I don't consider drinking a sport, although some certainly do. And, you shouldn't sport-drink high end rum, but, there's a new rum distillary on the horizon, and of all places, it's in Silverton, Colorado! Check out Montanya Rum.
On Tuesday, my wife and I went out to run the Rexius loop here in Eugene. We'd never run this trail and I was looking for something flatter again, as I still had some knee pain. We headed out on what is a really nicely done trail. It's essentially flat and the shredded wood surface is the softest I've run on to date, and was just awesome, and my knees were feeling great. However, at almost exactly one mile in, my lower back twanged, and bam, I was done. I've had issues with the lower left side of my back, off and on, for a long time. It's residual from a severe cycling accident I had many years ago. I have essentially no feeling in an approximately 6"x6" area of my left low back/butt cheek/hip area, but internally it seems I can pinch a nerve or some such there on occasion. It can be bad enough sometimes that I can barely walk or move much. Sometimes it takes physical therapy and special drugs, other times just a little "Vitamin I" (aka Advil). Anyway, we walked back to the car, which sucked, as this looked like a great run for the day, and I was even on a pretty solid pace. Argh. I've been doing the 3x/day ibuprofen treatment since then, and finally it's a lot better. Yesterday was really bad, as it seemed to cause some serious tightening and pain in my right knee (I believe that's a side effect of what I suspect to be a pinched nerve, as this kind of thing has happened before and that was the supposed diagnosis if I remember correctly). But today I'm feeling much better (plus I feel like all the knee pain is gone too), and expect to head out on my road bike on Friday, and maybe also Saturday. Sunday I'm planning to ride Brice Creek (mtb), then chill for the rest of Father's Day.
Yes, we're having a late summer/long spring this year, both here in Oregon, and in Colorado, amongst other places. Evidence: Matt went skiing today, June 12th, 2008. Check out the picture. Ya, it's not big pow or anything, but hey, how often have you skied in June?
Original picture is here (you can comment, etc.).
Today I did my fifth "trail" run. I don't consider these quite as "trail" as what we've been doing to date, but it was a good one for today to be a bit easier on my knees. I ran the full Pre's Trail over at Alton Baker park. This is a set of trails that in total cover 4 miles of almost completely flat bark covered trails. Perfect for today. Drove over to Alton Baker with my wife and kids, and they went for a walk and checked out the ducks, etc. while I did the run. It went pretty well, and I did my longest sustained chunk of running to date at about 11 minutes. Total run was 40 or 41 minutes. Total time was 45 minutes, but with about half a mile to go, I stopped running right near Autzen Stadium and some folks asked if I was done running. I said no, but that I was taking a break (I could tell they wanted a picture). So, I said yes to taking their picture (with a "Pre's Trail" sign in it of course). Turns out they were from Ohio and were visiting. I'm not as in awe of the whole Prefontaine thing as folks who are in the running community, so seeing all this is somewhat amusing to me (had already seen it once with some others at the beginning of my run). I spoke to them for a while, as they asked about Eugene and so on. We got to talking about how I'd moved from California, and they inquired about whether I missed the sun and beaches, etc. I said I missed surfing (true!), but didn't miss the heat, the people in general (people in Oregon are far friendly in general), love the environmental feel of Eugene, etc. The mom (I presume) said she wanted to move to Eugene, but didn't sound like they could or something (I was getting itchy to finish up my run, so I was trying to bring the conversation to a close politely at this point). Anyway, finished talking to them and then finished up the run. Found my wife and kids, and walked a bit more, then headed home. Overall, happy with my run, especially my longer stint, and clearly I can run faster when it's all flat. But, this was a much less interesting run for me, I really do prefer the singletrack trails of Ridgeline so far. It's a good option to have though. I also want to check out the Rexius loop as another flat option for when it's needed/desired.
Update: correction, as it turns out, this trail is just over 2 miles long each way! On the map, I saw the 1.3 miles, but it's 1.3 to a junction, and then another .7 to Fox Hollow road. I have amended the entry below accordingly. Yesterday I did another trail run, on a new trail (to me) in the Ridgeline system. It started at 52nd & Willamette, and did some serious undulating for 2.1 miles over to Fox Hollow. So 4.2 miles total, which took me a painful 50 minutes on the dot. As a comparison, the trail we've been using the most so far, is 3.6 miles and we do that in the same 50 minutes, although I am running probably closer to 4 miles, as I double back at points to re-connect with my wife (which I suspect is not going to happen much longer, as she's improving fast). After my last run, some spots below my knee had been hurting as I mentioned in my last post. I figured they'd be ok by now, but after walking for the first 5 minutes to warm up, upon starting to run, it was a rude awakening to that pain still being there, and in force! Ouch. At first I worried about it, thinking, should I not be running right now, will this do more harm than good? I decided to just go easy a bit and see. This trail turned out to be a bad choice. It's constantly up and down, and has a bunch of steep spots. It's also extra narrow in places, with a lot of low overhanging branches and such. For an experienced trail runner, it'd be fine I'm sure, but it's just not for me yet. Regardless, I kept going. Things seemed to loosen up a bit and I felt I was working through it. I made it to the end of the trail (in one direction) in 27 minutes. Yikes - not that I'm a speedy runner yet, but this shows how much walking I was doing during this "run". The trip back was better though, and I ran more, and the pain wasn't bad. The return trip was 23 minutes. Overall a really cool trail scenery wise, and would be fun for hiking. Today I'm feeling ok actually, and thinking I'll run this afternoon (on something a bit more mild :). But, I think the pain is actually reduced, so I'm hoping that I just need to run more and condition my knees/joints to those stresses. Hell, my arms and shoulders might be more sore from playing a bunch of Wii boxing last night! (I'm not even kidding!) So, now I'm scouting out trails for this afternoon's run...
This page is a collection of trail running info for Eugene, OR. As I get into trail running, I will catalog trails and info here.
The title of the post is a bit misleading... kinda sounds like I actually had to go looking for it... but fortunately for those of us that are still skiing here in southwestern Colorado, there's no shortage of skiable snow.
Trail run #3 happened a few days ago (Tuesday), but then I went off to a conference, and am just getting to this. I had actually hoped to go for a run during the conference. I brought my shoes and so on, but never made it, more on that in a bit... My wife and I ran the same trail as on Trail Run #2, but we in the same amount of time we ran more (covered more distance, and higher percentage of time was spent running). Very cool. She felt better on this run, and I was doing good as well, but this was probably the first one where during part of the run I was having to rest a bit more (in particular a bit after half way there was a steep hill that got me a bit). Still pretty psyched, and found that we might be able to make this trail a loop, need to research a bit. So then I spent the rest of the week, through Sunday at a conference in Portland. I know that Portland has the great Forest Park, and was hoping to get over there and do a run (and see the park). But, unfortunately that never happened. The conference was crazy busy (8:30am to sometimes 10pm each night, with nary a break). I had thought I'd run one or two of the mornings during some keynotes I didn't care about. Timing would have wound up being tight, but honestly, the truth was I was simply too tired each day, and also found the area just below my knees to be hurting quite a bit. I should get out on the bike today for a quick spin, see if I can work the leg/knee pain out, so that when my wife and I run again tomorrow things will be good. Hope that works.
Saturday I spent at the "Wipe Fest" ride here in Eugene. The "Coasties" (a group of mtb riders from Florence and nearby areas on the coast) wanted to come over and ride Why Pass with the Disciples of Dirt. The request was to ride every trail in Why Pass, and we did just that! Everyone arrived around 9am, and the weather was looking great, even though the forecast was for thundershowers. It was about 50 degrees when the relatively large group of 28 of us started out. By the end of the day it had warmed up to a lovely 66 degrees. I actually wound up wearing knee warmers, a thin wool long sleeve base layer and thin long sleeve jersey on top of that most of the day, and was perfect. The trails were mostly dry and tacky, and conditions overall were stellar. With the large group we stopped to regroup a fair bit, but the nice thing was there wasn't a huge disparity in skills, so the wait was primarily due to the effect of nearly 30 people in a group. As we saw on short sections, like "Green Velvet Elvis", as the front end of the group was finishing the loop, you could still see the tail end of the group. On one trail, we stopped to have a couple guys do this pretty sweet drop. It wasn't too big (3' at the drop itself, although Isaac and Erik were probably dropping a good 6' by the time they landed below. Isaac was on his dirt jumper and really flyin it, crossing it up, almost went for a bar spin and the whole deal. The crazy part is that shortly after these guys were landing it, they had to slalom through two big trees, and then another one right after. There were some VERY close calls! Bob gets some big cheers too, as he pulled this thing off on his full rigid fixie! Yes, fixie! Nice. We finished off with one of the best descents in the place, and Bob and I rode the final log ride, or specifically, he rode the first part, not sure about the second, and I rode the second part. Super fun. I need to work on that first part, but it's a bit sketch to me so far. At the end of the day, we'd ridden 20.5 miles of singletrack, with almost 3 hours of ride time, and having been out on trails for 4.5 hours with a great group of people. Awesome day. Update: picture thread has started on MTBR.
On Thursday, my wife joined me for my second trail run, and her first. We did a different set of trails in Eugene's Ridgeline system (the entrance off Blanton). I really liked this one. It's all singletrack, has a couple steep spots, but is just a really nice environment. We saw a few other folks out running as well. This run went much better for me. Less pain on my knees on the descents, and just overall was easier for me. I think I knew more about what to expect. I'm finding that I'll have to work on/figure out water. I took a handheld bottle again, but barely drank anything. We ran (and walked) for about 50 minutes, and the weather was much cooler this time (in the 50's). I suspect that if I do runs that are under an hour, I may be able to get away with not taking water. But, I fight this at a core level, after so many years of riding, and having experiences running out of water, and knowing how important fluids are, etc. What I probably want is a mini water bottle, maybe 10 ounces. I've seen that I think Nathan Sports or Ultimate Direction makes that size bottle, but haven't seen a handheld holder (so far I'm not interested in a waist belt/pack or backpack). On the flip side, I realize that as I get better, and can actually run for 45 minutes, an hour, or more, I will probably want/need to consume more water.
I'm a cyclist (mountain biker at heart, but spend a lot of time on the road as well), trail runner (no pavement for me!), skier, hiker, like to camp, romp in rivers, and generally spend as much time as I can in the mountains. I also love to surf and hang at the beach, but I don't get to do that much these days. I moved to Eugene, OR a few years ago, and am continuing to explore my local outdoor opportunities. The Lake Tahoe area of Northern CA is probably my favorite place to mountain bike (love the rocky trails!), but I love to ride any new trail I can get my hands on.
I also post trip reports from friends here; guys like Matt who is based in Silverton and skiing as much backcountry as he can year round (he goes to Las Lenas every summer), Rich, another backcountry skier as well as kayaker, and so on. Good times.
