I’m between plans, and this is an odd week that sort of went off the rails, but not in a bad way. I was in Portland, Oregon for a conference, and when near the Nike Headquarters, one should put on their New Balances and take a few runs.
Sunday: Planned 8 miles. Since Thursday was going to be a waste and I had extra time on Sunday, I moved some runs up. I intended to do 8 miles… a friend texted me in the morning ‘how far you going and at what pace?’, I replied ‘8 easy’. Long story short, we went running together. Ended up doing 9.5 miles and he put the idea in my mind to do an AppCon Half Marathon. Went across the Hawthorn bridge and headed down along the east bank of the Willamette River to the Sellwood bridge and then back up the west side of the river. 9.5 miles in 1:24:59 (8:57 min/mile pace).
Monday: Planned 3 miles. This was really a little bit more of sight-seeing. Went across the N Steel Bridge and then back across the Hawthorn Bridge. 3.23 miles in 29:12 (9:02 min/mile pace).
Tuesday: Planned 8 miles. Actual: the Biennial AppCon Half Marathon Fun Run. Yeah, it happened. We ran across the Hawthorne Bridge, which they started the lift process when we were in the middle of the lift span (the process starts with them blasting a horn, starting an alarm and announcing over an intercom for pedestrians to wait behind the gates). Since both of us running are engineers, we turned around and watched a little. Yeah, that first mile was a little long š.
Then, we ran along the river as far south as we could before proceeding north and back across the Sellwood Bridge. Once we made it to Tillikum Bridge, we crossed it and then ran up to the Steel Bridge where we crossed back and finished along the west riverfront waiting on his FitBit to get to 13.2 miles. Mine made it to 13.29. GPS inaccuracy! All that in 1:56:25 (8:46 min/mile pace, an 11+ first mile and sub-8s for the last 2).
Wednesday: Planned 5 miles. I was running a little short on time from being out too late on Tuesday (I took a large group to Deschutes as part of the conference dine-around, and then we closed down Backpedal Brewing and 10 Barrel Brewing). Ran 4.19 across the Hawthorne Bridge and back across the Tilikum Bridge in 36:02 (8:36 min/mile pace).
I really didn’t mean to look surprised, I had just finished going up a hill.
Thursday: Travel day.
Friday: Planned 12 miles. Since the week was crazy and I way overslept (9:30 PM bedtime, woke up around 7:00 AM), I just did 8 in the park and the neighboring subdivision. 8.03 in 1:07:08 (8:22 min/mile pace). Also did my stretching and squats (I was a bit lax on those during the trip) and did 4 chin-ups.
That’s it for this wild week. Planned 36 miles, ran 38, so I was close to the plan. Next week is like this week but maybe I’ll close the gap a little between planned and actual.