lovely lake oswego

Total Distance So Far: 233.8 miles

Can you believe it? I've finally succeeded at 2 long group runs on 2 consecutive weekends!!! It's the first time since before my knee started locking up!! This makes me optimistic for event day. Maybe everything I've been doing for the knee/foot issues I've been having is paying off!!

Today's run was out in Lake Oswego. As an added treat, my mom is in town for the weekend, and she is training to walk the Portland Marathon, and I was able to bring her to the TNT group run to walk with the walkers. She was really nervous about the prospect of walking with people who have been training (up till now she's been training on her own out in Eastern Washington, and she had no idea how she was doing compared to how she should be doing). Everyone agreed though, my mom is looking strong. She was averaging faster than a 15 minute mile pace, and she went 20 miles today!!! I think she'll do great on event day.

It was kinda cold when we all convened. Coach Joe was giving us a pep talk about the end of the training, and what to expect as the sun rose behind him in George Rogers Park. What a pretty park, situated pleasantly on the Willamette River just off downtown Lake Oswego.

After the review of the route (the short-hand directions that they gave the runners were very cryptic and difficult to parse), we set off. The first bit was an out and back south of the park along the Willamette River, a 4 mile length. Very pretty! Val and I were practicing the 8 minute run and then a 1 minute walk for this first bit. We continued to take regular walk breaks throughout the rest of our run too, but not as often as during this first bit.

The second bit was through a residential area around the lake (Lake Oswego itself... you know all this time it never occurred to me that the town Lake Oswego was situated on a Lake named Oswego... but it makes alot of sense). This loop (with some additional little loops to up the mileage somewhat) was supposed to be 9 miles back to the park. However, the directions, as I mentioned before, were hard to follow. Several times Val and I questioned where we were supposed to go next, and whether we were hopelessly lost or not. For the most part we were actually correctly on the route, but there was one right turn onto A Street that wasn't marked as a turn. Infact the directions said "straight", so we crossed A Street and went straight. We were on 10th Street at this time... and as we got further in (B Street and 10th, C Street and 10th, etc) I started questioning our decision to go straight so I asked some guy working on his front yard whether we were indeed headed to State Street like we were supposed to be. He said nope. Infact we were going the exact wrong way. oh. He gave us directions back to A Street, insisting that we go his way instead of back track the way we came, so we followed his directions and approached A Street from several blocks further away from State Street than where we were before when we missed the turn... all in all when we got back on the route, according to my Garmin, it was about a 1 mile detour... so our loop around the Lake took Val and I 10 miles... and also allowed a good amount of the faster walkers to pass us. Oof.

While running along A Street toward State Street tho, we came across a large SUV stalled halfway onto the street. There were 2 large guys trying to push it, altho it didn't seem like they were getting anywhere, and a woman behind the wheel turning it in whatever direction the guys told her to. Val and I took one look at eachother, and got infront of the car on the outsides of the guys and helped push. It was mostly uphill, and that SUV was big, so it took a good amount of effort. Finally tho we got the vehicle into the parking lot over the highest bit, and the rest of the parking lot looked downhill or flat, so Val and I decided to continue on our way and leave them to finish taking care of their stalled car. We had about 5 and 1/2 or 6 miles left to go at this point.

The last bit was an out and back along the same course (but supposedly 1/2 mile further up) to round out the last 5 miles... but since Val and I had gained 1 mile through a missed turn, we repeated the first out and back of 4 miles to round out our run.

I was starting to experience noticeably aching knees and feet with about 6 miles left to go in our run... which is about the same distance from the end that my knees and feet started aching last week... so I was able to get 4 miles further this week before my joints started complaining! That was an interesting revelation. They ached so much tho that I was having trouble continuing running, and Val decided to walk with me everytime I declared that I needed yet another walk break. On the final out and back, we walked nearly all of the 2 miles out. At the turn around point I encouraged Val to go ahead and run back if she wanted to, so she took off (mind you, when we turned around I found my mom marching up the hill about 50 feet behind us!). Before she left me, Val encouraged me to try running if the mood struck me, and then took off at a good clip down the hill.

I walked for a little while, and then decided I was bored and wanted the 18 miles over, so I was going to try running again, and took off down the hill after Val, altho I could no longer see her. And, I actually managed to run the entire way back to George Rogers Park at about an 11:30 minute mile! Granted it was mostly downhill, but still it felt good to know I had that in me, even with sore knees and feet.

According to Carl, who was hanging out at the aid station in the parking lot, I was only about 6 minutes behind Val too. She apparently put nearly everything she had left into that 2 mile run back to the parking lot. She hauled butt! heh.

By the time we were done, the sun was high, it was approaching 1pm, and the day CLEARLY was a hot one. My knees were having trouble bending once I stopped running, and Coach Joe urged me to ice them. I am.... right now actually. But hey! I made it! It was a really pretty route too, with beautiful neighborhoods, great water views, challenging hills, and even functioning water fountains along the run! What a charming run today!

My stats from this run:
DISTANCE: 18 miles TIME: 4:04:20 PACE: 13:34 minute miles

Pretty sweet!