|
Last fall my husband and I went on the most
incredible run (we were both training with the Austin Fit
program and both finished the 2001 Motorola Marathon for the
2nd year in a row this February 2001). I thought I would share
this information with anyone who might be traveling to the
Portland area, as this was one of the two most phenomenal
runs I have ever been on.
We were in Portland, Oregon for the weekend and had planned
to do our long run on Sunday to keep up with rest of the Austin
Fit Training group. We asked for information at our hotel
on places we could go for a nine to ten mile run and the Concierge
told us we should go to Forest Park. Forest Park is in the
Portland city limits near Knob Hill, a cute area of town with
quite a few shops and sidewalk cafes (it reminded me of San
Francisco). The Forest Park is actually a huge mass of very
hilly and wooded acreage encompasses several parks including
Washington Park and McCreary Park among others. We decided
to run at McCreary Park because we were told the paths were
wider and it was a better park for runners. So we set off
on our running adventure.
When we arrived we were pleased to find that the park was
beautiful. It was literally a forested area inside the Portland
city limits. There was a map with details on the distance
of the many trails that ran within the park, the lengths varied
from .85 miles to 32 miles. We chose to run on a trail called
Wildwood Trail that actually ran through 26.2 miles of the
park. It was lovely. The weather in Portland was about 50
degrees when we started running, clear and sunny with no wind.
The difficult part about the trail of course was that although
we planned to run hills, these hills took ten minutes to run
up and only five minutes to run down. YIPES! I think they
were small mountains. The scenery was great and the air so
crisp that I was able to block out the pain/fatigue from the
hills for at least 75 or the 90 minutes we ran. I kept thinking,
if only I had more mitochondria and Red Blood Cells these
hills would all be much easier- we think we have hills in
Austin. We ran to the top of one big hill (this took about
30 minutes) where the old Pittman Mansion (owned by founder
of one of the Portland papers). This was great, you could
see all of downtown Portland, and there were water fountains
to refill our water bottles bathrooms etc. (second group of
bathrooms on the trail). We continued to run the trails past
the Mansion for another 30 minutes (up and down the long hills)
then ran back to where we started from, our entire run lasted
about 2 hours. I did however talk to a runner from CA who
we met on the trails that mentioned that the entire length
of trails equaled at least 100 miles; there was even an ultra
marathon loop. The runner from CA also mentioned that he traveled
allot with work and this was his all time favorite place to
run in the U.S. I could understand why.
We did not search out additional trails since the two-hour
hill run was about all that we "flat landers" could
handle. I would advise that you check this out if you are
in the Portland area- it is just beautiful! Happy Trails!
Tre McCalister
|
