Vacation Exercise Recap

I want to do a recap of my runs that I did while on vacation!  I am very proud of myself for following through and doing every single run I had planned to do while I was off having fun in Oregon.  So, here we go!

• May 10^th: we have my first run while on vacation here.  I had just flown into the Portland Airport the day before and wanted to make sure I had a great chance to really stretch my legs from the flights that took me over 2500 miles, so I had planned to do a 10 mile run, I just had to map out the route, which I did with MapMyRun.  My home town is relatively small, a population of less than 15,000, and not all of those are “technically” within the limits of the “city” proper.  I managed to map out a 5 mile route that I could just run twice for a total of 10 miles.  It went great.  Usually I don’t exactly like doing multiple loops, but after I ran passed my parents’ house and started the 2^nd loop, it was like hitting the reset button and I felt refreshed, like I had just started running.  This 5 mile route took me passed my high school.

• May 11^th: went for a 5 mile run this day.  Nothing “special” about this run.  Just did one loop of the 5 mile route I mapped out for the 10 mile run I did the day before.

• May 13^th: this was a fun one.  I was staying with my best friend, Patricia, and she lives at the coast.  I had planned a beach run for while I was staying with her.  Her and her hubby are self employed so, while she can take MOST of the time off work while I’m there, she does occasionally have to do a little work.  She had to do a little work on this day, which worked out perfectly for me to head to the beach for a 4 mile run.  I have never run on a beach prior to this run and have heard so many different things about it.  I found that if I ran along the water line, where the sand was still packed from being under water during high tide that it really wasn’t all that different from running down the street, just softer.  The amazing thing about this run, aside from it just being cool to run on the beach, was I saw a bald eagle!  It was so amazing.  I felt so blessed by this wonderful creature’s presence and that it let me get fairly close.  I was probably about 50 feet away from it, if that. 

• May 15^th: I knocked out this run before making the 4-ish hour drive up to middle Washington state to visit with my grandma.  I knew I wasn’t going to be moving around a lot this day, so I definitely wanted to get a run in.  I just did 4 miles, a modified version of the 5 mile route from earlier in the week. 

• May 17^th: this was the Portland Rock’n’Roll half marathon.  A super great run.  I wasn’t expecting the hills that happened during the run, but I didn’t let them stop me.  I never stopped once to walk, I just powered through.  (recap will be posted as soon as I get the official photos in the mail…I don’t fork out for the digital downloads)  As I was running this race, I decided that Portland is a great city to run through and mentally added the Portland Marathon to my running bucket list.

• May 19^th: not a run, but a great hike with my dad and both of my brothers.  The hike was at least 9.25 miles.  I say “at least” because there were a couple time we stopped to rest or check out something that nature was displaying for us that we wanted to look at more closely and then forgot to unpause my Polar until a ways down the trail.  Oops.  The total that my Polar said was 9.25 miles, but I’m sure it was over 9.5 miles total.  This was a very technical hike with over 2700 feet in elevation gain!  My upper butt muscles and the entirety of my hips, and my calves were all super sore the next day, so I postponed the 6 mile run I had planned for the next day.  Overall, I la-la-loved this hike.  It was so amazing and we saw so many wonderful things.

• May 21^st: another first!!!  I went for my very first trail run.  I had asked my brother (who has a fair amount of trail running experience) to recommend  a good trail for me to run.  He recommended the trails of Peavy Auditorium in the OSU College Forests.  He gave me a map and instructions on which trail routes to take.  He told me the run was probably about 10 miles, but it was less than 7.  And since I had my heart set on 10 miles, I ran seven .4 mile loops around this little trail to make up the difference so I could hit the 10 mile mark.  I loved this run, but because there was about 1300 feet of elevation gain during this run, it used the exact same muscles as the hike, so I was even MORE sore the next day, so the 6 mile run I had rescheduled from the day after the hike to the day after this run, got postponed yet again.

• May 22^nd: as I mentioned, my upper butt muscles, entire hip area and calves were extremely sore and I was pretty much waddling as opposed to walking.  I decided the best way to loosen things up was for a walk around town.  I was meeting a friend for lunch about a ½ mile from my parents’ house, so I walked to meet up with her.  She dropped me off at my parents’ house after lunch because I didn’t eat all my food and had take away containers.  So I stashed those in the fridge and headed back out for another 4.75 miles.  It was a really great walk and really did the trick for me.

• May 23^rd: there was supposed to be a hike in the Opal Creek area with a friend, but her son got really sick the day before and she had to cancel.  While I really wanted to go on the hike with her, it gave me the opportunity to catch up that 6 mile run I had postponed twice already.  I wanted to run the hike/bike trail that runs along the side of Oregon State Hwy 22 between Salem and Rickreall.  I parked in the Safeway parking lot in West Salem and started my run down the highway.  I was just going to run 3 miles out and then back.  I hit the 3 mile mark and did not feel like turning around.  So I went to 4 and turned around.  I was a little bummed because I had decided not to take a gel with me to run (there was one in my car).  Why was I bummed?  Because at mile 4 I still did not want to turn around, but if I’m going more than 8 miles, I like to be able to refuel as I run.  So, I reluctantly turned around and headed back to the car.  It was a really great 8 mile run (that I wished had been a 10 mile run).

When I drove up to Oregon last June, I did all but one of my runs.  I didn’t do that one run because when I stopped for the night in Flagstaff, AZ I woke up with my sinuses just completely packed and I felt miserable and not one bit like running, so I didn’t.  I had only planned on 3 miles, anyway, but still.  This year, I did EVERY SINGLE RUN I had planned to do, even if there was some shuffling done with what days I did the runs on.

Total miles run while on vacation: 54.5.  BOOM!  I’m very proud of myself.  Running in Oregon is just plain awesome.  I plan to be in Oregon over Thanksgiving next year and am in the marking for a turkey trot and also a half marathon while I’m there, anybody have any suggestions for such races in Oregon (or even southern Washington) at that time?  Thanks!