Portland: Through my BB eyes and my Brooks feet

Well, thanks to your encouragement and Van's long talk with the front desk manager (no joke) I was sufficiently convinced that I wasn't going to be murdered, raped, kidnapped, mugged, slashed, molested or shot while running in downtown Portland at 7am (but, word to the wise, don't go running solo in north east portland on the OTHER side of the Willamette.... the above mentioned just might happen.... hello West Valley! ;) So....this might be a lengthy post, just tuck yourself into your comfy work chair (yes, amanda, you're at work...."working") and the classroom chair (umm...pretty sure you're supposed to be paying attention to the professor right now Erin....) and get ready for my super duper uber awesome running adventure.

I rolled out of bed (finally) at 6:45am. I had been awake since 6:10 but the bed was so comfy and puffy that it took all I had to convince myself that I really needed to get a long run in. So, I finally got down and outside about 7:20. I was GORGEOUS. I ran downtown for about a mile and a half until the parkway. It was a pretty downtown run. Most of their streets are awesome like this and have bricks... cool eh? I was just running along checking things out when I spotted THIS:

and made a mental note: TELL VAN. Which I did, but unfortunately we never made it back. Drat! And now I'm back home so there is no longer the "i'm on vacation" excuse for having such DEEEVINE ice cream. Sad.....

The run continued until I got to the Parkway. It runs right along the Willamette River. What a pretty place. And ps? the elevation change from Utah? HOLY FREAKING COW....sign me up! My lungs were totally diggin' the extra O2. I say we sign up for a marathon at sea level. We'd kick some serious butt. :) Here's the parkway...... I was immediately put at ease by the massive amount of runners/walkers/bikers/dog-walkers there were along the path. I knew that I would be safe for the next 2-4 miles. Whew. What was really cool was there was a "blind team in training" running along the pathway. I've never had the opportunity to see how that works. They run with one runner who can see and they direct them with their steps and voice. It was pretty cool to watch.

The walkway was GORGEOUS. I'm sure these miles took forever because I kept stopping to take pictures. There are 5 or 6 major bridges that go over the Willamette river. I've always been a fan, but man it was sooooo pretty being able to see them all just intertwined, almost artistic. Sigh. (I was cursing and kicking myself for not bringing my ACTUAL camera... silly Lori)

So, then came the funny/scary part of my run. I thought I had been pretty good about not freaking out. I had run the entire south end of the parkway and turned around and gone northbound. Well, the farther north you got the shadier the parkway became. I just noticed little things like...under each underpass there were peeps dealing drugs or just in the general not looking like a crowd I'd stop and ask directions for. It heightened when I ran under the next bridge. Apparently, this was the make shift apartment complex for all of Portland's homeless. Yaaaaah. I kinda tripped out in my mind. I was running in nice clothes and had my little ipod on.... and at this point the runners had sifted down to a runner every 1/4 of a mile or so... so I wasn't surrounded by numbers. I ran through there acting like I totally wasn't affected (hahahaha...yah, right) and kept running. Well, as I was running I kept thinking "I have to run back under that bridge to get back... what do I do?" and I looked around and realized that I was in "Chinatown" yaaah...smoooooth Lori. So, I kept jogging and kinda slowed down and waited for more runners to just pop out of the woodworks. Strength in numbers, right? Well... I had started running again and a man-runner ran past me, so I did a nice little u-turn and followed him. Apparently, I had on my "scary Lori" face that day....or the guy was gay and afraid of me...who knows.... he looked back at me when I started to follow him like I was a serial killer. He started SPRINTING! All I wanted was someone to run under that bridge with! So, I sprinted after him. Tee hee.... ohhhh.... poor guy. Yup, we made it under the bridge together and about 1 minute after we cleared the bridge I had to stop cause I was laughing so hard. Little did he know that I was the most non-scary-runner ever to run that parkway. Ooooh... fun fun. (that's the best pic i could get of him cause we were SPRINTING... see the bridge underpass coming up? That's it!)

It was about this point that I got REALLY HOT! (whether it was the 3 minute sprint or the amazing Oregon weather....) I stripped down to my cute new Nike tank. ;) Peeps were looking at me like I was nuts. They had hoodies, gloves, jackets, etc.... umm... obviously they never trained in sub-zero weather. It felt AWESOME. After the parkway, I ran back up through downtown to get back to my hotel. I'll spare you the details, but I got a little lost. It started with "ooooh I should get a picture of ______ for Amanda" so I tried to find it and uhhhh.... then my adventure started. :) Nonetheless, I knew what street my hotel was on, so even though I went 6 blocks too far south and 3 blocks too far east I eventually found it. Here are some highlights from the rest of the run.....

Niketown and a really cool park.... can't remember the name....

Their "world trade center" in Portland. The main financial hub of downtown. It's a gorgeous building!!

Me in Pioneer Courthouse Plaza really excited... cause I recognized it! It meant I wasn't totally lost anymore!! Wahoo!!!

YAY! The hotel!! I had to run up 5 blocks of uphill to get there and you know what? I didn't even feel bad. Seriously, sign me up for some bottled Portland Potion..... I LOVE IT HERE!

I was so energized by that awesome run that I didn't even care that I still had to run 2 miles in the sweatroom. (and yes, you can see by my lovely forehead that it is--in fact--and appropriately so-- the sweat room)

It was an awesome 8 miles. I would run it again in a heart beat. It made me all excited about the day that Van and I live in Oregon. My lungs with LOVE it here. The only thing that would have made this run any better was if I could have run it with you two..... allll together now....

AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

how was the 10 miler?