MYSTERY RUN

10 mile mystery route.

I had a lot of fun this Sunday leading a "mystery" run for a group of friends from Portland Running Company. Alejandro and I both decided to run 10 miles this weekend, the weekend before our race in Vancouver. Since it wasn't the usual 16-20 miles that seems to go with marathon training, we invited some of our other friends from the group who might want to join us for this shorter distance. There ended up being six of us, yours truly included, so we met at 10am at PRC.

Normally we'd just run on Fanno Creek, but Alejandro wanted to run elsewhere because he was getting a little tired of that trail over and over again. I had the entire week to plan a new route so I told him not to worry, I'd find something else. I ended up plotting a route from the store through the local neighborhoods, trying to stay on not-so-busy roads and use fun little "shortcut" greenway paths where possible. We even did a lap in the woods of Hyland Forest Park.

I then memorized the whole route in my head and wouldn't tell them where I was leading them. So I had a lot of fun saying "I don't know" and shrugging my shoulders every time they tried to get me to reveal the route. When the trail would split I'd start running way one and then suddenly jut the other way just to mess with them. At one point a runner guessed our next move I said "you're right!" and then took off in the complete opposite direction. Anyways, lots of jokes about how I was getting hopelessly lost, leading them into the forest to kill them, secretly running twenty miles, etc. Overall the ten miles seemed really short and time flew by. It was a great run.

That was the final long run before my second ever marathon. Yikes! I'll run six easy miles tonight at run group, then follow up with an easy three on Wednesday. Then rest up until the race Sunday morning! I'll have a preview of the race and my goals later this week.