Tag Archives: long run

Longest run in a couple months

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I have been thinking of making my Mt Tabor run for awhile now. I don’t know why I have been so hung up on this and procrastinaty. I think maybe because it was the longest run I have done in a few months, 8.11 miles. I was curious to see how my foot discomfort would be affected. I even swabbed on some arnica gel before I pulled on my socks. Not sure how much it helps, but my feet didn’t really bug me until I was coming down off the mountain. That was when I really noticed that my show size somehow shrunk like 2-3 sizes (or at least that is what it feels like).

The run went pretty well albeit slowly. That has really been the story of my running life lately. Slow slow slow, like near 10 minute miles plus or minus a bit. If I am going under 10 min miles I feel like I am going pretty well! Oh the eight minute mile days… I do want to start incorporating some speed work in and build back up. I am feeling pretty good about getting back into the swing of things these days. I think the nicer weather has been a big part of it, though today it is nice and cloudy and cool, these will be the days I yearn for in the coming months.

My neighbors decided last night would be a great night to treat the entire hood to their campfire smoke. Woke me up after midnight and I had to shut my windows essentially trapping all the smoke in the bedroom. My lungs felt pretty flemmy this morning and I imagine that effected the run a bit. Thanks considerate neighbors.

Return to running

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My break from running was short, but for some reason my body was thinking it was longer. I have run 4 out of the last 6 days with two set of back to back days. I am feeling really slow and experiencing a few minor injury problems. It is as if I brought my conditioning to a pretty high level and after the break my body is rebelling.

I have been having periodic issues with my hip lately. I have had these in the past, but it seems as if they have decided to flair up this week. I have been using the foam roller on my hips and that seems to help quite a bit, so perhaps that is the answer I am looking for.

On Sunday my running partner and I did an enjoyable nine miles in Forest Park, toward the end we decided to pick up the pace as we left the park and headed down the hill. Running downhill is supposed to build strength in the legs and running fast downhill is even better. The hard part of doing the fast downhill is letting go and not holding back. If you can relax your legs and gate to let your body just carry itself forward the downhill run can be a good thing. But if you are holding back you tighten up and can more easily cause injury to your legs and back. I think I was able to relax in our run down Thurman St. and we finished feeling good. My problem came later.

After our run and sushi my running partner wanted to go to the gym for a shower so I decided to bus home. The light rail took me from NW to downtown where I could pick up a bus to my neighborhood. On the train ride I saw that I had plenty of time to catch my bus, or so I thought. When I got off the train I had about a five block walk to catch the bus and when I turned into the bus mall there went my bus. The buses make a lot of stops downtown and tend to go slowly, so I thought I could catch it if I sprinted. Three blocks later I just made my bus! Phew! But as I sat down I realized my left leg was in pain. I could barely lift it. My sprint had been all I could take and I appeared to strain my left thigh. I seriously could not lift my leg, I could walk ok as long as I shuffled.

That evening I did a lot of gentle stretching and foam rolling concentrating on my left leg and it seemed to do the trick. Well that and taking a couple more days off combined with more stretching and rolling. My first run after the strain went pretty well. It was basically a junk run, over 70% of max so no recovery benefit and not nearly fast enough to be a quality run. But I put in some miles, eight of them, and most importantly was relatively pain free. I felt a little bit of occasional pain in my hip, but I was able to align myself and run through it. The only odd issue was feeling somewhat exhausted, like I still hadn’t recovered from my running break.

The next day (today) I started out resigning myself to another junk run. My thinking was that I might need to build up some regular running as a way of getting back into running form. Before I knew it I was cruising along at a pretty good clip with my HR in 160s. I quickly decided that my fear of doing quality workouts was not based in reality and today’s junk run became a slow tempo run, but still a tempo run and still a quality run. I felt pretty good as I maintained my high HR for five and a half miles or so before I slowed to a cool down for the final mile. The run felt great and I was really glad to beat the heat that showed up in the afternoon.

On another note we are considering doing the Pints to Pasta run that goes from the Widmer Brewery to the Spaghetti Station. Free food and beer and a new shirt are all part of the deal. Its a 10k and would be a good way to get another race it this year. My partner wants to do the Race for the Cure 5k the week following, so this would be a good warm up for that for her. More on this soon.

Mile high desert run to Five Mountains

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Ok, as usual I am exaggerating. Winslow is actually a shade under 500o ft. but it sure is a lot different than the 500 ft. elevation I am used to in Portland. I was curious to see how long it would take to get used to the change. In the past it seemed like 3-4 days was enough to acclimate to the new elevation and this trip has more or less confirmed that. For the first two runs I did (on days 2 and 3) I struggled a bit with my breathing. Just couldn’t seem to get enough oxygen. Even when I wasn’t running it seemed like I was always slightly out of breath. Nothing huge, but it certainly was noticeable. Even now at day five here I still feel slightly out of breath.

The big difference has of course been breathing. My first run I started out at 3 breaths in and 2 out, after only a few blocks I was breathing 2 and 2. Soon I was down to 2 and 1. I was surprised how quickly I transitioned into the faster breathing. And I wasn’t even doing a hard pace. The second run was about the same. It wasn’t until my third desert marathon that I was able to settle into my normal 3 – 2 breathing pattern.

As tough as the breathing was I think the more drastic change was in my heart rate. It was exceptionally high for runs that I was not doing at a super fast pace. My average pace was up above 165 for most of the runs and 155 for my “recovery” run. Way too high. We are having some high humidity, so that could be having an effect, but I am mostly attributing this to the change in elevation. All in all I would say my HR was about 20-25 beats higher than normal. I think this had quite a drastic effect on how I was feeling on the runs, but my post-run recovery seemed to go pretty smoothly. Every next morning I was ready for another run.

Yesterday I had a really great run out to what is called Five Mountains, really a chain of five mesas north of Winslow. I had ridden out there once on bikes as a kid and for some reason the area always held a level of mystique for me. Partly I think was due to the fact that i was never totally sure how we got out there and partly because I never went out there with my parents on any of our desert explorations. It was our place, “our” being the gang. In my mind it was only accessible via my old long gone purple bike. It seemed so far away too. You could always see it in the distance, but I never knew how far it was. Nobody seemed to know. Even as an adult, it seemed like it was miles away (and it was three miles to be exact from Desert View where my sister lives.)

On trips home I would always consider running out there, but I never did. This time I asked my sister and niece how to get out there and neither had any idea. They actually weren’t even sure what I was talking about. “Its that big mesa out there north of Winslow” I would say, “Can’t you see it.” “Whatever” said my niece… Hmmm, if nobody knows how to get there, how would I get there? My mom had an idea that I could head out to the old dump and find a road to the mesas, but that would be too long for a run as I would have to double back to the south, plus there was no shoulder on the road.

So on my Friday run I headed out towards Desert View originally not intending to go much further. The day was cloudy and that combined with my early start kept the temperatures nice and cool. Tooling along on the trail that runs through a culvert under the highway I thought to myself I may not have a better opportunity to try the mysterious run to Five Mountains. I dropped by my sisters house hoping to use the bathroom (I miss not having the bathroom mid-run at Reed) but she wasn’t awake despite the cacophony from her four dachshunds. I filled up my bottle from her garden hose with the most vile water imaginable (but still wet) and headed down the road to the desert north of her house.

Through a muddy dip I chased a jack rabbit and headed in the general direction of the mesas. The roads, used for off road fun, twisted and dipped and featured many ruts that I am sure are a lot funner on an ATV. My ankles rolled to match up with the uneven terrain. North I went. Then the road turned, and split, and got worse. Soon I was heading due west towards two water tanks that service a new community west of town. I thought I would just keep going for awhile in hopes of turning back towards the mesas, and the road did! Unfortunately I soon took me up a big hill and to the east, again the wrong direction. I was on the verge of giving up and heading for Walmart when the road ended in a big circle used for spinning broddies. I looked to the north again at my mesas and I saw a barbed wire fence between me and the mountains. I thought, what the heck, I’ll go see if there is any way I can get through. As I reached the fence I found a spot that looked like someone had broken through. Some rancher had repaired it but left me enough space to easily squeeze through. I thought, this is a sign that I should keep going toward my goal, so I did. Not 100 feet away, I had a bad sign when I tripped over a dried prairie grass clump and landed in the redest most powdery sand imaginable. With the sweat I had worked up at that point I managed to completely cover my right side. I was a mess. But I continued on.

As horrible tasting as that hose water was, I was super glad to have it. And powered by the Tower of Power I did an Oakland Stroke across the sands. The ground was oddly swept by winds and rains and many of the sparse desert plants where pretty green. The going was slow as I pushed through the sandy soil. The mesas loomed in the distance, looking much further than the 3 miles they actually were. I was determined to make it out there and eventually I did despite thoughts of getting bit by a rattlesnake. I kept my distance from larger brush piles and such. Eventually I found myself on a long flat stretch to the south of the mesas and I knew I was home free. I had made it! Now I just had to climb to the top. Actually the thoughts of climbing the mesa was on my mind the entire run colored by my fear of heights. I could see a spot on the side of the mesa where I probably could reach the top. The last bit was like a sandstone nipple and really made me reconsider the ascent. But by the time I reached it I knew I had no choice, I had to get to the top. So I stopped my watch and made the climb. The ground was pretty soft due to the sand and rain we had had, but I trudged through the crumbling face and made it to the stone top. I wasn’t done yet though. I had to get to the very top and stand up straight to look out at the desert floor all around me. And I did. I was pretty nervous about it and standing up was a chore and a half, but I did it. I didn’t stay long, just snapped some pics on my phone (which came out poorly) and headed back down.

Coming down was pretty nerve racking for me. I spent a good amount of the initial rocky part on my but scooting down. I figured I was already covered in red dirt anyway, so whats the dif. The crumbly part posed further climbing challenge, but one I realized I could crab walk sideways and keep my balance I was fine. I have to say I was glad to be at the bottom. I hope this sounds like the mesa was really high, becasue it wasn’t. I am just a heights wuss.

At the bottom I realized I hadn’t searched out the road back so I wouldn’t have to cross through the desert again. Well I wasn’t climbing back up, that’s for sure. So I decided to just take the road and see where it led. I had the water tanks in the distance as a guide, so at the very worst I could just head off toward those. The rod curved through several washes and carved out trails in the sandstone. As I got closer to the water tanks I was also going further west, the opposite direction from home. But I had a pretty solid idea that eventually I would meet up with a road that was meant for real human transport so I kept on. Eventually my dirt road came to a fence and soon a gate (complete with a no trespassing sign) and beyond the gate, I found myself across a cattle guard and onto asphalt. After a long stretch of blacktop I came to the side road along I-40 and headed back into town and my sisters neighborhood. I had another 2.5 miles to get home and I decided I had enough. It was time to wake up my sister and get a ride home which is just what I did. Her dogs loved me, I was a giant stinky desert salt pop and they licked and licked. After several cold G2s I felt much better. I had done it, I had conquered the Five Mountains. And I even know how to get back there now, not that I ever will. It was a lot funner as a kid than as a heights challenged/addled adult.

Long run of the week

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This week’s long run wasn’t actually that long, but it was longer than it could have been. A friend of mine invited me to go running with him and a friend of his. Both of them aren’t regular runners, so I knew it would be very casual. To top it off he wanted to run Mt Tabor which is by no means a casual run. So not only would it be casual, but would feature a lot of stopping which was fine.

So knowing all this I decided to get some miles in ahead of time. I have been contemplating adding Laurelhurst park into my regular core of runs. I discovered it was 3.25 miles from my house to the park and about a mile around it. So all in all 7.5 miles in total from home to park and back. I didn’t head back home, rather ran over to the volcano to meet my friends. I was running a bit late so I had to put on the afterburners to make it up the hill in time. After meeting them we headed up the volcano. It was fun and nice to have some company as my running partner has been out of town all week. All in all I got in 10.5 miles, not enough to put me over the 40 miles total for the week. I hope to get out today for a good start to the week.

Rainy week

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This week, actually this whole month, has been super rainy. While I don’t mind running in a little rain, downpours are too much! My mileage has been suffering, until yesterday that is. Saturday I got an early start on what ended up being the furthest I have run this year, 15.5 miles. Overall it felt pretty good though slow. I started by heading up to the top of Mt. Tabor, our friendly inactive volcano. After enjoying the run down and out of the park I headed in a southwest direction and entered Oaks Bottom wildlife refuge which eventually hooked up to the Springwater Corridor. I ran that for a mile or so and then curved around through the park and into Sellwood and West Moreland. Over the bridge I ended my run by going through East Moreland and up to Woodstock for that pizza I missed out on a couple of weeks back. I was pretty pooped and feeling a bit sore, especially in my hip. I need to break out the foam roller tonight for a little hip work!

I ended up with over 30 miles this week, but most of them came on Saturday. I am looking forward to being a bit more consistent this week. I got two quality runs in last week, so that was good, just too many days with no running. Next week will be better.

Mom asked me why I do this to myself. An extremely reasonable question! Part of it is the health benefit of the preparation for doing long endurance runs. Part of it is the burning of 2500+ calories. Part of it is the challenge of seeing just how far I can will myself to run. My distances are by no means incredibly long, but they are good distances and my body certainly feels it after I am done. I don’t feel like I am running away from the ms, always keeping ahead of it. No, it is more of an overall health benefit that I think is doing the most good for me. It has been over two years since any major symptoms so I am thinking it must be working. I have no illusions about curing my ms, but I do think I am helping to keep it at bay. I makes me wonder what effect running would have on me if I wasn’t taking the rebif. Would I be in a similar place? Could extreme exercise and diet work to prevent ms on their own?

Lake of mystery solved!

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My choice of a run through Milwaukie (yep, spelled right this time) or check out the lake of mystery. I initially decided on Milwaukie, but I didn’t get too far before I hit railroad tracks The road along the track had no shoulder to speak of, so I turned east. After running through a little block long nature preserve (which was really nice despite being part of a housing development) I decided to make my way back to King road and then the 30 blocks to the east that woudl lead me to the lake of mystery.

I thought the lake might have been part of a development, but I wasn’t expecting an upscale trailer park. I barely got to see the lake which was all fenced off with 5 foot chain link. I’m sure the birds like it, though I din’t see any. I ran around the perimeter of the park which was walled off to the north by a steep embankment. I hardly saw anyone out; several for sale signs almost like breadcrumbs. The one person I did see was driving an SUV she had just barreled out of the driveway in. As I passed her she blew out a nice big puff of smoke, nice. Ok, time to go back.

I knew I had some hills ahead of me but I didn’t want to take the one nearest to the l of m. So I decided to see if Springwater Corridor was blocked off on this end. When I had crossed it on 42nd, it was fenced off. So it was, but I could see several people out on it, so what the heck (cue: Breaking the Law by Judas Priest). The first fence was easy, but they really did a good job at 42nd and I had to do a little climbing. Past the bathrooms they had the Tideman Johnson Park blocked off as well. A little ways down the road the city revealed its plan to keep it open by fencing a corridor to it. So I headed up the entrance and made it back to east moreland.

Two more miles to go. I decided to stop and get a couple slices of pizza. Good recovery food. At a busy corner I waited, the walk sign flashed and a bike cut right in front of me making the turn on my left. His asleep sorry was answered by my “nice.” On the way down Woodstock I see mr. bike is also getting pizza, so I passed and headed home.

Finally back at home after 2 hrs and 10 mins. I get in the yard, pet the dog and my neighbor yells across the fence asking if I can give him a hand. A hand turns out to be getting his new boat motor out of his tahoe and mounted on the rolling rack he made, ugh. It was actually easier than it seemed, but I’d hate to do it every day.

With the motor in place I was ready to eat some casserole I had left over, lots of pasta and cheese!

So with the lake of mystery solved on my bachelor long run weekend, it opens up a whole new level of mystery. What is going on inside that crazy trailer park? Why do these people live there? What do they do? Whatever it is it is all done inside with the curtains drawn.

Two quality runs in a row

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I sort of went off my regimen of hard – easy – hard – easy runs today by doing a second hard quality run in a row. Yesterday my running partner and I ran up to Mt. Tabor to do some hill repeats. We started with a mile warm up that ended up including too much hill work to be a good warm up. Once we finally got to our repeat area we started our 1/4 mile runs. We did eight of them between 2:05 and 2:20 with the slower ones due to doggie troubles. By the time we got to the last one I was feeling pretty pooped  and my 2 mile cool down took forever. But a great workout.

Today I started out for six easy recovery miles. I decided to add on a couple of miles by running down to the Eastmoreland golf course. On the loop back I decided to add a couple of blocks to the loop (mile 4) and ended up going east for 30 blocks when I hooked up with the Springwater corridor (mile 6) and returned to the reed neighborhood. At the end of the corridor (mile 8) I ran through the Moreland Park (where I found a water fountain) and over the bridge to the Reed neighborhood (mile 10). At Reed I found another fountain (mile 12) and started to curse myself for not bringing water on this short run I had planned. I did have Sharkies which helped a lot. I headed home and ended up going 13.75 miles all together at 2:31. Super slow run and a burner for sure. I feel pretty depleted but I have been drinking a lot and eating well. Which would have been great if I hadn’t taken advantage of a beautiful day and worked in the yard. I am pretty tired. But I am going to watch a movie (Human Centipede) and  go to bed early tonight. I have a show tomorrow, but I may run after, we’ll see. That will definitely be a recovery run!

Weekend long run, a day early

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This week I did my long on Saturday so I could do a shorter run on Sunday with my running partner who is getting back in the swing of things after a race, a new dog and life. When I got up this morning I was only sure of one thing about this run and that was that I was going to do one. I knew I needed to do a long run this weekend as it would be my last long run before the Race for the Roses on Sunday, April 11th. But I was also thinking I didn’t really need to do another long one as I should be tapering. Since I didn’t run long last weekend, I felt a little pressure to get another in, but I was feeling a bit lazy. And due to a late large meal last night which managed to supply my brain with a host of nightmares and my belly with a not so digested wake-up, I was more inclined to just do a short run. As I walked down the driveway I still hadn’t decided what to do. Go right for a shorter run or left for a run up to Mt. Tabor. I picked right.

Even as I turned east and headed to the volcano I still hadn’t decided if I would just do the eight mile Tabor route or if I would extend it with a dash to Laurelhurst Park. I think this option was one of the main reasons I chose “right”. It was cool and spitting, so I dressed warmly. Too warm in fact as just after a mile I had to stop and take off my warm shirt to settle into a long sleeve running shirt and my running shell. But the gloves didn’t come off, I wasn’t that warm yet! The run to the mountain was relatively fast and I powered up the base of the mountain to get to the lower trail. The big climb went quite a bit slower, but I managed to keep my HR in check for the most part with one 170+ peak. At the top I did my victory lap and downed a gel. At this point I knew I was going on to the park.The run down the mountain was really muddy and I found myself slogging through a couple of really bad spots always mindful to go through the mud so as to not carve a wider path on the drier edges.

The park was beautiful with all the blossoming trees and despite all the rain it wasn’t too muddy. The run through the park always goes by too quickly and I soon found myself heading south into the wind I would be dealing with for the next 2.5 miles. At one point I found myself with another mileage choice. If I went right I could go to the track and onto Reed college which would give me really close to a half-marathon distance of 13.1 miles. If I chose left it would be less, but how much less I wasn’t sure. Since I had already gone longer twice before, I chose left and discovered that this route gives me 11 miles exactly. I felt really good, easily felt like I could go on for another couple miles at least, but I’ll save that for next weekend!

Long slow distance run

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Today I made up for my short run yesterday putting in 13.5 miles in 2:20. It was a harder run than I expected granted it was a long one. Our warm spring days of yesterday did not make it past the evening and the rains returned. The rain actually made for pretty nice running weather as the temperature was nice and cool. The clouds that came in yesterday evening kept a lot of the warm air around also, but it wasn’t muggy at all, at least that I noticed anyway. There was a bit of a breeze that felt a lot stronger whenever I would head into it. So I don’t think the weather was the issue. Maybe it was what I ate last night which wasn’t horrible, but also not that great as far as fueling up. I had a large veggie sandwich and a bag of chips that was almost 500 calories (that really surprised me as the bag was pretty small! The calories didn’t stop there either, I also added on a juice drink and a slice of carrot cake. So that was the culprit I think. Not enough energy stored up to make that run as well as I would have liked.

The other factor that I think got in the way mentally was the route I took was a new route. These new routes always seem to go by slower than the ones that I am overly familiar with. Also, I overestimated how long it would be. So at the point when I figured I had 8 or nine miles done, I really only had 6 or 7. So I decided to take my first extension. then I took my second mileage extension finding myself down on the water front which meant I would have to climb my way back, which wasn’t too big of a deal. Down on the banks of the Willamette I had a hard time finding a path and had to climb over some areas, but that just added to the fun (well I say fun, but my legs were pretty woozy at that point so I was climbing very slowly.) I took a third mileage extension into East Moreland and figured I would hit a half marathon distance pretty close to home. I hit the 13.1 mile mark at 2:16:16, not great at all, but tha’ts ok.  Good run but a tiring one.