Saturday Morning 14

Saturday morning I got up and out before sunrise for a fourteen-miler along the banks of the Willamette. I did the counterclockwise loop from the east side of the Sellwood bridge, with a four mile out-and-back extension out Front Avenue at the north end. This is a flat route, and I wanted to run it at my marathon pace, 9:00 per mile or a little faster.
Total 14.0 miles in 2:04:43, for an average 8:54 mile.

Mile splits 8:59 8:50 8:53 8:54 9:02 8:53 8:53 8:57 8:54 8:56 8:43 8:45 8:35 9:14.

Goodbye Kentucky

Yes! With 1080.6 combined run and walk miles so far on the virtual trans-America run site, I’ve made it through Kentucky at long last, and have crossed the Ohio River into Illinois. I was also gratified to find that I hit a milepost with a picture right across the river:

Those cars are waiting, I think, for the Cave In Rock Ferry. Now why would they want to go back across to Kentucky?

Not much to report

Not much news on the running front this week; I did run my usual six miles Monday and Wednesday, but Saturday’s trail 20 did take a lot out of me, and I’m having a little trouble with my left hip/groin area and both sciatic regions. Nothing major, but enough that I didn’t run today, and might not tomorrow. Hopefully I’ll be in shape for a planned (flat!) 14-miler on Saturday… I was planning to do it at my planned marathon pace (9:00 per mile) but I might ease up some if I’m still gimping along.

I’ve been eating little but turkey all week, so I should be in good shape :-)

19.6 miles in muddy and wet Forest Park

The route I had planned for today’s 20-mile run wasn’t particularly easy, and the pouring rain and frequently muddy trails didn’t make it easier. In other words, it was the perfect race-specific training for Hagg Lake and beyond. It was also my most taxing workout since the Portland Marathon, and may have even been harder in some ways.

In the cold and rain, I ran 19.6 miles in about 3:30:00, for an average 10:43 mile. I’m surprised it was that fast. My Forerunnner GPS wasn’t keeping a lock in the trees, rain, and hills, so I couldn’t tell what my pace was along the way. I felt like I was running slower.

The first 1.7 miles was the steep descent from Pittock Mansion north, past Cornell Road then down to Balch Creek (absolutely beautiful with all the rain turning it into a glowing white cascade) and the Stone House. Since I was just warming up, I couldn’t attack the downhill, but I could think about what it was going to be like coming back up it 18 miles later! I wasn’t feeling particularly strong.

After the Stone House, the Wildwood Trail goes mostly uphill for a couple of miles, then finally levels out into the more mild and frequent rollers that comprise most of Wildwood past milepost eight. I was doing all right, getting pretty wet and very muddy. There were enough muddy puddles that jogging right through them was the only option. My shoes and socks were soaked and foul, of course, but in the end, my feet and toes have come out 100% fine. Although I did have a certain shoe problem later…

After about an hour, more than five miles in, I took a short planned walk break and decided to have one of my Clif Shots — mocha flavor, with caffeine. Mmmm black viscous delicious oh so sweet goo. With a buzz. Great! I’ve cut caffeine out of my day-to-day habits, but this run called for it.

Nothing notable happened the rest of the way out on Wildwood, and, before I was expecting it, I reached the Koenig Trail, my turnoff. It wasn’t until I was lying down and resting at home, long after the run was over, that I remembered I was supposed to have gone another quarter-mile past Koenig and back! That’s why my distance was 19.6 instead of 20.1. Lying in bed, quads and calves stiff knots of discomfort, I entertained the idea of getting dressed and running a half mile around my neighborhood, but I’m just not quite that dumb. Close.

Koenig was a poorly-maintained very narrow pretty short very steep downhill connector trail that took me to Leif Erickson, and then a couple hundred feet northwest on Leif, continued down the hill to end at the Maple Trail. I headed back southeast on Maple, taking my second walk break and munching on a Kashi snack bar.

Soon Maple climbed back up to Leif Erikson, around milepost 4. The gravel and rock of Leif felt hard and strange on my soles after a few hours in soft splashy mud. I was headed to the Wild Cherry trail right near mile zero of Leif, and for once I didn’t appreciate how visible the milepost markers every quarter of a mile were: I’d rather have just zoned out without thinking about distances remaining. It didn’t help that those fast runners populate the road, zipping by you like you’re standing still. We hates them, we do. It was at the start of my run down Leif that my MP3 player/FM radio gave out. I think maybe it got some water up the microphone port? It was working intermittently, then not at all. I hope it dries out and gets better — it’s an iRiver e10 and its fm radio pulls in stations phenomenally well.

There’s a porta-potty on Leif right where the Wild Cherry trail intersects it, and I went ahead and peed there… I guess I was keeping hydrated successfully. Yuck, shiver, gross, porta-potty. (The “Honey Bucket” brand.)

Wild Cherry provided a pretty steep and very muddy climb back up to Wildwood. Huff huff puff puff. After a few miles of rollers on Wildwood, the downhill back to the Stone House began. The downs were OK, but every time I hit an up, the muscles on the front of my quads hurt. Yep, those last 1.8 miles were going to be a ton of fun! I also started getting annoyed by just how very much water and mud my running pants had soaked up and held onto. Especially around the ankles — slap slap slap slap. Maybe it was the three hours of hard work addling my mind, but I thought about getting some — errrk! — running tights for any future really long cold and wet runs.

Past the Stone House then up, up, up. I think I walked two steep uphills, maybe 30 yards each, but I kept up a shuffle of a jog for the rest of it, and my leg muscles came through for me, resigned, I guess, to their unhappy fate at the end of the whip wielded by my slave-driver of a brain. It was hard, hard, work, and I have rarely been so glad to make it back to my car.

The risks of running in the mud

I read a lot about ultra running and trail running, so as to (a) waste time and (b) be prepared for the things that might happen to me out there. But I have never seen anyone else mention what happened to me today.

So I finished up my 20-mile trail run and drove home. Soaking wet, I kept the heat cranked all the way up in the car, which almost but not quite kept me warm. By the time I made it home, I was really cold, and was desperate to force my stiffened legs upstairs, get out of my sodden clothes, and take a shower. I eagerly started a hot shower and began to undress.

Painfully bending down to take off my shoes, I tugged on my lace ends. Nothing. No movement. No untying. Solid as a rock. I lace my shoes securely and tight around the ankles. (It wasn’t that long ago that I couldn’t tie a knot that would keep closed.) If I couldn’t get those laces untied, I wasn’t getting out of those shoes. I’m not sure if it was ground-in dirt particles causing extra friction, or a result of soaked laces getting slightly dried during the ride home. In any case, I just couldn’t work on the problem for long. I was cold! And bending over hurt!

Yep. You see it coming. I pulled my running pants and underwear off over my shoes and got into the shower, filthy stinking shoes and all.

Plans

I had myself scheduled to run 14 miles this Saturday and 20 the next, but Mom’s going to be visiting next weekend, so I moved the 20 up a week. Which means I probably should have taken it easy during last night’s run. I guess I did take it easy, a little — at one point I looked at my watch, said “I shouldn’t be running this fast”, and slowed down some — but it was still six miles at around an 8:40 pace. I’m looking forward to Saturday, and my new longest trail run. My planned route is to start at the Pittock Mansion, take Wildwood north until a quarter mile past the Koenig trail, return to the Koenig and take it down past Leif Erickson to the Maple Trail, Maple south back to Leif,  Leif  south back to the Wild Cherry trail, Wild Cherry back up to Wildwood, and south on Wildwood back to the start. I think that’s 20. I should double-check, but doing trail junction math is kind of a pain. I started thinking about writing a program to make it easier to figure out loops of certain distances in Forest Park. [Update: the way I had it before, according to my double-checking, was 19.8. I added the slight excursion to the Maple Trail to bring it up to 20.1.]

I also signed up for The Race For The Roses half-marathon in early April, for fun, and because a MiPL event was posted for it. The route looks relatively flat and covers a lot of the same ground that the Portland Marathon did, and it shouldn’t interfere with my training for the Eugene Marathon.

If I can get a minute per mile faster every nine months, pretty soon I’ll be finishing races before I start

I’m trying to do runs that push my speed on Mondays. Today I had to run at lunch. I went over the pedestrian bridge to Cook Park, then followed the trail along the river west, until it came out on 108th. Mostly flat asphalt and pavement; some gravel in miles 2 and 5. The first and last miles had a lot of stopping at crosswalks. Total of 6.0 miles in 49:27. Mile splits 8:32, 8:04, 8:21, 8:19, 7:52, 8:19. Not quite as fast as last Monday, but I didn’t have the incentive of running with others this time… plus my legs didn’t feel great going into it. So I’m happy happy.

Wildwood: Germantown to Newberry

I had myself marked down to run 11 miles on Saturday morning, and I figured out that it was pretty close to 5.5 miles on the Wildwood Trail between Germantown Road and the very end of the trail at Newberry Road. I’d also wanted to get a look at where the trail hit Newberry, since I’m planning on doing a through-run of the Wildwood sometime soon. Anyway, I parked at the trailhead lot on Germantown road (after making several painful mistakes in driving there) and did the out-and-back. Let’s be honest: once you’re past the Stone House where it meets the Lower Macleay trail, most of the rest of Wildwood looks pretty much the same. You slant down to a creek through deciduous forest, cross a rail-less wooden bridge, slant back up away from the creek, the forest turns evergreen and rolls up and down little hills for a while, you climb up a ways and cross a fire-lane, and it all repeats over and over again. This section was no exception. It had a few more downed trees to scramble over or duck under than other sections, and maybe more nice ferny parts, but for the most part, it was similar looking to the adjacent 20 miles. I ran a bit later in the day than I usually do, so the trail was (relatively) busy, mostly with other runners.

Wednesday and Thursday runs

My legs felt pretty rough last night, probably still recovering from Monday’s speedy run. We did our 5.8 miles at around a 9:30 average pace. It felt slow, but uncomfortable. Then I ran again today at lunch (I can’t tonight, because Sweetie — who is done with finals, yay! — and I are going roller skating at Oaks Park with MiPL) and did 3.7 miles at 8:56/mile, with only a moderate perceived effort.

Poke snip bzzzzt

I have a band-aid on my left jawbone now because I went to see my dermatologist (he also writes expensive books on the art of the American West… I’m not sure which is the side job) about this bump on my face I’ve been noticing for the last few weeks. Right after I shower, it gets all puffy and light-colored; as it dries up it turns darker brown. Anyway, Doc Peterson took a look and said it’s almost certainly a Seborrheic keratosis, which isn’t much to worry about. Of course he wanted to pop it off and send it into the lab just in case. Well, I think he’d want to pop it off even if he knew, 100%, that it was benign: it’s still an ugly annoyance to have growing on one’s face. So, after a little Novocaine, some snipping, and a bit of electric cauterization, I have a little less face on my face and a little more band-aid.  The band-aid comes off tomorrow morning and there’s supposed to be scabbing for a few weeks.

Monday Night’s Run

Last night I ran 5.8 miles in about 47 minutes, averaging around 8:10 a mile. That’s very fast for me! In fact I think it must be a new nearly-10K PR. (Though there were a few stops for traffic lights, where I did pause my watch.) This was on our usual PRC winter route, which has some mild-to-moderate hills.

It seems like the lighter week plus the nice slow long run on the weekend did the trick; obviously I was feeling pretty good last night. I’m pleased with how quickly my legs recovered after the 18-miler. And surprised, considering how much they ached immediately after.

Track Town U.S.A.

I went down to Eugene last night for my Mom’s traditional Chanukkah dinner (hey, two years in a row is a tradition if you ask me) and stayed over to do my 18-mile run down there today. I started with hills and mud, not leaving me a lot of oomph for the second half… but then, running on tired legs is good training too. Letsee… total distance, 18.4 miles, total time, 3:33:25, average mile 11:36, fastest mile 9:44. Yeah, I started out slow and tapered off; I’ve heard that’s the best plan.

OK. The route. Click here for a full zoomable map.

I started around 29th and Willamette and headed up Crest and Blanton to reach the trailhead at the western end of Eugene’s Ridgeline Trail. This is a six or seven mile trail through the ferny fir forests that dominate the landscape south of town. From Blanton, it climbs up and down and snakes around developments to reach Willamette Street. There was one downed tree in this section, its big unearthed root-ball laying right over the trail, but scrambling over and around wasn’t a big deal. Other than that, this section of ridgeline was very well maintained, and the footing was very good.

Crossing Willamette, the trail continues at another trailhead parking lot a small ways to the south. It starts off with a steep section climbing away from the road, following a power-lines clearing, then levels off some when it turns toward the right and heads for the flanks of Spencer’s Butte. The forest is beautiful all around the butte, but of course the trail starts to climb steeply too as it nears it. After not too long, it levels out and skirts the north side of the mountain. A trail intersection with good signage lets you head to the summit of the butte if you want; I kept heading east instead, toward Fox Hollow road. Throughout this section, there was a little mud.

The trail section between Fox Hollow and Dillard road is fairly short, not too hilly, and a little muddier. (Sensing a pattern yet?) I stayed to the right at the fork to take the hiking trail, rather than the one open to mountain bikes too.

I didn’t realize that it was a significant distance along Dillard Road to the continuation of the trail, and I guessed wrong which way to go along the road, so I took a short out-and back before returning to the trailhead to, you know, look at the map they have there. Ohhh… it’s the other way, duh. I jogged down the road the right way to reach the other Dillard Road trailhead lot.

Now, the book Trail Running Oregon has a runs covering all of the Ridgeline I’d seen so far, but it didn’t mention anything about this last part I was about to run, past Dillard Road. Very, very quickly, I figured out why. Have a look at the elevation profile for my route:

See near mile eight? Where the line goes vertical? That’s the Ridgeline Trail after Dillard Road. It goes straight up Mount Baldy, on an exposed mud-slick path that was hard to even walk up. I walked it. It was pretty once the trail made it to the top. Then there was going down the other side. Almost as steep, this trail was the muddiest yet, a nascent stream really, and had enough erosion that you really had to think about where to plant each step. A sane man would have walked it; I ran as best as I could. No falls, yay!

The trail ends at the dead-end of Spring Street, amid all the expensive new houses way up there in the southeast hills. A few rough pavement-pounding miles downhill, and I was at Snell and Amazon, quite close to the house I grew up in, on Martin street. I ran south up West Amazon, along the bark-dust trail they have along both sides of the creek now. (Amazon Creek runs between the two parallel streets, East and West Amazon Drive.) The trail has a name; it’s the “Rexius Trail”. I guess it’s a corporate thing.

My house was still there on Martin Street; there’s also a new playground there, which was weird. I took a short trip up the unnamed trails immediately south of the street, and discovered that they’ve build up a new one too, that connects to the dead-end Canyon road. Cute little trail.

Back north now along East Amazon, then through Amazon Park (which has a very popular bark dust trail with 1000m and one-mile loop options), up past South Eugene High school, and over toward the University of Oregon. I would have taken a turtle-like loop around the Hayward Field track to top off my Eugene Running experience, but it was closed for resurfacing or other renovations — they’re gussying it up for the US Olympic track and field trials, no doubt. Back to my Mom’s, and that’s 18.4 miles. And I am sore sore sore. Ouch ouch ouch. (I actually got quite a bit better pretty quickly though.)

Both Virginia and Kentucky are way too wide, in fact

Another 4.4 miles last night. It was 46 and barely raining: not too bad.

Have I ever mentioned the site I use right now to log my mileage? It’s http://exercise.lbl.gov,  and as bare-bones, unpolished,  and somewhat sluggish as it is, I still find it fun and motivating. The basic gimmick is that it tallies up your mileage and shows you how far along a trans-America route you’ve made it so far, along with a picture from around your (virtual) location. You start on the Virginia shoreline and end on the Oregon coast (in Florence, in fact).  So right now I’m near Whitesville, KY, and what a breath-takingly beautiful place it is, too:

4.4 miles

The enormous storm that had been pelting Oregon and Washington for two days was winding down by last night, but there was still a lot of flooding around, along with sporadic heavy rain. I’m not sure if it was the flooding (217 was shut down near Allen, Fanno Creek having overrun it), the weather, or the usual Christmas-season traffic, but getting to the Portland Running Company from my house was a nightmare. If it really were 2007, I’d have a flying car and this sort of thing wouldn’t be a problem.

The good news accompanying the storm was that it was warm: in the mid-50s. So running through the drenching rain and big puddles wasn’t bad at all. I stuck to my plans to ease up this week and ran, for the first time, the “short loop”, 4.4 miles instead of 5.8.

Snowy 13

When the nice big slow-falling snowflakes started coming down kind of heavy, around mile 11 of my 13-miler this morning, I started playing games. Well, one game. I’d pick out a flake as far ahead as I could see one clearly, at about the right height (and adjusted for the breeze) and try to run and catch it. The first one, I nailed it: without a change of pace, I caught in my mouth. Yes! The next three or four, I was close, but no direct hits like that. Then the crowds picked up as I neared the end of Leif Erikson Drive, and I had to stop acting like a little kid.

My run was 6.5 miles up Leif, to about half a mile past its intersection with Saltzman, and then 6.5 miles back down.  Total time: 2:12:28, average mile 10:11. Mile splits: 11:37, 11:00, 10:57, 10:46, 10:43, 10:15, 11:21 (I stopped to get out a Nutella and Jelly sandwich during this one — I’m starting up the training-to-eat-solid-foods thing again), 9:34, 8:33, 9:31, 9:44, 9:57, 8:19.

It felt more difficult than it ought. I think I’m overdoing it a little. The last three weeks I’ve run 31, 26, and 30 miles, which is a noticeable step up from my Portland Fit pre-October pre-marathon schedule, which peaked out at about 25 miles — and then only some weeks. I know any serious distance runners who read this are going to see that I’m finding 30 miles a week to be a little wearing and just have a good laugh at me, but, remember, I’ve haven’t even been running a year yet. Anyway, next week I’m going to take it a bit easier and see if I can’t recover a bit.