Picture Post

Training has been going great - legs are getting a bit sore but it's not so much pain as just soreness. My hamstring has been bothering me a bit but I'm hoping that stretching and foam rolling will help it. This weekend Jen and I ran our 18 miler, my longest run yet. We ran along the Old Columbia River Highway which is now closed to cars in some sections. It was a fairly hilly run which led to the usual recipe of me feeling great for the first 10 miles and Jen getting in her groove around mile 11 when I stop talking and start focusing on keeping up. Tomorrow I have a nice short 4 mile recovery run then 7 on Tuesday, 7 on Thursday, 4 on Friday, and 20 on Saturday.

Now that Fall is officially hitting the Portland area I took some pictures from my office and also on our recent runs.

Dirt hill we ran up on our recent long run - we gained approx 600 feet in elevation over 1.25 miles:

Jen and I running along the Old Columbia River Highway:

Hike in Forest Park:

Mount Saint Helens from my office:

Red leaves in Portland:

In other news I've decided, well 85% decided, to aim for the HulaMan Half Ironman as my A race for this coming season. Really nothing is holding me back from saying that I'm 100%, it's just a little strange for me to think about training for a HIM. The plan I picked out is pretty intense but not overwhelming. One thing that will be different from my sprint training is that this plan does not have any bricks - well, it does have some bricks but they are short. I've read quite a bit about bricks and like pretty much everything else in tri it's split 50/50 as to how beneficial they are. The plan has a lot of running, just not any long bricks. I guess all I can do is give it my best and see how I do (and maybe see how many times I can use the word bricks in all my sentences).