What do I need to carry with me to run 30 miles in Oregon in January?

Wildwood trail really is amazing when you think about it. Thirty miles long. The whole thing (or very close to it) is within the Portland City limits, yet the 25 miles north of Cornell road cross just one trafficked street (and come alongside of just one more). Between mileposts nine (where it grazes NW 53rd) and 25 (the Germantown Road crossing), only side trails, closed gravel roads, and power line clearings interrupt Wildwood’s meanderings.

Today my mood has turned more positive and I’m looking forward to tackling the whole thing.

Let’s see… what do I need to carry with me to run 30 unsupported miles in Oregon in January?

• 100 oz of water
• About 10 Saltstick capsules (though I don’t plan on needing that many)
• A peanut butter and jelly sandwich
• A good number of pretzels
• Six Clif Shots, two each vanilla, chocolate, apple pie flavors
• Four Panda bars, two licorice, two raspberry
• Two Kind Almond & Apricot bars
• One plastic trash bag, kitchen size. (Emergency rain and cold-weather gear!)
• My cell phone
• A Radio / MP3 player
• A Space Blanket, just because I have one
• A small first aid and blister kit
• Extra gloves
• Extra socks
• Extra hat
• A Forest Park map

Hmm. My Ultimate Direction Wasp pack is going to be the one getting the real workout here.

Update 2/1/08:

Addenda to the list:

• Some paper towels. (Nature could call.)

Thoughts before Saturday

I’ve never been nervous about a training run before. I’m nervous about Saturday. Thirty point two miles, the entire length of the Wildwood Trail, from Newberry Road to the zoo. On one level, my nerves are silly: I made it 25 miles in an out-and-back three weeks ago. That was hard, but I limped along and finished. And I don’t plan on running out of water this time around.

“It’s only five miles longer.” What’s five miles? At the start of a run, five miles is easy. In the middle of a good run, five miles is nothing. At the end of a run gone south… five miles is agony. If I’ve slowed down to 14-minute walk-some-jog-some miles, that five miles will take 70 minutes. It’s difficult to describe what that 70 minutes is like under those circumstances. I’ve had it happen twice now. It’s hard and frustrating and not much fun. It’s a spoiler too, casting a mental shadow over the whole accomplishment, at least if you let it. It’s tricky not to let it. What if you hit a real limit? What if this isn’t a case of running too fast for the first 20 miles, and running out of water had nothing to do with it, what if you only have 20 good miles in you? I’m finding it hard to fully shake off thoughts like this until I can prove it otherwise.

I’m glad I’m not doing another long out-and-back; they present psychological challenges all their own. But the route I’m taking offers a different challenge: the biggest hills, up and down, are packed into the last six miles. That’s just one more reminder for taking it easy until the end. Really. Remember: this isn’t about speed. This is about time on my feet. A training run. Run lightly, run slowly. Let the forest pull you along. Enjoy the ride.

Or maybe I was just feeling lazy

Saturday morning’s run wasn’t great. It wasn’t even good. It was only a ten-miler, and with a couple of weeks of lower mileage, it should have been a snap. Maybe it was mental: I wasn’t having a hard time running, but I was having a hard time running well. Let me put it another way. I knew I was plodding slowly along but I didn’t have the energy or the legs to do anything about it. I started out slow to try to warm up, and never felt like I did. Maybe it was the hills. This was a hilly route, starting uphill from my house to the top of Taylors Ferry, then across I5 and weaving down toward the river, following the signs for “SW Trails route 5″. It was a good thing I was following signs; that neighborhood down there is so confusing I might have gotten lost even on an out-and-back.

Just to fully frost the cake, the top of my foot started hurting again during the run, too. And after, the bottom of the foot was fairly sore as well. Not my best day. Mile splits 11:24 11:16 10:10 11:47 9:25 11:53 10:57 10:35 9:48 9:54. Yeeesh.

What blood pressure medications should runners take?

My girlfriend Sweetie is saner than I am and so I agreed with her that I should get a full physical exam, with special attention paid to factors that might make me keel over dead in the middle of a long run. So, having done that, what’s up?

• My cholesterol is hanging in there, though my LDL is quite a bit higher than it should be. It’s not going up, at least, and my HDL (“good cholesterol”) number is still off the charts.
• My blood pressure continues to be an issue. Though it seems OK, usually, when I measure it in one of those drug store machines, in the doctor’s office it likes to come up as 140/90: right at the low end of hypertensive. If I’m hypertensive sitting in an office, it’s a little scary to think of what might be going on during a five-hour run. Sigh.
• The doctor gave me an EKG and didn’t entirely like some of the readings. So now I’m going to get a more conclusive test, an echo cardiogram. From what I can gather, this is basically an ultrasound of the heart. I plan on making at least one lame joke to the technician about not wanting to know if it’s a boy or a girl.

I’m getting the echo cardiogram February 6th and then talking with my doctor about that and about blood pressure medications a little after that. I did a little research on blood pressure medications for endurance athletes (am I an endurance athlete?) and found out some interesting things. Mostly, of course, people who put in a lot of hours of training, simply don’t have high blood pressure. But there are exceptions. What medications can they take?

• Diuretics? No. Diuretics, i.e. “water pills”, are the major class of hypertension medications. They work by making you pee more… less hydrated blood means less pressure. You can see where this could be a problem, right?
• Beta blockers? Heck No. Out of the question, if you want to keep exercising intensely: among other effects, they keep your heart rate down. Try to run and you’ll be exhausted in no time.
• ACE inhibitors are apparently the way to go. These act to counteract the bodily signals that cause constriction of the arteries and veins.

I learned this stuff from the article “Managing High Blood Pressure in Active People“, by Dan Ullrich, on HealthLink. I’ll be interested to see how aware of these issues my doctor is.

Six Miles on Terwilliger

It’s still cold and clear in Portland. It was hovering right around freezing last night. I decided to run on Terwilliger Boulevard. There’s a nice asphalt path with only a few street crossings, very popular with runners of all speeds. Even at night, in the cold, you aren’t alone out there. Except for two stretches, it’s all mildly to moderately uphill from north to south; I started in the south so I finished with the long uphills. From Nebraska Street, south of Capitol Highway, to the north end of Terwilliger is about three miles.

The real draw of Terwilliger for me is the view of the city. Especially in winter, when the trees don’t have their leaves, it’s easy to get distracted looking off to the east, down the hill and over the river. When it’s clear like last night, the Portland lights are stunning. They’ve been illuminating the Morrison Bridge with these beautiful deep indigo lights this year, making the river through downtown that much more interesting to see.

Since this was my second six-mile day in a row, I tried to take it easy. I only succeeded so far. On the way back, uphill, mental inertia kept me wanting to move at a reasonable pace, and after a while I found myself breathing rapidly and hard, pushing strongly with my arms and powering my way up the long slopes. Nothing to really write home about though… I ended up averaging a 9:20 per mile pace for the six miles.

After a quick dinner back home, I headed out for Lloyd center for another wild night of curling. We’re slow: we managed only four ends in a little more than an hour and a half. Our team lost by one point. I had a couple of good throws, but an awful lot of them were too heavy and sailed right through. But the ice was weird: fast parts, slow parts, not very even. Yeah, that’s it, blame the ice…

Just wear two of everything

So far in the course of this Oregon winter, I’ve managed to hold out from buying any sort of lightweight jacket that would be appropriate for running in, instead getting by with long sleeve shirts and a technical vest. Last night was the coldest night yet (maybe 30°F, though at least it was dry) and drastic measures had to be taken: I wore two long-sleeve shirts. And two pairs of gloves. And a hat. It was a good thing I doubled up the gloves: that water bottle I was carrying was cold. I haven’t been carrying water on my six-milers — I don’t need it — but I decided to start training with a hand-held bottle again since I’m going to be carrying one at Hagg Lake.

I ran hard last night and averaged around 8:35/mile for 5.8 miles.

8 on Fanno Creek

I had just eight miles scheduled this morning, as I recover from last Saturday’s 25. I ran it on the nearly-perfectly-flat Fanno Creek trail, starting in the north in the little parking lot off Denney Road and running down to 99 and back. I kept up a consistent 9 minute/mile pace the whole way. It didn’t feel like I was running fast, but it wasn’t particularly easy, either. Still, I’m still recovering from last week and my body’s been feeling a little under the weather lately, so good enough.

The 5K-to-Couch Plan

Thousands have followed Cool Running’s Couch-to-5K Plan and most have lived to regret it. The following is offered to assist those, and others like them, in need.

This new running schedule will help you get off of our overcrowded roads and trails and back onto your comfortable sofa.

It’s waiting, and easier to get back to than you might think.

Too many people have been turned off from lounging simply by trying to stop running too slowly. Their bodies rebel against the arduous weeks of threshold and tempo reclining, and they wind up miserable and still upright.

The beginners’ program we outline here is less of a sofa regimen than a recipe for life. The idea is to transform you from runner to couch potato, getting you lying there for several hours on a regular basis in just three days.

It’s easy to be overly patient, and you may feel tempted to repeat days of the program to stretch out the process. Don’t. If, on the other hand, you find yourself progressing well after day 1, feel free and skip ahead a bit.

Be sure to space out these three days throughout the week to give yourself a chance to stiffen up some between efforts. And don’t worry about how profoundly you rest. Reclining more sedately can wait until your beer gut is back and your posterior callouses are thicker. For now focus on on just lying there, twitching as little as possible.

The schedule
Bookmark this page so that you can easily return to check on your progress. You can also add daily vegetation reminders to your personal calendar.

Week	Workout 1	Workout 2	Workout 3
1	Brisk five-minute warmup walk. Then run for 5K (or 30 minutes).	Lackadaisical two-minute warmup walk. Then alternate 60 seconds of jogging and 60 seconds of lying on the couch for a total of 20 minutes.	Lie on the couch.

Lunch run

Six miles, from the office, out Martinazzi, crossing I5 on Norwood, a little way up Frobase and back. Mild hills, 8:45 miles. Didn’t feel easy. Top-of-foot felt good.

Forest Park Maps

Kelly over at OregonLive’s Run Oregon Blog talks about Erik Goetze’s new Forest Park trail map. I’ve been using this map for about a month, since Erik made a request for beta testers on the Portland Fit discussion board. It is great. Clear and easily readable, with both topological lines and trail distances, it’s miles ahead of any other forest park maps I’ve seen. (Friends of Forest park is a great group, but their map set isn’t great — and at $20 for 10 little sheets of paper, you might feel a little taken advantage of.) The map comes as a set of 4 fairly enormous PDFs and is still being updated fairly regularly as of now.

The Forest Park Map by the Art of Geography

Curling Redux

Last week’s little taste of curling was interesting enough to hook me into joining Evergreen Curling’s new four-week novice curling league. Last night was a free night of practice for those signing up. It looked like about 15 to 20 people, maybe, and some of the experienced club members helped us play a few ends. With a lot more chances to try, everybody did a lot better than last week, but still… I’ve got to admit that at our skill level, the scoring is largely random.

One nickname for curling is “the roaring game”, so-called for the sound of the stone moving over the textured (pebbled) ice. It’s a good nickname. The sound when you push hard off the hack and slide along, readying to release the stone… it’s a little intoxicating.

Top-of-foot pain; new shoes; semi-colons used in title

Six miles at an easy pace felt simple enough last night, even if the skies did open up on us halfway through.  My only problem was that the top of my right foot was painfully sore, near where I tie my shoes. I probably tied them too tightly during the 25-miler and bruised the right one. It hurt a bit to run on it, especially uphill.

Still, I’m glad that was my only issue. I feel like I recovered gratifyingly quickly from Saturday’s run. As far as my foot goes, I bought new shoes last night (the same Brooks Addictions I’ve been using), so I’ll have a nice cushy new tongue laying on the sore spot, and I don’t have much mileage planned for this week. (Only eight miles on Saturday!)

25.5 miles on muddy hills? Hard.

Total distance: 25.5 miles. Total time: 4 hours 57 minutes. Overall impression: First 20 miles no problem (in fact after 12 I decided to stretch my planned 24 to 25); last 5.5, mildly hellish. I hit a small wall, maybe caused or exacerbated by running out of water at around the same time. My legs didn’t hurt like they did for the last four of the marathon, but overall fatigue set in and I found running difficult on the flats and herculean up hills.

The conditions were muddy, muddy, muddy, to the extent that the mud which found its way inside my socks started chafing the soles of my feet. A few puddles were deeper than my shoes, giving me a good soak. It was warm enough that I was able to wear shorts, at least, so I didn’t get the soaking-wet-muddy pants that I did the last time I ran Wildwood.

So why did I run out of water? I think I drank faster than I have in the past because I was carrying plain water instead of stuff with electrolytes in it. I believe I found the water to be more drinkable, even though I never actually minded the Nuun or Gu2O taste. So, the good news is, I learned that I hydrate more with water and salt caps than I do with an electrolyte drink. The bad news, of course, is that I have to carry more water… I’ll probably need my full pack plus one or even two hand-held bottles to make it the full length of Wildwood, 30.2 miles or so.

Nutritionally, I think I was doing fine out there until I ran out of water. I ate two Panda licorice bars (super-yummy) a “Kind” apricot-almond bar (heavenly), a container of Pacific Organics creamy tomato soup (very good), and some peanut-butter filled pretzels. But once I was out of water, I figured I should stop eating too.

My feet came through it OK. I was wearing Nuwool Injinji toe-socks, which seemed appropriate for the wet conditions. The mud getting through to the inside of the sock and then hardening up was a bit of a problem; at one point I stopped and took off the shoe to scrape some of that out.

The end was disappointing. It’s probably good to have some training runs that don’t go according to plan. While I was training up for the marathon, nothing went wrong, so dying in the last few miles of the marathon itself was an upsetting surprise.

Plan for Saturday

A — gulp — 24-mile trail run! My route will be simple.  I’ll park along the shoulder of NW 53rd, where it touches the Wildwood trail at milepost 9.18, then run 12 miles (plus a smidge) northwest to milepost 21 1/4, and back again. Out and backs aren’t as fun as loops, but they sure are easier to plan (and execute). I’ll try for walk breaks every four or five miles. I’m packing in water, SaltStick capsules, peanut butter filled pretzels from Trader Joe’s, two bars of licorice, two Cliff Bars, and a small Tetra Pak of creamy tomato soup.

Stand-up comedy is soooo early ’90s… but bacon is forever

 This made me laugh out loud.

Curling and Karaoke, in the same night, does it get any better? No, right?

I suppose you wouldn’t know it from this blog, but I’m something of a hard-core foodie. Whether its knowing what new restaurant in Portland has all the other foodies buzzing, cooking a good meal, or (a few times in the past) doing the research and writing a good Wikipedia article on a food topic, I’m there.

So when I was free on a Meetin Portland karaoke night, and the theme was “food”, did I really have a choice? No sir I did not. I had to go. But first: curling.

That’s right, curling. You know, the Olympic shuffleboard-on-ice sport? The one with the brooms, and the big rocks-with-handles that look a lot like tea kettles? The local curling club (yes, Portland has a curling club) was having an open house on the Lloyd Center ice, and a Meetin group was going.

It was fun, but it would have been more fun if around 30 people had shown up, instead of 60. As it was, I didn’t get enough hands-on curling to satisfy my lifelong itch. (Yeah! OK! I always watch it when it comes on TV… what?) After all the lessons and practice shots, we each got only one actual try at a real shot, all the way down the ice. Mine wasn’t bad. It’s harder than the pros make it look, but I guess that’s no surprise. My shot, with the smallest of tiny little helper kicks by one of the club members, actually ended up in “the house”, the points-scoring region! It was the first of our group’s to do so too. Life was good. Until someone had an even better shot that both knocked mine away and ended up almost dead-center in the house. But that was just luck! Luck, I say!

After curling, it was time to tackle food karaoke. A Martini and a half let me belt out what to me sounded like a spirited rendition of Mr. Yankovich’s “Addicted to Spuds”.

Monday night fast run

Yep. The light mileage last week showed itself in tonight’s run. It turned into something of a time trial for me.

Total 5.8 miles in 48:27 (8:21/mile average). Mile splits 9:13, 8:53, 8:39, 8:01, 7:51, and, for the last 0.8 miles, a 7:18/mile pace. Yikes!

Ten miles, hilly and slow

This morning I ran from one end of the Marquam Trail to the other and back, plus about half a mile along Wildwood, for a total of 10 very hilly miles.  Starting not far from the Charthouse Restaurant on Terwilliger, I ran up and over Council Crest, down the other side (with a brief on-road trail gap) down to the Highway 26 crossing, around the back of the Children’s Museum, Forestry Center, and Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial. That’s where the Marquam ends, running into the Wildwood. All told it took me a little more than two hours — a slow pace thanks to the hills and mud. I was taking it easy, but I still felt some of the usual tweaks. My right heel was bothering me some, especially uphill during the early miles, and then hours after the run, I noticed a pain I’ve been dealing with a lot lately, near my left groin, I think in an adductor muscle. Hopefully my low mileage this week (only 22 miles) will help out.

2007 in review

It was a good year. I switched to a healthy lifestyle, cleared out a very cluttered house, trained for and finished a marathon, got off the couch and out into the real world, met a lot of new friends, met one wonderful much-more-than-friends woman, paid off enormous debts, learned to parallel park (somewhat), bought a tiny car to make parallel parking easier, got off antidepressants after six months, and found out that I liked soy milk.

That’s going to be a hard act to follow.

Goals for 2008:

• Find more happiness at work
• Finish the Hagg Lake 50K in under 6:15
• Finish the Eugene Marathon in under 4:00
• Tackle the home maintenance tasks I’ve badly let slip