RIDING THE ROLLERCOASTER

The so called rollercoaster.

After taking most of the week off after the marathon I'm back on the running bandwagon. Last Saturday was my first long run since the Portland Marathon and I originally planned to do twelve miles. Long story short, I ended up sleeping in until 1pm (solid 12 hours of sleep) and needed to abbreviate the run a little in order to get to the Portland State football game with my dad in time.

Originally I plotted a course on gmap-pedometer that was 12 miles and all on city streets since I was concerned that Fanno Creek may have flooded with recent rains. When I woke up my computer had restarted itself to install updates (just left the route open in a tab) so that coupled with the time crunch led me to my normal home to Fanno Creek route for ten miles. Luckily Fanno wasn't too bad and my feet were able to stay dry. Those ten miles seemed so long, but I managed to get them done at about 9:15/mile.

One reason why the long run seemed harder than it should have was my legs, hamstrings in particular, were still tired from running what we affectionately call the "rollercoaster" at my run group. Last week was the first week switching to the winter route, and thus, the rollercoaster (only if you go seven miles... the five mile route is hilly but nothing like the seven). Anyways, I don't want to slack off so I opted for the seven mile route both times and even gunned it a little bit on one of the runs.

It is one of those routes that seems hilly just for the sake of being hilly. And we call it the rollercoaster because, while it has definite "up" and "down" portions, it is going up and down all the time. Even after reaching the "top of the hill" halfway through you still have multiple uphills on the way back. Needless to say, I did it again last night and my hamstrings have been sore all day today. If I do it again tomorrow I'll have to take it really easy... I might just switch to the five mile route instead.

All told, I am happy to do the rollercoaster though. Running hills makes you a stronger and faster runner and it is great prep for the Zena Road Runs and Shamrock 15k I'll be doing in February/March.