A Sunday nine mile run didn’t happen yesterday, so we made up for it by getting up really early facing the rain and going for it this morning. At 6:30 my running partner and I found ourselves under the freeway bridges on the Portland waterfront, The rain wasn’t too bad, but it wasn’t great either other than supplying us with a relatively warm morning. Off we went into the AM dark on the darkest night of the year, nothing but bright runs from here on out. I wasn’t sure how much light we would have, but we picked up enough from the city and the low clouds to see our way for the first hour or so until the day decided to welcome us.

We had to add on some miles to our loop to make nine which we did up a hill before we crossed the Willamette. I powered across the bridge mostly I think to get off it as quickly as possible but also to push my partner. We successfully traversed the thin pedestrian path as quickly as we could and then headed off to the final half of our run along the west bank of the river. This portion of the run is sort of unfair as the new waterfront development gives you the illusion of approaching downtown which really doesn’t come for another mile and a half or so, sort of frustrating.

We brought peanut-butter filled pretzels to eat on the move which turned out to be relatively hard. We have taken them on long runs before and they have made for a good protein boost mid run. However in the past we stopped to eat, this time we powered through the run and ate on the move which proved to be difficult without choking on pretzelly goodness. We also brought sharkies, electrolyte gummy sharks which I love. I managed to pocket my partner’s pack of sharkies, which may have been subconsciously on purpose.

I rode the bus home from the waterfront and ate a protein bar which was awesome (but I realized it is not vegetarian as it has oyster shells in it). I may need to let that one go.