20 MILE DEATH MARCH ON SPRINGWATER

3:30 pace group rolling into the finish. That's me a good 10-15 feet behind everyone else.

On Saturday I was really excited for the Portland Marathon Clinic brunch run. I did it last year, my first run with PMC, and had a great time. The run was a lot of fun, hopping a bus to a mystery location and then running back to where we started to eat a meal they had prepared. It was a giant adventure and looking at the map afterwards was amazing... twenty miles when you are not doing an out and back or loop looks way more impressive!

Flash forward to this Saturday. If you had asked me before the run the LAST thing I would want to have happen, I would have said "bus us out twenty miles toward Boring (that's a city) and run the entire way back on the Springwater Corridor Trail." I even joked at the beginning of the bus ride about this, saying wouldn't that be terrible, I would just call a taxi if that were the case, etc. So what do they do? Bus us twenty fucking miles away and have us run the ENTIRE way back on the Springwater Trail. FUCK ME.

About halfway there we realize this is indeed what they are doing. While I'd say most people weren't thrilled, I don't think they despise it quite as much as I do. My first experience with it was last summer, when I ran 21 miles with Alejandro mostly on that trail. It SUCKS. It's straight, it's boring, it's ugly and runs mostly through industrial areas, it's exposed, the list goes on and on. The fact that it is mostly uninterrupted by roads does not even come close to overcoming these negatives. I'm glad I live on the west side with the Fanno Creek Trail... it may not be as big, but it is 50x better than the Springwater Trail.

This route sucks.

Okay, needless to say, running is part mental and part physical. I stayed fairly strong mentally for the most part, at least I had company and PMC provided aid stations. Plus, the first ten miles or so were new territory that I hadn't explored yet. While the scenery SUCKED, it was technically new. Had the weather been cooler I probably could have made it through this run fairly well. However, the high on Saturday was 96 degrees and by the time we started around 8:30am it was already hot. It over 90 when we finished around noon.

The last place you'd want to run on a day like that is on a boring trail that lacks shade. It was soul sucking. I was already kind of worn down from the last two weeks of running higher mileage and that plus the relentless heat lead to me feeling like shit around mile sixteen. Until then I was doing okay, annoyed at the route and not feeling super fresh, but okay. Those last four miles though... those were done with nothing but grit and determination. I hated every second of it and just wanted to be done.

Long story short, I finished. It sucked. The brunch run was so much fun last year, but this year it was terrible. Twenty miles on fucking Springwater? Really guys? Fuck that. I was diagnosed by a PMC coach working the brunch table with being dehydrated and running in too fast of a group because I passed out on the lawn in the shade after finishing. Um, no. I had plenty to drink, have run a 3:33 marathon, and was with the 3:30 pace group. I am lying in the grass because your run fucking sucked.

The food was good though.