13 States To Go

For multiple reasons, mostly mental, I’ve had a hard time getting interested in racing or even driving from home to places to train so the majority of my running has been on Lynx Hollow Road. The last race I ran this month was a Taco Tuesday 5K on the 6th. Since today is the 21st I guess it hasn’t really been that long it has just seemed like it because I’ve been in a funk. I had some oatmeal with blackberries I picked right out of our pasture for pre race meal. It was another hot afternoon race. 83 degrees at the start and I was disappointed in my time again which played a small part in my loss of motivation. I had planned to run two more races that week and talked myself out of both of them. I woke up five minutes before my alarm for Saturday’s Race, said to heck with it and turned it off. Something I never do.  One of the things I realized when trying to dissect this slump is that I lost sight of the second of my three goals for racing. “Enjoy it as much as possible between the ...

I found a race that I wanted to do in Tualatin, Oregon and since it had a pre 8:00 start and was over a two hour drive away I decided to make it an overnight trip. As I always try to do I made sure to see a few things while I was in Northern Oregon. My original destination was Multnomah Falls on the recommendation from Brandy. I did get to Multnomah Falls but they were so crowded that they closed off parking so I just continued north up the Columbia Gorge and came to Horsetail Falls. I stopped and then took a short hike from there up to Ponytail Falls which is at the top of Horsetail. There were other longer trails but they were still closed because of a past forest fire.  Considering that I’m still dealing with paranoia over falling and the trail was very rocky, steep in places and somewhat slippery because of a light rain it was enough of a hike for the time and place. What I did learn for a return visit is that by staying on 84 to exit 31 there is additional parking and it wasn’...