Mike Stays Upright, When Appropriate

Well, I had a nice run. Arrived at Portland Running Company right on time, at 9am. At least I thought it was right on time. The actual right time was 8am. It had been moved up earlier in the week. I hadn’t checked gmail in a few days. Oops. Lesson learned: always check for schedule changes.

I missed the classroom part; no big loss I hope. I’ve got good shoes, wear layers & avoid the evil cotton. The TNT mentors & coaches will be around to keep me straight.

Anyway, Alli-the-mentor described the route: down Grand to Salmon, down to the Vera Katz statue on the river, and then start the loop either to the left or right. I was ~15 minutes behind the last people to leave PRC, so no one was in sight. When I reached the Vera Katz statue, I picked left which was not right. The loop was all to the right. I was all on my own to the left. Still, it was a nice run along the Esplanade to OMSI and over to Springwater Trail. After 2 miles down the Springwater Trail (and a slowly increasing certainty that there were no TNT folks over here), I turned around and went back the way I came. Things I saw: homeless folks camped out, dragon boat racers practicing, racing shells on land & in the water, marathoners in training (including Len Neiberg from Intel), Canada geese and more jogging strollers than you could shake a stick at.

Run report: 6.69 miles according to MapMyRun in less than an hour (need to practice stopping my chrono) with ~5 minutes walking. Much better than I expected. No physical problems. Starting to get a little tight in the inner thighs 12 hours later, but not bad.