DaCrizzow

    This past Wednesday was the 2nd race of  5 race series in Forest Park. The Portland Trail Series ( https://gobeyondracing.com/races/portland-trail-series/ ). While I usually use these races as speed workouts since they're usually pretty short, (4-6 miles) but this week I decided to hang back and run with a friend who's coming back from a knee injury. It's not like it's a big sacrifice for me or anything. My races are really my ultras. Where I can just find my slow-ass pace and hold it for 5-12 hours. check out some amazing scenery, meet some interesting people, eat some food every 5 or 6 miles and if I'm lucky, have some visions and hallucinations. Yeah, those are my kind of races. The Wednesday night series are my "community" thing, they happen just down the street from my apartment and sometimes I can get my "newbie" friends in on the fun.     We started in the back and TRIED to stay in the back but still managed to make a few passes once...

    I don't usually like to drive somewhere to go run or bike. In fact, i actually despise doing that. So much so that I haven't been on a real mountain bike ride in about two years. I much more prefer heading out my front door on the bike or on foot. I'm lucky that I live near some great areas for road cycling with a little bit of scenery and a lot of nice hills for training. And there's a park a couple miles from my apartment with miles and miles of trails to run on. Not so much for mountain biking, though.     Anyway, the last few months have been somewhat stressful and a bit disjointed. I needed to get the hell out of the city. I needed to get some solitude, some sun, and I needed to "feel" something. I needed to get some answers, or at least find the right questions.     I got up friday morning, through my gear in the car, picked up some coffee and headed out to the Deschutes River Trail, about 100 miles east of Portland, OR. It's an old railroad ...

    Wednesday night started the first of a five race series that happens every other week in Forest Park. The Portland Trail Series ( http://www.portlandtrailseries.com/ ). There's a spring series and a fall series and this year a summer series just got added. The summer series will be every week for five weeks.     They're all shorter distances, about 4.5-6.0 miles but with some really nice climbing and singletrack. And a different course every week. My only complaint is it's always on a downhill finish so all those guys I pass on the climbs. about half of them get me on the downhills.     The course this week featured a climb that I do in my training runs that we've never used as an "up" before. Only as a "down." It's pretty intense but since it was so far from the finish it didn't do me much good. Most of the people I dropped on the climb managed to get me on the downhills.     For myself, these aren't so much races as they are trai...

    This act of running, for me, is only a means to an end. Or better, a means to a journey. I've used several "vehicles" for this journey over the years. Music, drugs & alcohol, cycling, art, food, running just to name a few. Some playing bigger roles than others and probably a couple I've forgotten but none the less, these have all played big roles in getting me from one place of self to another place of self. So, with this in mind, I'm in the beginning of one of the biggest "journeys" and transformations of my life as are a lot of people in my life and on the peripheries of my social circle. And wether we know it or not, I think most of us are either on a new journey or about to be, either on a personal or on a more collective level. I can't speak for anyone else but this journey I'm on is a scary, soul crushing trip into blind faith that there is a light at the end somewhere. And very little faith at that. There is no "yellow brick r...