Category Archives: Portland

October 21, 2012 · 9:19 pm

Running a half marathon with half assed training

This was a costume race – I hate costumes so I didn’t dress up. But, based on this photo, I’m going to say I went as a ghost.

I love my city and today was a good reminder of that. I ran the Run Like Hell Half Marathon and even though it was cold, wet, and my training was pretty half assed (though not as non-existent as it was in July for this race), I loved it.

This has not been a great year happiness wise. I fell into a post holiday funk in January and never really got out of it. Still in the middle of it to tell the truth. I should write about that, when I’m out the other side. But today – today I was happy. At the starting line surrounded by damp Ninja Turtles, Wonder Women (yes, plural, this was a VERY popular costume), and the Noid, I was just excited to run.

The race was pretty challenging. Like, four uphill miles through the Terwilliger Curves challenging. And, it was also beautiful. The leaves were changing, the bums under the Hawthorne Bridge were cheering (serious – they were my favorite cheering section and the course took me through their area twice), and even though I lost a toenail and bled through my shoe, it was fun. I’ll take it.

Signs of something very bad inside…

(PS: For anyone keeping track – and I doubt anyone is but me, but still – this race keeps me on track for the 30 Before 30 goal of running one race per month. In September I did a quick 8k with Race for the Cure (ahhh sorry super lefty lady friends – I needed a race and this was the only one that would work with my schedule. It was super boring and not worth a post.) 

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August 22, 2012 · 5:42 am

Signs you need to go for a run

Signs you need to run it out:

  1. You are sitting in your office, eating baby carrots, listening to The Damned and feeling annoyed for no reason in particular.
  2. The words “I wish I was still 21″ have come out of your mouth in the last 30 minutes. (Especially if you’re about to turn 29.)
  3. Your email inbox has approximately 45 kajillion emails in it with that little “urgent” exclamation point, but you can’t bring yourself to respond to any of them.
  4. You live in Portland and it’s not raining, but you know soon it will be non-stop for months.
  5. You’re making this face:

Yes, there is a Purple Rain poster in my office.

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August 6, 2012 · 8:17 pm

CMKY Run: skip it.

One of the reasons I run is to stay in an endorphin-fueled positive mind-set as much as possible. So, I try not to complain too much on this blog. Try being the operative word, especially for this post.

Yesterday I ran the CMYK color run in Portland and I have to say, it was pretty disappointing. After seeing this race hyped up across social media and at my most recent half marathon, I was really excited. I think I had an image in my head of a fast, fun race – mostly based on the flier, which promises “five kilometers of vibrant ridiculousness that will make your face hurt from perma-smile.”

 

Girl on the flier is having SO MUCH FUN!

I was totally snookered by the marketing. So A+ to the marketing director. C- for the actual race director though.

The course was on an equestrian path (why?! The waterfront would have been such a better Portland venue) and it was mostly uphill, it was full of holes to sprain your ankle in, and it was covered in hay a lot of the way which is extremely slippery to run on. I felt particularly bad for the parents who had come to run with their kids in strollers. At registration, the course was described as “stroller friendly,” but it was actually barely even runner friendly. (Seriously, the hills were rough, especially since they were unexpected.)

Add to that the fact that it was 90-degrees and the color that they throw on you, while not toxic, really hurts to accidentally breathe in, and I have to say that I wish I’d slept in and just done 3 miles on my own in my neighborhood yesterday.

The ONLY saving grace of the experience was that it gave me the chance to spend some time with my friend Ren. She was really the best part of the morning. She’s pretty much the most positive person ever, and so her can-do attitude about the ridiculous – in a bad way – logistics of the race made the whole thing bearable.

That said, even with Ren’s power of positive thinking, this was one of the biggest wastes of money I’ve spent as a runner (and that includes a race I registered for and couldn’t run due to injury) and if it comes to your town, I recommend moving past the hype machine and sitting it out.

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July 28, 2012 · 6:31 pm

Lately

Lately, my “training” has basically been “running through airports in heels” instead of actual running. Lately, I’ve been pulling 13 hour work days regularly. (It’s ok, I like it. Honest.) Lately, I’ve felt grateful for what marathon running taught me about moving forward, even when you’re really tired and your legs just want to stop moving.

I took a day off yesterday, because I was tired, and found time to run. It felt good. Today, we’re heading to the coast for Oliver’s birthday and that will feel good too.

Hopefully I’ll come back with a good story to tell.

Meantime, I leave you with this photo of me at Fairy Falls – a place I wish I could spend every weekend.

 

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July 13, 2012 · 6:13 am

“Cross train” is just a fancy way of saying “walking fast up a hill”

According to my new marathon training regimen, Sundays are “cross train” days. The idea of cross training strikes me as a little bit funny since it makes me sound like a serious athlete, which I am not. I love running. It’s my medicine and my therapy. I take its benefits and challenges seriously.

But, I am far from someone who should say things like “Sunday is my cross training day” in regular conversation. This is further complicated by the fact that I hate the following common cross-training-for-runners activities: swimming (I don’t know how), bike riding (ugh, the seats! They’re the worst!), power walking (blerg, slow and humiliating!) yoga (sitting still and quietly stretching for an hour?!) and the elliptical machine (it’s for 19-year-old naturally skinny college girls who want to read US Weekly while they “work out.”)

SO.

I’ve landed on hiking. Which I realize is basically just walking sort of fast, up a hill. But, it’s not boring, Oregon is full of good places to hike, and steep hills will give me strong quads.

This past Sunday, Oliver and I headed out to the Columbia River Gorge – which you probably  remember from the time you floated your wagon down-river during the last leg of the Oregon Trail – and saw some waterfalls.  The Gorge is full of ‘em. Some you’ve heard of – Bridal Veil, Multnomah – some you probably haven’t.

Accessibility ranges in difficulty from “park your car, walk across the street, see waterfall, lazy-ass” to “park car, hike one mile up a steep hill, sweat an embarrassing amount, get passed by a toddler on her way up. Then, see waterfall.”

My favorite discovery of the day was Fairy Falls, which is a relatively challenging climb up an un-maintained trail with what seems like 1 billion switchbacks, about a mile above Wahkeena Falls.  While we were walking we discovered that there’s actually a loop that you can do from Wahkeena to Multnomah and back. We’re going to try it the next Sunday that I’m not flying off somewhere.

I’d still prefer a nice, long run, but I’m excited about the idea of working our way through the other dozen or so Gorge waterfalls. Maybe I’ll get to the point where I can run these hikes instead of walking them. If I’m ever going to turn my Western States pipe dream into a reality, I’ll have to start somewhere…

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May 14, 2012 · 5:57 am

Summer planning and possibilities.

Our first summer – a year before I moved to Oregon I came to visit Oliver. You can see why I made the move less than a year later.

Today was a perfect Portland summer day. Almost, but not quite, 90 degrees. Not a cloud in the sky and 0% chance of rain.

I adore summer. It fills me with a sense of possibility and slight recklessness – a feeling that something great is about to happen. The feeling of hope and excitement that summer brings is a little stronger here in Oregon (after all, I’ve endured months of rain!) but even in 110-degree Arizona I felt the same way. As a kid, summer was the time to stay up really late scheming, reading book after book, worrying about the future. In college and the few years beyond, it was the time to abandon responsibility, to go a little crazy, to wear my swim suit all day.

And, always, at the end of summer comes the chance to reinvent, to calm down for the fall. I was that nerd who always planned – over planned – the first day of school from my outfit to my notebooks. My birthday falls over Labor Day weekend. The official end of summer and the perfect opportunity to plan all the ways I’ll be better next year.

Today, obviously, I don’t get completely reckless just because it’s summer, though I do, occasionally, leave work by 4 on Friday. A couple years ago a co-worker had what she deemed “epic summer.” I admire her energy, but decided to allow myself to feel ok about just having “pretty good summer.”

Whether this summer turns out epic or just pretty good (which would be fine with me), I do still have my birthday at the end. This year I turn 29. I’m excited and I also feel like I need to really do something with my 29th year. Taking a page from my friend Mindy, I’ve decided to try and come up with a “30 before 30″ list. The only trouble is besides “finally go see the Grand Canyon” I have no idea what to put on it. There are some things on my lifetime bucket list (qualify for and run Western States, live in a foreign country) that are unrealistic to start on my 29th birthday and complete by my 30th.

So I’m taking suggestions.  I don’t have unlimited funds, but I can afford some travel. I get 20 days of vacation time a year. I’m vegetarian (and one goal on the list might be “finally go vegan” so no weird food suggestions.) I can only think of two other things – skydiving and bungee jumping – that are absolutely 100% not ever going on a list of things to do in my lifetime.

I think those are the only rules. So – help me out here… what goes on the list?

 

 

 

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March 1, 2012 · 9:34 pm

….. only counts in horseshoes

So, remember how on Monday I was all, “hooray, it’s almost spring!?” 

Yeah:

March 1, 2012. Snow.

 

 

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January 14, 2012 · 8:33 pm

File under: What was I thinking?!

Ok, so next year please remind me NOT to have a marathon to train for in January:

Are you f-ing kidding me with this weather? 

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August 14, 2011 · 7:15 pm

Eye roll, Portland

I’m not disagreeing with the premise of this article (The Portlandification of Brooklyn)  — which as far as I can tell is  Portland and Brooklyn have the same kind of annoying yuppies — but I am giving it a huge eye roll.

I think I’ve said it before, but Portland is the most latently racist city I’ve ever been in. It’s not overt, it’s more an unchecked, completely unexamined white privilege thing.

It’s statements from college kids calling North Portland “the ghetto” because it’s the historically Black part of town. (A hilarious statement by the way if you’ve ever actually been in a real ghetto… North Portland ain’t it.) It’s years of systematic neglect and outright redlining in the African American parts of town. It’s the city council constantly pretending that North Portland and far-East Portland don’t really exist. It’s the disgustingly sparse news coverage of what happened to Yashanee Vaughn compared to the  extreme 24/7 coverage of what might have happened to Kyron Horman.

Or quotes like this one from the article — “Portland is Brooklyn without Black people” — that completely discount, ignore and fail to see 7.8 percent of the population of our city. Not to mention the 9.4 percent that’s Hispanic.

Sometimes I feel like Portlanders intentionally focus on the city’s “whiteness” because they actually don’t want to see it any other way.

I’ve never lived in Brooklyn, so can’t speak to what the dynamic is really like there (and I don’t trust this article to paint me that picture clearly) but I’m betting that long-time Brooklyn-ites take issue with this statement from the piece: “Brooklyn is producing and consuming more of its own culture than ever before.”

What does that even mean? Judging by the story, culture means coffee shops off formerly “scary” train stops, bikes and farmers markets where you can buy organic chocolate. Or maybe culture is this, another quote from the article, “Yeah, I ride my bike every day, I make pickles in my basement, and I sell those myself.”

Um…Pickles?  Spike Lee, Walt Whitman,  Basquiat, Arthur Miller, stern looking German man who designed the Brooklyn Bridge, Mos Def, Al Capone, thousands of other people who have been actually creating and consuming culture in BK for generations — please join me in a collective eye roll. Thank you.

It would be easy to let this girl off the hook saying “she’s just so young,” but we’re the same age, so no.

Ok, time to stop complaining and go for a run to celebrate the parts of this town that I love. Note — those parts have nothing to do with clowns on unicycles or making homemade pickles.

Why Portland is worth it to me.

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· 3:46 am

I just read a hilarious article on running mantras in the September issue of Runner’s World. The author mostly has a nonsensical thought processes while running — though I can identify with this fleeting thoughts while passing a small dead animal on the side of the road: “HA! Dead! Not like me, I’m RUNNING!”

(Sadly the story isn’t online. Here’s a more serious piece on how a good mantra can help you run stronger if you’re into that.)

The story got me thinking about if I have a mantra when I run. I’m not sure.

Mostly I just make up stories to entertain myself while running, or make up imaginary scenarios between me and random people I know  that will never actually happen. (Usually ex boyfriends, old enemies, or people I haven’t seen in a decade or so. What can I say — I have some unresolved issues.  Hence, the running. It’s therapy.)

Sometimes, usually after mile six which seems to just be a bad spot for me no matter what, I basically just chant one word over and over again.

I guess that’s a mantra? It’s not always the same. Often it’s four letters.  Lately it’s been “thank you.” I’m not sure who I’m thanking — I think myself most of the time, which sounds ridiculous and egotistical, but oh well. Thank you for getting your ass on the road today, thank you for surviving your early 20s, thank you for moving here to this beautiful place, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Yesterday I was mostly just thankfull not to be caught in this cluster on I-5 when I ran past it...

I’m a little bit embarrassed by how corny this is. So unlike me to be so positive, but I guess that’s just what running does to your brain.

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