland Running Company group, all of them sub-10 minutes. I think there was an 8:40 and a 9:06 thrown in there too. Thinking about it now, I’d say my cardio felt really good; I don’t remember feeling out of breath at all. My legs, of course, were a little tired.

The marathon taper has begun. On Portland Fit’s schedule, that doesn’t much change our weekday running — it’s still about 30 minutes, three day a week — but our next two weekends only have runs of seven and five miles. I suppose (fingers crossed) that’ll be enough to keep me from going batty before October 7.

Twenty-two Miles

The coaching staff at Portland Fit very strongly emphasized that we should not try to run the 21-mile training run at our hoped-for marathon pace, but at a minute to two minutes slower per mile, or well into our aerobic zone, whatever that means. (OK, I kind of know what it means. I just don’t know exactly what heart rate it corresponds to for me, since I’ve been unwilling to pony up $100 for the VO2MAX testing it would take to find out.) Normally, I’d ignore this sort of well-intentioned advice, but they were really making it sound like you would be a lot better off for the marathon in three weeks if you didn’t kill yourself now, so I did my best. I kept my heart rate under 82% of my max the whole time, which meant I hardly felt like I was working at all, and ended up running miles between 9:30 and 11:15 or so. Although those 11+ minute miles also involved stopping at a lot of pedestrian crosswalks, so it’s not as bad as it sounds. My new shoes gave me a little foot trouble, especially in my left foot, where I was feeling a seam dig into my inner arch, which I think caused me to compensate and run a little funny on that foot, leading to a mild blister on my index toe (is that a real term?) and a bit of stiffness and pain in the ball of my foot. Other than that, the new shoes seemed to work well, so perhaps some strategic foot taping will do the trick.

Despite the mild discomfort, I did throw in an extra mile along the way. Boo-ya, I ran 22 miles, how you like me now? :-) Well, it’s pretty good for a guy who, nine months ago, had never ran more than a mile or so at a time.

Our route covered most of the actual Portland Marathon course, which is a good thing, since I’m utterly unfamiliar with the North Portland parts of it. Since we start in NW Portland, we skipped the first six or seven miles of the course and ran them at the end. And to shorten the route down to our training distance, we skipped a five-mile out-and-back along the north part of Naito Avenue. Rather, after a brief wiggle around the starting neighborhood in NW Portland, we headed out St. Helens Road toward the St. John’s Bridge. Then up the approach road (this moderate hill comes at mile 17 of the actual marathon, by which time I can see why it’s a bit more imposing) and across Portland’s lovely suspension bridge. Until this run, I don’t think I’ve ever been on the St. John’s — certainly not on foot, and I don’t think in a car, either.

After the bridge, the route returns to downtown via Willamette and Greely avenues, the first quite flat for quite a long time and the second nicely downhill. Some weaving around through the pedestrian-unfriendly north Rose Quarter parts of town, and we finally cross the Steel Bridge. We crossed on the lower deck, though the real marathon does not. I got a long rest there — just as I got to it, the lower deck was raised, waiting for a (slow) boat to go through. Rather than take a detour, I used the time to have a snack, fiddle with my shoes, and find something I wanted to listen to on my MP3 player. “It’s not a race, it’s a training run.”

Then we went south along the west side waterfront, up Harrison (a nasty little climb that actually comes toward the very start of the marathon), and out Barbur until its intersection with Front. That’s pretty much a 180° turn, heading back toward downtown again. Along the way we do one street crossing through this under-street tunnel. If you’ve ever spent time in the New York City subways, this tunnel brings back a flood of urine-soaked memories.

Back along the waterfront, then. As I approached the Steel Bridge, I decided I was going to do my extra mile, so instead of continuing up Front, I did an out-and-back across the lower bridge deck (no boat this time!) and along the east waterfront esplanade. Finally, we finished up the run along roads I’ve become very, very familiar with over the last six months.

Soreness: pretty severe at first. But I was walking ok later that day and never came close to wanting a pain pill, so that’s all right. I did — shudder — take my first-ever cold-water bath, after I got home. They say taking an ice bath (I wasn’t brave / sore enough to try it with real ice!) improves recovery a lot, by reducing swelling and increasing blood flow. I say it’s a practical joke they like to pull on the newbies! It was, of course, agony. Just because you’ve run a long way and are feeling sore, that doesn’t somehow make it any easier to sit in a frigid tub of water. But, moaning and chattering the whole time, I stayed in about 15 minutes. I have no idea if it helped.

This and that, Friday edition

• My blood pressure has been a bit better lately — could be random, could be coming off the Zoloft, could be trying to ease up on the salt. No guess. But it’s been well below 140/90 the last three or four times I’ve checked it. I use those arm-crushing deathtraps by the Pharmacy in Fred Meyer or Target to check. It’s like an arcade game. A really, really, dull arcade game.
• I got an official OEM “boot box” to sit in the bottom part of the MINI’s hatchback storage area and bring it up to the same level as the seats, when they are folded down. The idea, aside from creating a little extra out-of-sight storage, is to have one big flat surface back there for setting a dog crate on. My evil puppies already chewed up my old car; they aren’t going to get their teeth into this one. The boot box, sized to fit the tiny boot area of a MINI, was actually reasonably small. They shipped it in a cardboard box the size of a coffin. With a couple cubic yards of lightly-crumpled packing paper making up the difference.
• I’m sleepy. Is it time to run 22 miles yet?

Less than a month to go until the marathon

I ran Monday night (4 miles), Wednesday night (3 miles), and this morning (2 miles)… a bit of a rest week ahead of our 21-mile benchmark this Saturday. This is our last long run, then it’s three weeks of taper to the marathon. The 21-miler is going to cover most of the actual marathon route, which is good practice, but maybe not so great as far as battling busy streets and traffic goes; they don’t close the streets for training runs, of course. I’m planning on adding in an extra mile, like I did on the last benchmark run.

I bought new shoes before Monday’s run. I needed to get some new ones to break in before the marathon, but I was interested in having them take a look at my stride and see if it had changed much over the last seven months. I guess it hadn’t: I’m still best off in serious motion control shoes. But I tried some Saucony shoes on, instead of my usual Brooks’, and based on several things decided to go with them: they felt livelier, they offered more heel cushioning for my heavy-heel impact stride, and they have a wider toe-box to give my right little piggie more room (and maybe less nasty black nail). They do feel different, and their supports pushes into my inner arches a lot more than the flat-feeling Brooks, but I think they’ll be good.

So it’s still more than three weeks away, but I’m already putting some real thought into the most important post-marathon question: what am I going to eat after? I’m thinking throw all caution to the wind and pig out on forbidden food. I’m thinking Carl’s Jr. Six Dollar Burger, large fries, and a milkshake… Do you know how long it’s been?

Eating on the Central Oregon Coast

Yes, oy, I’m still catching up on things I’ve been meaning to write about for a week. So, the weekend before last was our trip to the coast, and we ate out three times. First, the Lincoln City Mo’s. If you’ve ever been to the Oregon Coast, you’re probably familiar with the small local chain; between Florence and Cannon Beach, they have six locations, all, I believe, with pretty views, except for the original one in Newport (but they have an annex right across the street that does). Their food is, well, straightforward but comforting in its predictability.

In this overhead view, the Lincoln City Mo’s is marked by the knife and fork. It overlooks Siletz Bay, to the south. (The anchor marks where the pod of seals were, at the midpoint of my run the next morning.)

At Mo’s, I had the cole slaw with bay shrimp garnish, and a clam chowder “cannonball” — you know, a hollowed out sourdough loaf, filled with chowder? Sweetie had a cod sandwich, I think. All were acceptable. We were just happy to be on the coast on such a beautiful bright sunny day.

I love clam chowder. Mo’s is far from the best — it’s too floury, and too skimpy on the clam flavor. That night we had dinner at one of my favorite spots, with my favorite crab-laden smoky, silky, and buttery chowder, Gracie’s Sea Hag in Depoe Bay. Sweetie had never been, and was in for a surprise: with a name like the Sea Hag, she wasn’t expecting it to be good. The somewhat run-down atmosphere and bizarrely-dressed and overly aggressive host did little to assure, I think. I had steamer clams with clam chowder; she had halibut Oscar and a trip to the salad bar. As usual, it was all great. My steamer clams were the teeniest little ones I can ever recall getting; I love that. We shared a Marionberry Cobbler with vanilla ice cream and whipped cream for dessert, and that was yummy too. I have to admit, though: something probably gave me an upset tummy that night. Ah well: no risk, no reward.

We were driving through Yachats around lunchtime the next day, and went into the Drift Inn, right on 101. I don’t think I’d ever been there. It was non-pretentious and non-nautical, with an interesting decor consisting of clean wood furnishings and decorated open umbrellas hanging right-side-up from the ceiling. (Ha! Selective memory strikes again. It has been pointed out to me that I completely forgot about the cheesy paintings of mermaids and mermen on the walls, the -maids with the usual enormous… assets, and the -men, in this case, with ’70s porn-star mustaches. Ah well, it was still nice somehow.)  We were both ready for some hot tea, for some reason (herbal for me), and they served good tea in Japanese cast-iron teapots, a nice touch. For lunch, I had dungeness crab eggs Benedict, and Sweetie had Dungeness crab quesadillas. The crab was absolutely some of the best I’ve had — must have been a good season, or the Drift inn has a great supplier. Both dishes were excellent. Service was slow, but the place was busy when we got there, so that wasn’t a real surprise.

Running on the beach / Over the rocky part / I can almost forget / That forgetting is the hardest part

(Title from a song I like)

Sunday morning (yes, yes, that’s like four days ago) I woke up bright and early (ok, dark and early — it was six and the sun wasn’t up yet) in our room at the Surfrider Resort, a few miles north of Depoe Bay, overlooking the beach at the Fogarty Creek wayside. A lovely little beach, by the way. It was the next beach north that had my attention this morning — if the low-res satellite maps weren’t deceiving me, it was six miles long, stretching past Lincoln Beach and Gleneden Beach to end up along the south spit of Siletz Bay, right across the inlet from the south end of Lincoln City. I was supposed to run 11 miles this weekend, but 12 on the beach sounded like fun. I’d done some research about running on the beach:

• Wear your normal running shoes and socks; don’t go barefoot.
• Run on the firm portion down near the water.
• Beaches slope toward the ocean, making for a side-hill run. Run out and back, to equalize the tilt left and right.
• Expect it to be more work than asphalt.

I drove half a mile north down a gravel road and found a public access path that looked like it should be about where the beach started. It was signed as “Fishing Rock”, and a short trail through the lovely coastal woods let me out on top of the outcropping delineating the south end of the beach. There were a few makeshift paths leading down to the sand and I scrambled down a steep one.

Running hurt a bit at first. I’ve been feeling a bit of what I think is sciatica this past week (what a pain in the ass) and so my right leg was especially bad. I figured I’d just take it slow. The first mile took around 11:30 or so. I think I passed only three or four people in the first three miles. The sun still wasn’t showing, but it was getting light. The surf was mild, but I still had to sprint once in a while to outrun the tail end of a wave. It was beautiful.

After a while, I saw what looked like a big hotel building up ahead overlooking the beach. I guessed it was a mile and a half out, and figured it was part of Salishan, and that I’d have to run past it a ways to get to the end of the spit. My mental map was blurry and I wasn’t really thinking clearly about the mileage I had run — those parts of my brain shut down when I’m running — or I would have realized a lot sooner that the hotel I was seeing was actually across the bay inlet, in Lincoln City. I just now did the research. It was the Inn At Spanish Head. In any case, it wasn’t until I could clearly see the beach curving around to form the bay inlet that I realized my error. It made me happy to be further along than I had thought! (Yes, I was wearing my Garmin, so I knew how far I had run. But maybe my estimates of how long the beach was had been wrong. It would have been disappointing to have to turn around before the end of the beach.)

There were a lot of pelicans out flying in formation, which I don’t recall seeing too often on the Oregon coast, but the real treat came when I rounded the tip of the spit and came around to the bay side for a bit: a small pod of seals was hanging out in the water just a few feet off the sand! My naturalist friend seemed annoyed when I recounted this and could not say if they were harbor seals, nor whether they had visible ears or not. I guess I don’t look at seals correctly. The seals were shy; if I approached too close they slapped the water once with a flipper and dove underwater.

I turned around shortly after rounding the spit, and started retracing my steps. I had warmed up nicely by then and was making 10-minute miles without much problem. I picked up the pace to race myself back. Surprisingly, I managed to hit a 8:30 mile around the 10th or 11th mile. There were a lot more people on the beach at 8:30 than at 6:30.

I got back to the start of the beach and started making my way up the outcropping. I tried to find a less steep path up, in hopes that parts would be runnable. The path I took quickly plunged into thick, dew-wet pines and then proceeded to all-but-disappear, excepting for a narrow tunnel that only extended to navel-height. “Oh well, a little speed-crawling at the end of a run is always good. And this rock isn’t that big, I must hit the more cleared portion soon.” A surprisingly long bushwhacking time later, I finally did. A short jog back to the car, and I was done. 12.2 miles in a little over two hours. And one great time.

Hey, didn’t I get a new car?

Buying my MINI proved to be a pretty easy experience, and the dealer seemed to actually go out of their way to have it ready for me by Friday afternoon. (But, grain of salt, right — it’s a car dealership. Who knows what the truth is.) So that meant Sweetie and I got to take the grand new toy for our trip to the coast this weekend.

We put about 400 miles on it and I’ve had enough time to form some opinions about the 2007 MINI Cooper.

Good

• Styling.  Love it. Cute yet classy, at least in my color scheme. (Pepper white with a black top, no bonnet stripes or nothing.)
• Size. Small is good. Even the tiny little hatchback trunk area (the “boot”) is just the right size for holding a reasonable amount of luggage, or five bags of groceries — and they don’t slide around :-)
• Power. More than enough. Doesn’t feel like a lawn mower. Or a ‘95 Saturn. Not sure why you’d need the S model.
• Gas Mileage. Averaging 35.1 mpg for the first 400+ miles. Yay!
• The key fob and starter system. There’s no real key. Insert the key fob disk into a slot and press a button to start it. It amuses me.
• Fun! Well, it’s a new car. It better damn well be fun!

Bad

• No center console or armrest. I guess it was optional. Mmmph. Now where will I store all my garbage?
• Confusing UI.   A lot of the computer displays aren’t all that intuitive. Heck, we had to consult the owner’s manual to figure out the cruise control.
• The slam factor.  I have to close the hatchback door quite hard or else the system thinks it isn’t closed at all.
• When you fold the rear seats down flat, they are still quite a bit higher than the floor of the boot storage area, which is annoying if there’s something you want to put in there that needs one big flat area.
• The dashboard illumination dimmer switch works in a silly way, and can’t dim far enough.

OK, don’t just compare the size of the two lists. The goods are very good, and the bads are niggling details for the most part.